Posted from Quito by Daryl, 21 Feb 09 at 16:23
At Quito airport we didn`t have enough money to pay the airport tax. They wouldn`t accept credit card or travellers cheques, we`d had our quota from the cash machine and the banks were shut! After about 2 hours of panic, with no-one able to help us, Chris managed to find a machine that would cough up some money on his Egg card. Phew! To celebrate, we took a taxi out to the equator which is basically an orange line painted on the ground (surprisingly cool to the touch, we expected it to sizzle) and a grey monolith which advised us we were at latitude 000000. Of course we had to have several photos of each other with one foot in each hemisphere. The irony of it was that it was cold because of the altitude. There`s queer. The trip to Rio, via 2 planes was unnecessarily complicated, involving us flying through Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. So we`ve done S America