Ecuador, Part 1
Thank you for joining us on our first of three blog series on our trip to Ecuador! Ecuador is a beautiful country and trying to sum it up in one blog would be too difficult. Our trip began with a 4am taxi to the Cartagena airport which made us not very happy travelers for the first leg. Despite the early rise, the flight to Bogota and then onto Quito went smoothly. Quito is the capital of Ecuador and home to around 3 million people. According to stories on the internet, at least 2 million of them are pickpockets. We proudly announce that we were not subjected to pickpocketing while in Quito. We had the advantage of the knowledge of the latest scheme which was to pour water on an unwary visitor from above and then a couple of “helpful” people would run to assist you while stealing your wallet. We simply wore a hat when out and we never carry the wallet in a pocket so no worries! Our hotel was located in the Old City which was the first city to become a UNESCO site in 1978. When you think of a UNESCO site, you think of a preserved area with strict (sometimes ridiculous) rules to which the site much adhere. Well, knock that thought out of your head. Quito is a busy, crowded place filled with hawkers and quite a few homeless folks. In spite of its’ grittiness, we enjoyed our visit in Quito. Quito has 27 historic churches in the Old City. What gold did not get plundered back to Spain definitely ended up in these churches! The alters were amazing! I do have a bone to pick with them, though….catacombs versus crypts. We paid an extra dollar to go into the catacombs of one of the cathedrals only to find modern age crypts. Gotta say I was disappointed! Most of the churches only open the underground crypts on November 1st and 2nd when they celebrate Dia de los Difuntos (Day of the dead). The local teenagers seemed to like to “haunt” the city on the weekends by dressing up in skeleton-like costumes with black and white makeup so overall, Quito had a darker side that I, of course, found charming! After checking in the hotel, we were starving so we walked down the street to a unique area called Calle La Ronda. We found this quant restaurant and the owner welcomed us with hugs. We were the only diners at the time so we had first class service. She acted as hostess, waitress, chef and busboy so she was a busy woman. It was like being at your grandmother’s house on Thanksgiving. She kept bringing us food and it was all amazing. We finished the meal with a chocolate con queso which was hot chocolate with cheese melted in it. While it was tasty, we could not grasp the purpose of the cheese because it did not really add anything to the hot chocolate experience but we can mark it off our bucket list. The following day was filled with cathedral visits and we learned about several Ecuadorian saints in the Catholic church. One was a priest who was poisoned with his own communion cup. His shrine was on one side of the church while his murderer was buried on the other side of the church. It appears you can buy yourself a spot in the church burial chamber even if you can’t buy your way into heaven! The next saint was a young woman who “sacrificed her life to save the city from the earthquakes”. Evidently, once she sacrificed herself, the earthquakes stopped. I guess the earthquakes stopped long enough for her to be sainted but I wondered how she got to stay a saint when the earthquakes continued. Bill figured the church used it to raise more money….”You didn’t give enough money so she made the earthquakes return…pay up!” Our hotel room had a cathedral across the street and it was funny to see the vendors set up wares on the cathedral steps every morning. I did not get as many inside church pictures as usual because I do not take pictures during church services or when people are praying. However, I had to make an exception in Quito because these folks are some church going folks! I also got to witness a group hanging out on the church’s front steps one night when the police came along and gave them a shakedown. On the church steps. In front of their children. It did not appear that any of the mothers were doing anything criminal because the police moved on but the locals did not appear flustered by the incident so I am guessing it must be a common thing. The next morning, we headed out on a tour to Quilotoa Crater. We stopped on the way at a local traditional house and we were greeted by a 76 year old man who had lived there his entire life. He introduced us to their cuy (guinea pigs) that ran about the house until it was time to send them to market. Cuy is Ecuador’s national food (more information on cuy later in the series). The farmer also knew more about potatoes than one could ever want to know and he showed us all of his potatoes and corn as well. When we were visiting, the wind was howling which bit through our thin skin. When we got back on the bus, Bill responded, “Not the place!” referring to our ongoing hunt for our “forever place”. I responded, “Not your forever place?” Bill responded, “It’s not even my next 30 minute place!” Our next stop was the crater which was beautiful. The crater lake formed over 800 years ago. We had planned ahead for our hike. We had walking sticks, snacks, water and had reserved two horses to carry us out of the crater from the bottom. The tour guide told us it would take “about 30 minutes to hike down and about an hour for those hiking back up”. Liar! It took us about an hour to hike down, navigating soft, powdery sand and a million switchbacks. Luckily, the view was incredible. I would say “breathtaking” but given the extreme high altitude of 12, 841 feet, we did not have any breath left to be taken. As we passed the twenty-somethings struggling back up the crater path, we felt very wise in our choice to reserve the horses. We finally arrived at the bottom and spent a few minutes enjoying the view. We made our way over to where our horses were to supposed to be only to find…no horses. Evidently, some of the group that were not wise enough to reserve horses had helped themselves to ours! Our tour guide said, “That’s okay. You can walk,” to which we responded, “We could, but then we’ll be dead and it will be dark.” She seemed to take that comment at face value and she headed to find us some replacement horses. In about thirty minutes, two horses arrived to save the day! My horse was a sweet, little horse while Bill’s was a big bully. Bill’s horse would block my horse from going up the path but we decided his poor horse was probably just trying to get a few minutes rest so we forgave him. The horse tender was an amazing man. He was about 5 feet tall, probably in his sixties and he ran our horses up the hill in only 20 minutes. If you recall, it was an hour walk for a healthy young person! The Ecuadorians are a hearty people! Our day ended with a beautiful view of Cotapaxi which is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Our final day in Quito was the ultimate tourist day. We stood in two hemispheres as we straddled the equator! First, we went to Mitad Del Mundo which was a large park dedicated to the French scientists who “pinpointed” the middle of the earth back before the existence of GPS technology. The monument was large and impressive….and in the wrong the place. After GPS came to be, the exact location of the equator was 240 meters to the north of the monument (okay, gotta give the French kudos for being pretty close!). The real equator was located in a small park named Museo de Sitio Intinan which had all of the fun equator experiments to do such as watching water go down the drain in different directions and balancing an egg on a nail. Cheesy but much more fun than the “official” monument! The trip to the equator wrapped up our time in Quito and the next day we headed to Mindo which will be featured in the next blog post. ***More pics on Pictures tab
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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