Oct-07

Today, I continued traveling together with my Argentinian friends. It was a day full of ups and downs:

Taking the short 6h-ride too easy, we left late, at 7am. On the way, we planned to visit two touristy sights. Pretty fast we arrived at the first, the church Las Lajas, which is built on columns in the middle of a valley. Together with the volcano of Ometepe, it was one of the first things on my “to visit” list for this trip and it was  totally worth it – beautiful!

Then we arrived at the border at around lunch time. A big mistake. Being super crowded, it took us 3h to cross – the longest border crossing I’ve had so far. Back on the road, we found out that the “Mitad del Mundo” park where you can take pictures exactly at the equator – our second destination – closed before we would arrive. Sad and in regret about leaving late, we thought about new plans. We decided to do this sight tomorrow in the morning instead.

Eventually we arrived safely in Quito, ECU. Even without passing by the “Mitad del Mundo” park, I am currently for the first time in my life in the southern hemisphere!

On our way looking for the hostel, another misfortune happened: I opened the driver’s window and it wouldn’t close anymore. After being weak for the entire trip, the window’s motor seems to have finally given up entirely. Luckily we found a hostel where we could park the car secured in the courtyard. Planning to go to a mechanic in the morning, we worried our plans for tomorrow would fail again.

To forget about all of this we went out. It was lots of fun! We just came back and asked the receptionist about mechanics and she reminded us that tomorrow was Sunday and therefore there wouldn’t be anything open. After thinking about it for a moment we decided to simply “roll with it” and to always look for secure places to park the car and to not let this ruin our trip.

Let’s see how this goes!