Round the World with Ann and Katie

We arrived in Quito Sunday afternoon and decided to stay in the old town.  After finding a hostel we tried to find somewhere for lunch.  The town was surprisingly quiet, the roads were closed to cars and there were a lot of people walking and cycling, but almost everything was closed.  Apart from that we liked the old town, a lot of nice squares, impressive buildings and it seemed very quiet and easy to get around for a capital city.  For once it wasn´t completly overcast and raining so we decided to make the most of the weather and spent most of the afternoon in La Carolina, the main park in the city.  It was obviously the place to be on a Sunday as it was really busy but it was still a really nice place, until it started raining and we back to the hostel.  In the evening, it was even quieter and the only place we could find that was open was an internet cafe.

The next day we decided we should go to the Equator which is marked by a monument and a few museums just outside of the city.  Although its not far we had a few problems working out the public transport system and it took us nearly all morning to get there.  When we finally arrived we ended up going to what is probably best described as the alternative museum.  It was set up by a small group of people who have proven that the equator isn´t where the monument and official museum are, but 240m away.  They are investgating a pre-Inca arcaeology site which they think was built to mark the true equator.  the guy running it told us a lot of interesting information about archaeology, geography and astronomy in the area, he also talked a lot of rubbish as well.  After that we deicided not to even bother going to the official museum and went back in to town, a slightly better route than we had taken.  We spent the rest of the day looking round the town and doing a few jobs that we had to get done before our flights the following day.

It was an early start the next day as Cathy’s flight home was at 9am.  My flight to Costa Rica wasn´t until 2pm so I just spent most of the day at the airport. 

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