In Quito now

Thursday we visited some pueblos around Otavalo, which gave us an insight into how the Indios really live. Incredibly poor! we got a tour of how they manufacture their handicrafts and sell them on for very little money, i.e. baskets, traditional hats and woolen jumpers. Then these things are sold on to tourists for a lot more money thru middle men!

Today, we left our 2weeks base camp in Ibarra and unfortunately had to leave Sra Teresa, who took such good care of us! Muchas Gracias Teresita!

Just arrived in Quito this afternoon. Pretty depressing place! Its raining non-stop, completely grey sky (reminds me of London) and everthing is shut. On Sunday they have the elections here and that means "ley seca", i.e. no alcohol is served anywhere 3 days before the elections!! That also means also a lot of restaurants/bars are shutting. Unbelievable, cant even get drunk! ;-)Cant wait to leave this place again. Here til Tuesday morning, then off to Galapagos!
hasta pronto!

Sunday, 15th Oct
Found this Mexican restaurant with free internet access and which sells wine to take away! success!
We went to "Mitad del Mundo" today, the Equator line. You can jump between the northern and southern hemispere! FUN. It is about 20km north of Quito and it was nice to get out of the big stinking city.

Was quite a hassle to get there though... we seem to spend a lot of time on buses over here. A nice lady on the bus advised us to get the "autobus amarillo" back to Quito, which would be much faster. Well, as far as my Spanish knowledge goes, amarillo means yellow. So John and me are desperately looking out for that "amarillo" bus, and they come in all colours here, white, red, green, blue but just not yellow. Well we ask the driver of the "autobus azul" when the yellow bus would be passing. He just said "This is the yellow bus". With disbelief and thinking "have we gone colour-blind" we ask again - and he explained: The sign with the destination on it is yellow, so we finally clogged what they meant! I think we would still be in Mitad del mundo now if we hadn´t asked. LOL
More next week!