The middle of the world and colonial quito!

Hola,
I had quite a weekend! On Saturday myself and some other students visited ¨la mitad del mundo¨or the middle of the world, where the equator cuts through Ecuador (in the photo below you can see me in both the N and S hemispheres). It was a pretty cool experience, and we were practically submerged in clouds it both felt and looked pretty cool. On Sunday we took to the old part of town, or colonial quito. Though it has a very European feel, it is a very unique, gorgeous part of Quito. We spent a lot of time simply wandering the narrow, hilly streets. The political center of town, the playa de independencia or plaza grande, where the president both lives and works, was blocked off for most of the afternoon because Ecuador had invited presidents from every nation of the world for today´s presidential inaugaration. Should be an interesting few months politically for Ecuador, they have had about 10 presidents in practically as many years - they seem to really enjoy running them from office. The best part of the day though was climbing La Basilica. La Basilica is a beautiful, European style church (though it was built in the 19th century) and offers visitors the opportunity to climb to the tip-top of two of its massive towers (I took a ton of pictures of the treachorous climb so check out the photos link). It was a pretty scary trek to the top at times, but well worth it as the view was breathtaking (as was the altitude). Today it was back to school, but with the campus being so beautiful and getting to meet so many new people that´s not such a bad thing. The weather here has been perfect (I hear it´s pretty nasty in Wisconsin, sorry!), around 75 everyday and cooler at night. We´re making plans to head out to Baños next weekend, which gets it name from its many natural volcanic springs/baths. Bout it for now, I´ll add the photos to the yahoo photo site soon.
Attentamente,
Brett






Atop one of the towers of La Basilica, across the way were the other clock towers we climbed!