Quito

We arrived in Quito after a long trip from Madrid made considerably more comfortable by an upgrade to Business Class. The amount of attention lavished on travellers in this class is ridiculous. Still I am not complaining…

In Quito, which is very high in the mountains, altitude sickness is always a possibility and I did experience some shortness of breath. However on the following day we linked up with Tony and Chris who had flown in from Australia to join us for the organised tour part of our travels. We spent a quiet day looking around Quito and taking a cable car up to the top of a mountain. Unfortunately the three volcano tops visible from here were masked in cloud so we descended and had lunch in the centre of town.

However the next day we rose early and assembled in the lobby for our transfer to the Amazon. at 9.45. We left a little early with a guide who confirmed our name with Jack. When we arrived at the airport, he discovered that we were not the group he was seeking and in a great panic he set off again for the hotel to find his own group. It was good luck for us that he had been going to the airport and not somewhere else.