Hello all, we arrived last night at tea time and are sitting in an internet cafe before heading back to our "lovely" hostal. The journey was pretty long, left on friday night at 9 and arrived at heathrow at 10.30 with no where to sleep. Flight to madrid was the next morning at 6.30 and we arrived in quito at 4.30, about 10.30 home time. Are considering how much it would cost to fly first class home, grim. All the little latin american girls on the plane looked like dora the explorer - we plan to steal one for amy and ella.

Quito is pretty exotic, palm trees everywhere. Matthew says it reminds him of certain places in eastern europe. It´s about 20ish degrees at the minute but hot enough when you can´t find an atm to get water anywhere. Wasn´t that bad, but Matthew has altitude sickness. He says he doesn´t, but he has a splitting headache, dizzyness, and a sick stomach. We´ve spend the day wandering around the new town mariscal area, which has a KFC with an armed guard outside it. As in a guard with his gun actually in his hand. We didn´t go there. We think its because theres a mcdonalds right beside it. We went up the main touristy streets which weren´t really that interesting. We passed by the national museum though which we plan to visit tomorrow. There was a handicrafts market on in one of the parks and Lisa bought a few scarf/pashima things.

The hostal´s a bit...disappointing. Lisa´s spanish is better than the staff´s english, which is saying something. The room has a massive window with crap curtains so you can see in whenever the lights on. There´s a random door that leads outside and a bathroom that has a window that doesn´t shut and no cold water in the sink, very little hot water in the shower. The pillows look like if we turn our backs they would walk off by themselves, Matthew reckons they´re older than the pair of us combined. The ceilings like a piece of mouldy cheese. Only here for another few days so can´t really complain, this is the complaining over with and we haven´t even gone into the breakfast.

Will post a few photos next time, missing everyone and our own pillows

Love, Lisa and Matthew xox