30 hours and 4 flights after we set off we’ve finally arrived here in Quito, Ecuador – our first stop on what we hope is a round the world adventure. The rough plan is to spend the next 13 weeks making our way through South America before boarding a flight from Brazil to Frankfurt and then onto London. We’ve got our flight booked out of Rio and a rough idea of how to get there and for now that’s as far as we want to plan.
It’d have been far too sensible to arrive in a foreign and supposedly dangerous city during daylight hours and so we opted to arrive just before midnight and get a transfer with Pablo (I already forgot his name so I’m making this part up) through the empty streets to our hostel for the night. It’s always disorienting to arrive in a new city at night, no way to get your bearings or work out the city centre from the outskirts.
Mild altitude headaches are here already (Quito is 2,850m asl.) but it’s the extra effort simply climbing up stairs that we’ve noticed the most. Walking about is no problem at all but the slightest incline quickly sucks the breath out of you. We’ve given ourselves a full day today to get adjusted (both to the altitude and the obvious cultural change) and taken it relatively easy visiting a few interesting places around the hostel (outside the hostel that is, not interesting places inside the hostel :p).
Given that we’re newcomers to this part of the world, we’re heeding the safety and security warnings carefully especially when the hostel staff themselves are more than happy to share recent stories of their own mugging experiences in the street out front.
