Quito
ECUADOR
A Week in Quito
By LYNDI
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Aaron and I were sad to say goodbye to Colombia, seeing as how it had made it’s way up to “Favorite Country Visited” status quite easily, but we were not sorry to leave behind the exorbitant bus prices. We crossed the border into Ecuador early Sunday morning and were back to the dollar an hour busrides we’d come to know and love in Central America. Hallelujah.
So our first stop in Ecuador was actually a town called Otavalo – not Quito as this blog might lead you to believe. But seeing as how we were only there for one night, it is being absorbed by Quito. Anyways, Otavalo is well-known throughout South America as having the best weekend market on the continent. Local indigenous people come to Otavalo every weekend to sell their animals, produce, and tons of handicrafts. In fact, a lot of the handicrafts you find throughout the rest of the country are actually purchased in Otavalo and resold – making this a must-see stop for us.
We didn’t plan ahead too well (shocker, I know…) and arrived into Otavalo around 2pm on Sunday afternoon. By that time, quite a few stands had already closed down for the weekend. Luckily, the market is enormous, so it still gave us plenty to browse through. And what we didn’t anticipate was how much easier it was to bargain with the vendors. Not quite how my mom’s garage sales used to end (“Anything you can fit in the back of your truck for a dollar!”), but similarly, they were willing to lower rates so they could sell more and have less to pack home. Aaron and I ended up doing pretty well – two hats, a shirt, and a scarf for $10, so our late arrival all worked out in the end. After our shopping spree, we found a seat at a rooftop Mexican food restaurant overlooking the market and people-watched while enjoying the very-average-national-beer Pilsener.
The next day before leaving for Quito, we hit the city museum where they had carefully arranged hundreds of Barbie dolls dressed as indigenous tribes to represent local customs and heroic battles. Unfortunately, I learned more about how many ponchos Ken can wear than Otavalo’s history – but educational nonetheless.
We arrived in Quito in mid-afternoon and found a good hostel for $8/night per person in the New City called the Galapagos Hostel. The two main tourist parts of Quito are cleverly named Old City and New City – and just in case that confuses you, New City is also called “Gringolandia”. True to it’s nickname, we found ourselves surrounded by pizzarias, Irish pubs, and sushi restaurants. I was in heaven. But along with all the gringo-fied bars and restaurants, there is also nothing short of 1,000 tourist agencies – all touting the cheap, last-minute deals to the Galapagos Islands.
Our first night we arrived just in time to settle into our hostel and find a bar showing Monday Night Football between Aaron’s Philadelphia Eagles and my Dallas Cowboys. Unfortunately, the bar we found was open-air. Even more unfortunately, this open-air was very cold. So at halftime we migrated to what would become our local watering hole for the week: Finn McCool’s.
We spent Tuesday exploring the city and visiting a ton of travel agencies trying to find these so-called rock bottom Galapagos Island prices. And maybe I have a different concept of “rock-bottom” prices (see my mother’s garage sales above), but nothing about $1000 sounds quite right. We never ended up booking anything with a tourist agency and decided we’ll just wing it on our own (see some future blog for how that actually worked out for us…). We also visited the excellent Banco Nacional Museum in the New City. It took me hours just to go through the first floor because of all the interesting artifacts they had in there. Aaron enjoyed it, but got a little bored waiting for me to read every single plaque. Tuesday night was Trivia Night at Finn McCool’s, so we joined a few British guys and tried to relive our magical, winning night in Leon, Nicaragua from a few months earlier. However, we soon learned we were out of our league when questions popped up like “Who was the first Irish-born Prime Minister of Israel?”, so we quickly took to drinking oversized Pilseners and shots of Aguardiente (which, by the way, only sounds like a good idea after the oversized Pilseners).
As you may have guessed, Wednesday was spent recovering a bit. That afternoon I had a great idea – why don’t I go get a haircut??? I asked the dueña of our hostel where a good salon was and she recommended the place next door. My first exit cue should have been that she was just sitting in her shop chatting with all her friends watching Venezuelan soap operas. My second cue should have been that the cut was $3. Maybe because I wasn’t totally with it, or maybe because I’m really, really cheap, it sounded like a great bargain. Well, it didn’t work out so well (once again, I know… shocker). I didn’t so much get “layers” as “shelves”. I can’t fully explain it, but I did try to fix it myself the next day. Aaron even got in on it by reluctantly taking scissors to the back of my head. It’s still a mess, but nothing a few hats, rubberbands, and 4 months of growing out can’t fix. Ugh.
We spent most of Thursday at the famous “Mitad del Mundo” – otherwise known as the equator. I can’t even begin to explain how interesting everything was. We caught an early bus out to the famous monument erected by the French explorers 300 years ago where an enormous tourist trap has since developed. There’s about 5 different museums (none of which, by the way, are actually worth paying for), but for a $2 entrance fee to the monument you do get the opportunity to take those famous pictures straddling the equator, with the official line signs, etc. The only problem? Umm… it’s not even the equator. You have to give the Frenchies a break though, they placed the giant monument only 240 meters off the GPS discovered equatorial line – which for 300 years ago isn’t half bad…
Until we found out at the next museum that the pre-Incan civilizations found the exact line 1000 years ago!!! After being drained by the tourist trap, we walked along the highway about 100 meters to the solar museum where there are about 5 Ecuadorians working to get the word out about the actual equator and it’s actual meaning. Our guide showed us a short video of how the pre-Incans not only built a semi-circle monument with the ends directly on the GPS proven line (still standing today), but one end of the half-circle ends 23.5 degrees short of the equator – which is exactly the angle of the earth’s tilt!! How do they keep doing this???
He also showed us how nearly all of their designs on pottery, weavings, etc. incorporates the angles of the solstices, equinoxes, and the 23.5 degree tilt. Apparently, Ecuador is the only country in the world where the equator crosses mountains. All other countries (Indonesia, Brazil, Uganda, etc.) are equatorial rainforest, so they didn’t have a constant guide like the Ecuadorians did. While they were comparing their stars and reading their angles against ever-changing trees on the horizon, Ecuadorians had the mountains that never grew, were never cut down, and never changed – so supposedly their star-gazing and reading is incomparable. He went on to explain how our entire view of the earth was wrong, but I couldn’t possibly explain that on this blog. Remind me to try to remember the details when we get home.
Our last equator stop was the actual equator, where there now stands another hokey tourist trap. But it was pretty fun anyways. For $3 you get a guide to take you through several experiments and shows you several pre-Incan artifacts. I liked the museum for 3 main reasons:
1) It’s actually the equator
2) You really can balance an egg on the head of a nail on the equator, and they showed us how water really does swirl in opposite directions on either side, and goes straight down directly on top of the line.
3) They have a real-live shrunken head! And instructions on how to do it to your enemies in the future!
So after a full day of seeing several equators, taking tons of pictures, and balancing eggs, we headed back to Quito.
We were filling time in Quito because we had arranged a biking tour of Cotopaxi and Quilatoa, but it didn’t leave until Monday morning. So for the next 3 days we walked around the UNESCO Heritage Site Old City, Aaron won a few pool tournaments at Finn McCool’s, went to QuitoFest – a free, 3 day concert with bands from all over South America, and enjoyed several of their enormous city parks. We may have filled a little too much time at Finn McCool’s – because Aaron was even asked to represent them on their soccer team on Sunday (they won 7-1, by the way).
In the end, I guess we didn’t need a full week for Quito, but I’m glad we had it.
