Day 115 - Highest capital in the world

Riobamba to Quito

The bus trip from Riobamaba to the capital Quito is only three and a half hours, and so far in Ecuador we haven't been blasted by loud music and action movies on our journeys. However the snake oil (and other) salesmen seem to take their place, and today we had some good ones!

The first one was selling some kind of pill, and over an hour and a half he didn't draw breath for a second, that was an amazing feat in itself, As usual someone on the bus purchased a bottle of his product - we hope it works for them but we suspect it won't, though the placebo effect can be pretty powerful!

After him we had a guy selling compilation CDs, most likely music he'd downloaded from the internet.  After his initial spiel of 15 minutes or so he then pulled out a portable CD player and started playing us samples, a few seconds of each song. The guy sitting across from us bought one of his CDs, for a dollar.

Bus travel throughout South America has been cheap, it works out to about $1.50 an hour and most of the time the buses are fine. We've heard there can be problems with theft on the buses, and stories of people who have nodded off for a few minutes to find their backpacks had either been stolen from under their seat or slashed and all the contents gone. The common theme of these stories is that these thefts occur at night so this just reconfirms our plans to only travel during the day.

Our little airbnb apartment is in a great part of Quito, and is almost brand new and equipped with everything we need and more - even coffee and sugar, milk and juice, a bowl of fruit and washing detergent. The view of Quito from the 13th floor is amazing, it looks to the west over the houses and buildings across to  the Pinchincha volcano, it's a great view during the day as well as at night.