Our flight from Santa Marta took us to Bogota where we stayed one night before our flight to Ecuador the next afternoon. In the afternoon we headed up on the escalators to Mont Montserrat viewing point, we’d already been when we first got to Bogota but the girls hadn’t so we took the trip again, although it was so cloudy at the top we hardly saw anything. That evening was our last night in Colombia and also our last night with Alexa and Laura so we decided to out for an early birthday meal for Grace’s birthday. We also met up with one of our friends from the Spanish school who was in Bogota and after the meal decided to go for drinks and then ended up in a club where they had a ‘Gringo Tuesday’ night which meant the music wasn’t reggaeton for once, which was a nice change. We ended up having a really fun night and even bumped into some people we met in Mexico. The best part was after a great night out we were still tucked up in bed by midnight as the club opened so early.
We flew to Quito the next afternoon, it’s cheaper to cross by land but we had heard the the boarder was chaos due to a huge influx of Venezuelan refugees fleeing from the civil war, so we forked out a bit more and got a flight. Quito is the world’s highest capital at 2850m and we really feel it here, it’s always worse when you fly in as your body has less time to adjust, so we spent the first afternoon just adjusting and meeting people in our hostel. On Thursday it was Grace’s official birthday I had decorated her bed with banners and she started off the day with a beer and a cake for breakfast which she enjoyed and a chorus of happy birthday which she didn’t!
We decided to join some people we met at the hostel and take the cable car ride up to a viewing point on Pichincha Volcano, the cable car ride is about 10 minutes and rises 2237m, it’s actually one of the highest cable cars in the world and at the top reaches just under 4000m high. We saw some stunning views of Quito at the top, we hadn’t realised how big the city was until it was laid out Infront of us, we also really felt the altitude there, I ran up some steps to quickly and got light headed and dizzy and after walking around for an hour all of our hands started to get pins and needles from the lack of oxygen, so after a few more photos we headed down.
On the lift down we noticed a fairground not to far away and decided to check it out, we had a great afternoon going on the dodgems and rides, although it was a little more stomach churning at altitude!
In the evening we decided to go out partying and fortunately the hostel had a night out already planned with a party bus that took a large group of us to a club, we had a lot of fun although we all learnt the hard way that altitude makes you get drunk more easily due to the lack of oxygen (or at least this is the excuse we’re all sticking too!) and as I write this I am suffering from the worst hang over I think I’ve ever had. (Sorry if the blog is sub par because of this, but honestly it’s a miracle I haven’t killed of the brain cells containing these memories!)
But so far we’ve had a great time here and Grace has had a fun birthday (I think) apart from having to look after one slightly too drunk cousin…
Keep you updated on what we get up to next here.
Lots of love,
Alice x