Running Off A Mountain

Second highlight of my time in Medellin was paragliding over the city. Paragliding is where you are strapped to a parachute and fly around for a while. When I thought of paragliding, I always thought that since you were in a parachute you would take off from someplace with a really high elevation and then float down and land at a lower elevation, but the wind conditions in Medellin allow you to take off and land at the same spot.The wind conditions in Medellin make it one of the best places to go paragliding in South America and people come from all over to try it out here.

Me and and a couple Swedish girls from the hostel had to take a 2 hour bus ride up to the top of one of the mountains overlooking Medellin to get to the take off point. I´ll admit, I was a little nervous before setting off (running off a mountain isn´t something I do every day) but everything turned out great. The ride was very smooth and I was in the air for the tandem flight over Medellin for about 45 minutes. The only downside to the paragliding is that while we were waiting to get everything set up, we got tons of sand flea bites on our feet and ankles and they have been itching like crazy ever since. Oh well.

Great day in the mountains with some great people.


More pictures of paragliding in Medellin can be found on my Picassa photo site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Atlético Nacional vs. Caldas

One of the highlights of my time in Medellin was going to my first proper men´s professional soccer match. It was an absolute blast. Atlético Nacional, the team in Medellin, just happened to be playing a match while I was there and several people from the hostel were going to the game, how could I refuse?

The atmosphere outside the stadium was great. Everyone was wearing green and black (the colors of the home team) and there was live music. After buying our souvenir hats and going through two security checkpoints, we finally made it into the stadium. Very few fans of any American sports team can compare to your average South American soccer fan. Everyone seems to be a die hard fan and people are truly emotionally tied to their team. As soon as the teams came out and the match began, the true noise began. Several drums in unison, several different chants, firecrackers, cursing out the referees. It was quite the experience. At several points riot police had to use their shields to protect the side referee after he made calls against Atlético Nacional, but once they were too slow and he got pegged in the back of the head with a bag of water. Another time a player for Caldas actually got hit by a bag of water also, resulting in a slight delay in the action. In the end Atlético Nacional won the match 1-0.

There are more pictures of the soccer match on my Picassa photo site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Medellin, Colombia

Medellin, Colombia was made famous in the 80´s and early 90´s as the home of Pablo Escobar. Despite its reputation, Medellin has proven itself to be an amazing place. It is incredibly modern and very organized with very little crime. It obviously has its fair share of problems, as any large city does, but I felt very safe and am very glad that I included Medellin as a stop on my tour of Colombia.


Having just read a book on the life of Pablo Escobar (¨Killing Pablo¨) I went to visit his grave in Medellin with Aussie Dan. We were both expecting a large extravagant gravesite but were surprised to see a modest headstone for Pablo next to his mother and some other family members. His grave has a caretaker and we talked to him for a bit about Pablo and his effect on Medellin and Colombia. According to him, people are very conflicted in their views on Pablo because although he was responsible for some horrible crimes in his life, he also invested a tremendous amount of money into Medellin in areas such as infrastructure, education and recreation. While nobody would condone the many murders, assaults and kidnappings that Pablo and his associates were responsible for, people are also very appreciative of his generosity towards their community. One thing that was always in the back of my mind as I was going through Medellin was that despite it being such a nice modern city, how much of
this is a result of drug money from the Medellin cartel.

One of my most bizarre experiences in Medellin was visiting a night club called ¨Mangos.¨ Several of us from the hostel took a cab to this American Wild West themed place a little outside of the main downtown area of Medellin. We were told that this was THE club to go to in Medellin so we were all very excited to check it out. I knew it would be a bizarre night when I arrived and was greeted by a group of midgets; some dressed as Fidel Castro, others in cowboy costumes and others in salsa dancing clothes. The main part of the club had several stages around with salsa dancers in very extravagant clothing. Shortly after our arrival though, group after group of scantily clad women came down from a fire pole and started dancing to more popular club music. There were about 5 different groups of people who came down the fire pole before they were replaced again by the salsa dancers. Do I want to return to Mangos? No. Am I glad I went? Yes. An odd night, but good company made it enjoyable.

Medellin has a great metro system that runs to most areas of interest for the average traveler. Part of the metro system is a cable car that runs from one of the metro stations up the mountain into some of the poorer neighborhoods. The system has been great for the working class people in Medellin, but it also gives travelers the chance to take in some good views of the city. Several of us from the hostel ventured up and walked around the neighborhood at the top. There is a very large and very interesting black brick building at the top which is a new library. For us though, it had a nice terrace area giving us a chance to take in the amazing views over the city. There were lots of little kids running around in this area and they were all very intrigued by us, especially since we could speak Spanish with them. Lots of giggling. Perfect.


More pictures of Medellin on my Picassa photo site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Zipaquirá, Colombia

Took a day trip to Zipaquirá, Colombia, a small city about two hours outside of Bogotá. This city makes money on mining salt from the nearby mountains and is also home to the Salt Cathedral. I´ve been a bit tired of visiting churches, but this one was one of the most interesting that I have seen. It is actually inside of a mountain in the salt mines, .75 km from the mine entrance. It is very eerie on the inside as everything is dark except for dark blue purple lights illuminating crosses as you walk into the main chapel. The main chapel is enormous and I was told can hold almost 8000 people. Very amazing that all of this is basically under and inside a mountain.

No hay agua...

Water is something I have always taken for granted, until today. Went the last 36 hours without any running water at the hostel. They told us that the city shut it off for maintenance. This meant no toilets, no showers, no clean dishes. What a pain. Had to walk about 10 blocks just to use a restroom and the hostel is really starting to smell quite bad since nobody has showered. Oh well, I lived.

More from Bogotá

Cerro Monserate is a mountain that towers over La Candelaria in Bogotá. They have both a cable car and a train that runs to the top, although the train only runs on weekends. At the top is a church and restaurant and great views of Bogotá. Spent a good deal of time hanging out looking at the city.

I also toured the Police Museum in Bogotá. It was actually pretty boring for the most part, and we were not allowed to take pictures during the cool parts (the room full of guns and the Pablo Escobar room). The Pablo Escobar room featured some things owned by Pablo when he was killed such as some guns and a jacket. They also had a tile from the roof where Pablo was killed that has a blood stain on it. Reminded me a bit of the pillow in Washington DC with a blood stain from Lincoln.

Other than that, I have been enjoying just walking around Bogotá. Great city with lots of character. They have done a great job moving forward and embracing the new without abandoning the old.

Donación Botero

Spent the morning going through a great art museum in Bogota. The main focus is the art of Fernando Botero, one of the most famous Colombian painters. He is known for painting people, animals and things in a very rotund and large fashion. The museum also has a bunch of art from people like Miró, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Calder, Dalí and Matisse. Fun to just hang out and look at good art for a while.

Bogotá, Colombia

I was supposed to arrive in Bogotá in the afternoon but due to two separate multi-hour delays (one due to a car driving off the road and over a cliff and the other due to semi-truck spilling its cargo all over the road) I arrived at about 10pm. The hostel I was supposed to stay at had lost my reservation so I got put up in a room with a queen size bed instead of the dorm room I had reserved. No complaints, especially since they charged me the price of the dorm room.

Anyways, spent the next day with a Colombian that I worked with at a resort just outside of Glacier National Park in St. Mary Montana. Diego is from Popoyán but recently moved to Bogotá following his graduation from college. We ate lunch at a mall near his house and then spent some time exploring La Candelaría, the older colonial part of Bogotá. We visited the Plaza Bolivar and also saw where the Colombian National Congress meets and the Casa de Nariño (which is where the Colombian president works). Across from the National Congress is the Palace of Justice where in the mid-1980´s the M19 guerillas held over 300 people hostage. Eventually all of the guerillas and almost half of the Supreme Court Justices were killed in a shootout with the police.

We then wandered over to the Colpatria tower, one of the tallest buildings in Bogota, where we took the elevator to the roof for some views of Bogota.

By this time it was dark so we decided to head to the newer, trendy part of Bogotá called La Zona Rosa. We spent some time at the Bogota Beer Company, the only microbrewery that I had seen on my trip. The place was packed as Colombia was playing Venezuela in a World Cup Qualifier match.

Bogotá has really surprised me. La Candelaria has a certain old colonial charm to it, while one could think they were in any major city in the US or Europe while in La Zona Rosa. I have found Bogotá to be very safe, there is a very large police presence, and the Colombian people have been incredibly helpful and friendly. I am really looking forward to checking out the rest of the city over the next couple of days.

To see more pictures from my trip, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Cali, Colombia

Only had a day in Cali and since it was the middle of the week, there wasn´t much going on. It was incredibly hot, the hottest weather I´ve had yet and much different from the cooler temps in the mountain cities I had been to earlier.

The English teacher that I met on the bus from Ipiales suggested that I check out the Universidad del Valle, one of the universities in Cali. The campus has many left leaning student activists and the campus is covered in grafiti. There was both written statements calling for students to rise up in protest against various government actions as well as murals. When I first entered the grounds to the university, the security guards stopped me and asked me lots of questions. They didn´t understand why a gringo would want to look around the university campus and assumed that I was up to no good. Eventually I convinced them to let me walk around but before I left they warned me to be very careful since there was a lot of anti-American sentiment on campus. While that may be true, I had a great time walking around the huge open campus and everyone I talked to there was very kind. It was really nice to get out of the bustle of Cali for a couple hours and just hang around with some students my age.

The quote in the upper part of the mural is from Che Guevara and roughly says: ¨The division of America into different nations is completely fictitious. We make up one mixed race from Mexcio to the Magellenic Straight.¨ The bottom part of the mural basically describes imperialism as death, misery and repression. It reminds me of the mural that is painted on the old American embassy in Tehran, Iran (http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/scaniranic/images/us_embassy_wall_in_tehran_2.jpg).

Cali is a party town and on the weekends the salsotecas are packed solid with Caleños. Although it was mid-week, I still ventured out to a salsoteca and although I have no idea how to salsa dance, the Caleñas were very kind and tried to teach me. I don´t think I learned much, but it was a fun evening anyways.

The Road From Ipiales To Cali

Amazing scenery on the road from Ipiales through Popoyan and on to Cali. The huge green mountains and the river kept reminding me of the fertile ¨Great Valley¨ in The Land Before Time (haven´t seen that movie in about17 years though so I could be remembering things wrong). Spent almost all of the daylight hours of the bus ride glued to the window.

Bienvenidos a Colombia

After losing the 13 colonies in a friendly game of cribbage with a Brit, I forced myself out of Quito and headed for the border with Colombia. Surprisingly, the border was very open. One could wander back and forth quite easily without being stopped by any kind of police or military people. In fact, you really had to go out of your way to get an exit stamp from Ecuador immigration and then an entry stamp into Colombia. Very easy to do though, no questions, no searches, just a printed entry stamp in the passport.

Spent the night in Ipiales, Colombia. Nothing too special about Ipiales, but there did seem to be many more upscale stores than anything I saw in most of Ecuador. For a border town, though, it really wasn´t too bad. The next morning I went to Las Lajas, a small town a few kilometers outside of Ipiales. There is really only one reason to visit and that is the Santuario de las Lajas (Sanctuary of Las Lajas). It is a pretty impressive Gothic cathedral built into a cliff wall on a bridge spanning a deep gorge. It was a pretty impressive sight. The front interior wall of the cathedral is actually the rock face of the cliff.

Supposedly an image of the Virgin appeared in the cliff in the 1700´s and in the early 1900´s the current structure was built. Pilgrims from all over Colombia, and the rest of South America, visit the site and many miracles are attributed to it. On the path that leads to the site, there are many ¨Thanksgivings¨in the wall, which are basically little plaques thanking the Virgen de las Lajas for various things ranging from success in sports to curing various ailments.

After getting back to Ipiales, I took a horribly long and horribly noisy 12 hour bus ride to Cali. very painful, but I met a guy from England who was working as an English teacher in Cali. He gave me some tips on how to spend my time. We´ll see how it goes.

To see more pictures from my trip, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Extra Gringos

Back in Quito. I am really enjoying staying at this particular hostel in Quito. It is owned by an ex-backpacker from Australia and it is only a few months old. Pretty nice with a great terrace with excellent views of the city. Very comfortable beds, a nice TV lounge, a well stocked kitchen and a big common room with a bar, book exchange, computers, darts and foosball. Not bad.

Been spending lots of time in Quito with people from Australia and England. I wrote earlier about Americans who developed British accents, and while that hasn´t happened to me, I have started using some of their sayings. I call gasoline ¨petrol¨and use words like bollox and queue. I also pretty much only use the metric system now, even though I still have to convert everything in my head (I have no idea what 1500 meters means).

One night in Quito me and Irishman and an Englishman went out for dinner in the Mariscal area. We had a big 3 course steak dinner with a drink for $6 each. Not bad. Afterwards, we went to a bar for a drink and they just happened to be showing the Sunday Night Football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Diego Chargers. The Irishman was an NFL fan and told me he enjoyed watching games (although he didn´t understand most of the rules). The Englishman, on the other hand, said that he detested American football and didn´t want to stay too long. We ended up watching the entire game, which luckily ended up being a very close game decided on a missed field goal in the final seconds, and I think the Englishman came around. I had to explain a lot of the plays and the strategies behind them and all of the penalties but both really got into the game. It was fun to watch both of them start to understand American football and in the case of the Englishman, actually enjoy himself while watching it. I promised the Englishman that the next day I would watch a British soccer match (I´m sorry, a proper football match) with him so that he could return the favor.

I also found out at the bar why there were so many more gringos than usual in Quito. An Iberia plane slid off the runway after it landed damaging its landing gear and one of the wings. Nobody was injured, but it did close the airports only runway for two days, which of course caused havoc and many flights were cancelled and diverted and it became very hard for people to get out of town. One guy I talked to had his vacation involuntarily extended by 5 days and wasn´t sure what he was going to do since he didn´t have any more vacation time at work. Interestingly, they don´t know what to do with the plane. It was a very large plane, an Airbus A340, and because the landing gear is damaged it cannot go to another airport and right now they don´t have the facilities to make the repairs in Quito.

Bus Rides

I figured I should mention my various bus rides a bit. I´ve been spending lots of time in buses as they are the cheapest way of getting around (in Ecuador you pay about a dollar per hour of travel). Although cheap, they are definitely not the most comfortable way to travel. In addition to uncomfortable seats and always being seated behind a person who insists on reclining their seat so far back that their head is practically in my lap, there is always outrageously loud music or outrageously loud audio from a horrible American movie. Always so loud that even with my IPOD turned up all the way, I still can´t block it out.

I´ve seen more movies staring either Jean Claude Van Dam or The Rock in the last couple weeks than I have previously in my entire life. Despite being horrible movies, I do like to use the movies as a bit of a Spanish lesson as they are dubbed over with Spanish dialogue. At first I struggled to follow along with the rapid dialogue, but now it is almost just like watching the movie in English. Although, even with these horrible movies, much is lost in the translation to Spanish.

One requirement to be a bus driver must be to be clinically insane. Many of the roads in the Andes are very poor with lots of potholes and more than 1000 meter drops without guardrails. This doesn´t make the drivers go at a safe speed however and they frequently overtake other slower vehicles on blind turns at excessive speeds. I was told by one Ecuadorian that bus fatalities are the second leading cause of death in Ecuador behind cancer. Not sure if this is true or not, but the way these guys drive it certainly wouldn´t surprise me. Despite these tactics, theoretically to speed up the journey, I have yet to arrive at any destination on time.

Another part of bus travel has been the police check points. I never quite understand how they work because sometimes the bus is waved through and other times we have to pull over. Police board the bus and sometimes just scan the crowd, looking for suspicious people I suppose, or ask people to get off the bus. Here is where it gets interesting. Sometimes the gringos are singled out and searched thoroughly and other times the gringos are completely ignored and only locals are searched. Despite knowing that my papers are in order and that I don´t have anything illegal with me, I am always very nervous going through this process. I have this image of some corrupt police officer pulling some contraband out and saying he found it in my bag. Thankfully this scenario has not played out.

Despite these checkpoints, which are supposed to make road travel safer, they almost leave me feeling less secure. Most of these checkpoints are looking for weapons. Every time I have been asked to get off the bus, nobody actually checks the inside of the bus. So say I had a gun with me, all I would have to do was leave it at my seat and it wouldn´t be found. Also, a couple of times I have had my bag scanned with a metal detector and when it goes off I have only been asked what was inside. I tell them that I have a camera and some books in my bag and they simply say ¨Bueno¨and go on to the next person.

With all of these shortcomings in the process, I was once forced to remove my pants. It was the night bus from Guayaquil to Quito at about 230am and both of us gringos on the bus were asked for our passports. I explained to the first officer that my passport was in a hidden pocket on the inside of my pants and that I would need to remove my pants to show it to him. He just waved me along and told me to get back on the bus. As I was climbing back on, another officer came up behind me and asked to see my passport. I tried explaining the same thing to him, but unfortunately he made me get it out. So I removed my pants on the side of the road in front of about 20 onlookers (plus all the other people still on the bus), I am sure they all loved the experience, and removed my passport for the officer. He looked at it for a total of about 1.5 seconds, never checked my entry stamp, and handed it back to me.

Fun fun.

Montañita, Ecuador

Took a bus from Cuenca to Guayaquil and it was quite the drive. You start in the mountains and end at about sea level, passing through amazing mountain landscapes (the road goes through Parque Nacional Cajas) and thick, lush jungle and banana plantation. Quite a day.

The Guayaquil bus station is a bit bizarre in that you get dropped off a couple hundred meters from the main bus terminal. You then have to get on another bus which drives you about 50 meters past a gate and then you have to walk the rest of the way. Is a bus really necessary for a 50 meter journey?

Anyways, hopped on a really nice bus headed for Ecuador´s Pacific coast. This part of the country is called the ¨Ruta del Sol¨(the Sun Route) even though it is cloudy for most of the year. I made it to Montañita just after dark and quickly found a hostel on the beach run by a 20-something Ecuadorian who used it to fund his interest in surfing. He lives at the hostel and goes surfing every day, although he told me that he was about to move to Alberta to work in an oil field at the end of the year. Talk about a contrast.

Montañita is a really laid back surfer village. Lots of foreigners and lots of people with dreadlocks. Reggae is heard coming out of every bar, as opposed to the usual late 90´s pop music from the US which is heard in the rest of Ecuador. A nice change of pace and nice to fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the beach (I love being able to pay $5 for a private room with a double bed, private bathroom and an ocean view).

Woke up my first morning to some of the surfers in my hostel coming out onto their balconies all excited because the sun was actually shining. They told me that it was the first time in 3 weeks that they had actually seen the sun. Good timing on my part, but their definition of sunny was a bit generous. Spent most of the day just hanging out on the beach, watching the surfers ride the waves. Very relaxing.

At one point I saw a guy wearing a University of Michigan shirt and started talking to him for a bit. Turns out he didn´t go to UM, he was from Wisconsin, but was a big UM fan. Nice to talk college football with a fellow Wolverine. This guy had actually just moved to Montañita and opened up a hostel and restaurant. Makes me jealous. Why do I want to go law school again? Couldn´t I just take that money for law school and open my own hostel in South America?

Parque Nacional Cajas

Delayed in Cuenca due to a bus driver strike, I took a day trip to Parque Nacional Cajas, about 30 km outside of Cuenca. Cajas sits at about 4300 meters and is a vast national park encompassing mountains and alpine lakes. It reminded me a lot of Glacier National Park in the US, only without any trees. There are only very small bushes and grasses, almost desert like.

Went on a 3 hour hike around a lake and up to a couple look out points. Very enjoyable day but very cold.

To see more pictures from my trip, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Cuenca, Ecuador

After Baños I bussed it about 5 hours south to Cuenca. Had to change busses in Riobamba and got to witness a near riot as hundreds of people were literally fighting each other to get on the buses bound for Quito. There was blood, police and arrests. People were knocking old women and children to the ground to cut in front of them. It was a mess. Luckily I wasn´t headed to Quito.

Cuenca is in southern Ecuador and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It´s a pretty city, but I arrived the day after their big Independence Day party so the city was a little dead.

Checked out the Museo del Banco Central, which really has nothing to do with banking. There is an Inca excavation called Tomebamba behind the museum which was interesting, but the best part was the shrunken head exhibit. I always thought that shrunken heads were part of some myth, but evidentally the Shuar people of Ecuador used to make ¨Tsantsas¨or shrunken heads. Basically they did this to people who were killed, either in battle or to avenge a murder. Not sure how exactly they do it, but the purpose of making a shrunken head was to seal the soul of the individual inside so that they could not cause harm to people either in this life or the afterlife. After a battle, the tsantsa was a trophy.

Cuenca was alright and I´m sure it is more lively at other times of the year. I seemed to arrive when the city was recovering from the massive party the weekend before. Off to the Pacific coast soon.

Baños, Ecuador

After Quito I headed south to Baños, Ecuador. Baños is famous for its volcanically heated hot springs and its beautiful surroundings. It is surrounded by giant, lush green mountains that seem to spring out of the edges of the city. I arrived on a Friday night during a 3 day weekend for Ecuadorians so it was packed solid with vacationing Quiteños (people from Quito). Had a bit of a hard time finding a hotel room and when I did find one it was less than ideal ( tiny with a crappy mattress, shared bathroom and no hot water). Oh well.

Baños was a bit touristy for me, and the main leisure activity seemed to be driving around the block blasting music. As I would sit at outdoor cafes, the same cars would drive by several times, all blasting their favorite music. Fun, fun.

Hiked to the top of one of the mountains surrounding Baños to La Virgen de Baños. It seems like every city in Ecuador has a virgen perched on a site overlooking the city. On the way up, I spotted the Volcán Tungurahua which is still a very active volcano, last erupting in August of 2006. In fact, it still shoots ash out of the top, which was pretty cool to see (so long as there wasn´t a full scale eruption while I was there). Continuing on to the top, the view over Baños got better and better. Really glad I went up as it was also an opportunity to get away from the mobs of people in Baños.

Last thing of note for Baños is the pools/hot springs. I went to the Termas de la Virgen, which has 3 pools, one of which is scalding hot, one of which is pleasantly warm, and one of which is freezing cold. The pools all sit at the base of a huge waterfall pouring out of one of the mountains. Really great spot, but too many loud screaming children to really enjoy the experience.

Off to Cuenca.


To see more pictures from my trip, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren

Quito, Ecuador

Meant to only spend a couple days in Quito, but ended up staying for 5 nights. Having too much fun in Quito with people from my hostal. Quito is a really beautiful city. As in any developing nation, there are crappy, dirty areas, but I am really surprised at how nice things are. I have been warned many times about how dangerous capital cities are in South America, but I have not felt unsafe or been in any kind of uncomfortable situation the entire time I spent in Quito.

Quito sits at about 9000 ft about sea level in a long valley surrounded by 14000 ft tall mountains. Spent my first day wandering around the old, colonial part of Quito and while doing so stumbled upon a changing of the guard ceremony at the presidential palace (which was pretty hoaky as these types of ceremonies tend to be) but the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa was hanging out on his balcony watching. It was funny to watch the Quiteños (people from Quito) react to seeing him. Some absolutely detested him and were protesting him with large signs and chanting while others absolutely loved him and were getting onto their knees, in tears and shouting things like ¨Viva el presidente¨ (Long live the president). I can´t imagine many people in the US who love our current president so much that the sight of him would make them break into tears. But alas, I digress.

Another day I visited the Basilica del Voto Nacional and climbed up to the top of the tower, 80 meters above ground. One must climb several steep ladders (that would definitely be a liability issue in the US) to reach the top, however once braving the ladders, you are rewarded with sweeping views over the old part of Quito.

The same day I gave into the super touristy thing and took a bus to the ¨Mitad del Mundo¨or ¨Middle of the World.¨ It is essentially a monument at the equator and they have a line painted in the concrete so you can get a photo. Only problem is that they built the monument on the site where the French calculated the equator to be in 1700´s and with the advent of modern GPS, it has been determined that the French, and therefore the Ecuadorian monument, is off by 200 meters. Ooops. Anyways, the place was pretty gross and not worth the time to get there. All I got was a crappy, crooked picture.

Besides the old town, there is also a new part of town called the Mariscal Sucre, or ¨Gringolandia¨due to the large number of gringos. Most of the tourists stay in this area because of the massive amounts of tourist oriented lodging and dining options (I stayed in an area between the old town and the new town). Went out a few times with people from the hostel in Gringolandia and it was pretty fun. There were definitely lots of Quiteños out dancing along with the gringos and it was a pretty fun night. Met a bunch of people from the US, England and Australia who are living in Quito teaching English. It was interesting in that all the people from the US seem to have developed British accents, so much so that I was truly surprised to learn that these people were from places like Kansas City and San Francisco.

Anyways, Quito is a great place to visit. Lots to keep you occupied day and night. But I spent way more time here than I had planned.


To see more pictures from my trip, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren