We’re back in the USA! We have a lot to catch up on. It’s been super busy traveling and seeing friends and family. So I’ll go back to (almost) where we left off and try to catch you all up. Keep checking this site for more soon!
When school ended, we packed up and headed to Ecuador for two weeks of adventure. Traveling to Ecuador was epic in itself. 1 hour taxi from home to airport. 1 hour flight to Seoul. 1 hour train to change airports. 14 hour flight to Dallas, with customs/immigration and a nice long lay-over. 2 hour flight to Miami, arriving at almost midnight. Shuttle to airport hotel. Crash.
Next morning, we got out to explore South Beach for a couple hours before we headed back to the airport for our flight to Quito.
On South Beach with a big black storm cloud brewing.
We got to Quito around 8:30pm. We grabbed a taxi (the most reliable night-time transport) for the 1-hour drive into the city center, found our hostel, and, again, crashed.
Patrick in the hostel room. Yay! We made it to Equador and officially on my 7th continent.
The front of our cute hostel in the morning light.
Day 3 began our real fun! We started by trying to find breakfast, and stumbling onto a local market with tiny side-walk cafes (for lack of better word). They cooked their one menu item on a grill on the sidewalk, so no surprises. Just a “ci” – I’ll have that, and we were served plantain patties and fried egg smothered in some savory sauce, paired with super sweet coffee so fresh that even I could handle a bit of it!
Big bundles of bananas at the market.
Frying up breakfast, right off the sidewalk.
Patrick digging into our street breakfast. Yum!
Beth *gasp* drinking coffee!
Then we headed off on a walking tour of the Old Town, starting just a few blocks from our hostel. That meant lots of churches and statues and beautiful old architecture. Here are some of the highlights.
Our skinny street in Qutio. The buildings are mostly pastel colored and smooshed right up to the skinny sidewalk, then street. And always on a hill.
The square of San Gabriel. It reminded me a bit of St. Mark’s with a fountain in the middle and tons of pigeons.
This statue of the Virgin Mary oversees all of old town Quito from atop El Panecillo – the little bread loaf – hill. According to locals, she’s the only virgin statue in the word depicted with wings.
The church of San Francisco with pastel painting on the ceiling and 18th-century touches.
The Basilica. Neo-Gothic built over more than one hundred years from the mid-1800s until the 1970s, I think.
The basilica towers. The closer one was open for climbing!
Inside of the Basilica. Beautiful and ornate.
The Basilica’s front altar. Surrounded by saints and apostles and lots of gold leaf.
We, naturally, climbed the bell tower. One stop on the way up was at the rose windows. Each segment featured a different species of flower.
One of the views from almost at the top. Quito is nestled between mountain ridges so is very skinny but VERY long up the valley. And everything is built on hills.
Panoramic at the top. Look at those houses crammed into the hills!
Some of the “gargoyles” on the Basilica. Instead of monsters, they used local animals. Here are rams and anteaters, but they also had sea turtles, tortoises and blue footed boobies representing the Galapagos.
Beth at the Basilica entrance with a statue of Pope JPII.
Our final stops were a bit less picturesque – South America’s oldest observatory (which we were not able to enter), a statue of Simon Bolivar, and a neat museum holding colonial-era religious art and pre-colonial metal-working artefacts (no photos allowed). We felt like we got a good overview of the development of Quito as a pseudo-European center.
In the late afternoon, we hailed a cab for a long ride up up up some very steep roads to the base of a gondola ride up to a volcanic peak hovering above Quito. The taxi seemed to take us pretty high, then we got on a gondola for 15+ minutes all the way above 12,000 ft. We got out and could hardly breathe. But we walked around a bit on the windy peak and enjoyed the stunning view.
Patrick in front of the volcano and gondola.
View of Quito (8,400 ft) from the peak (12,000ft) at the top of the gondola.
Day 2, we got up early and headed to the bus station for a 2+ hour, very scenic bus ride to the mountain town of Otavalo.
Views from the bus through the mountains and valleys on the way to Otavalo.
Some traditionally dressed women on the streets of Otavalo.
Otavalo is best known for its weekend craft and livestock market – the largest in Ecuador. We were there during the week when the market is much smaller and not busy, but still fun to shop and walk around.
The entrance to the Otavalo craft market.
After wandering the craft market and picking out some fun painted woods knick-knacks, and alpaca-wool stuff, we saw a bit more of the town. Lunch at a cute garden-seating restaurant. They eat a lot of corn in formats we’ve never seen! Then we walked to a traditional graveyard at the edge of town. Beautiful views of peaks, and crammed-in graves.
Ecuadoran mountain woman with her cow at the entrance to the graveyard.
Some “bathtub” graves at the traditional graveyard.
Back to Quito for the night, then up for our flight to the Galapagos! Stories and pictures from that will come soon. Check back!