Balancing eggs at Easter

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1. Old town, Quito 2. The real equator 3.Basil and Milo, Cotopaxi 4. A glimpse of Cotopaxi

From the Galapagos we landed back with a bump in overcast Quito. Some people rave about Quito but Mike and I found it one of the only cities in South America unable to seduce us. Perhaps it was the interminable grey suburbs and perpetual clouds? Or the fact that every morning over breakfast in our hostel yet another backpacker would recount their scary mugging tale from the day before?

So we caught a few buses out of the city to the centre of the world to cheer us up. Now, just to confuse things, there are two equator lines. The old one, before GPS cleared things up, where you can straddle the fake equator in front of a grand stone monument and buy 'maybe' Alpaca jumpers. Or the real equator - in a tarted-up parking lot around the corner - where you can balance an egg on a nail head, watch water go down the plug hole in different directions and walk along a painted line with your eyes closed and your thumbs up. It was gimmicky but fun, we were duly cheered.

After a few more days in the big smoke, with our wallets shoved in our underwear and eyes in the back of our heads, making repeat trips to see our new best friends at the immigration office to sort out the visa issue, we headed onwards and ever upwards to the foothills of Volcano Cotopaxi for Easter weekend in a remote lodge. It was a lovely few days spent sitting by the fire, risking our marriage over fraught games of scrabble, hiking and playing with the dogs at the lodge, all the time waiting for the clouds to lift their skirts and reveal the jaw-droppingly beautiful conical volcano underneath.

On Easter Sunday we gasped our way up a steep slope of scree to 5000m and had a hot chocolate at Cotopaxi's base camp. I surprised Mike with a Kinder egg which I had frantically run around Quito trying to find a few days before - explaining to bemused old ladies in corner shops that 'los huevos de chocolate' were very important to our Easter celebrations. They keep it simple and while we tuck into our hot cross buns they parade around the streets dressed as Jesus with heavy crosses, in a gory exhibition of mass self-flagellation.

It was an Easter different to any other, tucked up in our cabin with a roaring log fire, far away from the raucous family gathering we usually enjoy, but there are worse places to be than up a volcano beating your husband at scrabble (I am going to get crucified - excuse the Easter-related pun - for that comment).