Quito, Ecuador by Mel

Ola from Quito,
We are back in the capital (but not the biggest city) of Ecuador.
A tiny bit of information about Ecuador: it is located in the northeast of South America (just in case you didn’t know) and is on the equator (that is where it gets in name of)! Historically speaking, modern-day Ecuador was once home to several groups of indigenous peoples that were gradually incorporated into the Inca Empire during the 15th century. The territory was colonized by the Spanish Empire during the 16th century, achieving independence in 1820 as part of Gran Colombia, from which it emerged as a sovereign state in 1830 (thank you Wikipedia!)
On Monday the 29th of September, we took a plane from the Galapagos to Quito. It went smoothly, you know, just a regular bird made of metal flying very high in the sky, with us in it! Nothing extraordinary!
We took a taxi from the airport to our place and discovered the city for the first time. My first impression was surprise at how big it seems. One thing to know about Quito, is that it is the first or second (that depend on what capital of Bolivia you choose: apparently it can be La Paz or Sucre) highest capital city in the world. Its elevation is 2850m high. It is located between mountains and volcanos, which made the landscapes around it, spectacular. But which also made it pretty hard to breath in! It takes several day to adjust. As it is squeezed between mountains, it is relatively elongated. When we arrived from the airport by car, we could see the city from a high point of view and it is pretty incredible to see how far the city goes.
It was the end of the afternoon by the time we arrived, so we dropped our bags, relax for a bit and went in search of a place to eat. We found a small place with cheap food: we ate a ball made of dough and cheese inside (the other 3 had some meat as well) deep fried. I can not remember the name of it, but it was good. We also tried Morocho, a drink made of corn, milk and spices and you can add sugar in it. It was not bad either and pretty filling. After that we go back and went to sleep. The appartement we have is very nice and big: 2 bedrooms, one living room, a kitchen well equipped and a bathroom. It will be nice for a week!
The next day was not very eventful. We went out to find some breakfast: we got some sweet things from a bakery type place. Emma felt a bit queasy and had a small spew. I think it was probably related to highness sickness. She was better just after her spew!
We walked around to find some place to do grocery shopping.
When you arrive in a new country, you have to figure out what type of shop sell what. Is there big supermarket or is this more small shops selling specific things? It is not always easy the first few days. We found a small supermarket, which sells pasta, rice and basic things, but hardly any vegetables, nor coffee! We bought some of the things we needed and went back to our place. We will find out latter that veggies are sold either on the side of the street or in very small shops. Coffee is sold in specific shops. As I said before, Quito is wedged between mountains and volcano, which means that streets are going up and down a lot and are pretty steep! Mix that with the lack of oxygen, and just doing your shopping become an extremely hard exercise!
After a lunch with no salt (as we didn’t find any) cooked by Kev (like always, I am so grateful that Kev cooks!), we rested a bit. Kids played and I researched and planned the things we are going to do here. Then it started raining, then hailing! The kids were super excited to see hail! It was the first time for them!
When it stopped raining, we went out to find dinner. On the way, we stopped at a chocolate shop where we tried different chocolate and alcohol made with cocoa: wine, beer and whisky! Some were good and we ended up buying a wine, some moka/coffee and a bar a white chocolate picked by the kids. We regretted some of those things later, as it turn out the coffee/moka wasn’t that great. The wine was ok, but not as good as we thought it was in the shop! Anyway, we tried, that is what matter!
Kev found a lovely restaurant, where we (well, the other 3) could try, one of the Ecuadorian delicacy, guinea pig!!! There were 2 dishes made with it: one where you could see the Guinea pig and one where the meat was in your plate but not in the shape of the guinea pig anymore! Kev ordered the first one of course. I had a thought of trying it, but I couldn’t! Meat is not part of my liking anymore! The other 3 tried. I think it was not too bad, but not their favourite either. Andrew ordered pork belly and apparently it was the best he ever had (for more details read his blog).
I had one delicious meal, but again I can not remember, for the life of me, the name of it!
The kids ordered chocolate to drink. When it arrived, it had cheese on the side. I had read about that and was keen to try. You put the cheese in your spoon and let it soak in the chocolate and it is really not bad at all! I enjoyed it!
After that, we walked back to our place, slowly, to save our breath.
On Wednesday the first of October, we visited Quito. We started by the Basilica del Voto Nacional, which is 2 minutes from our place. This is the largest neo-gothic basilica in south America. The project was first thought of in 1883, started in 1892 and finished in 1909. We stayed in this basilica longer than in any other basilica we visited. You can visit the towers of the basilica: it has 10 level and shops at every level pretty much, where you can buy Ecuadorian things. You can also admire one of the rosace made of painted glass which is beautiful. But the most interested thing for me, was the fact that you can visit inside the roof: You can walk above the roof made of stone and under the one made of slate, metal, I’m not sure, but the pointy bit at the top! You can also go right up in the spire, which was pretty cool. Emma and Kev went at the highest point going up a pretty steep ladder/stairs: Andrew and I stayed at the slightly lower level because you know, we felt better there! You can also have a drink at one of the levels, which we did of course. I think we stayed over 2 hours there and it was a great time.
After that we kept walking in the historical centre of Quito. We arrived in Independence square, which is considered the centre of Quito. There are several important buildings, including one ministry of some kind (I didn’t quite find out what it was), but there was a heavy police presence around it, so I assume it is an important one! There is a statue in the middle dedicated to the independence of Ecuador and also another church called Catedral Metropolitana de Quito. We visited it and there again we could go on the roof. To get there, we had to walk through very narrow and dark corridors: it felt like we were going to discover treasures around the corner. The view from the top on the independence square was nice. Inside the church, it was very colourful. Like a lot of things here, there are colours, lights: it is very lively.
We got something to eat in a small restaurant: empanadas (pastry filled with meat, or cheese or vegetables) and sandwiches. It was cheap and good! We kept walking in the street of Quito for a bit then grab a taxi (they are everywhere here!) to get to the cable car. It took us 3945m high! It takes around 18 minutes to go from the bottom to the top. When you get there, the views over the city and the surrounding volcanoes are amazing. We hiked a bit to a close viewpoint. On the way, we did the ‘swing in the sky’, which is a swing (obviously) near the edge. If you swing high enough and take a good angled picture, it seems like you are swinging in the cloud! It was a good opportunity to show the kids how pictures can be manipulated: the swing is really safe and a few meters away from the edge, but it is easy to make it look like it is not! We had fun nonetheless. We stayed there for a while, taking on the views. When we decided to get down, we had to wait a bit as a big cloud was passing by and the cable car was stopped. It was cold!!! Emma said she wanted to feel a cloud, well we did! When the cloud passed, we got back in one of the cabin and went back down. You may know that I am not comfortable with heights… then again, I was suspended in a small cabin on one cable (thick but still!) very up high… great! What I wouldn’t do for adventure! After that full day, we came back to our place, had dinner, movie night and bed!
Thursday the 2nd was another fun and interesting day. We got picked up by Jesus, the taxi driver we meet the day before coming back from the cable car to our place. He took us for a one hour drive from where we stay. The first stop was a volcano (yes another one); the Pululahua volcano. We trek down for a little bit, but decided not to go all the way down: when you go down, you have to come back up. We are still struggling with breathing, so we decided not to push it too much. The views again, are amazing. Nature is so beautiful.
The second stop was “El mitad del Mondo” (the middle of the world). This is where you can find the monument which marks (almost) where the equator is. There is a whole little town around it. For more information, go to Andrew and Emma’s blog as they did some research on it.
It was fun. Even if it is a bit touristic, it is fun thinking we are jumping from one side to the other side of the equator, marked by a yellow line on the ground. We spent a few hours there, as there are a few small museums to visit: one about the Ecuadorian people, one about the French expedition which came here in 1736 to determine the position of the equator and the exact shape of the earth (flattened on the pole) and one small planetarium. The French expedition of 1736 got their calculation slightly wrong and with our modern technology we know now that the equator is actually a stripe (wider than a line) around 240 meters away from where the monument is located. Interesting fact is that El Mitad Del Mondo is the most visited site in Ecuador.
There are a lot of little shops and I couldn’t resist buying a small chess set (the Spanish versus the Inca; the Spanish have horses for the knight and the Inca got alpacas!), a small El diablo mask (a traditional 2 faces colourful mask use in to scare demons) and some magnets of course!
We left there around 3.30pm and as the traffic here can be a bit busy in Quito, we were back to our place by 5pm ish.
Easy evening activities and sleep.
The next day, was another trip with Jesus, our taxi driver. We drove for just over 2 hours to Mindo. This is a small town located north of Quito in the cloud forest. A cloud forest is a tropical or subtropical forest, forever green due to water being almost always present in the form of low clouds. It is one of the most biodiversity rich biomes in the world, with a lot of species depending on it.
We started by visiting a butterfly sanctuary, with beautiful species flying all around and landing on us. We also could see butterfly coming out of their cocoons. Some of the cocoons were golden and magnificent. It was a lovely visit, even if it was a little pricey for Ecuadorian price.
Then we went to do one of Andrew’s favourite activities: zipline!!! The place we went had either 3, 7 or 10 zipline course. We took the 10 of course! Andrew was excited. Emma a bit less. But Emma seems to panic before doing something, and then when she is doing it, she loves it! When she saw the first zipline, she panicked a bit and said she didn’t want to do it. I told her, she didn’t have a choice and we were doing it no matter what, but we will do it together, me and her. If I can do it, she can too! And we did! And guess what: she loved it!!!! She had the biggest grin on her face when we were flying through the air above the cloud forest. As for me, despite being scared of height, I loved doing that with Emma. It was a great moment together. We did 9 out of the 10 ziplines together. The last one was a very long and fast one, so she had to do it with guide, but she was fine with that. After she thank me for pushing her to do it and for doing it with her. It was a great moment. Andrew and Kev loved it as usual.
After that, we took a cable car above the cloud forest (why did we always end up high, I don’t know!) to get to a trekking track to a waterfall. The cable car was fun and the trek was nice too. But being a cloud forest, it was meant to rain at some point!!! And it did! For some reason, we left our rain jacket in the taxi, but we had 2 umbrellas (the one bought in Paris) in Kev’s backpack. We trekked down with our umbrellas and got to one of the waterfall, which was very pretty. The forest is amazing: there is moss everywhere and it looks magical. When we arrive at the waterfall, the kids decided to throw rocks in the river, because that is what kids do, even if it was raining and getting heavier. Kev and I watched from a small undercover area. As we didn’t want them to get sick, we had to leave because the rain was getting heavy. We walked back up the trail which was becoming a small river! There were more waterfalls to see, but we were wet enough and decided we were done! Back on the cable car to get back to the other side of the ravine and in the taxi, back to Quito.
I was a bit sad to leave the area because I wanted to see birds as it is the area for that, but the weather decided that it was not for us that day. We did see a toucan between 2 ziplines, which was cool.
Saturday the 4th of October was our 9 months on the road! I can not believe we are down to our last 3 months of the gap year. I really don’t want it to finish! I truly love traveling and most of all, I love spending time with Kev and the kids. I am going to miss them when we are back home, running between work, school and activities. It is a privilege to watch Andrew and Emma discovering the world and being themselves. I could easily spend my life doing just that!
We started the day easy, a little bit of a sleep in. Then we took the underground to go to a shopping centre to get Emma’s Pandora charm from Ecuador. There is only one line of the Quito underground, so it was easy to find our direction! We got to the shopping centre, find Pandora and Emma choose her charm, an avocado! When we asked “Cuanto?” (How much?) we got a bit surprised by the answer: 210US$!!! The most expensive charm so far! We were not expected that in Ecuador. But a promise is a promise and we promised Emma a Pandora charm from every country that has Pandora, so there it is!
After that we had brunch and tried some more Ecuadorian food. Pretty delicious.
And then we spent the rest of the day, walking in one of the massive park of Quito, the Carolina parc. It is a massive open space with a lot of soccer, basketball and other sport fields. There are also several playgrounds for kids, exercise areas (one had massive tyres that the kids managed to turn over). There is a botanical garden that we visited. Ecuador has a lot of endemic orchids and other plants and flowers. There was also a bonsai garden and Emma fall in love with it and want to have a bonsai when we go home! We’ll see if the idea last till then!
We got back to our place, blog a bit, had dinner and decided to go out as it was Saturday night.
We wanted to see some live music, but didn’t find some. We find a bar with some music in it (just not live) and spend a couple of hours there, playing one very long game of Uno No Mercy. Nobody won as it was taken so long and it was getting late, so we forfeit (Andrew didn’t want to, but 3 against one!). Back to our place for a good sleep.
Sunday the 5th is our last full day here in Quito. We did some blogging in the morning.
This afternoon, we are going to have an easy one and maybe have one more walk in the area.
Tomorrow we are taking a bus to Ambato a city south of Quito.
We will see you there.
MelRead more