This started with our trip to Cotopaxi the following morning. This didn't look good from the outset to be honest - it was drizzling and the clouds were even lower than they had been before we left Quito the first time. We drove up to the volcano, and quickly realised we had forgotten about the temperature change that comes with altitude, a few more alpaca items were bought at a market stall - because you can never have too many scarves and gloves... We realised we may have been a little ambitious in our attempt to go from sea level to 5000m in less than 24 hours when we stopped at a lagoon for an acclimatisation walk on the flat, and couldn't go more than about 20 steps without feeling dizzy and light headed. This was at the relatively low altitude of around 3500m.
Regardless we carried on, to the car park at the bottom of the path to the Refugio. The car park looked like a building site, and the volcano was still shrouded with cloud, but we gave it a go anyway. The plan was to start out here at 4,500m, and spend an hour climbing to the Refugio, and possibly even the snow line beyond. It soon became apparent that this was not going to happen, we made it up to about 4,750m against the wind, and were not enjoying ourselves. On learning hat the Refugio no longer served hot chocolate (or anything for that matter), as a new one was being constructed, and our guide having told us that if we couldn't see the volcano we were climbing by now we were not going to if we continued, we decided to cut our losses and headed back down. One highlight of the walk we did do was seeing a pack of donkeys appear out of the clouds ahead of us coming down the track, they were making the trek up to the new Refugio site heavily laden several times a day. Determined as ever for a good picture, I came quite close to being knocked off the path by the donkey in the lead, apparently I was in his way, but the picture was worth it :)
We were on the move again, to a hotel in the Mariscal area of the city - which we immediately liked as they gave us vouchers for a welcome cocktail on arrival! The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the lively area and watching the world go by, before heading to a trip advisor find for dinner - La Burguesa. This was a burger with a view, Quito is beautiful by night. The burgers were awesome, Andy (the connoisseur) rated them as amongst the best he has ever had!
The next day was clear when we woke up - so we went up to try the teleferico again. The lady confirmed that today there was a vista, so we went up to the top of the hill and were treated to a panoramic view of the city, which really is huge - neither of us can fathom how it only has 2.3 million inhabitants.
The rest of the day consisted of laundry, some shopping and a nap, (travelling is tough you know!) before meeting up with Brandon and Leah, friends from the Galápagos! for dinner and drinks. With no shame we went back to the burger place from the night before - they were *that* good, and it was a big old menu to try!!
The next day was cloud forest day, and another change of hotels. We left the city and went for miles through the hills to The Mindo cloud forest. First stop was zip lining. We'd heard stories of the bugs from people in the Galápagos, so I was fully prepared, tucking leggings into socks and wearing long sleeves despite the warmth. Andy wore shorts and a t shirt, and forgot the insect repellent. You can imagine how well that turned out, at one point his legs were running with blood from the bites. The zip lines were double cables, and the staff managed the brakes, despite this I screamed down every single one and had my eyes closed a fair bit as we swung over the canyons below. Andy loved it of course!
We then moved on to a Orchid garden and to visit the Butterflies and Hummingbirds, all fantastic. We were in the wrong season for the orchids, but still saw a lot of flowers, including the Dracula and monkey faced orchids (I expect these are not the official names for them). The hummingbirds and toucans were incredible, we could have stayed watching them for hours. They are so tiny and beautifully coloured, and the noise their wings make is quite hypnotic. The butterflies were amazing, so many of them, typically despite trying to get one to come close enough to land on us, when one did we squealed! They're so delicate I wasn't expecting to feel them... It felt exactly like it was, that something was crawling up my neck!!
Last stop was the chocolate factory, where we learned all about how chocolate is made from cocoa bean to bar. We tried the product at various stages through the process, it really doesn't taste very much like chocolate until very near the end. The Ecuadorean chocolate is very dark - they don't mix with milk but with the cocoa butter, but even then the cocoa percentage didn't go beneath 65. We were treated to a chocolate brownie at the end and told the recipe... Which consisted of 8 eggs amongst other things. Very gooey!
On leaving Mindo we headed back to our new hotel - up on the side of a volcano crater. This was very desolate, and again shrouded by cloud, so felt quite eerie. They had pet alpacas wandering around which we were please by, as they were the last of the 4 types of South American camelid we hadn't seen, always nice to have the full set (Alpaca, Llama, Guanaco, Vicuña)!
When the clouds cleared the next morning the view was incredible - you wouldn't even have known what was out there, and then the view just appeared.
Our last stop in Quito, which was pretty action packed looking back on it, was the famed Middle of the World monument. I had been wondering why Ecuador seemed to have he monopoly on the middle of the world, as surely other countries around the world also have the equator, but on looking at the map and seeing some of those countries (The Congo, Gabon, Somalia...) you start to understand why Quito, as the closest city to the equator - gets to make the fuss.
We visited the official monument, and took the obligatory pictures, finding it all a little odd. The site is set out almost like a theme park, - in fact Andy's description of it was a Cold War theme park, but still takes itself quite seriously with statues of Ecuadorean presidents heads along the walkways, and official looking signs. This is made slightly ridiculous by the fact that the monument isn't even actually on the equator - which makes a mockery of the people posing on 'the line'. When building this they got it wrong, and when military GPS was used it was discovered that the actual equator was a few hundred metres down the road.
Being enterprising individuals, there is now another site to visit, this one actually on the equator. This is a more lighthearted visit, with scientific experiments (ish) proving that the equator is a funny old place. Water falls straight through a plug hole on the line, move the sink 1m either side, and it swirls down the plug hole in opposite directions. We lost our balance horribly (me even worse than usual) while walking along the line, and Andy managed to balance an egg on a nail. No mean feat! At the last second I remembered that we needed to get our passports stamped, (quirky stamp no. 5 for the trip), and then we went back to enjoy our crater view and hug the alpacas for the afternoon - our last one in Ecuador.
We've really enjoyed Ecuador, for a start it was nice to spend so long in one country at a stretch, we were there for 11 days. Definitely somewhere we wouldn't mind coming back to explore more in the future... After all, Andy managed to get out of the Andes without having tried Guinea Pig this time... So we'll have to come back one day!
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