Colonial Quito

Still in Quito you say?  Yes, it is a huge city with stuff.  Lots of stuff.  After living and traveling on a boat, cities are fascinating to me with all the hustle and bustle of traffic, horns, lights, smells, cab drivers and buses, languages foreign and more foreign.  Everyone with someplace to go, things to do, and we were no exception.  We had touristy things to do before we headed to the airport for our anticipated trip home.  

Quito is divided into districts so it's fairly easy to get around and map out your day.  An entire day was devoted to the historical center, or old town of Quito.  If you like old buildings, this city was awarded the First Cultural Heritage of Humanity and American Capital of Culture in 2011.  It's over 5 centuries old.  I won't bore you with descriptions but some of the churches here are unbelievable.  One of them took 160 years to build and has over 52 kilos of 23 carat-gold leaf adorning the walls and statues.  There is a painting in one called the "Hell and the Last Judgement" by Brother Hernando de la Cruz from 1620.  A massive work of art depicting the "breaking of the big 10 sins" people standing in judgement in hell,waiting.  The colors and activity in that painting alone could keep you standing there for hours.   Most of these places you're not allowed to take pictures.  One of the churches has an 1104-pipe organ that is still used for special concerts.  The streets throughout this part of the city are brick, the buildings multi-colored and adorned with more carvings and ornate iron work than anywhere I've ever seen.  Some of the tile work is interlaced with the back vertebrae of animals giving white geometric symmetry to the tile stones.  Take a stroll through Old Quito with a few photos:  

Look at the church at the end of the street.  I wanted to go but the hills had become too much.

Hell and Last Judgement

What a great few days we had here.  Now it's time to get on a plane and head back to Texas for a few weeks.  Adventure awaits there too.

Bahia Caraquez to the Middle of the Earth - Quito

Good day to all of you. We've had adventure after adventure the last few weeks, so I'm a bit behind in the blog updates.

 First a bit about our entry into Ecuador. We had been told to not try and enter your first time into Bahia Caraquez without a pilot. On our approach it was apparent why, with huge boulders piled onto the beach, and jetting up through the shallows, a current sending us backward and winds taking us sideways.

the nav aide, yep it's on dry land at low tide

 We had sent an email letting the owner, Tripp Martin, know of our anticipated arrival date. We anchored in what they call the "waiting area" overnight for a pilot and high tide in order to enter the channel leading into the bay and marina. Twenty dollars and 3 cold coca colas got us safely in and secured to two mooring balls, one aft and forward. It was rapidly apparent why we needed two moorings as the current is 3 knots with lots of debris washing down the Rio Chone. Logs, trees, masses of grasses that looked like small islands, all wrapping themselves around the mooring lines and Limbo momentarily encasing us in jungle rubbish as the current carried it out to sea. The marina is not really a marina, more a restaurant with some mooring balls they rent by the month. They also provide a dinghy dock, laundry facilities, and the indispensable, wi-fi. This is a less expensive entry point with the Marina Puerto Amistad being owned and operated by an ex-sailing gringo. He doesn't charge the exorbitant agent fees that are charged at the other entry point in Salinas. People tend to leave their boats here for long periods of time while they do inland travel. Which is exactly what we intended to do. The town of Bahia is not much to talk about except that it is a weekend resort town for people from Quito and beyond. It is quaint with it's daily markets of fresh produce and fish, comfortable and safe to walk around in to get off the boat a bit, and some fairly decent restaurants. The lunches being the best. You can get a bowl of soup, a meat with rice, salad, plantains and fresh squeezed juice for $2.50. Some come with a desert and then it's $3.00.

fresh produce and fish daily

We left Bahia and Limbo behind and headed up into the Andes, to the capital city of Quito approximately 10,000 feet above sea level, and home to over 3 million people. The bus ride was luxurious compared to others we've been on, complete with English subtitled movies. We could feel our lungs struggle slightly, the air thinner and cooler as we traveled higher.

10,377 feet according to the smart phone.

After a 7 hour ride, the bus let us out in what appeared to be a congested intersection, not a bus station. Shrugging our shoulders with a look of confusion towards one another, we picked up our backpacks and hailed the next cab. Turned out we were only a few blocks from our hostel, the L'Auberge Inn, owned by a Swiss couple. A very cute place, good food, very friendly English speaking front desk help.  Unfortunately, we had to climb a lot of stairs to get to our room which did not help our heaving, wheezing, lungs.  No TV, no heat, but some great alpaca blankets, wi-fi, hot water shower, and decent food.  Of course when you took a shower, the time between water to clothes was exceptionally cold!  Not to complain, we were going to be too busy to worry about our room with the rock hard bed and flat pillows.  Our intent was to do some volcano exploring.

The following morning we took a cab to Teleferico which is at the base of volcan Pichincha.  There you can take a gondola ride up to the clouds, or 13,400 feet.  The view is spectacular with all of Quito spread through the valley surrounded by mountains and two other volcanoes, Cotopaxi and Cayambe.

gondola to the clouds

Quito from the clouds

The view was a bit obscured because of the clouds but beautiful none the less.  We decided that we would definitely need more time to acclimate to the altitude before we ventured any higher or on any hikes.


Next on the list of things to see and do, Mited del Mundo, or middle of the world.  A monument made from volcanic rock and museum marking the supposed equatorial line.  It has quite a display of equipment used by the first French Geodesic Mission in 1736 who came to measure an arch of meridian to prove the shape of the earth.

Mited del Mundo

The true equator is down the road just a few miles with another museum called "Inti-Nan" or "Path of the Sun".  This site was the one claimed by the Incas as the center of the world and has been verified using GPS technology.  Amazing isn't it?   How did they know?  

First we sailed across, now we're standing on the line of two hemispheres!  Incredible when you're there.

Some of the experiments they show like, how your balance is different, how an egg can stand on a nail head, how water circulates in different directions depending on what side of the line your on.  All impressive stuff until someone tells you its a hoax.  But, we did see these things with our own eyes 

Captain Don trying to make the egg stand by itself.

the egg does stand, but some else did it.

This little museum is packed with local lore including how to shrink heads which according to the guide, was allowed all the way to 1950 when it was outlawed for human heads but continues to be done on animals in some of the remaining jungle tribes.  The walls depicted paintings showing the steps.

Step 1 cut off the head

Step 2 take out the skull

Step 3 sew the lips together and add secret herbs.  (they don't tell you which herbs, its ancient secret, if they told you, they'd have to cut off your head)

Step 4: Boil the head

Step 5: If the person was a loved one or person of importance they would decorate it and wear it.  If it is an enemy, you get put on a pole or hung in a tree.

This is a real shrunken head kept in a glass case.  The guide said it was of a 12 year  old  boy. (I have been called gullible more than once)

Enough for now, we have more on our stay in Quito to share another time.