quito

Situated 2850 metres in the Andean foothills, Quito is considered the highest capital in the world, even tho it isn't the highest city. It was the first city, along with krakow to be declared a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 1978. It was certainly interesting to fly into as it's built on the side of a steep mountain with very deep gullies splitting parts of the city up. There are three parts of the city, the old town which is the heritage site, the north and the south which are far more modern. We were headed for the old town, or at least we were but unfortunately our guide was not given our new flight details (the original was cancelled so we had to rebook an earlier flight) so we were left stranded at the airport. Luckily a very kind local guy lent us his phone and we rang the local emergency number we had. They were very apologetic but the only solutions were either wait there for an hour and half until he could turn up or take a taxi and get reimbursed later. We chose the latter as we had been up since 4 that morning and just wanted to get there. Double unfortunately and unbeknownst to our taxi driver, they close certain streets off in the old city on Sundays and have it pedestrian only which meant he couldn't drop us off at our accommodation. This meant dragging our suitcases up some very steep hills for 6 blocks, stopping every now and then to either ask the way or draw breath as not only was it steep, it was also hot and given we were not use to the altitude we were really starting to struggle. Eventually we made it but it took some time to recover and breath again.

It was a lovely part of town, the architecture was Spanish colonial and painted in blues and dusky pinks and whites. Being a heritage site they have very strict rules of when and what colours of paint they are allowed to use. We explored the area that evening and went down to independence plaza which is the main square surrounded by the presidential palace on one side, cathedral on another, city hall third side and what use to be the priests building on the 4th but is now mostly restaurants and shops with a shoe shine stand under every arch. Being a Sunday night the place was heaving, vendors walking down the streets yelling out the wares they were selling, families out for a stroll, buskers trying their luck and generally people enjoying the evening.  Next morning our guide picked us up and took us on a walking city tour. The first stop was to watch the changing of the guards. Coincidentally they only change them once a fortnight and today was the day. It was quite good with the horses and marching soldiers all dressed up in uniforms that looked just like the tin solider. The president and his wife and the Vice President made an appearance on the top balcony. There was a cheer that went up when they appeared but from what we can gather, he is not a popular man I think mainly due to corruption (although that can't be openly discussed). We also saw a couple of beautiful churches including the San Francisco church of baroque style. Every space was covered in gold and down by the alter there were also lots of mirrors so when the sun came thru the windows at the top it reflected all the light and the gold just glistened.

After that we headed 25kms out of town to the line of the equator, latitude 0. It was thought the line was a bit further over but once they used their sophisticated gps, it was determined to be at this spot. They had several monuments there as well as a ethnographic museum showing how the native people lived and what they did. Certain tribes were head shrinkers so we got to see just how you shrink a head, very handy thing to know. There was a hut there that an old woman had lived in, at that very spot, for all her life until she died so it was preserved just like she had it. In the corner of this hit was a guinea pig pen, still with live guinea pigs as this is a source of food for the highlanders. It is still on the menu in certain restaurants. There were also a number of games they had set up. The first one was a sink full of water & some tiny green leaves and a bucket underneath. When the guide pulled the plug when the sink was directly over the red line representing the equator the water drain straight down. He then moved the sink about a meter into the Southern Hemisphere and pulled the plug again and Lo, the water drained anticlockwise, the leaves helping with being able to follow the direction and when we went across to the northern hemisphere the water went down clockwise, all within several meters of each other, amazing. Another game was to walk the line with your eyes closed and arms out, like in a sobriety test and feel yourself being pulled by the two different forces. The last was balancing an egg on the head of a nail, a task I completed but sadly Jon didn't. Apparently only 50% of visitors do it, this certainly was the situation in our case.

Next morning we were driven out to Cotopaxi national park. We had no idea what we were going to do or see, I guess I should have done more research but we were told to wear warm clothes as it could be cold. I thought we would just be doing a bit of a walk around a nice park. As we were driving along we saw this majestic volcano, covered with snow at the top. It looked great against the blue sky and were admiring it saying how good that looked. We were semi excited to see we were driving closer to it, thinking we were going to get a nice close up shot of it. This volcano is also called Cotopaxi, meaning the neck of the moon as that's what it looks like when the moon is above it. Not surprising I guess as at 5943 metres, it is the highest active volcano in the world and active it is. They had only just reopened the walk to base camp six months ago due to all the volcanic ash and rocks coming out but they have yet to reopen the climb to the top. Our excitement started to wain when we realised we were going to get more than a close up shot, we were actually going up it and you can only drive so far. The car park is 4500 metres high and admittedly we were only expected to make it to base camp, not the top but base camp was another 364 meters up. We could either walk straight up or take the "easier" route that zig zagged up making the climb not so steep. You may think that 364 metres is not far but when you are at this altitude and it's all uphill and with the zig zag turned it into 1.2kms it's a bloody long way. We had to keep stopping every 30-50 metres to catch our breath and after awhile I stared feeling very dizzy with a headache just starting at the base of my skull. If it had got much worse we would have had to abandoned the climb as altitude sickness can be fairly serious. We eventually made it an hour and a half later and had a well deserved hot chocolate before taking the route that went straight down, making it back to the car in 20 minutes. 

 

 

He took us to an old Spanish farm that has now been turned into a hotel and restaurant for lunch. It was a beautiful building, well preserved with gorgeous gardens and the food wasn't bad either making our climb very worthwhile. It was an early wake up the next morning for our amazon adventure so this concluded our Quito experience for this time around. We were to return to Quito twice more but stayed in a different part of town and only for overnight.