Day 31: Cameras and Quito

Woke up this mornin and Joe realised that he left his camera on the plane. (I told yee lads, if only yee had yeere eye patches and sleeping bags in Montevideo and got some rest yee wouldn be loosing all yeere stuff). Myself and Joe headed back to the airport to collect the camera. Charlie decided to reacquaint himself with a long lost friend called bed, no point in all of us traipsing across. Transport in Quito is so cheap. The currency here in US dollars so its easy to work out if you’re getting a deal or not. No messing around we decided to get a taxi across. $5 for a half an hour taxi ride to the airport. After a while of searching around we finally found the Taca airline office who said: ´We try to ring Mr Dooley but there is no answer´, so they obviously tried to ring home because I had booked the three tickets on my credit card but Mam and Dad must have been out golfing. We were all pretty happy to have the camera back because its the one with all of our best photos on it. On the way back we decided to be a bit more adventurous and try to hale a bus. Because Quito is in a valley with mountains on either side its pretty to find your way around, It’s either north or south. With Kilian and Marys present of a little compass we could easily tell what side of the road to be on, stuck out our hands and the first bus stopped (by stopped I mean slowed down to 30mph and we jumped on for 25c which took us all the way back to the hostel. The bus was full with school children and old women, not dodgy at all. My advice to people in Quito is to get taxis at night, these buses during the day and stay the hell off the trams, you’ll see why further on.

Came back to the hostel and grabbed Charlie who said he was woken up about 4 times by the staff trying to put people in our beds. They aren’t the most organised bunch of people working here so they don’t really know how many days you’ve booked in for. Went to the Statue on the top of the only hill in the middle of the valley overlooking Quito of the Virgin of Quito. Joe had to tell everyone he met randomly in the hostel that it doesn’t take 30min to get to the statue before he could talk to them because he lost the bet. If I lost I would have had to pay for the taxi, I was pretty confident though. The view from the statue was spectacular. Quito is so unlike any other city ive seen so high up but yet down in a crater surrounded by volcanoes and mountains.

Had Grub in the Hostel at 7 when we got back. They do a nice dinner but it is expensive compared to the local area. Its convenient though and there is an open air roof top bar here overlooking the whole of the old town in Quito with the best view in town, so everyone just gathers here for some grub and a few beers. Talked to a group of US lads "Chris Matt, Adrian and Julia" who told us about this climb they were going to do. The climb of all climbs, the mother of all mountains, not just any mountain, a volcano, and not just any volcano, the highest volcano in south America, the highest active volcano in the World. We all said it at the same time.... We gotta do this. And so it developed, TEAM IRELAND would race TEAM AMERICA to the top of Mount Cotopaxi.

Having such success with the Irish pub in Rio and having no clue where to go out, we decided to hit the Irish pub. "Finn Mc Cools". One of the German girls Anna joined us, seeing as we sold it so well. Luke wouldn join because he was tired which we slagged him for later. Luke is from Melbourne and will be a big part or this blog for the next 5 days.


IRISH PUB (WOO BOO BBOO BOO BOOP PooP)

Great crack in the Irish pub. Ended up getting to know all of the staff and the owner Ursula. Told her all about our Cotopaxi expedition plans and immediately she wanted in. She wanted to sponsor the whole of team Ireland to make it to the top. Charlie started to hammer out the deal. A free round of pints tonight, free stew when we came back down, another round of free pints, Finn Mc Cools would put on a rerun of the all-Ireland that we were going to miss while up there and put up our names behind the bar. In return we had to make it to the top with the flag that Finns gave to us, signed by all of us and TEAM AMERICA (BOOO!!!) and our guides (TEAM ECUADOR).
I think we did well. This is why I brought Charles on the trip. In the end Eimear from behind the bar had to kick us out at 10 minutes past late.