Friday, June 8, 2012

Bienvenidos!

We have arrived in Quito!

After a five-hour flight, we finally got in around 9:30 on Wednesday night and were greeted by our two National Geographic guides, Taylor and Sam. Pizza awaited us back at the hostal, and it was delicious! The next morning the owners of the hotel cooked us eggs, which were really good. Overall the food has been great, except for some difference between the Mexican chorizo that I was used to and Ecuadorian chorizo. Lets just say Bailey and I won't be ordering sausage the rest of the trip. We had orientation in the morning and then went to climb a mountain in the afternoon. A gondola took us up part way, so it sort of felt like we were about to go skiing. Once we got there we hiked up even more, reaching 12,000 feet. I had Kilimanjaro deja vu hiking at such a high altitude and getting out of breath so easily! The views were fantastic and there were a bunch of pretty horses that made for great pictures. That night we went on a night tour of Quito with a very enthusiastic guide who claimed to be the devil. His translator counterpart was a little less into it, and the contrast was funny. This morning I woke up around 4 oclock, no idea why because I was pretty tired. This gave me plenty of time to wait for the sunrise and think about pictures and stuff. A little later we went a two hour drive to the market in Otovalo. The touristy market was full of cool stuff to buy, like an llama sweater! I got one that has llamas all over it, it's kind of weird and I look like a hobo but I love llamas so it's worth it. We also wandered around the local market and got a lot of good shots of produce and cool foods. We tried a couple of berry things that had a weird texture but were really yummy. So far the trip has been a blast!





3 comments: