Lucien Says

PASTO

Trying to leave Colombia...

We were due to spend one night in Pasto, close to the Colombia/Ecuador border but after checking out the town Crhistians temperature went through the roof and started feeling really ill. After a trip to the hospital, Dr Diego advised us to stay in town for a couple of nights to check that Crhistian was OK before travelling to Ecuador where the health system was shit in his own words. For anyone that has been to Pasto, there is not that much to do so luckily we had cable TV and watched about 6 episodes of Law and Order and House everyday.

After a couple of days Crhistian was feeling alot better and we went and caught a hair raising shared taxi to the border on one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on only stopping once for a passport check, where half the police were interested in doing their job and the other half just wanted to know about Australia and my thoughts on Colombia. We got dropped off right on the border from the taxi where we almost got ripped off by money changers and met the biggest knob I met in all of Colombia working at the border.

Quito

The other city of churches...

After getting dropped off in Quito, the capital of Ecuador at 1am after we thought the bus was going to drop us there at 6am the next morning we ended up checking into a cheap hotel to get a few hours sleep. We checked out the Old Town of Quito and climbed to the top of the Basilica de Voto Nacional, one of the oldest churches in Quito. The climb included a thin wooden planks and narrow ladders and was pretty scary. Very different to the cathedrals in Europe and alot less safe! From there it was to the bus terminal and off to the border with Peru.