Ecuador's capital Quito is a crazy town - big, dirty and full of 'characters' but we liked it all the same. Arriving late at night we got a nights sleep in the back room of a cosy cafe called El Cafecito and set out in search of a home for a week the next morning. We ended up renting a room in Alberto's house, a big characterful shared house in the New Town area Mariscal! The house is twinned with various NGO's and a Spanish school next door. Consequently the house was full of cool kids - all interesting and lovely uni-aged people mainly from Europe. I signed up for their Spanish school - my (head)teacher Julio made it really fun 'y yo apprendo mucho'!
We met some great people, especially three dutch guys Sean, Gideon and Bas who Pete rumba-ed the week away with. We had some ace house BBQ's and dinners - like living in a student house again.
We also rode the TeleferiQO up the side of Volcan Pichincha to 4100m Cruz Loma to see the amazing views of the city. It goes on for miles along the valley floor for a city of only 1.4 mil. We wanted to hike up to Rucu Pichincha to get an even better view but the hail and lighting stopped us in our tracks. Maybe just as well, as the altitude took your breath away!
The Old Town in Quito is beautiful. Having inherited the trait of looking around every church I pass (why!?) we spent a lot of time looking at chapels, churches and monasteries. We also watched the locals practicing their traditional dancing for a parade which was cool to see. We've seen a lot of colonial centers, but Quito's is special - even on a freezing cold, rainy day. I got through a lot of chocolate caliente in Quito just to keep warm!
We also enjoyed checking out the indigenous weekend craft markets in the parks and backstreets and did our shopping at the huge Santa Clara food & fruit market. Pete and the guys took advantage of Quito's ace climbing wall and 'bouldering' facilities during the week too.
Finally, we took a day trip to the Mitad del Mundo - the equator! Seriously touristy but how could we not when in Ecuador. We visited the 'fake' and 'real' equators. The fake equator being the place where the French marked the equatorial line in the 1736, the expedition created the metric system and proved the world not to be perfectly round. It was fun of Quiteno families, tourists and school kids (we got interviewed for English class projects a few times). We had lots of fun posing for pics on the equator and they had a traditional pipe band playing. After, we went to the 'real' equator a few hundred meters away - the Museo Solar Inti Nan. Modern GPS has shown that the French were slightly out with their calculations but that the indigenous had got it spot on. The museum is on the indigenous site and has an exhibition of astronomical things and people showing crazy water and energy experiments that demonstrate the power of the equator. There was a cool ancient sun dial that sits on the equator line and reads the exact month, day, year using rays of the sun!
Sadly we haven't got any photographic evidence of this once-in-a-life-time visit as we got robbed on the metro on our last day - Opps. So our visit was not without drama, we had a trip to the local police station and not to diverge from our recent pattern of events, I made a day trip to the local hospital with some crazy toxic seafood poisoning. It was like something out of one of those gross medical textbooks - nice!
Still, on the mend now and enjoying the wild, windy and very beautiful coast of Southern Ecuador! We're about to go and have a camp fire on the beach and toast some marshmellows...
We met some great people, especially three dutch guys Sean, Gideon and Bas who Pete rumba-ed the week away with. We had some ace house BBQ's and dinners - like living in a student house again.
We also rode the TeleferiQO up the side of Volcan Pichincha to 4100m Cruz Loma to see the amazing views of the city. It goes on for miles along the valley floor for a city of only 1.4 mil. We wanted to hike up to Rucu Pichincha to get an even better view but the hail and lighting stopped us in our tracks. Maybe just as well, as the altitude took your breath away!
The Old Town in Quito is beautiful. Having inherited the trait of looking around every church I pass (why!?) we spent a lot of time looking at chapels, churches and monasteries. We also watched the locals practicing their traditional dancing for a parade which was cool to see. We've seen a lot of colonial centers, but Quito's is special - even on a freezing cold, rainy day. I got through a lot of chocolate caliente in Quito just to keep warm!
We also enjoyed checking out the indigenous weekend craft markets in the parks and backstreets and did our shopping at the huge Santa Clara food & fruit market. Pete and the guys took advantage of Quito's ace climbing wall and 'bouldering' facilities during the week too.
Finally, we took a day trip to the Mitad del Mundo - the equator! Seriously touristy but how could we not when in Ecuador. We visited the 'fake' and 'real' equators. The fake equator being the place where the French marked the equatorial line in the 1736, the expedition created the metric system and proved the world not to be perfectly round. It was fun of Quiteno families, tourists and school kids (we got interviewed for English class projects a few times). We had lots of fun posing for pics on the equator and they had a traditional pipe band playing. After, we went to the 'real' equator a few hundred meters away - the Museo Solar Inti Nan. Modern GPS has shown that the French were slightly out with their calculations but that the indigenous had got it spot on. The museum is on the indigenous site and has an exhibition of astronomical things and people showing crazy water and energy experiments that demonstrate the power of the equator. There was a cool ancient sun dial that sits on the equator line and reads the exact month, day, year using rays of the sun!
Sadly we haven't got any photographic evidence of this once-in-a-life-time visit as we got robbed on the metro on our last day - Opps. So our visit was not without drama, we had a trip to the local police station and not to diverge from our recent pattern of events, I made a day trip to the local hospital with some crazy toxic seafood poisoning. It was like something out of one of those gross medical textbooks - nice!
Still, on the mend now and enjoying the wild, windy and very beautiful coast of Southern Ecuador! We're about to go and have a camp fire on the beach and toast some marshmellows...
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