14th October

Went for second run in Quito. Not quite as bad as last time although I didn't go as far and limited myself to the flat rather than the mountainous terrain of last Sunday. The good thing about running in sunny Quito is that when you come back and shower you don't actually care if the shower is cold or not. Went to meet Kate and Katrina (from the school) up the road from where I live. Strange place to get a bus, quite an innocuous little street...until 3 transsexual prostitutes walked passed me much to the excitement of a security guard sitting outside a florist.
Got the bus to Mitad Del Mundo (middle of the earth - or the equator to you and I). Bus took 40 mins and cost 40 cents. Bargain. Great views of the hills and great to be out of the city for a day.
The large equator statue is actually 150 metres out of place. But seeing as I am only coming to Quito once we had to go to the actual museum which is smaller and more interesting. Forced the girls to take a guided tour in Spanish as a bit of revision. Very interesting although the experiments they do on the equator line itself are a bit cheesy although my GCSE physics was letting me down as most of the "tricks" seemed pukka. Where is Dan when I need him, the voice of reason. Once experiment implied you are stronger either side of the equator but on the actual line itself you are weaker. The female guide tried to pull your arms down in the southern hemisphere and couldn't, but on the line she said she could do so with ease (despite the fact she nearly jumped on top of my arms to prove it). Hmmmmm.

Did the obligatory straddle of the equator so I now have a photo of me straddling 0 degrees latitude (Greenwich) and 0 degrees longitude (Ecuador). We had to skip the rest of the tour due to hunger.

Bus back left the road on several occasions but at 40 cents again I wasn't complaining. The 3 of us had a nice lunch in town (The Maple Leaf) with salad, nachos, cake and coffee for a fiver.

Got back to the house. I had forgotten it was Tim's last day until I saw him on the corner of our road. He had lost his voice. WHAT A RESULT! Did the charitable thing and took him to a chemist for some throat sweets. Chemists are a bit different in South America. They gave him anti-biotics and top strength pain killers. I had to beg, borrow and was on the point of stealing to get anti-biotics from my GP in London. He left for Guayaquil at 10 and the Germans have gone too so there are just 4 of us left in the house.

Struggled through a very tired soup Maria had prepared and rewrote Babs's homework for her.