We are nothing if not awkward!!!

Already the plan has changed! But then, anyone who knows us wouldn’t be surprised by this!!

We awoke this morning after a surprisingly short but nevertheless deep sleep and found our way to the breakfast room where we surprised ourselves by ordering what we thought was fruit, granola and scrambled eggs; and actually receiving fruit, granola and scrambled eggs! Wahaayyyy…….the quick perusal of my Spanish lessons was working. Even better, we are both now quite fluent in requesting “cafe con leche”, life is good 🙂
I can safely report, we are both doing excellently in “Spanglish” ~ except Iain likes to add in his limited German too!!
In daylight, we are even more impressed by our little hotel; Art Plaza ~

Quito is a pretty cool place. Honestly, we didn’t explore too much. We could have gone to many and various touristy type places but that’s just not “us”. We took a walk, 45 minutes, to the place that we’re renting the motorbike from; Freedom Bike Rentals. From our hotel, this took us through various areas. The most interesting was this great park that had gym equipment and a huge running/walking track. This was pretty cool to see. We would pay top $s for in the U.S. and yet it was all here in a  public are. Of course, we didn’t feel the need to get involved in all that public display of fitness lark and circumnavigated, while secretly admiring the young man on the rings, who was particularly athletic

Quito, is dramatically situated, city buildings that are hemmed in by mountain peaks,  with greenery concealed by gray afternoon mist. Modern apartment buildings and modest concrete homes creep partway up the slopes and busy commercial thoroughfares are lined with shops and choked with traffic, beeping away merrily on their horns, for no apparent reason! The streets are lined with little stands selling traditional foods and traditionally dressed girls did their way up streets, in the actual traffic, selling their wares.

The city is very colorful. Many of the residential buildings and homes are painted in patterns and designs, It gives a general air of happiness
The people are all amazingly friendly! They are pleased to meet you. They don’t care that you cannot communicate easily with them. You just find a way. Bizaarely it just works!

We strolled around a local mall – then we headed back.

Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental

Good gravy people….I cannot shout loudly about how AMAZINGLY helpful these guys were!
We went in causing issues from the start! We had decided that we didn’t want to wait until Wednesday to start the adventure. We were itching to get on the road and start eating up the miles and absorbing the sights. Our first request was, can we start tomorrow please?!?!

Give them their dues, they did not blink an eye! Within minutes it was all sorted and the adventure advanced by one day!
All that I had to do was change/add some hotel bookings and we were set! Have I mentioned Booking.com is pretty bloody cool when it comes to booking hotels, good prices and last minute changes

After an amazingly pleasant few hours spent with Court, Sylvain and all at FBR, getting organized, we meandered our way back towards our hotel. Can I just say…..Court & Sylvain went above and beyond….. they did NOT have to spend the time they did with us, but they humored my planning and route mapping to ensure that we will have the absolute optimal experience – brilliant blokes 🙂