Day 7

 

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 felt the effects of the altitude. We paused to take pictures with alpacas. When we got down, we took a taxi to a large market called Santa Clara.  We had to partake in the famous fanesca soup  which is only made once a year, during the Easter week. In Quito there is a competition where you can get the best fanesca, and as our morning driver told us, Santa Clara market won this year. This soup is very hearty – it includes 12 grains and beans (symbolic of 12 apostles), cod fish (representing Christ), an egg, potatoes, peanuts and vegetables such as butternut squash, onions and cabbage. It was very tasty. After  a brief rest we decided to visit an upscale store called Olga Fisch Folklore. Their flagship store is only a 10 minute walk from our hotel, and it’s quite beautiful. Olga Fisch, a Hungarian artist, came to Ecuador after escaping Europe during WW2 and started working with indigenous artists to create beautiful things based on local folklore. Bo couldn’t resist, and we bought a large, colorful wool wall hanging created by a woman from a Salcedo tribe.   After that we continued our shopping spree by embarking on a quest for a chocolate place recommended by our guide.  The place/brand is called Pacardi and in spite of being hidden in a small residential street, it was full of people buying their chocolates. They had many unusual flavors, which you could taste before deciding what to buy. The chocolate was excellent and cheaper than the tourist place from yesterday. Needless to say, we had to buy some.











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 5

Image
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...
Read more

Day 4

Image
  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...
Read more