The Key to Quito… Go to Quito, The Key to Guayaquil… Don’t Breath
I liked Quito a lot. It is the second largest city in Ecuador with 1.7 million people. The largest being Guayaquil which I will discuss in a bit. Quito is a city about 3000 meters above sea level in northern Ecuador’s Andes. It is surrounded by active volcanoes. The city sits in a valley with the old portion of town and a good amount of the newer sections on the valley floor and newer sections also on the flanks of the surrounding mountains. With about 1.7 million people, it has everything you would expect in a modern city including financial businesses, modern airport and McDonald’s. The old colonial section of the city is in excellent shape and the crown jewels are the many old churches that Quito is famous for. I had fairly low expectations for Quito and I was really happy with my visit to such a nice city.
I believe you can stay a week in Quito and never get bored. There are churches, other old buildings, neighborhoods and museums to explore. The city has a lot of beautiful parks and it prides itself on all of the sculptures that have been placed around the city. People watching consists of Quito residents going about their regular business, very pretty women and indigenous people trying to get by. We sat in the main square in front of San Francisco Cathedral and watched all of the children going home from school mostly in their school uniforms. We also watched a protest near the President’s offices which resulted in some police action to control the crowd. Apparently, political protests are a regular thing in Quito and Ecuador. This one was mainly led by women and we speculated that it had something to do with women’s rights or family issues.
There are a lot of day trip possibilities from Quito. We went to the famous Otavalo market one day where we purchased some indigenous art. It was our first taste of the multi-colored clothing of the Incan people and we had a good time watching the whole scene. The visit also included a stop at the Equator which was my first since I flew over it in Uganda and Kenya. The mountains and their valleys were stunning and probably the highlight of the day. The low point of the trip was seeing all of the greenhouses which are growing roses for the gringos. Ah, the beautiful and perfect rose. Perfection achieved in Ecuador via very nasty chemicals. Enough roses and their required chemicals to be killing the surrounding lakes. I can only imagine what it is doing to the workers. We love our roses, but they are so horrible to produce that we rely on a poor country to do the work which would never be allowed in our countries. When I took a floristry class I learned that there is so much chemical residue on the incoming roses that you have to wear gloves to protect yourself. Now that’s a thought for all for this Valentine’s Week! And I do admit to still buying roses even with this knowledge because there really is no more beautiful flower to give someone even if it is a toxic nightmare…
The other daytrip was to Papallacta’s thermal pools. We hung out for the day in hot water pools of various temperatures. It was a very clear day and the views of the surrounding hills and mountains including active volcano and glacier-covered Antisana were awesome. We ate the local delicacy, trucha – trout, and drank fantastic jugos de mixto – mixed fruit juices. The facility had a hotel and I would recommend this location for any visitor to Quito and especially for romantically-inclined couples. Other day trips from Quito include Cotopaxi Volcano and bird and butterfly watching near Mindo, but we ran out of time to do these. You can also take the tram above the city for views, but Quito has a lot of cloudy weather and the day we attempted to do this the clouds moved in just prior to going up so we canceled. Jillian and I spent a couple of hours in the city’s botanical garden especially admiring the blooming orchids for which Ecuador is famous. I spent a good amount of that time learning how to use the macro lens in a non-wind situation (I’ve learned that taking flower pictures with the slightest breeze is basically impossible). Some of the photos will surely make it online this week. (By the way, I am at the location of my timeout in Cajamarca, Peru in the Andes at a resort which has more thermal waters.)
And then there is Guayaquil which sits on the coast in Southwest Ecuador. I never visited it so I can’t say much, but due to an airline fiasco which will make it in another entry we spent a lot of time in Guayaquil’s airport on the way between Quito and Galapagos Islands. All I can say is that Guayaquil is the most wretched smelling place I have ever been. I remember how bad Gary, Indiana smelled 30+ years ago, but Guayaquil is worse. It has an organic smell. Rotting sea animals to be specific. We learned that it has shrimp farms, but that does not explain the overwhelming smell of rotting death. A couple I met witnessed dozens if not hundreds of dead shark carcasses on beaches north of Guayaquil. All of them had their fins removed for shark fin soup (that damn Chinese soup is wiping out shark populations world-wide) and the rest of the bodies were left to rot. That still doesn’t explain the smell, but maybe it is a combination of a number of things including the possibility of animal feed production from sea animals. I don’t know. I looked up Guayaquil Smell on the internet and found nothing although I know this was not a once-in-a-bluemoon thing because Ecuadorians knew about it. All I can say is that you may want to avoid ever taking a breath in Guayaquil…
Tags: Travel
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