Photos Finally!
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2008
1
8
21
Trip End
Sep 20, 2008
Quito,
Ecuador
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Our last night in Ecuador--and to end on a odd note--roadwork down the street has knocked out a water main and the whole street has no water. There go my plans for a long, hot, shower.
Also, I forgot to tell my ant story from Bella Vista. On our last hike, we saw a massive trail of ants across the road. We got so absorbed in watching them that we didn't notice they had started crawling up our shoes until they reached our legs and started biting. We made quite a spectacle for the group of German tourists coming down the road as we stood there alternately shaking our legs, picking off ants, and expressing pain at new bites. They were persistent little things! Especially conisdering we were wearing permethrin treated socks and pants. Luckily, the bites didn't hurt for more than a few minutes, and don't itch (unlike the horsefly bites I picked up in the Galapagos).
Today we spent the morning at the Guayasamin Museum and Chapel of Man. Guayasamin was an Ecuadorian painter. The musuem has his paintings, as well as his collections of pre-Columbian artifacts and Colonial era art. The Chapel of Man is basically another musuem, focusing on the theme of man's inhumanity to man. It was a moving experience, but really, quite depressing.
Afterwards, we went up the teleferiqo, which is a 2.4 km long cable car that takes you up to a 4100m high peak. The views of Quito from the mountain are spectacular. I think that's the highest altitude I've ever been at. It's a little strange to be up there and watch planes flying past lower than you are. Sadly, it was not a clear day, so Pinchincha (the closest volcano) was shrouded in clouds, and Cotopaxi was nowhere to be seen.
