The Egg of Columbus

After a week here in Quito, we have already settled in quite well. The Spanish is getting better and better, más o menos ;) although Tömmi curses every day and regularly makes the whole language school laugh: "I like birds" was quickly turned into "I like wankers" because "pájaro" and "pajero" sound almost the same :-) Mitsubishi, the car manufacturer, had already made this mistake and had to rename his SUV "Pajero" because of course no one wanted to drive around with a wanker (although traditionally the term refers to the "straw dealer"). As you can see, we are diving deep into Spanish linguistics here ;)

On the weekend, we explored Quito's surroundings and were at the equator, the center of the world, which the Ecuadorians are very proud of. We have noticed that the water in the toilet flushes the other way round, but according to our guide, this only has something to do with the construction of the toilet ... However, at the "Mitad del Mundo", you can do some experiments with the force of gravity and it is actually true that flowing water rotates in a different direction on the northern and southern hemispheres. Tömmi and I even managed to balance an egg on a nail (the other shaky hands in our group failed ;) and now we can hang a certificate on our backpacks!! In the museum, we learned a lot of interesting things about the indigenous Indígenas, and I was particularly fascinated by the ritual of the shrunken heads ;)

After that, we headed to the "Cloud Forest", where we climbed some waterfalls and were quite out of breath due to the high altitude here in Ecuador.

In the evening, there was a marathon in Quito around all the churches in the old town (and Quito has a loooot of churches) with 18,000 registered participants. The crowd of people seemed endless and we walked to all the churches with a host family and got a little guided tour.

On Sunday morning, we climbed the house volcano of Quito, Mount Pichincha, well, at least we tried ;) but mountaineering is not so much fun at over 4,000 meters and we turned around halfway! I wonder how long it will take us to get used to the altitude because in Peru, it will be even higher! But it reassured me that the locals struggle and pant just like we do ;)

I need to check on Tömmi now, he's been doing his homework for 4 hours already :) By the way, Tömmi "misplaced" his phone / maybe it was stolen, we don't know, anyone who wants to reach us can do so at our Ecuadorian number +593967220852.