So back in March I headed off to Quito on a work trip. We had gotten a new client in the city and we were off on a 3 day trip to get them up and running.
Once we arrived things went very well, and very quickly, and we found that we needed to stay an extra couple days to take care of everything and round out the trip. At the end of day four we realized we were off again - we'd need to be back the following week in order to really get things where we wanted them to be. Now, typically we'd just head home for the weekend and then turn around to come back Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning. That kind of turn around is challenging when you're on a different continent though. We would have had to take the red eye home Friday night, not gotten home until close to noon on Saturday, and been on a plan again at 2pm Sunday. Not exactly a fun weekend, and a lot of stress and almost 24 hours of travel. Made much more sense for us, time and money wise, just to hang out in Quito for the weekend. It was also great because we got to explore a bit!
Now, as you know if you know me, or may have picked up on if you've read previous posts, I am a very anxious person. This change of plans did throw me off a bit, but once I recovered I was able to really enjoy the incredible weekend that we had.
It had been a very long work week full of early morning and late nights so our first decision was to sleep in a little bit on Saturday. We didn't want to waste our precious time to explore, but we also didn't want to feel dead as we had the past few days. We agreed on a happy medium and a time to meet, and talked to the tour company that was housed in our hotel. Our destinations for Saturday would be the Equator and the Historical Center of the city.
We packed our backpacks with a few snacks and some water and headed out! We found out that for our visit to the Equator there were actually 2 stops - the first was a museum and the actual physical location of the equator, the second was the monument for the equator. When the monument was first built, in 1936, they used their most precise measurements and were off by a couple hundred feet. With our modern GPS systems the actual equator is marked at the museum, but the fact that they were so close without the technology that we're so used to is pretty cool to me.
Once we went through the exhibits with our guide, saw the demonstrations of water rotating different ways on either side of the equator, and tried our hand at balancing an egg on the head of a nail, we got a special stamp in our Passports and headed off to explore the monument and the not-quite-actual Equator.
Now, side note, Quito is actually in the Andes mountains. Not like you can see them from the city, it's built in/on the mountains themselves. It's absolutely gorgeous and I love the mountains so I was ecstatic with our surroundings.
Once we got to the park with the monument we walked around the monument and took some pictures. There were all sorts of shops and restaurants within the park as well, so we stopped and had a good lunch and grabbed some souvenirs to take home with us.
As we were finishing up and walking out we came across a restaurant that was selling full Cuy on a spit outside. I remembered learning this when I studied Spanish and we did various culture projects, but it didn't really occur to me until we saw this that Guinea pig is a common food in the Andes regions. My coworker Andrej was eager to try some, but I wasn't really into it. Sadly for him they were only selling the whole thing, and we had already eaten, so he would have to wait to try Cuy.
From the monument we headed back to our hotel in search of cleaning up a bit and refilling our snacks and water. We hadn't realized that the afternoon portion in the Historical Center of the City was a separate thing so we worked out timing and such with the tour guide to solidify the rest of our day and then agreed to meet after a short break. It was during this drive back and our short break that Andrej and I realized how sun burned we had gotten. Now, in our defense, it had rained non stop since 20 minutes after we had landed the Sunday before. When we went to pick up some supplies for the weekend we grabbed umbrellas, but neglected sunblock. Naturally, the first sunny day we experienced was while we were up in the mountains literally on the Equator. I have never burned so badly in my entire life. I was a lobster. On our way out we quickly agreed to go get after sun and sun black and lotion from the K-Mart-like store that we had found a block and a half away.
It was a quick ride through the city to get to our first stop, the Basilica del Voto Nacional. We didn't realize we could at first, but we ended up climbing to the very top of one of the towers and getting an amazing outlook point. This was an interested climb as I am terrified of heights, but love being in high places once I'm there and feel secure. Andrej hates heights, but is okay getting to and from them. I was shaking on the way up the steep ladders and across not-super-secure walkways, Andrej was not comfortable while we were at the top looking around, and I had a very challenging time convincing myself to climb down said steep ladders. Even so, the view from the top of that climb was incredible and so beautiful (and worth it).
After we were done exploring the Basilica we headed to our next stop at the center of the historical district. The traffic getting there was slightly crazy...
Once we found somewhere to park we headed out to the grid of streets and explored for a bit. Right in the middle was the Independence Monument, and the entire grid around it was packed with people and shops and the hustle and bustle of city life and food traffic. Everyone was out and about and enjoying the beautiful sunny day. We were even able to see up the street to the angel statue that we saw from the top of the Basilica.
After we got back to the hotel we took a quick walk to the K-Mart type store, picked up our sun burn supplies, some more water, a quick dinner, and were ready to sleep and rest up for the next day's adventure. We had decided to head to a volcano about an hour away, Cotopaxi, and we knew we'd need our energy!
Post about Day 2 and our hike up a volcano to follow!
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