Quito

Well I finally made it. It was a 30 hour epic journey, firstly to Sydney for a three hour layover, then a LAN Chile flight from Sydney to Santiago, stopping at Auckland for an hour and a half.

Another 3.5 hours in the terminal at Santiago. There's only so many laps you can walk of the terminal, but there was a Starbucks to relieve the boredom. 7 hours flying north to Quito via a refuelling stop at some small place I can't quite remember.

Believe it or not when I arrived at Quito my bags were waiting for me on the carousel after all those hops, and the taxi was waiting outside with my name on it. Beats going to Sydney.

It was actually dark by the time I got to the hotel at 10:30pm, which was kind of strange. As we travelled the great circle route to Santiago we had gone near Antarctica, so although the sun dipped below the horizon it never really got dark.

To bed and sleep, and no jet lag or altitude problems - great.

Sunday

Hired a taxi with a couple of other people on our tour and did a half day explore of the old town of Quito. Went to a national park which was an old crater of one of the 13 active volcanoes in Ecuador. Then to the equator park for a tour - really interesting.

Did you know that you drop a kilo of weight while straddling the equator? The affect fades a metre each side, so I'm sorry for you girls but its a really temporary solution. Also you can balance an egg on the head of a nail, and I have a certificate to prove I did it. You also
lose a lot of strength just straddling the line. I had the tour guide girl overpower three guys while standing on the line, that she didn't have a hope of doing a metre away. We couldn't walk a straight line with our eyes closed, and we'd only had coke.

We then went to the big statue of Mary on a hill overlooking the town, and then to the old town square and church where we had a lovely lunch in the plaza.

Off to the Galapagos Islands by plane tomorrow at 7am.

Hope you are all well.