Quitodo

So this is it - my first visit to South America. That makes it 5 out of 7 continents visited, not that I´m counting :-)

The flight from Miami to Quito was entertaining. Despite my stetson-styled straw hat, which I thought would scream out "gringo" to everyone within a two mile radius, everyone insists on hablar espanol with me. Probably has something to do with my Portuguese roots, which mean appearance-wise I look like I should speak Spanish. Well, I don´t... not much beyond "Una cerveza, por favor", "Muchos gracias", "Buenas tardes" and "Hasta manana", anyway. But my blank stare didn´t stop the 155cm tall granny I helped with her bags* from telling me half her life story in Spanish during the flight. I´m sure it was an interesting story, wish I´d caught more of it. Another entertaining guest on the flight was a boy, maybe five years old, who stared at me curiously while we were waiting for take-off. So I said "hola" and got a "hola" back. Then the kid flashed me a conspirational grin and proceeded to lay his hands on the behind of a girl, maybe 25, standing in front of him. Latin machismo - they start young!

Anyway, I got to Quito around 10pm and was greeted by the driver from my hostel. Nice guy, name of Daniel, who explained in near-perfect English his family run the hostel and he worked there as the driver, resident tour guide and overall handyman, while studying eco-tourism at a local university. He was pretty excited about my itinerary, mentioning he´d never been to Machu Picchu himself but really wanted to go. I was shown my room - small but tidy, with an external bathroom - and crashed, being deathly tired.

However, my blissful slumber didn´t last long. This being the equator and all (yep, hence the name Ecuador), I was expecting a relatively warm climate, but overlooked the fact Quito is about 3km above sea level. As we landed, it was +11C outside, but, thanks to the thin air, I could see my breath. I have no idea how cold it got during the night, but I woke up shivering under my blanket. Well, after putting on a bunch more clothing and stealing a second blanket from the spare bed, I slept kind of ok for the rest of the night until being woken by the sweet sound of my alarm at 6:20am. Time to get to the airport and head for Galapagos!

Incidentally, Galapagos flights have a really tight policy on baggage. The allowance is 20kg per passenger, including carry-on, so in order to avoid paying ridiculous excess weight fees, I decided to leave some of my stuff at the hostel. Guess how much storing my stuff for 8 days and delivering it to the airport when I get back from Galapagos cost? 5 bucks! In fact, all of Quito made me feel like someone wiped a zero off the US dollar´s value. My room for the night was a whopping 12 bucks, a cab to the airport 5 bucks... You could live like a king in this place just on Finnish student support!


* Technically, it was one bag and one huge stuffed Spider-Man puppet. I´m sure she told me who the puppet was for at some point, but it went right over my head.