The Highest Bathroom in the World

We´ve gotten to the end of our first week of spanish classes here in Quito, Ecuador. The people here are much easier to understand! Especially the tutors who are used to speaking slow for dumb gringos like ourselves. We are staying with host families here, separate families so that we don´t just speak in english to each other all the time. My ecuadorian mum is called Maria and she spoils me by making me delicious food and cleaning up after me. I´ve tried to insist on helping with the dishes but she called me "loco". Despite my poor language skills, we´ve had some interesting yarns including one last night where I managed to explain the workings of the NZ student loan system!

Quito is an interesting place. We are living in the Mariscal area of town known to locals as Gringolandia for the abundance of flashy bars and restaurants serving the tourist trade. Its meant to be quite unsafe late at night and many of the houses have huge concrete walls with broken glass of spikes atop. The neighbourhood has a strange vibe to it, during the day everyone goes about their business but as soon as it gets dark people seem very nervous. It seems as though something bad went down here recently and people are still quite wary.

Yesterday we went for a cruise to the "old town" which is like going to a completely different city. Our trip coincided with a protest by local indigenous people so the city was jammed with colourful tradition. We wandered about a bit before finding our way to the Basillica de Voto Nacional and this is where my day got a bit frantic....

Something about our new diet hasn´t been agreeing with me at all and as such, like clockwork everyday I have to find a toilet in fairly short order. I figured we could safely find a loo in the basillica and go about checking out the church. When we entered, I asked where the baño is, the answer was "arriba". I found myself frantically scaling the stairs to the top of the basillica towers trying to find what I firmly believe is the highest bathroom in the world. Yikes.