A quick note about the flight – 12h with a baby…??? It was quite fun actually. Baby keeps you busy and you hours fly by problem-solving and being creative about entertaining her. I normally feel awkward walking back and forth around the plane, you become that weird guy very quickly, but with a baby, it was a treat to tread the aisles. Instead of being an annoyance I was a cool dad. Frida made friends on most rows, people were playing and giggling with her and pulling silly faces – I had never been so social on a plane before. And glowing little Frida was embracing every moment of it.

Now to Quito, our first stop. The capital of Ecuador.

Quito has a great vibe straight off, it beats to a pulse with strong identity and a sense of community. There are few tourists, we spotted two Europeans in socks and sandals and two Americans with patriotic accessories, so the city isn’t a slave to tourism and they don’t fuss about you. Cars have life size superhero figures attached to the roofs, streets are lined with offerings of yellow knickers and men dress up as women. What? I’ll come back to it… Buses are constantly packed to the rafters, but people remain calm and keep a sense of humour about the sticky situation. The blaring Latino disco music helps. London must introduce music to buses and Underground! In fact the whole world should.

Architecture, museums, galleries and parks may all have something to offer in Quito, but the most exciting bit is street food. You line your stomach up with a Michelada (beer mixed with spices, sauces and salt) and then get stuck into parts of animals you never knew existed. Primarily intestines, feet, tails, noses, tongues – a rollercoaster of textures and flavours. I find meat boring usually, but this got me going. And of course your meal is always accompanied with potatoes – fried, roasted, mashed into patties or the odd chip. Then back to the Micheladas. Then, shrimp ceviches, which are ridiculously good – can’t wait to go to the seaside where the seafood will be even fresher. But the Michelin stars go to the salted corn kernels and bean mix with tomato salsa, sliced onion and a squeeze of fresh lime. This is a common cupful that ladies mix together super fast under your eyes for a dollar. And suddenly the sun comes out and you’re in bliss.

We arrived in Quito on the 29th Dec, so our experience of the city was shaped by the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Ecuadorians have a beautiful tradition of making life size effigies of people, which they burn at midnight. Some of them have brilliantly detailed paper mache faces. As the story goes, the figures symbolise the most negative memories of the past year, which disappear forever when set a flame. But part of me thinks they just like burning things, because a lot of the effigies were superheroes and other odd shaped funny figures decorating vehicles, which looked great in flames. Unless it was the onslaught of superhero films that made up their worst memories of 2018 (I would second that). Anyway, we love the tradition and built our own effigies. You decide what they symbolise…

We walked around with the three of them in our bag for the better half of the day and people gave us strange looks and even asked what we had in there. When we tried to explain in our Spanglish, we were met with confusion.

Our second favourite tradition was men dressing up as women (naughty and sloppy) and demanding money from strangers. They would start off all seductive and cute, but effortlessly turn into raging queens when their demands weren’t met. However peculiar this sounds, it makes perfect sense: the effigies which get burned are predominantly male, so men dress up as their widows and beg for money to raise the children. There’s no escaping them, traffic is stopped, buses raided and restaurants cleaned up with all change going into the widows’ purses accompanied always by this very tune:

Next, you must wear yellow knickers on New Year’s Eve in Ecuador, then you’ll have a good year!

Last, but not least, eat 12 grapes at midnight! Then you’ll have an even better year.

The streets were packed with celebrations until 7 in the evening, then major fireworks took place and everybody left… It all went quiet. We thought we’ll go back to the hotel to give Frida a nap before the late night resurgence and were so good at putting her to sleep at 9 that all three of us passed out and didn’t awake until in the early morning hours. Jet lag and baby brains took hold of us and so it was a very anti-climactic finale for us in the bizarre and playful build up to the big night.

Considering our performances on the night, we’re going to have a terrible 2019, but Quito was  awesome and finished 2018 off in style.

Saturday 5th Jan, with fondness from the foot of some volcano.