Quito

Ahhh Quito. This is my 6th time in Ecuador and 4th time in Quito. I fell in love with traveling because of this city and country. It was my first time out of the US when I first visited in 1992 and I got bit pretty hard by the travel bug. But now I'm a bit of a weary traveler and the city has lost some of it's charm on me. The old town where we stayed is in much better shape than ever and there are police everywhere protecting tourists and locals alike. But it's still a huge Latin American city, and that means traffic and air polution.

It's cleaner than ever with its system of trolleys and a brand new underground Metro system should start service any month now. It's 3 years late and probably millions over budget, but building a subway system in a city this big and in the mountains was no easy task. I was amazed at how clean the Centro Historico, or old town is compared to my first time here. Man, it was grotty and the streets were full of buses spewing blue-black smoke. The pollution is better, but at this altitude, we still felt it. And I did notice that the "electric" trolleys were mostly gone and replaced by large diesel buses. The massive infrastructure spent on putting up the electrical lines seems to be wasted.

We landed just after midnight on New Years eve to save some cash and arrived at our hotel at about 2 am. Having a driver pick us up at the airport was a great idea. But most things were closed on New Years Day and then the day after that was a Monday. Most museums are closed on Mondays and/or Tuesday so we missed out on the Museo Nacional, an amazing museum with lots of Inca artifacts, incuding the famous Gold Mask. I've seen it twice, but wanted Deanne to see it.

It wasn't like we had a bad time, but we probably stayed a day too long. We found good restaurants and felt totally safe but there wasn't too much to do. At one point, I took a picture of a street corner plaza and counted 17 different types of cops from 3 different agencies! Two types were official police and the other group were like tourist police without arms. But still, that seems like overkill. Especially since most were just talking to themselves or were on their phones instead of looking for the myriad of pickpockets.

The old town is much safer than the Mariscal neighborhood in the new city. I know 2 people who were victims there of the old "mustard" trick where someone squirts mustard on you and another person shows up to clean it off. And in the process, they clean you out. We avoided that area except for a lovely New Year's Day stroll in the empty streets. The thieves and everyone else were sleeping.

I talked Deanne into taking a day trip to Latacunga, just for something to do. We didn't need to take a bus to the Equator for a photo and we didn't need to go to Otavalo, a wonderful market town. Who wants to buy souveniers at the beginning of a 2 month trip? After 4 nights, we headed to Mindo, an amazing bird watching paradise in a cloud forest. Now we're talking.Read more