For the past several weeks, I had been surrounded by people and had quite forgotten that I was actually on this trip all by myself. That realization struck suddenly when I disembarked in the bus terminal at Quito, and I felt momentarily confused and overwhelmed, much like on first landing in Ecuador. But this time I had the advantage of at least understanding some common Spanish words and being able to make simple sentences. After walking about the bus terminal for half an hour, I walked up to the information desk and picked up a couple of maps, one of Quito and another of Ecuador itself.

It turned out that I was currently at Terminal Quitumbe, at the southern end of Quito. This was one of the two main bus terminals of the city (the other one being Terminal Carcelén at the northern end). I would need to take a trolley bus (El Trole) from here to get into the heart of the city.

The bus ride to the historic city centre (Centro Historico) took about 45 minutes. Once there I started walking around looking for an internet shop so that I could look for a nearby hostel. Instead, I stumbled upon some sort of a street theatre in progress and spent a long time just watching them perform though I didn’t really understand much.

Street show

The crowd

Soon after, I found an internet cafe and saw that Matt had left a message on Facebook about the hostel he was staying in. It was called Hostel Guayanga and was quite easy to locate. I reached there, checked myself into the same dorm room as Matt, and located him on the roof of The Secret Garden, a partner hostel across the street.

Over a few beers, we spent some time catching up on our respective weekends.