At present I am sitting in our guest house in the old town of Quito. We started off on Monday with a long flight to Miami, with a 2nd turn around. Bit of excitement as it took us ages to get through and back in the airport. Luckily we got driven in one of those carts from one end of the airport to the other! Of course our gate was the far end and managed to get there as as the last lot were boarding. The flight from Miami to Quito was just over 3hrs, so the last part of the journey was ok.

I had booked the Secret Garden Hotel Quito for our first night. It was reassuring that the other passenger said it was a very dangerous part of town and not to go out at night. We ploughed on to turn up at this lovely little tree lined cobbled street. Entering the building u go into a little court yard and have to navigate to the room to sort out details, but what a view! The whole roof is a bar with music, a wheel barrow with coal as a fire and a friendly atmosphere, then I forgot to mention the view. Wow!! You look over the whole of Quito and the surrounding hills.

Today started with a lovely breakfast on the roof chatting to a Germany couple. They said to watch the altitude and not go anywhere high, so guess what we did first? There is a cathedral near by so we decided to climb up both the bell tower and spiral. ALOT of climbing but also amazing views! Afterwards we spent the rest of the day walking round the old town and found a lovely restaurant in an underground building.

After getting back, we have just booked the Galapagos islands for tomorrow! We (I) decided it was best to fly there and sort out everything from there. We looked at the boat trips but they don't do diving! So we will head there and sort it out separately. Adam will do his Padi and I will spend my days diving!! Yippppeeee! If we don't see all the sea lions, turtles, hammerheads etc we will then do a boat trip. We plan to fly back to Quito on 29th Sept but these can be change.

May be out of touch until I get back. Will keep u posted.

Tess