Quito - Day One

Our flight yesterday was quite uneventful with all flights leaving & arriving on time, in fact a little early into our first stop. It was a very eerie feeling coming into Quito late at night. We had seen very few lights and none in the couple of hours before we landed, with only minutes to go before touch down no lights and then lights!!! I wish I had thought early enough to get out my camera coming in as it was quite spectacular with the black all around and the sparkling yellow lights of the city. There was one point that it was apparent that there must have been a very deep drop off. I guess tomorrow we will get to see the city and will probably find out more about that cliff as the real tour starts in the morning.

We woke to clouds this morning so I still don't know if we have mountains surronding us or if the fact that we are already over 8000 feet will mean that most of the moutain is below us. Never can tell maybe it will clear up this afternoon. We went for a walk around the hotel this morning, lots of old architecture mixed with some modern building. Spaced out along about a 9 block area are these bulls that are painted in different colours, much like we had the orcas in downtown Vancouver.

The funniest thing to happen to us this morning was meeting a couple on the street. We had said hello and were about to pass them when they asked if we knew where the Holiday Inn was which ofcoarse we didn't. After a bit of conversation they are from Kimberley and knew Poppa very well as they too are Amateur Radio operators. In fact I met them a few years ago at a dinner due that I went to with Pop. Anyways they are now staying at our hotel. We aren't likely to see them again as they leave for home at 5 tomorrow morning. They are heading off to the place that you can stand one foot in the northern and one foot in the southern hemisphere. Since we are going there tomorrow with our group we declined their offer for us to join them.

We meet our group leader this afternoon at 5 along with any of the rest of the group who have arrived before dinner.

Today is election day and we don't have any english channels on TV so I guess we will be watching in Spanish this afternoon or logging onto the internet often.