Quito

Quito for Quitters

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

Quito rooftops

Hola! It’s been two days since the TC and I returned from Ecuador/the Galapagos Islands and we seem to have brought with us the nastiest colds that could ever befall a body. Fantastic.

We also brought home lots of dirty laundry, lots of photos, and lots of mind-blowing experiences. Our trip was so removed from the everyday lives we lead in Vancouver that it will take me awhile to process and write about it all. So I’ve decided to break it down. This post will be devoted to the approximately five days (two and a half before the Galapagos and two and a half days after) that TC and I spent in mainland Ecuador, i.e. in Quito, Ecuador’s capital.

The city of Quito is nestled high in the Andes, at an elevation of 2800 metres above sea level. Given its high altitude, travellers to Quito often experience altitude sickness for at least the first couple of days that they are in the city. Since there was really no way of knowing beforehand whether the altitude might affect us (or how badly), my TC and I arranged to stay in the Old Town and pretty much take it easy. This turned out to be a good plan, as our colds combined with a lack of oxygen left us fatigued and lightheaded through both our stays in the city (neither of which were long enough to allow us to acclimatize).

For this reason, I can’t give a full report on the charming colonial city of Quito, much as I would have liked to. We didn’t see enough of it. We were too damn dizzy so we gave up on our more ambitious plans (even climbing a cathedral tower or visiting a museum were ambitious plans for people in our condition). What I can provide, however, is “Quito for Quitters”.

Even for quitters like us (who spent more time lying in bed at the hotel than we would have liked), the city has its share of sights and atmosphere. Wandering the streets of colonial Old Town was really my only goal for our time in Quito, and it is a goal that delivers; winding lanes full of women selling mandarin oranges and lottery tickets are crisscrossed by one-way streets packed with taxis and buses, and it seems there’s an old church on every corner.

Keep in mind that churches in Old Town aren’t just any old churches–Quito’s Catholic iglesias are about as ornate as they come. Since I got a bit “cathedral-ed out” travelling through Portugal and Spain last autumn we only visited three of the seven major churches packed into the area (all within walking distance of one another):

  1. The Monastery of San Francisco looms over the Plaza San Francisco and (according to my Lonely Planet) is Ecuador’s oldest church. The interior is a little faded but still dazzlingly opulent, in that shiny but gloomy Catholic sort of way. It was interesting to see the way in which the decorative wood in the ceilings resembled the star-patterned wood ceilings of the Moorish Nasrid Palace of Spain’s Alhambra.
  2. Just down the street and a little north from the Plaza San Francisco is the Jesuit church La Compania de Jesus. Our driver from the airport had pointed it out on the way to our first hotel. He said the entire interior of the church is covered in gold. It is. You really have to see it to believe it. The interior of that church is absolutely covered in gold.

    Basilica

  3. The Gothic Basilica del Voto Nacional is relatively new (construction began in 1926). I felt it lacked some of the soul-tapping je ne sais quoi that spaces like churches acquire over the centuries, but it was an otherwise imposing and impressive building. One really nifty detail was the use of lizards and tortoises, instead of gargoyles, on the church’s exterior. We apparently could have had a very interesting (and slightly white-knuckled) climb up the bell tower, but unfortunately TC and I were wiped from our uphill trek just to see the Basilica itself; it was all we could do not to fall asleep in the pews so we gave the steep staircases and ladders a pass.

Though we spent most of our time in the winding streets of Old Town (when not resting back in our room), TC and I did reach for even loftier heights by riding the TeleferiQo up the side of the Volcan Pichincha (a dormant volcano). This required us to take a taxi up to the western edge of the city. After ripping us off, our driver dumped us at the gates of what appeared to be an empty, volcano-themed amusement park, complete with creepy happy Spanish music screeching from a metal box mounted on a lamp post and echoing around the vacant lot we stood in.

At first, we thought there’d been a mistake. Quito’s TeleferiQo had been a multi-million dollar project. Why were we standing outside an empty amusement park, in a weed-covered plaza, flanked by abandoned buildings and rusty signage? The Lonely Planet had advised us to arrive early to beat the long lines for the cable cars, especially on weekends. It was about 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Our cab was long gone, and that creepy music just kept playing.

When on a mountainside, you can go up, you can go down, or you can go sideways. We did not want to go sideways into “Volcano Park”, so we decided to climb a staircase on the edge of the plaza, and once at the top (thoroughly winded I might add), we were able to see the TeleferiQo and the large ticket office adjacent. Foreigners pay double fare compared to Ecuadorians, but they are also fast-tracked in an express line it seems. Since there was still hardly anyone around, within 5-10 minutes we were in a cable car and heading another kilometre or so skyward (to an elevation of 4100 metres).

The view was incredible. I wasn’t so interested in seeing Quito from above (besides noting that it is very big, over 40 km long apparently and only 6 km wide in some places, depending on how it can squeeze in between the mountains), but I was enraptured by the green valleys and mountains to the west. I had one of those moments where I thought to myself Wow, I am in South America. And I would squeeze my TC’s hand and say Wow, we are in South America. It was an amazing feeling.

We were exhausted. And light headed a lot of the time. And altitude sick. And plain old sick sick. But damn it, we were in an old colonial city, nestled in the Andes, in South America. And that’s pretty amazing.

Galapagos Bound!

/ Lauren / 3 Comments

Oh backpack. How I’ve missed you.

Well, I’m at it again. Packing for an adventure, that is. This time, I’m taking the TC with me and we are flying to South America to spend two weeks in Ecuador. This will be our first trip to the Southern Hemisphere, my first time travelling on a US airline, and South America will be the first continent I visit that I hadn’t already lived in (I lived in Europe as a child before ever going there to just travel). It’s funny that after over a year and a half of using the term TC (Travel Companion), my TC and I are finally going to be doing some major travelling worthy of the title.

Our official reason for choosing Ecuador as our destination this year is that we want to see the Galapagos Islands (TORTOISES!) and even the untimely death of Lonesome George (George was only 100 years old, and the last giant tortoise in his subspecies, the Pinta) has not shaken our resolve (I would have loved to meet Lonesome George, but the other giant tortoises will hopefully cheer me up). So to the Galapagos we shall go, to spend a week living on a boat visiting various islands in the archipelago and having our minds blown by an amazing array of flora and fauna that can be found nowhere else in the world.

Bookending our week in the Galapagos will be 3-night stays in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city. Since Quito sits at an elevation of 2800 m, travellers flying in from sea-level (like us) can often find themselves suffering from altitude sickness. For this reason, TC and I decided to stay in hotels in Quito’s Old Town (to put ourselves close to most of the things we want to see), and to really just take it easy as far as our plans for Quito are concerned. Depending on how the altitude affects us, a flight of stairs might cause me to require a lie-down, so we don’t really have much choice but to gauge how we’re feeling when we get there and plan around that.

When I set out on my European Adventure last year, I was pretty anxious about the whole caper. This year, though of course I am visited by the usual worries of “what-if-we-miss-our-flights” and “what-if-we-lose-our-passports”, I’m feeling much better. I’m travelling for two weeks, not four. I’m not going alone this time. We’ve done most of our major planning (transportation, accommodation, etc.) already so we won’t be trying to plan and book things on the fly. As far as Ecuador-specific anxieties go, we’ll need to be vigilant about robbery (as travellers often do), and about trying not to get sick (let’s just say we’ve packed a big bottle of Imodium and are crossing our fingers like crazy). I don’t mind worrying a little bit, worrying sometimes keeps us smart. We’ll use our heads, I guess, and hope to be lucky.

Worries aside, we’ve been so busy lately we’ve hardly had time to get excited. But we are. Deep down behind our tired frazzled faces. We take off early tomorrow morning. In the words of Doctor Who, “allons-y!“. It’s time for things to get awesome.

P.S. No need to worry about Bunny. Our neighbour will be stopping in while we’re away to feed him and make sure he isn’t chewing the wall. But Bunny will, of course, be chewing the wall.