Quito, Ecuador

We arrived into Quito and got a taxi through the city to The Secret Garden hostel. Quito is a massive town that seems to go on forever but the old town where our hostel is located has a really nice feel to it. The roof of our hostel has a great rooftop terrace and bar looking out over the majority of the city and at night when Quito is lit up the view is spectacular. The terrace is also a great spot for socialising and meeting other tourists and staff. Charlie, who was on our Semuc Champey tour in Guatemala, has just started volunteering here and we've met Zack from England, Max (the tallest man I've ever seen) from Australia. The night we arrived the first two people we sat down beside happened to be from Ireland, two teachers on their summer holidays, Steph and Edel from Dundalk. The same night we also met four Cork girls (Eve, Sorcha, Amy and Orla) who'd just flown in to South America from Ireland that day.

During our few days in Quito we visited many of the grand and impressive plazas and climbed to the top of the city's famous cathedral. We also spent a day going out to the equator line with latitude of 00'00". The city has spent a fortune building a massive visitor centre however we'd been tipped off that the real equator point is just around the corner with a much nicer visitor experience. Here, we were shown some cool experiments like balancing an egg on a nail, and the difference between the gravitational pulls when north or south of the equator.

We also visited one of the local markets and discovered the many local fruits on offer including Mora their version of blackberry which makes a delicious juice.

Every night everyone gathers on the rooftop terrace for a group meal and drinks until 11pm and then we head out to one of the local bars or clubs such as Bungalow 6.

However, we're getting an extremely early night tonight as we're up at 3.30am tomorrow morning to get a flight to the GALAPAGOS!!!

The four of us cannot wait...