Day 19: Dusty Days in Quito

After climbing Cotopaxi, Sarah was feeling a lot better so we decided to take the TeleferiQo cable car up Pinchincha mountain, overlooking Quito city. From there we could climb up to roughly 4400 metres. It was pretty bizarre watching planes take off from Quito airport below us - see if you can spot the plane in the picture!! But after Sam had finally climbed all the possible mountains in the Lonely Planet guide, it was time for a rest.

So Day 17 we bought bread rolls, cheese, pepperoni and tangelos from the supermarket, and went for quite a walk to a pretty park and had a picnic. This was a great day but we got pretty tired walking back to our hostel in the heat!! Speaking of our hostel, we made a new friend 'Manchita' the owners' border-collie/something else.

Day 18 we were excited to be joining our new tour group. We checked into the new hotel (pretty nice for 'basic' accommodation), and went to the Irish pub to watch Ecuador play Bolivia in the world cup qualifiers. The atmosphere was awesome, heaps of people were wearing their Ecuador jerseys (a pretty offensive bright yellow, even coming from a Hurricanes supporter!) and the pubs were packed! Luckily Ecuador won 1-0, despite their goal being a penalty from a really obvious dive!! We then had to leave the festivities to return to the hotel where we had our joining meeting for the big Quito to Rio tour! Unfortunately we had to spend an extra day in Quito that we didn't know about on the tour, so we are pretty Quito-ed out, but really looking forward to heading to the amazon tomorrow!!!

So hopefully we will be able to blog after the Amazon!

Hasta luego everyone! Xoxo

Sam Fact Day 19: Cotopaxi and Pinchincha form part of Ecuador's Avenue of the Volcanoes. The eastern and western ranges are separated by a high altitude valley (2500m - 3000m), where the city of Quito and many other villages are located.

Chimborazo is the highest peak in Ecuador at around 6300m. However, due to Earths equatorial bulge, the peak is furthest from the centre of the earth (closest to the sun). Even more than Mt Everest!