El Ciudad!

The initial excitement and nervousness of arriving here has receeded, and now were are feeling much more capable. No longer do we have to point at the pictures on the menu to get what we want or flip frantically through the phrasebook to look up how to say "The Bill Please".

We've had three days of spanish lessons now and it's beginning to feel like grade 10

french immersion class, except for some reason I am trying to learn this. Perhaps out of pure necessity or a deep down fear of not being able to ask for the right food and ending up with a random meat infront of me.

After our morning classes we have the whole afternoon to explore or more often than
not, just nap. Aparently we should have taken our lessons in the afternoon and had the morning free to explore, since the weather is perfectly clear and sunny all morning and the clouds slowly roll in during the afternoon, making it slightly chilly.

We spent one afternoon and took the Trole Bus from where we are staying in 'La Mariscal' over to 'Old Town' which is the colonial part of Quito. It has lots of cool old buildings and some big plazas with lots of people and monuments. Most of the sidewalks are only two people wide and the cars zip along honking randomly all over the place. Seriously they honk at every opportunity, and some. We checked out 'El Basilica...' which is a big gothic church built in the 1920's for way too much money. It's just like lots of other big gothic churches, except because this is South America they let you climb the bell tower for $2. It's quite a long way up and you can cross a rickety old bridge that goes above the ceiling of the main gallery in the church to a series of ladders that take you up to a random tower. It's pretty cool and kinda sketchy. The view of the city was neat, and it seems to go on forever and ever. Around the Basilica they have instead of gargoyles, pairs of stone animals including: Iguanas, Giant Turtles, Condors, Tiger, Fish, and many more. Very strange choice of 'gothic' mascots.

Yesterday we met up with James, an Aussie bloke from fall camp whose on to his third month in SA. Nice to see a familiar face and share ideas about places to go and see. We braved a nearby market and managed to buy some bananas, avacados and a mango without getting ripped off! Only $1.50 for it all. The mango is by far the most incredibly amazing piece of fruit, mango or otherwise, I've ever eaten.

Today was really nice and warm so we walked over to a nearby park that had the coolest collection of playground equipment ever. None of it would be legal in Canada now because it's way too fun, heh. There was neat little cars that kids could rent that were kinda like go carts that you had to pedal. I resisted the urge to rent one. There was a interesting craft market with lots of indigenous jewelery and clothing and other assorted crafts. Not worth bying just yet, but since we fly home from Quito, we figure we'll hit it up again before we leave.

We've got a few more days left in quito, then we are planning on heading north to a little town of Mindo to see some cloud forests and much more!

Updated the map.

Buenos noches amigos!

Buenos Tardes

We are here!

After two flights, a fairly easy connection, and a taxi ride, we arrived at our hostel at about 11:30 last night. We discovered that we are in desparate need of some spanish lessons, and so set off this morning (after a continental breakfast across the street) to find a suitable school. We can see mountains from the hostel too. It has been a beautiful sunny, warm day and all the leaves are green again! But we didn't forget our sunscreen.

We went to 5 different spanish schools, and decided on one which is a short walk from the hostel. So we start tomorrow morning, and have 4 hour classes for the next 5 days (unless we decided that we still need help). We had lunch at a small restaurant, and with a lot of help from the waiter and chef, were able to point to a meal that looked (and tasted) good. It was called "Mote Mixto", so next time we'll be able to say that rather than point. heh heh

We came back to the hostel for a much-needed nap. And are going to now look for a place to eat dinner, and some activity to do tomorrow afternoon after our first spanish class.

Some new photos of the hostel we are staying in and the view from the plane