Hi everybody and welcome to another series of dispatches from an RMI Expeditions' Ecuador Volcanoes program! The majority of our team arrived scattered throughout the day yesterday with high spirits and great expectations despite being exhausted from a solid day of airline travel. We met up for the first time as a complete team this morning at Spicy, our hotel restaurant, and enjoyed a pretty good spread of food and decent coffee to boot. After breakfast we headed out on a very informative city tour with our veteran city guide Jorge. Jorge showed us around town while explaining much of the complex cultural past that made Ecuador the country it is today. Our crew climbed the towers of the Basilica, enjoyed sweeping views of the city from the top of the Panecillo, and got to experiment with different physical phenomena on the exact geographic equator. All of this while beginning our all-important acclimatization process. Cool! We plan on rounding out our first full day in Ecuador with a brief team meeting followed by a team dinner. More to come as the adventure progresses! RMI Guides Billy Nugent, Katie Bono, and the rest of the gang

On The Map