Thursday 22 September 2011

In Quito via a night in Madrid!


A couple of days ago I told my dear friend and filmer Bjarne Sahlén that we will meet at the hostel Rabida at 18:00. Now we are sitting here on the other side of the planet and I made it here with a 5 min margin. It’s the first time in a long while that I’m feeling really excited and I’m looking forward for our three-month adventure through the Andes.

After a full day of packing back home in Luleå I flew to Madrid via Stockholm. I haven’t been thinking too much about the journey before hand and when I arrived in Madrid I realised that I had a night to kill before the flight to Quito the next day. I had never been in the Spanish capital so I jumped on a buss for an evening in town. My learn by doing Spanish course got a bit delayed as I met a couple of French girls on a bar and spent most of the evening drinking cervezas in French. But after midnight it was time for me to find my way back to the airport for some classic airport sleep.

It’s the first time in my life that im trying to speak Spanish, so I’m hoping the learning curve is going to go steady upwards. I learnt on the flight that no one in my surroundings spoke English and no one knew what a vegetarian was. But my seat neighbour worked with me for about ten hours straight and now I have kind of a foundation for the next couple of months. It reminded me of when I went down to the alp once with Bjarnes older brother Morgan and did a 21h straight French course that lay the foundation for my poor French.

Now its time to hit Quito by night and try to find some good Ecuadorian food and keep the acclimatisation going. Quito is on just under 3000 meters altitude so just hanging around here will help us get used to the thin air.

Tomorrow we will try to find the local gondola to get a view of the town and get even higher…

Check out Quito on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito
And our hostel Rabida: www.hostalrabida.com/

Keep on following our adventure on my blog, Bjarne's blog (endlessflow.posterous.com), Oakley.com and Haglofs.com


Lots of people on the streets of Madrid


A classic airport night on a bench



The streets of Quito from the cab

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