Quito

So the next day I flew to Quito. My hostel was small but friendly and as soon as I'd unpacked that afternoon, me and another girl went out to the old town for a look around. The old town was quite nice, lots of squares to walk around.

The next day, me and a random bloke from the hostel went to the equator :-) it was about 20k north of Quito and we braved the public transport system and got there for the bargain price of 65cents :-)

The equator was really cool! There was a big statue with the world on the top that you could climb and walk around and there was a big compass drawn on the floor with a big red line marking the equator - nice and cheesy for some photo oportunities!

But, I'd read in my guide book that that place wasn't the actual equator, and that was located about 200metres down the road! I'm really glad I read aboyt it as it wasn't sign posted at all at the cheesy place. But we found it and it was a really ace museum with stuff about the local culture, the jungle (including a huge snake skin, a full sizes picked penis fish (these are gush that if you pee in the river, they swim up the urine stream and inside you and then grow - and they grow big!!) and step by step illustrated instructions on how to make a shrunken head! Great stuff!!) and of course, the experiments you can do at the equator :-)

We saw a sun dial and how they used different sides of it depending on whether summer was in the northern or southern hemisphere, water going down the plughole in different directions, and going straight down on the equator - it's amazing that only a few metres away can send it turning the other direction!  And a notice saying that due to the bulge of the earth at the equator, gravity is everso slightly less and so you're lighter on the equator than elsewhere - great!! And the egg balancing experiment! I liked that one! The idea is that because gravity gies straight down at the equator rather than being slightly skewed away from it, the egg yolk is directly at the bottom of the egg and it's therefore easier to balance an egg on the head of a nail.

Not everyone can manage it, but if you succeeded, you got a little 'eggmaster diploma' certificate :-) I'm very proud to say I managed to do it and am now an eggmaster!!

In the afternoon, I wanted to book a tour to the volcano cotapaxi, but there weren't any running which was a shame. Me and Karen went up a viewpoint behind our hostel a few blocks to have a look at the city. I can't get over how huge the cities are here, they spread on and on ad far as the eye can see. I don't know if it's just because of the location of lots of them, being surrounded by hills and mountains and viewpoints so you can are more of them, it's hard to tell the size compared to UK cities.

The next day my friend Karen from the hostel left to go to the galapagos so I went up the teleferico by myself. This is a cable car that takes you up to 4000m so you get nice views of the city. I thought it was just going to be a viewpoint but it turned out there was a massive walk you could do up to a mountain.

The next day was the start of my galapagos trip :-)