Quito´s angel

Can we handle the pressure was the question we were asking ourselves as we went from the lowest we have ever been (18m below sea level whilst diving in Panama) to the highest we have ever been (2800m in Equador´s capital Quito) all in one week.

We flew into the worlds second highest capital city Quito on Sunday evening and spent a couple of days in the city aclimatising to the altitude which left us breathless and drousy. Quito isn´t at all how we imagined, the city sits in a valley of the Andes with mountains and volcanos on either side making the city extremly long and thin. Although we didn´t take any chances with safety (we were warned by locals not to go to the old town at night) we felt relatively safe taking public transport to eplore the city and around. The city is also extreemly modern, with better roads and facilities than Costa Rica (something continued through out the rest of Equador that we have seen so far) and (unfortunately) not nearly as cheap as we had hoped! On our first day in Quito we went to to of the citys best view points, a giant statue of an angel which sits on a hill towering over the city and we also climbed the towers of one of the citys most famous churches, which was extremly scary as health and saftey isn´t quite up to european standards and we found ourselves scaling a ladder with nothing between us and a drop to our death, if ever there was an insentive to hold on tight this was it! However the view from the top of the bell tower was worth it (take a look at our recent pictures to see what we mean).