The middle of the world....

Hey everyone

We hope that people in the UK are all OK and aren´t suffering too much from the weather. We have seen the satellite pictures and it looks pretty cold!

We arrived safely in Ecuador and are staying in a nice hostel called Chicago Hostel with a roof terrace and brekky for a $1. Everything feels cheap here - you can get a 3 course meal (albeit basic) for under $2 in local restaurants and we paid $3 for ours at a nice veggie one. The weather is pretty changeable but is generally warm, cool wind, and sunny so much more pleasant than Buenos aires. Quito is much higher than Buenos aires so we both felt a little tired yesterday but are suffering no real ill effects luckily.

Today we went on an organised tour which guided us through the old city, up to a mirador (with a statue of a pregnant Virgin Mary) and up to the ófficial´and unofficial centre of the world museum and monument. It is the first ´touristy´organised tour we have done for a while but it was good value and the tour guide was good. Nina made Glenn take some lame photos with her at the ´centre of the world´monuments, and we will post them up on the next blog.

When we talk about the ´middle of the world´, it is the equator line which goes through Quito and where some French, spanish and Ecuadorian scientists designated the official equator line in the mid 18th century. There is an official monument and also a museum where they demonstrate water going round down the sink one way in the North, another way in the South and straight down on the equator line (correolis effect etc).

Tomorrow we are getting driven up a volcano (Cotopaxi) and then are going to whizz down on mountain bikes. It looks really good fun and not as dangerous as Bolivia! Around Quito is known as the avenue of the volcanoes and we put a link below to the one we are going up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotopaxi

Tomorrow evening we are getting an overnight bus to Canoa, a lovely little beach town, where we might try surfing depending on the weather and conditions. We plan to stay for 3 days before heading on, as we are working our way down the coast to Lima for our flights at the end of this trip. But if we love it, we might stay longer!

We will upload pictures as and when we can but because we are going off the beaten track there may be a delay to transmissions.

We hope the weather clears up in the UK and people are taking care of themselves.

Nina and Glenn xx