I'm in Quito!
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2005
1
2
28
Trip End
May 07, 2005
Quito,
Ecuador
Thursday, March 3, 2005
The flight was long and boring. I had an hour flight from Boston to Newark, then a five and a half hour flight from Newark to Bogota, and then an hour flight from Bogota to Quito. They only showed one movie the whole time - Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff (gag). We were on the ground in Bogota for an hour and a half, but we were required to stay on the plane if we were going on to Quito. So technically I didn`t actually set foot in Columbia. I mostly read to pass the time. I brought three novels with me and have already finished one.
After passing through customs in Quito, I found the man from my hostel with a sign with my name in large block letters. He drove me to the hostel in his old beat up car - so much more personal than a taxi. The place is nice. They serve breakfast in an outdoor courtyard.
First impressions of Quito:
It`s located at 9,000ft. above sea level, making it one of the highest cities I´ve ever visited. I woke up this morning feeling a bit queesy in the stomach, but other than that I haven`t had much trouble adjusting to the altitude. It`s in a valley with volcanic mountains on all sides. Because of the valley the air is quite bad to breath, as all the automobile exhaust seems to hover around rather than dispersing. The architecture is mostly Spanish colonial with red tiled roofs and lots of courtyards and balconies.
The highlight of my first day so far has been climbing to the top of the bell tower of Quito´s main Basilica. There´s an elevator that goes half way up. Then you take stairs for a few flights. Then to go up to where the bells are you climb ladders. I climbed all the way up to the bells and was standing at one of the highest points in the whole city. The windows didn´t have any glass so the wind was blowing right through the bell tower. You could look down and see the tiny red roofs and stone streets below.
