Hello!

So we've officially gapped Brazil (yay!) and are in Quito, Ecuador! Eeeee! We are definately both in our element here and are a lot more positive after the whole Brazil exercise...!

Spent our last day in Rio killing time basically.. Met up with Gina (who we met in Paraty) for lunch (I had steak, can you believe it?! Which is a whole different story but to cut it short, I am back eating red meat and now not eating chicken hahahha wtf right? I know, I'm mental) in Ipanema and then milled around and headed to the airport at about 8pm.

Got to the airport, the "shopping area" was entirely closed! Managed to have some dinner (more red meat I might add haha!) and then found ourselves a nice posy in the corner of the airport and stayed up until 4am playing cards and drinking short blacks!

Checked in and went through customs - all of which took about 1.5hours because the Brazilian staff were so fricken lazy. I swear to god, we were sitting (when I say sitting, I actually mean lying) on the floor of the hostel trying not to fall asleep waiting to go through to our gate!

Finally got on the plan about 6.30am and slept most of the way to Lima, from there connecting to Quito. So as you can imagine we were stuffed by the time we arrived! Went out for a late lunch/early dinner and ZOMG this place is cheap! Insane in the membrane cheap! We had all up at dinner: two massive plates of food (shrimp & rice, chicken & rice), wontons, and a jug of homemade lemonade and it cost us US$11!!!! It is definately a weight off my shoulders that we can actually afford stuff here, and can go out to eat without feeling guilty!!

Wandered to the old town today; Ecuador is the size of NZ apparently, and Quito has the same population as Auckland but it's made up of three areas - the old town, new town and the CBD I think. We are staying in the new town, so went to the old part to do the touristy stuff! It's very different because in Brazil and Argentina there's a very diverse look to the people, like you could be any skin colour and fit in kinda thing, whereas here the people are very distinctive looking - very brown skin, very short, etc etc so needless to say we got a lot of stares in our direction! We don't really mind as it's more a curiousity thing (as opposed to the rude Brazil thing).

We've been getting a lot of beeps from passing cars with males driving them.. A taxi driver even saw us walking down a massive hill towards the main road and stopped in the middle of the intersection in moving traffic so he could beep and stare hahahhahah! Tomorrow I will start the official beep count!

Have had a bit of altitude sickness from being in a city that's so high above sea level. Was reading some info in the hostel about how high up this place is, and apparently even though Mt. Everest is the highest point in the world, since the earth isn't symmetrical or whatever (it's higher on one side than the other, which is more flat), Ecuador is one of the closest places on earth to the moon! Crazy! So yeah, bit of headaches and short of breath, and also dizziness which I can't tell if it's altitude sickness or just me since I'm always dizzy haha!

Still completely knackered so I apologise is this is not written very well - just trying to tell you guys everything I can think of! lol!

Gonna go for dinner now and then crash out me thinks, hope you all had a lovely xmas!

xxxx