Quito

The first night I stayed at Centro del Mundo hostel for $5 (dorm). It's kinda a dump and doesn't even have wifi so the next morning I moved next door to Casa Basik for $6. It's much nicer and has wifi. I had a king size bed in the dorm room that also had a bathroom inside with a hot shower and it turned out that no one else came into the dorm so I had the room to myself. They also did my laundry in 8hrs for $0.80/kilo. 

I went to the equator park "Mitidad del Mundo" north of the city and it was kinda a cluster to get there. It was Saturday and election day and there seemed to be lots of traffic. To vet there first you have to take the metrobus line to the end at Ophelia Terminal ($0.25) then transfer to a "mitidad del mundo" bus for $0.15 which drops you at the gate to the monument which is free to enter. The trip there took 2hours. To get back you do the same in reverse. Then we took the metrobus all the way into the old town and walked around. Its a really cool city surrounded by mountains and it has a really big old town with lots of old buildings from the Spanish. Quito is really easy to get around with three set bus lines that have stations like a subway. Some areas can be dangerous though and the 2 Swiss guys on my amazon trip got robbed at 3pm walking up to the big angel statue on the hill. Taking taxis at night are a must. 

Leaving Quito I bought a ticket for the 430am Panamericana bus, because they have a station in the Mariscol a couple blocks from my hostel, to the border town of Tulcan (5hrs, $5) the bus didn't leave until 6am though! There were 3 other gringos on my bus also going to Colombia so in Tulcan we split a taxi from the terminal to the boarder for $1 each. After getting your exit stamp from Ecuador you walk across a short bridge into Colombia.