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11th-12th August
Yesterday afternoon was spent napping and some more napping and finally it was bed time. I was so exhausted from our stop over that apparently I slept through a dog barking just outside the window and a group of youths singing, just outside the window, can you believe it Mum and Dad?
After my power sleep we had a nice breakfast at our hostel then explored Quito's old town. You can feel the difference a few thousand metres makes as it felt a lot warmer here than in La Paz. We took our time looking at all the sights, trying some food from an Ecuadorian style farmers market, which was delicious but very sweet. There are so many churches and museums to choose from we had to have a drink at one of the plazas to decide. We finally chose La Compañia a beautiful church with the most elegant, overdone gold leaf, covering the entire interior. We weren't allowed to take pictures but got some on the sly anyway, rebels! The thing I found the most interesting was there had been a fire in 1996 which ruined nearly everything inside, but they painstakingly restored it back to its original beauty, the only testament to the damage is the smoke-blackened face of an angel, deliberately left uncleaned.
In the evening we went to the new town. It was really lively and seemed to have a nice atmosphere. We found a restaurant that seemed quite cheap and we both had a great meal and watched a bit more of the Olympic highlights. The taxi back was interesting as I had remembered the name of our hostel but the driver had no idea where it was, we drove around a bit with us desperately trying to direct him with our limited Spanish and eventually he said a road name that we had heard of so he dropped us near (ish) to our hostel. I would like to say this is the first time this has happened but we do it a lot. Either book a hostel and then forget to write down the name or forget to write down the address, this trip cost us an extra dollar so hopefully we have learnt our lesson.
The next morning, after our 'Toni' yoghurt breakfast our hostel owner kindly drove us to the bus station that was miles away and we caught a bus to Latacunga. It was Sunday and only the hostel and a pizza place were open. Fortunately it was a top notch pizza place and after a quick briefing about where we were going to walk tomorrow we had some food, packed our smaller bags in preparation for our hike and went to bed.
- comments
Mummy Mansfield Just a few pointers: Only a dog barking and a group of youths singing, no phone calls or stones at the window and yet you still sleep. You do know someone higher up saw all you did in the church. Some of us saw the Olympics live. We don't know what a Toni yoghurt is - means nothing to the oldies. You can't live on pizza. xxxx
G Dawg Love your mums comments!!
G Dawg Found a picture of a toni yoghurt! unfortunately it wont let me post it on here!