Ecuador: Day 1

Highlights of today: Walking around Old Town with Sophie from Belgium and Lara from North Carolina. We went to the top of the tower of the basilica only a few blocks from the hostel, which involves walking up the stairs of death in order to get to the top. Which is a very steep staircase that climbs up one of the buttresses of the tower, meaning first it heads out from the center along the side of the buttress, so that it looks like you're climbing a staircase into thin air (which seems all so much thinner in the mountains), then it doubles back and climbs up the top of the buttress. It was definitely a moment of 'feel the fear and do it anyway.'

Then to la mitad del mundo, or the center of the world. Which is surprisingly only about 10 minutes away from the middle of nowhere, or so we found out when we missed the bus stop and rode out far into the mountains, then had to wait on the side of the road across from a tire shop with lovely hand painted signs for a bus trip back. But we did make it to latitude 00'00'00, and walked past the big monument to a smaller museum where they give tours full of curiosities like shrunken human heads and fish from the Amazon that can bury themselves inside you and make themselves at home. I got a certificate for being able to balance an egg on the head of a nail, which I will hang alongside my BFA and my master's, once I get the latter.

And had a lovely ride in a SUPERTAXI on the way back, complete with skull gear shift and salsa and merengue blaring (all of which was fine by me).

The hostal is predictably full of hippies, and particularly English-speaking hippies, being that it markets itself as English-speaking. But it's got the requisite lovely-quirky architecture, and a bar on a rooftop patio with a view of Quito and the mountains that is to die for. Quito is laid-out as a long, snake-like city, draping itself sensually through the valley between the mountains and volcanos. I arrived last night after dark, and Quito then was a long ribbon of lights. Me gusta.