Quito, Ecuador

  Quito, Ecuador
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Monday 24 November - Quito, Ecuador

The start of our South American Trip.

Stormy Weather

We flew into Quito at 10:00 at night in the middle of a storm.
We were met by a courier from the hotel who seemed so pleased to see us (not half as pleased as we were to see him). Our hotel was locked & shuttered when we got there & was accessed from a dingy side road (not very welcoming). We followed the porter up three flights of stairs & collapsed on the bed totally knackered & gasping for breath as we weren't acclimatised to the elevation of 2,800 m (9,200 ft). Both Barbara & I were secretly afraid that we wouldn't be able to breathe that night.

Winged Virgin

The next day everything was different - we had both survived the night, the hotel was nice, breakfast was served on white table cloths on the top floor restaurant which had a panoramic view of Plaza de Santa Domingo, the surrounding picturesque mountains & the Winged Virgin on top of El Panecillo. What a difference a day makes (that's a good title for a song).

Quito Old Town is a UNESCO Heritage Site & a lot of money has been spent on restoration, in fact several of the churches & cathedrals were closed for this. There are 24 churches or cathedrals in the city & many other examples of good Spanish colonial architecture.

We did a grand tour of the statues & paintings in the most important churches in Quito - I think I saw more virgins than an Al Qaeda martyr. Many of the statues & paintings were created soon after the Spanish Conquistadors conquest in 1533. The first missionaries to arrive in Quito were two Franciscan monks from Belgium who arrived in 1534. They taught the indigenous people how to paint & brew beer, oh yes, & to worship a Roman Catholic God. They didn't mention when they introduced chips with mayonnaise.

I was fascinated by the technique used to create statues - they were carved out of balsa wood (just like I used as a young boy, to make model aircraft - what a memory!) but the fascinating part was how they created the smooth shiny faces that have survived intact since the 1530s - they chewed raw calves liver & used their saliva to seal the surface.

Rubbish Band

We arrived back in Quito from Galapagos in the middle of the Ecuadorean Founders Day Festival week.
On Friday night there was a great party spirit everywhere - we got caught up in an impromptu Salsa dance in a shopping mall.
Bands were playing (very badly) in the street & on the backs of Lorries. One particularly bad band played the same tune as they repeatedly drove round the block, again & again & again!

Safety in Quito
The old city is fairly safe with a large police presence but the new town & areas around the bus terminal are no-go areas, especially at night. We strayed into this area once & two locals came running after us to drag us back to safety. Most commercial buildings & hotels have their own private guards & the banks in the new town have guards with pump action shotguns outside!

We were told by a couple on our Galapagos boat, that they had their hand luggage slit open while it was under their seat on a bus. A French couple, on a bus we were travelling on, had a camera stolen from a zipped up rucksack that was in the rack above their heads. Vendors are allowed to hop on the buses to sell fruit, drinks, counterfeit DVDs etc. They move up & down the bus creating a diversion while their accomplice steals what they can. They then hop off at the next stop.