Fear and loathing in Quito

One funny thing about travelling is that people who are sitting back home generally have the wrong impression security wise about various countries.

Good examples are El Salvador, Nicaragua and Colombia. All of which have had bad reputations at one stage but are now, apart from certain areas in the big cities (like any country), very safe and extremely pleasant to travel in. The Scary Planet type guidebooks generally take 3 or 4 years to reflect the general vibe on the street, so Colombia is still one of those places where we are told to be extremely careful. To be honest I would be more worried walking round north inner city Dublin than I would in Medellin.

Likewise there are some places that have a decent reputation, even in guide books, but are black spots when you talk to other travellers. My informal straw poll amongst fellow backpackers gave the ranking:
1. Caracas & most of Venezuela
2. Quito & the east of Ecuador
3. Guatemala City
as contenders in the "Most likely to get mugged" competition.

So it was with a vague uneasy feeling that I arrived into a dark and windy Quito (2800m) with an Australian bloke I had met at the Colombian border.

The uneasy feeling was alleviated about 4 hours later as I was dancing with aforementioned Aussie and a Dutch girl in a club absolutely jam packed with friendly Ecuadorians.

It was a Tuesday night.

Yes, Quito likes to party. Every night of the week the streets of the La Mariscal are packed with people either drinking (despite draconian laws against street drinking; none of that stuff in Colombia!) or queuing up to get into packed pubs and clubs. The Reina Victoria pub was a great place to get things going. It had a good mixture of locals, travellers and ex-pats and it had a lovely big fire going in the fireplace. It is actually a strong candidate for the next entry in Quietpubs.com

Other than its fun loving people, the Old Town of Quito is a veritable treasure trove of churches, monasteries and leafy Plazas and well deserves it UNESCO status. So between ambling about the old town, visiting the equator and putting one leg in the Northern hemisphere and one in the south (had to be done), getting the cable car up to 4000m and looking down over the city and enjoying the nightlife & not enjoying the morning after (I am sure hangovers disimprove with altitude) it took me a week to leave Quito.