Quito

I´m in Quito with Julie. We are having a blast figuring out how to get around and all, the public transportation here is amazing, and only cost .25 per ride. Quito is a huge huge city much bigger than new York. We have visited the Old Town were there are a lot of cool churches and old type houses and streets. We went to one church, the Basilica, built in the 1700´s that was very cool and climbed all the way to the top of the towers to see a beautiful view of Quito!! Que bonita. The people here are very nice, you can ask anybody anything so it´s very gun. We also went to Mitad del Mundo- middle of the earth were we stood with each side of our bodies in different hemispheres. and took a little hike to Puleahua, can´t really describe that. We also spent a day at the thermal hot springs with a family we found on couchsurfing who has lent us a bed for free for three nights. chevere! We plan to go to Otavalo manana to see the Indigenous market and check up el norte de quito. Should be fun. I´ll try and keep you all updated, keep in mind uploading pictures is a pain in the butt...so bear with me : ) Buenas noches



June 8, 2008


Well today was supposed to be our day of relaxing because we had taken a long bus ride to the towns of Otavalo and Ibarra yesterday to check out the markets and then went to dinner with Julie´s host brother and sister form last semester. So today we decided to go up to the teleferico qhich is a rail thingy like in Palm Springs or at the Zoo that takes you up the mountain in a cable car. It takes you up mt. Pinchincha which also happens to be teh name of this province. We are in teh province of Pinchiincha and the city of Quito. At the top of this mountain you can see all of Quito which is amazingly HUGE!!!! It would take 3 or 4 photos next to eachotehr to captrue it all. We ran into a guy we know and hima nd three of his friends were going on a 2 1/2 hr. hike up into the mountains behind teleferico. So in our jeans, t-shirt and sweater with 1 bottle fowater we decided to go along...
What an adventrue the scenery is amazingly beautiful and green, it is gorgeous, ro hermosa. We took plenty of pictures, don´t worry... It actually ended up beign a crazyy ass hike. It is similar to the scene in Lord of the Rings where Sam and Frodo are on their wayt o mordor in teh clouds and sharp rocks, EXACTLY like that except we didn´t have a Golum tied up and walking behind us...and we don´t have huge hairy barefeet...our shoes are actually pretty nice Well it actually started hailing and raining on our way up there and I couldn´t really feel my fingers for a large part of the time, but it was still and amaizng adventure. We made our way to the top and enjoyed the scenery up in the clouds and practically on top of the clouds. We then had to go down the sand part of the mounhtain by running for the most part, really similar to skiing it was really cool, but know our feet look like something out of Lord of the Rings. We made our way down just in time for dark and on our way down Quito lite up, what a sight! We went and had dinner with this group who are really nice and we aer going to stay at this guys house tomorrow night for two nights, for free. It is cheaper than the hostal we are in now, which is only $5/night. Well we aer now goin to munch on some candies and drink some cola...look for updates later.
p.s. While in quito we are trying to check our emails more frequently because it might be a bit more difficult later on...