As soon as I started my trip those wired coincidences started to happen aswell. The girl who gave me a ride to Berlin turned out to be an expert of Quito and Peru, as she had spend several month there not long ago, so I got a lot of infos and even a contact in Quito. Well, I went to Berlin to catch my flight to Madrid, and from there my plane to Quito/Ecuador started to the sounds of "Wind of Change" (a pan flute version of course). A couple of hours later I was looking out of the window of the plane- white clouds looking like crumble and below - SOUTHAMERICA!!!!!! Arriving in Quito felt like arriving in a complete different world - very exciting. I felt a bit dizzy that evening because of the change of altitute, but haven't had any problems ever since...I took the teleferico ( a cable car) up to the high of 4.100 metres today, enjoying the view across the city and the surrounding mountains, and doing a bit of a hike far away from the turmoil of the city. Well, and of course I've been discovering the old city of Quito during the last days. With all those old colonial buildings, it's quite different from those of the new parts of town. The churches are amazing, beautiful white buildings and the inside of the church of the convent San Francisco is certainly everything but modest. Lot's of impressions.... indigenas selling tomatoes,mandarines and other fruits in the streets, lots of very little shops, little places where you can have almuerzos ( lunch ) for 1,50 Dollars every 5 meters, I certainly won't die of starvation here, more likely of an overdose of korinader. Rows of cars are sneaking up and down the hilly streets, on the big streets the exhaust fumes are quite disgusting. A dog comes out of one of the doors right next to me, gives me and a traffic a bored look before he leisurely strolls down the road and around the next corner, in the Centro Cultural Metropoliano they show amazing pictures of the people of Ecuador, and El Panecillo/ Monument de la Virgen de Quito looks down from her hill at all those ongoings without any change of expression on her pale face.
