Quito

Made it into Quito last night after a little wait on the tarmac at Miami while they changed a flat tire! Immigration procedures into Ecuador are refreshingly welcoming after the ¨what are you doing coming here¨ attitude you get trying to get into the USA.
We are staying in a lovely old spanish mansion that has been converted into a hotel. Two huge bedrooms and amazing old wooden furniture plus three flights of squeaky stairs.
This morning we went for a bit of a walk around Quito but all is fairly quiet for the new year holiday and hardly anything is open. We don´t really mind (at least not Tammy and me anyway) because the altitude sure hits hard. We are finding ourselves gasping after walking up the stairs so are enjoying just relaxing inthe hotel and acclimatising. The girls are running around everywhere making us feel extremely old. How Nikki coped with being here pregnant and with morning sickness is beyond us.
We meet our guide tonight and find out who else is on the tour. Our Spanish phrasebook is getting a workout but so far no problems.
I need to spend a bit of time describing our taxi ride in from the airport last night. Quito airport is about 10km from where we are staying and after advice from the hotel the quickest and cheapest way to get here was via taxi. Quito streets are very narrow and lane markings seem to be present only occaisonaly and only then in abstract patterns. Our taxi driver managed to communicate with us that obviously it was very busy becuase of NYE and then proceeded to drive at 80km\hr all the way to the hotel. It was one of those taxi trips that will not be forgotten quickly. I never actually felt unsafe, he seemed to be a very good driver, but there was definately an element of the thrill of a roller coaster ride or parachute jump involved. There were some crazy NYE celebration sights on the way in including a very large and very ugly transvestite who danced in the middle of the road while associates held a rope accross the road to stop cars until they gave her money. This was taking place on one of the main roads through the centre of quito in front of the Canadian embassy with security guards looking on and seemed to have some sort of official quality to it. Quite strange.