Will it be warm; will it be modern; will I find wifi available; will I easily find an ATM machine that takes me card; will my hostel be far from the city centre; how badly will I get stiffed on my first taxi fare; will the language barrier be a problem? are all just a few of the many questions that whizz around my head.
Similarly a whole host of questions fly through my mind when I am due to meet a new person for a first time. Will they show up at all, was their photo genuine; how much English can they understand; how much of my Spanish can they understand; will they like me as a person; will I like them; are they a fake just after a visa / money; if they are female and single will there be any mutual attraction and either way will it cause any problems?
Thankfully almost every occasion I have been pleased and relieved to have met people that I have been able to connect with on some level and usually spend the next day or two enjoying each others company while we visit a variety of places, taste a variety of local dishes and of course I also do a few classic tourist things when I'm left to my own devices.
When I met my C' in Quito for the first time I was not sure what to think but quickly she put me at ease and we spend the next two days going all over the place to try and find the best places for me to take photos.
On the first morning we visited two of the highest parts of Quito to get a few decent panoramic photos, and it was here that I learned that Quito was not only medium temperature and grey most of the time, but also the city itself is situated between two ranges of mountains and so it not so much of an overall circular shape, but more like a long thin strip.
The first high spot gave a nice view overlooking the north of the city, but it was not as high as the second which these days is only accessed safely accessable by the fornicular, the highest one in the world. Just like what happened at Manchu Picchu, when we arrived at the top the place was shrouded in dense cloud, but unfortunately the clouds and mist did not lift and then once the rain started lightly spitting down we decided to head back down, and almost like magic as we descended back down so the rain ceased and by the time we got down to the city centre again it was dry.
It was funny that on the way up I asked C' if the fornicular was the type that stopped midway and she assured me that in ten years of coming here it had never once paused or halted during service, so it was just my typical luck that it did indeed pause half way down, and at one of the scariest places to do so, where the distance from the car to the ground was at its greatest.
A less funny story was that C' told me about a couple of hikers who decided that it was a nice opportunity to go for a hike up the mountain and tragically both got struck by lightning and killed half way up, so you can imagine my desire for it to start up again.
For lunch we grabbed a Mexican and then went back so that I could grab a couple of hours siesta in the mid afternoon as we had planned a slightly later night than my usual, and I was still a bit tired from the previous days long autobus ride followed by a night of chatting and getting to know each other personally face to face.
C' had the great idea of going down to La Ronda, a region that has been recently cleaned up and made into almost a authentic tourist attraction region, and I was very impressed by the news that the locals were held accountable for their properties and fined should they let their buildings become run down, graffitied or in need of repainting. It was a nice place to visit and I especially enjoyed the whisky sweets and fruits on a stick covered in chocolate, yummy scrummy.
After a walk through the historic centre or town, where I got to see plenty of churches, cathedrals and both the president and the mayors mighty palaces, we stopped at a restaurant to try some traditional local cuisine and for this C' had chosen a favourite restaurant of hers, high up on the third floor and exclusive enough to have its own lift operator yet inexpensive enough for locals to use more than once a year.
The view from the rooftop restaurant was amazing and yet again I quietly cursed my cameras poor nighttime quaility, though to be fair it is good for just about everything else and it is small and light enough to slot into a pocket without needing a seperate bag so I shouldn't really complain.
Despite my prepatory siesta, the food, the drink ( a warm fruit and alcohol mix that I had a couple of and shuddered each time it hit the back of my throat ) and the darkness got the better of me and instead of hitting a club like we first planned we instead chose to go back and try for an early night in order to get a fresh start in the morning.
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