Un poquito in Quito

We have settled in and really like our temporary home here in Quito, Ecuador.

We were picked up from the airport by the host family that we are staying with (much to our host mothers amazement there were two of us and we weren´t from Belgium like she was told by the spanish school...)

The schools have told her just as innaccurate information about other students. Currently there is another student staying with us that was meant to be Italian. Turns out he is a citizen in the US originaly from Pakistan! When we first arrived there was a two students from switzerland and one couple from france and Germany. Everyone has been great fun to meet and chat with.... mostly practicing our spanish with each other so its even better.

Since we arrived on the Saturday night, we had a free day to explore some of Quito before we started classes on the Monday. We walked from "gringo central" with all the back packer places, travel agents and international restaurants to the "old town" with the original style buildings plus lots of large, intricately constructed and decorated catholic churches.

The most impressive was the Basillica with tall gothic towers (pictured above) that you can climb. The levels and stairs just keep going and going and going (plus for extra fun there is a rickety plank to walk across, through the roof cavity to get to the tower on the other side).

Spanish school has been great with our learning rate rapidly accelerated (which I guess is to be expected since we have gone from 4 hours a week to 4 hours a day!) We both like our teachers and have lots of funny, interesting and suprisingly in depth conversations all in spanish! (we can both understand more than we can speak, but we get by with a few extra hand guestures and pictionary skills. Tim using pictionary methods more so than Renee)

The school organises activities during the nights or weekends a number of which we have joined in on, including cooking classes, a trip to Pasochoa (an extinct volcano in a national park) and to Renees excitement, salsa classes.

This is a few shots from us climbing up the densely vegetated volcano "Pasachoa" ...well half way up... it was hard work in places and it apparently takes 2 days to go to the peak and return (A weekend day trip arranged by the school.)

Renee has already had her first interesting translation "incident". I needed a shower after our days outing and our host mother Silvia was almost ready to serve dinner. She asked Renee if we were ready. Due to the subtlety of reflexive verbs in Spanish, instead of telling Silvia "Tim wants to have a shower first"... she instead said "Tim wants to shower you first". Luckily that resulted in laughter... rather than us being thrown out on the street! :)

Since our classes have been in the afternoon, one fine morning we decided to catch the "TeleferiQo" cable car up the closest volcano to Quito called "Pinchincha". At an impressive 4100m above sea level, its the highest we have been (no snow though... it wasnt really even cold!) There are warnings all over it about altitude sickness and children under 1, pregnant women and people who have only just flown into Quito (and havent yet aclimitised to its 2600m altitude) arent recommended to go up it.

This sign says ¨Caution - 4100m altitude. Go Slow, Dont run¨

What?? ... run down?

We have made friends with a few little girls that sell chewing gum on the streets (one step up from begging. They say its school holidays but how do you tell if their parents let them go?) and despite all the requests from little boys with brushes and boot polish (black and tan only) we have not had our shoes cleaned yet (Our shoes are white and green so I dont know what they want to do!)

Bus rates here are great value and easy to calculate - $1 per hour.
The town is 8 hours away? .. .OK thats $8 thanks.
Its a set 25c for the metro busses that go along colour coded routes, similar to metro railway and for smaller trips to nearby citites it seems to be 1c per minute. The 45 minute ride to Pasachoa was 45c!