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Got up and had a very pretentious breakfast in the hotel courtyard with a fountain in front of us. Although hostals can have no fan and no hot water, we kind of wish we hadn't decided to treat ourselves to a hotel. We went to the tourist information and found out which bus to take to the equatorial line, the middle of the world. We took two buses, an hour and a half, and it was funny because people kept jumping on to sell stuff. They would deliver this really enthusiastic speech about a chocolate bar, one guy spoke for half an hour. We weren't tempted.
We stood with one foot on either side of the equatorial line and then went up to the top of the equatorial monument for the views. There was also a museum in the monument on the indigenous cultures of ecuador which was good enough. There was a chief´s coat made of over 80 toucan chests. This is made for each chief but nowadays has become more complicated with conservation/animal rights and all that rubbish.
We met a tour guide, called Fernando unsuprisingly, who took us on a tour to Pululahua which is one of the largest inhabited volcanic craters in the world. The guy knew his stuff and managed to get us up there before the clouds dropped completely. And he had a nifty hat. Another tour group arrived just as the place was covered in cloud and you couldn't see a few metres ahead of you. There is a hostal in the crater which we thought would be cool to stay in had we not arranged to stay elsewhere. Wherever you stay in ecuador, and many south american countries, is very close to an active volcano. In Quito there is an active volcano which erupted a few years back. It dates back to incan times where they wanted to be near to volcanoes which they considered were gods.
On the way back from the tour we were shown the real equatorial line site. Ancient people before the incas had built a monument here but for some reason this was ignored when the new equatorial monument was built 70 years ago. GPS confirmed a few years ago that the ancient people before the incas were actually right.
We had lunch, picked up certificates that say you have been to the equator (cheesey, but we had to), and got the bus home. We were going to head to this museum then couldn´t be bothered so pretty much ran for the bus when the tour guide turned his back. We got off the bus in the backside of nowhere and got a taxi driver to take us to the Virgen de Quito - a statue you can see from anyhere in the city. We haggled with the taxi driver for 20minutes over the fare, we think he must have been impressed because he halfed the price and waited at the statue for 20 minutes for us to see around it before driving us back to the hotel. He thought we were dutch and talked to Matthew about the football team's orange shirts. We went with it. The virgen was beautiful up close, all mosaic windows. It's not at all like the Eiffel tour which you end up regretting visiting.
We got back to the hotel and went to the jacuzzi and sauna. Guy at the frontdesk is still an a*******.
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