2022Quito

  We started the day with nasal swabs at 8 am. Negative covid results are required for entry to the US so without it you’re not allowed to board your flight. The results were supposed to be ready and emailed to us in 2-3 hours so we decided to visit yet another place in our La Florest neighborhood – a park called parquet Navarro, which is mostly popular in the evenings because it has a lot of different street food. Other than that, it’s pretty unremarkable, but it has a big Quito sign so we took a picture. After receiving our negative test results and uploading all the required documentation required by United (extremely laborious and frustrating), we set out to see the Good Friday procession in the historic center. It’s the main attraction of the Semana Santa in Quito.   We requested the young hotel driver to take us to the Basilica church, which is on the edge of the historic center. The kid was obviously not up to the task, not only was he learning how to drive, but he al...

  Day 7 We started the day with a taxi to the cable car   (TeleferiQo) terminal. It was a beautiful, clear morning, which is rare in Quito. When we arrived, there was already a pretty long line to the ticket office. It took about 30 minutes to get tickets, but then we got straight to the cable car. The car can hold 4-6 people and we were paired with two Ecuadorian soldiers. The ride up was beautiful with amazing views of the whole city. The cable car covers the distance of 2,500 meters and takes about 18 minutes.   The elevation at the top is about 12,943 feet and the views are spectacular, not just of the city but also the surrounding volcanoes. Some people attempt a hike to the top of the Pichincha volcano from the TeleferiQo top station, which takes them to the elevation of over 4000 meters and takes several strenuous hours.   We only took a 20 minute hike up further to a swing in the sky, which is at the elevation of about 13,000 feet.   We definitely fe...

  We were met at 8 by Andres, our guide to the Mindo valley region of Ecuador. This area is opposite to the Andean highlands we visited on Monday, and the climate there is very is different.   We were descending to low altitude of about 4000 feet, and it became hot and humid with very lush tropical vegetation. The first stop was at a humming bird sanctuary where we saw many varieties of birds, not just many kinds of hummingbirds, but also tucans and others. Mindo valley has an enormous variety of bird species and is very popular with birdwatchers.   We drove another hour to a little town of Mindo, but we didn’t stop. Instead we took a dirt road for about 20 minutes and arrived at the cable car terminal.   The cable car was a little cage for 4 people that took us across the river valley to the other side. The ride was short – maybe 7 minutes, and then we embarked on a hike to a waterfall. The hike was steep down for about 20 minutes and then steep up took a bit long...

After breakfast we started a walk to the Mindalae museum, but were side tracked by a quest for a camera store. The quest was unsuccessful, but we walked a large section of the Mariscal district, which is adjacent to “our” area of La Floresta.   The museum is not very big, but quite interesting. It is an ethno-historical craft museum and it holds lots of artifacts from the indigenous history of Ecuador. Its organization is a bit unusual as each of the 5 floors focuses on a different craft, e.g. the 5 th floor – on pottery, 4 th on weaving/textiles, 3 rd on basket weaving; 2 nd on wood carving and 1 st on jewelry. Since we were still on the camera quest, a woman in the museum told us that we may find a camera store in a shopping mall nearby, and we went there. After we got to the mall and asked several people, we didn’t find any store.   Back to the hotel, and the concierge told us where the big camera stores are.   We decided to have the famous Quiteno potato soup c...

  After breakfast, at 8 am we were met by our guide for the tour to Otavalo.   It is about 55 miles from Quito. The terrain is interesting with mountains and valleys. Ecuador is an agricultural paradise.   They do not have seasons here (since it on the equator) but they have climate differences based on altitude.   At the lower altitudes it is hot and they grow tropical produce.   At the higher altitudes it is moderate and different produce is grown.   Our guide bought some cherimoya which we enjoyed   We passed many acres of covered greenhouses where roses are grown. They produce about 100000 roses a day, which are shipped worldwide. Before driving to Otavalo, we made two stops --- one at the actual equator (there is a tourist site called Mitad del Mundo that has an equator monument and museum, but is several hundred feet from the equator). The site we stopped at is right on the equator as confirmed by GPS. We listened to a short presentation abou...

It was a horrible day with some frightening and frustrating moments. It started well enough – we woke up to a sunny morning, had a great breakfast (the hotel really has a great buffet   breakfast) and then decided to take a taxi to to centro historico and spend most of the day there. We wanted the taxi to drop us off at Plaza Grande, the main square flanked by the Presidential Palace and the Cathedral, but the streets were closed a couple of blocks before it because it was Palm Sunday and there were crowds and processions. When we got to Plaza Grande , we were in awe – it was gorgeous. It was also very full of people. Most of them had “palm”, which were green branches or bunches of flowers in small wicker “vases”. We were approached by a woman with a vest labeled “policia turistica” who warned us about pickpockets and gave us a city map. We visited the cathedral, which is covered with gold inside and very impressive. Then we walked the street of 7 crosses, which was also full of ...

  We didn’t get much sleep and woke up after 7 am. After a big buffet breakfast we walked the neighborhood. It’s called La Floresta and it’s a mix of some old colonial mansions and very modern high rises. There are several universities in the area so lots of young people, cafes and quirky restaurants. It’s also very green here because it rains a lot. Quito is surrounded by extinct volcanoes that are higher than the city – 15,000-18.000 feet. We see some of them from our hotel window when clouds dissipate. After the walk, we took a taxi to the center to take a 3-hour bus city tour.   Quito is a huge, mostly modern city, but it also has the largest and best preserved colonial city center in South America. The tour took us through extremely crowded and narrow up- and down-hill streets of the historic center to the El Panecillo hill with panoramic views of the entire city and the enormous metal figure of the Virgin, which supposedly is bigger than Christ the Redeemer of Rio. ...