Hola from Ecuador!

Afer a long looong tiring day of travel yesterday, I finally arrived in Quito. We were up at 4:30 yesterday morning so I could get the 5:30 bus from Reading to Heathrow, in time for my 8:20 flight. It was a great 9 or so hour flight to Miami with Virgin Atlantic. They have a fantastic in-flight entertainment service so I caught up on 3 movies, & listened to a couple of just released albums. It was the first time I've flown with them & I was quite impressed. The flight was very light, there were only 136 passengers on the whole big airbus! There were whole centre blocks of seats available if people wanted to stretch out & have a snooze. The next leg of the journey was harder work however. I was flying Miami to Quito with American Airlines, & due to some awful weather in Miami the flight was delayed, so my 2 & a half hour stop-over turned into closer to 4. Once I did finally get onto the plane I had a screaming kid directly behind me who insisted on spending the whole flight kicking the back of my seat! I had invested in some noise-cancelling headphones so they were put to good use as I tried to chill out with my ipod.

I arrive in Quito at about 10:30 local time, which is 6 hours behind the UK. As it had been a long day of travelling, plus my body clock thought it was 4:30 in the morning, I was pretty much shattered! As soon as I got into a taxi to take me to my hostel, the driver switched on a TV in his front seat & began watching the Copa Americana football match between Ecuador & Brazil as he drove along!!! Nevertheless he got me to my hostel without incident & I went straight to bed & got a good nights sleep.

This morning I woke up to glorious blue skies & sunshine. Not bad considering it's the middle of their winter! Quito is 2580m above sea level so I'm feeling the effects of the altitude with bit of a pounding head. The plan today is not to do much at all & give my body a chance to adapt, usually people are used to it within a day or two of taking things easy. I'm staying at Crossroads cafe & hostel (www.crossroadshostal.com) which is in a great location with lots of bars, cheap mexican restaurants (my favourite food in the world!) & internet cafe's (an hour of internet costs 25p).

Right, enough of this, it's time for a nice gentle wander...