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Quick Update from Quito!

posted Aug 29, 2010, 3:00 PM by Paul Gareau
Yep, that's right - I'm still in Quito. The supplies that I had sent here got hung up in customs for almost exactly a week. I was able to pick up the package yesterday, and today I've been getting everything ready to hit the road again. The past week was pretty uneventful. I spent most of my time in Posada del Maple, but since they fill up often and I couldn't make a reservation because I didn't know when the package would arrive, I had to move to another room once, and I had to move to a totally different hostel during the week, and again today. It's been a real pain in the @ss... The first hostel was the Wiphalla. They're just more people jumping on the El Mariscal Hostel bandwagon. Apparently all you have to do is buy a house, put some bunkbeds in and put a hostel sign on the door. They did have an included breakfast, but there was really nowhere to eat it, and no lounge area. Amazingly, I met a guy there who has been bicycle touring for the past 7 years, and has 10 years left! He is riding for "World Peace and Environmental Protection". His website is here: After that I was back to the "Posada", where I've been studying some more Spanish and hanging out with some other travelers, and today, I moved to the "Backpacker's Inn" - my fourth hostel in Quito. 

The package I was waiting for had a new emergency debit card, which I needed since my old one had expired, some bike parts, my favorite vitamins, a cool altimeter/barometer/weather prediction thing, and a few other odds and ends. Unfortunately, the total shipping cost was more than the value of all the items, and when you add to that a week of hanging around in Quito and an additional $50 in taxes for the package, the total cost was pretty outrageous. Oh well...

Tomorrow I'll finally be heading out to the Cotopaxi Volcano, but I won't reach it in one day and I haven't decided yet if I'll stick around there for a day to do some hiking. We'll see.

Ciao y hasta luego!