Quito, Ecuador – January 27-28 & February 3, 2011

Most of this blog is being written at the beginning of March, more than a month after the visit to Quito, but hopefully it will provide some insight into the city and surrounding area.

Quito, located at 2,850 metres about sea level and just 22 km from the equator, is the capital of Ecuador. The city is nestled in a valley flanked by mountains and on a clear day you can see the snow-capped volcanoes around the city. We only saw these on the morning we flew out of Quito so we took pictures from the tarmac. Cotopaxi Volcano, at 5,897 metres, is the second highest peak in Ecuador and the highest active volcano in the world so it’s very impressive when you see it. The old city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site but it wasn’t quite as impressive as other old towns that I’d seen with the same ranking but I think that was just because it was more spread out and didn’t have the usual narrow streets. That probably has something to do with the fact that the other cities, generally in Europe, were much older.

The city was founded by the Spanish in 1534 and now basically has two main sections: the old and the new. Obviously the old historical buildings are in the old city and that is the world heritage site. There are many museums in the city but we didn’t have time for museums as we were too busy seeing the rest of the area. A lot of the older buildings have a distinct Spanish look to them. About 2.2 million people live in the metropolitan area and gas is extremely cheap so there are lots of cars on the road. I think they were paying less per gallon than we were paying per litre for gas. And as you walk around the city you’d swear that the horn was the most valued part of every vehicle. There is non-stop honking all day long.

The first day in Ecuador was spent wandering all over town from about 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. when a heavy rain and thunderstorm hit. The journey went from new town to old town. There were lots of both modern new buildings and beautiful old buildings. There were also a lot of churches and some of them were open. The Basilica is a main attraction and it was quite lovely and very large. It is set on the top of a hill, which makes it look even larger than it really is. The Basilica was built in the late 19th century so it’s not a really old building. Pope John Paul II visited it on 1985, making it a basilica. It is 150 metres long, 35 metres wide, 35 metres high in the centre, 15 metres high in the chapel and the towers are 78 metres high. They are working on the back side of the church restoring it. From the inside everything looks fine. When you start climbing around the upper parts, which you are allowed to do, you see all the work they are doing as you are walking right beside it. In the one part you walk on scaffolding across the ceiling/roof of the side aisle to get from the front tower to the back towers. I climbed almost to the top of all towers but skipped the one just because it was a series of thin rungs on a ladder and my legs were already getting tired from walking and I was getting tired from the extra effort of breathing at 3,000 metres above sea level on my first day. I did make it up the other towers which had access by a normal stairway. The view from the top was great. You could see the whole city below and the hills nearby but the clouds were covering the mountains behind them. Quito is quite large and is now spreading up the hillsides. Some of them were beautiful shades of green as they were still farmland. Others had homes on them and some had heavy residential building.

Right below the Basilica there was a lovely garden built around the steps up to the cathedral – probably a whole city block. Right below that there was a school and there was a lot of cheering coming from the school yard as there was a football (think soccer) game going on. The entire school was enclosed in a high fence and all of the area within the fence and before the buildings looked like a paved playing field that was busy the whole time I was in the area. The cheering came from students standing around the field on the steps of the building and the cheering was loud enough that it drowned out every other sound in the area. That was my first indication that football is rather popular in Ecuador.

Just down the street from the school there appeared to be a market so when I left the basilica I walked over to the market. This was not your typical market for tourists but rather an everyday person’s market. There were many small, narrow streets meandering through the area and there were small shops all along them. However, these were shops that were there permanently, not just temporarily, and what they were selling was quite unique. We saw people doing woodworking and making furniture such as beds and tables and chairs. There were welders who were building new things and repairing things for people. There were hardware stores and people selling sinks and toilets. There were also food places, especially bakeries and fast food kiosks (their type of fast food, not ours), and lots of places to by tools of every kind. It was an interesting walk and there were lots of locals around buying things.

Amongst the old and new buildings around the town there were lots of park areas. One had some art in it and one had some old artifacts that looked like upside down ovens. Another park had some small lakes and people were paddling little boats around them. And others were just patches of green with parks for resting. The streets go from very narrow lanes to large open streets. Crossing is not always easy but I don’t remember whether that was because they didn’t have many crosswalks or whether the drivers didn’t pay any attention to the crosswalks and lights that did exist. I think it was the latter and you just had to be brave and hope they’d stop for you. The old town area was very spread out as far as the buildings one might want to see so it took a bit longer to find the main attractions such as the Palacio Municipal (City Hall), Palacio Presidencia (Presidential Palace), etc. They were both quite large and impressive. In one area we found a huge old building with a large courtyard and there was a photo display of the best photos of 2010 and that was quite amazing. Some of them you really didn’t want to see because of their subject matter while others were absolutely beautiful and some even whimsical.
The Church of the Society of Jesus or the Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus took almost 170 years to build from 1605 to 1765. It is baroque in style and contains approximately one and one-half tons of gold. Almost everything in the main aisle of the church except for the pews and the floor and the windows appear to be gold. It was a cloudy day when we were there but it was still very showy. Pictures from sunny days show beautiful shiny gold throughout. The main altar is three tiers of gold and the most of the side altars appear to be gold. Apparently 23 carat-leaf gold was used to gild everything in the church. There are wonderful frescoes and paintings in some parts of the building and they are from the 17th century. The façade is baroque and there are many statues carved on the volcanic gray stone. The church is absolutely beautiful on the ticket and the brochure I have on it. Unfortunately I personally don’t remember much of it. Hopefully my pictures will jog my memory but I don’t have them with me as I write this.

The area around our hotel was called Gringoland for obvious reasons. It was a lot of narrow streets and old buildings but it was also a lot of restaurants, hotels, bars, tourist/travel agents and casinos and it was very much frequented by a lot of gringos including our tour group, which was slowly gathering. Our group met on the evening of the 29th to get instructions for the Galapagos tour and there are twelve of us in total although there will be sixteen of us on the boat. Apparently some were on for a week and we will join them for the last four days.

Trip 1 Outside of Quito to the Otavalo Market

Some of us spent our free day in Quito by taking a tour to the Otavalo Market. Marco, our driver, was great and it was a very small tour so it was good. We drove on the Pan American highway which runs from Alaska to Patagonia. We were on that a lot over our South American holiday! Our first break was at a turn off to a local farm. The driver wanted to buy a cold drink so stopped at a small roadside stand. The amazing thing here was that there were three ladies standing over a barrel cooking something on a stick. Instead of hot dogs they were cooking rats. Despite the fact I knew they were rats, they actually looked very tasty. Apparently it is a delicacy around Ecuador and our driver certainly seemed to like it. He said it was always a treat to go to his grandmothers because she would often give them rat to eat. In this case, they simply skin and gut the rats and run a thick stick through the middle of them and hold them over a fire like a hot dog. You could certainly tell they were rats but when cooked they looked quite delicious. I guess the only drawback is that there are a lot of bones for the amount of meat you get. None of us tried one.

We went to a local farm that is quite large and was once very productive. Now I think it is more of a tourist attraction. We wandered around the farm and saw the old areas and the newer. There were two churches, one that was the original but it got too small so they had to build another one that was bigger. The workers sometimes lived on the farm so there quarters were there. Now these, and some new rooms, are used for tourists who want to come and stay on a farm for a while. It would definitely be a nice place to stay but it’s really out of the way. You’d have to be driving around the country to get here as it’s probably an hour and a half outside of Quito and not near any other major centre. The flowers were beautiful and there were some beautiful birds as well. The local countryside was lovely so it was a very relaxing location

When we got back to the main road we had just a short drive until we reached the equator. We had a quick stop so we could take some pictures but there really wasn’t much to take a picture of. I think they had a line drawn on the ground and a globe with the equator marked through Ecuador. I brought a compass with me on this trip just so I could see how it would react as I crossed the equator. However, I didn’t bring it with me for this day trip so I didn’t get to check anything. I crossed the equator a few times after this and by then I couldn’t even find my compass so that experiment was a flop.

The countryside in Ecuador is absolutely beautiful. There are beautiful rolling hills everywhere and they are wonderful shades of green and very lush and productive. The weather here is great for growing many products and in some areas it is field after field of greenhouses and flowers. Entire hillsides are covered in white and it’s easy to see how important the industry is in this area.

Most of the mountains in the area are volcanoes. Luckily most are inactive but on one side of the city of Quito, there are active volcanoes. Nothing major has happened in decades but the volcanoes are still active. I’ll talk more about one of them later as we did a specific visit to a volcanic crater when we came back to Quito.

We eventually arrived in the town of Otavalo and went to the market. This is the big draw for the entire country as it is a very large market and supposedly all of the tribes from the north bring their goods to the market. The main part of the market is on the main square but then the stalls continue down all the side streets so it really is a large market. There were lots of wonderful local products on display but there was also a lot of other stuff on display like brand name clothes and shoes. That definitely distracted from the native focus of the market. We wandered around for an hour or so and it was indeed very interesting. However, I don’t think anyone bought anything. Many of the locals were in their traditional costumes and they were very bright and colourful. The people were very friendly and it was fun just walking around the aisles.

We then went to another town whose name I forget but it is known as a Leather Town and indeed every store sells leather goods. The products were beautiful and one could have spent lots of money in the area. I just bought one thing and that was a red leather purse that can be worn as a backpack. It looks like really good quality and it only cost me about $30. The town was small and there were only a few streets that we wandered down. Actually we may have only wandered down one street come to think of it. There were some entertainers out on the street though so it was an enjoyable stroll.

Trip 2 Outside of Quito to the Cloud Forest

Marco picked us up at the hotel at 8:30 and dropped us off at the airport at 4:30 so full day with a lot of driving. Our first stop was the Pululahua volcanic crater. We drove almost to the rim and only had to walk a few feet, through a market of course. The crater bottom is basically flat except for a distinct mound in the middle. This mound was left after the eruption much like the bubble you get coming straight up when you drop something in water. The entire crater was a vivid green and the bottom was green fertile farmland divided into many smaller fields like a patch work quilt. It is a long walk down and back up from the crater and the path is not useable by cars. There is a school in the crater so children don’t have to walk in and out every day for school. The others come out about once a week for supplies and I’m sure they plan their trips carefully to ensure they don’t forget anything. Even the building supplies for their homes had to be carried in but they can use pack animals for this. There was a farmer in one of the fields working with an ox and plow. That was the only movement we saw other than for a few people walking up the trail and puffing very little as if they are pretty used to it. And many of them had packs on their backs and would probably be carrying more on their way down. Part of volcano is now producing steam so the 45 families who live in the crater may have to be moved if it actually erupts. It was a nice sunny morning and the view was beautiful. At many times the top of the crater is shrouded in clouds so we were lucky to have a clear morning so we had the great view. When we drove past later in the afternoon the clouds had indeed rolled in.

We continued driving for quite a while to get to the Alambi Reserve which is a cloud forest. The cloud forests are so named because they are always cloudy and rainy so you are often walking through the clouds as you wander along the paths. The continual moisture results in very thick, green vegetation with all sorts of flowers and plants so it is beautiful to see. There was a small house and just off the patio of the house there were about six hummingbird feeders and the whole area was alive with hummingbirds of all different sizes and colours, long and short beaks, and even one with furry white boots. We could have stayed there for a long time as it was so peaceful and entertaining. It was however quite frustrating trying to get any good pictures of the hummingbirds as they were normally moving very fast. There were other birds such as a couple of tangiers who were eating bananas placed strategically nearby and another larger bird that kept appearing high in a fruit tree. This larger bird whose name we never did quite get is very rare and only found in this area so people come just to see it. There is a fast flowing river or stream near the bottom of the property. We went for a short walk through the forest with the owner hacking a path with a big knife as we went. There were several different types of fruit trees, pine trees with strange trunks and sap that they use in fires, and lots of smaller shrubs and plants. We had tea on the patio at the house looking at the colourful humming birds and beautiful gardens to end our visit. Lunch was rather non-existent during the day but some trail mix and chocolate were enjoyed in the car.

On our return journey we stopped at another equator market and this one was much larger than the last one. The equator line was well marked by various interesting markers. There was a globe to explain why the two hemispheres behave differently re the rotation of the earth - something I wish I’d learned in school because I never quite understood the Corlionis effect (or whatever it is called. I just knew the water went down the drain in the opposite direction in the north and south hemisphere. They demonstrated that with a simple sink and a bucket of water. On the equator it went down straight. Two feet over in the south hemisphere it went down clockwise and two feet on the north side of the equator it went down counter clockwise. Personally I find that fascinating (and I hope I have it right). Did you know that you n balance an egg on the end of a nail at the equator? Well some of us can. I managed it on my third try. Of course I couldn’t leave without accomplishing the task! Apparently you cannot accomplish this if you are a couple feet in either direction as the earth’s rotation affects the balance. There were other little tricks as well but I had more trouble figuring out their logic in relation to the equator so I’ll skip those. The exhibition space also included exhibits on the four main regions of Ecuador. There was a building for each group to show the typical homes, dress, animals in the area, musical instruments, burial rites and even head shrinking. And of course there were lots of local crafts for sale. There was also a big stone monument nearby from 18th century when French labeled the equator but they were a tad off so we looked at it from a distance only.

The countryside was again beautiful rolling hills and very green in the higher areas almost to the point of being tropical. The lower areas were very dry and treeless. We stopped at a roadside stand for water and then decided to try some of their corn on the cob. It is very different from ours with big kernels and only partially filled cobs but it was quite tasty and much meatier than ours. We saw goats on the road at one point. They go up the hill every day and back down at night. We also saw cows running down the road with two men chasing after them trying to get them to stop, which was pretty funny. The road is very windy and in the process of being prepared so it’s quite bumpy. We were behind truck for a while going up and others were passing like crazy with curves coming up. Our driver was driving much more cautiously.

In talking about Quito, Marco noted that it is 50 km across Quito and it takes two hours to drive it. They will have a new airport next year. The current one is small and right in city so it’s amazing how close to the buildings the planes must fly now. Marco dropped us at the airport where we had something to eat, checked in, paid our departure tax, cleared customs and got to the boarding gate about 2 hours before our flight so we all sat blogging or writing (3 on laptops and 1 in a journal).

Other tidbits I remember (hopefully correctly):
They have been using the US dollar since 2000
Pay is only $6-700 per month for teachers

Marco works all year round in tourism and stays busy as he works for 3 different companies. He has a wife and two children both of whom are in private university, which just happened to be the one we ventured through by mistake while wandering around town. It is supposedly one of the best in the country and it costs $400 per month. The son is in first-year business and already has a job in place for when he graduates with a salary of $3,000 per month. The daughter is in medicine so will also be making good money. Marco paid $100,000 for his condo and it is 1400 square feet in size and sounds very nice. He says it is now worth much more than that.

The current President is well liked with a 75% approval rating. He is starting his fourth year in a four year cycle. He has made many changes but is unpopular with some because he’s quite authoritarian. However, he is much better than previous government that was corrupt. A friend of Marco’s had a government job under the old regime for only 8 months and went from owning a small apartment and normal car to owning four mansions and several luxury cars. Corruption was everywhere and the rich were not paying taxes. This has changed now and one man alone owes $65 million in taxes. This guy owns banana plantations and many other industries.

Quito is a very concentrated city with just over 2 million people. There are no really high skyscrapers, I assume because of possible earthquakes, but there are some 5 – 10 storey buildings. The homes on the hillsides look very small and close together but they look nice. There is no homeless problem in the city compliments of the new president. Those who are elderly or sick are on pensions. The new president put this policy in place as well. I guess that’s why the people like him. He takes from the rich and gives to the poor.

Okay, that’s all I can remember at this point so I guess that’s it except to say that I really liked Ecuador and would certainly consider returning.