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How do we sum up a city and culture in a paragraph? Well, I guess to start generalizations are a good place. People: Pretty plain looking. Not ugly but not a model in sight. Very reserved here in Quito. I hear the Ecuadorians on the coast are more wild but a Sunday morning here seems like the world is in church and the place shuts down at night at 7 or so. Generalizations of the city: despite being at the equator (thus the name) the place is pretty cold due to the altitude. We´re about 10000 feet up in the Andes and the temperature seems to stay between 50 and 65 all the time. Seems to rain a lot too but that might just be our bad luck for when we got here. The city is a bit more modern than I expected. Somewhere a little ahead of most Mexican cities. Very little begging in the streets. (I get asked for change more in San Diego.) What else... Seems to be a healthy middle class based on the shopping centers. They have a couple here that can go store for store with any in the US. The food so far has failed to impress me. They do have some weird combinations-shrimp in orange juice and popcorn with plantain chips that you are meant to dip. Needless to say once was enough.
We´re planning on a few day trips around Quito and maybe a sprint into the amazon and back. After that the big adventure will be the Galapagos Islands. 5 days on a boat! The strategy the Ecuadorians have chosen to protect the islands from environmental destruction of too many people going there is to make it so expensive you really have to think twice about whether you really want to go. We thought about 4 times and finally decided to take it in the shorts and go.
We took a day trip to tour North of Quito which included the towns of Otavalo and Cotacachi. Otavalo is famous for having the biggest market in South America every Saturday and attracts sellers and tourists from all over. The goods are mainly local crafts and support the Native Indians. We went on a Tuesday so probably it was not nearly as exciting but given luggage limitations it was probably a good thing.We walked away with one thing only - some locally made leather coasters (I know... not very exciting but it had to take little space and I still have the rest of South America).
The town of Cotacachi is home to the dormant volcano of the same name along with the Cuicocha crater lake. The lake is about 200m deep and 3km wide. The name Cuichocha is from guinea pig as apparently the islands in the crater lake used to be populated by a large number of them. Our next stop was the equator though apparently it is the small one - not exactly middle of the earth.
Our last day in Quito ended up being fairly exciting. While we were exploring the city we walked into a crowd of protesters and even got tear-gased by the police as we ran away from the police with the crowd. What had begun as a serious protest by concerned citizens finished up with a bunch of youngsters teasing and enjoying their defiance. The only way to control the unruly youth was to send some tear gas once in a while to try and break up the crowd. Not entirely sure what it was all about something to do with the approaching elections and the desire for a less corrupt government (what else is new). It is my understanding that in the past four years of democratic rule Ecuador has ousted six presidents.
We ended the day with a salsa lesson with a private tutor each - needless to say that was not enough but it sure was fun!!! Oh and we found a sushi restaurant (yey)
previous travel blog entry
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