TravellingStrom

Friday – Quito, Ecuador

For those interested in the roads of Colombia, I have finally managed to upload a video I took between Medellin and Pasto, I have added it to the day of the 8th December , it is half way down the page

By crikey it was cold last night, not in the room, I had plenty of blankets, but outside was ‘fresh’ !!! First thing after breakfast I went down to the bike to grab my thermal underwear, not used since British Colombia in Canada 🙂 I found they had moved my bike from where I had parked it and placed it closer to the dogs bowl, hopefully tyre is not his favorite dish 🙂

The main job this morning was to find a post office and send some photos and other stuff home, so this took a bit of effort as I needed to burn last months photos, find all the stuff I wanted to send and get sorted for a ride to town. The taxi ride was quite cheap, only a few dollars and because of the package size I thought I needed to be at a specific post office. If it is over 2kg, only certain places will handle it. As it turns out, it was 1.5kg, but they were very efficient, they did not charge extra for tape like the yanks do and I managed to get it packed up and sent with a stack of stamps for the people at home to collect 🙂 The only puzzling thing that I am still confused about is that, because I do not have an address here in Ecuador, the senders address has to be the same as the receivers address, so as silly as it sounds, it was sent from and to the same address? 😕 But, that is what they said had to happen, well, all I know is there is no return address, so hopefully it will arrive 🙂

Enough said about that, I had some lunch as by now it was that time of day and just for a change I had Kentucky Duck and found it tasted real good, so that means it is only America where this brand tastes like crap, which is really weird? 😕 I also found a bank that would accept my card and grabbed some cash and took another cab back to the hostel to offload it, it was too much to carry around and I had heard a few bad things about Quito. This is where I decided to take a video of how I have to access my room. Now, I am on the ground floor, but it is actually two buildings joined together, one with 3 floors, one with 4 floors and the only floors that match up where they could knock an access way through was the third floor, so I have to walk up 3 flights, though the Internet room and down three flights. The stairs are not even and my legs were copping a caning every day!

After that, I grabbed another cab and decided to go look at the Angel statue, this is the one on the hill I can see from the hostel and I had heard it had great views of the city 🙂 This meant a bit of a convoluted ride around and around, not being ripped off, it is just that the traffic was bad and the one way street system has to be seen to be believed!

Once up there, it looked like there was a lot of wire mesh fencing, but I found out later, this was used to hold fireworks a week or so ago for the xmas lights launch. The views from inside the statue were cool and showed the extent of the city, it runs for 30km or so down a valley, and over a lot of hills, this place has a population of about 4.5 million! In one of the following photos I have added an arrow, the photo is not clear enough, but the city goes another 10km past that arrow in the valley and what was worse, that was south, the way I was heading which meant a nightmare to get out! 😦

As you can imagine I was not happy to be in this city, too big, too much traffic but I was here now so I decided to enjoy it 🙂 After finding a rattletrap taxi to get back it was of course beer time 🙂 This was as usual on the balcony, a few people said that you can get better views from the Basilica, which is a church, cum clock tower just up the road a bit, well maybe another day, if I am still here 🙂

I had a few beers and some dinner which was cheap and quite filling and this is when it was decided to go visit La Ronda with a group of us 🙂

Now, we had heard about this place and I was under the impression that is was a salsa bar with booze and dancing, but no, it was actually an area of town and quite a few streets covered with small bars and street entertainment, live music and some great fun 🙂

Now, this stuff here was different, it is distilled cane juice, quite powerful, it costs 50c and is served hot, it takes your breath away and packs a punch 🙂 This is Nick, Justin, Leanne and myself testing the hot grog 🙂

So we wandered up the street and checked out what was on offer, there was heaps and the streets were packed, this was a fantastic place to be!

We eventually picked a place which had plenty of seats, live music and ordered some drinks 🙂

As you can see the girls were into the salsa and why not, there was nothing else to do, when I say we ordered drinks, well we did but where TF were they? Well, it turns out that they did not have beer on the premise, even though it is on the menu and had to send a young bloke out with money to buy a 6 pack take away and bring it back for us? I nearly crashed tackled him when he came past us, but we were eventually served beer, only 25 minutes after we ordered, and the place was not packed at all! The beer was real frothy too and Andrea looked funny with a moustache 🙂

After some more dancing and we had finished the beers, we decided to head off as it may take another hour to get another beer, we passed a place down the street where some people were drinking huge beers, so maybe they had heard about the service 🙂

The next stop was a place called Bungalow 6, this is a nightclub bar and there was a farewell party being held for one of the girls from the travel agency that operates out of the hostel. We were all given a set of bead necklaces, red yellow or green, which meant taken and do not touch, proceed with caution or single and free to mingle, of course I chose green 🙂 This is Dustin, Justin and Marie.

Booze was drunk and some dancing happened 🙂

And just for a laugh, I know I am short, but this bar makes me look like a midget! I need my mate Carl to buy the drinks, at least he could see the barman, I had no idea who was serving me 🙂

The party continued for quite a while, but we eventually left around 3am, it was a fun night and for once I managed to return home with a working camera 🙂

Day – 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 44,838 miles and 72,159 km

Salud
TravellingStrom

WORLD

Go to top of page