Quito is an interesting town. My first impression was that it reminded me a lot of Tijuana, Mexico. Its kinda dirty, everyone speaks spanish, you are in constant fear of being mugged and there are a ton of cheesy bars… Of course I got that after flying in at 10pm at night, taking a $5 cab ride through desolate streets and arriving in the “trendy” part of town. However, after a bit of exploration theres a bunch of stuff to do around here and I feel like I just scratched the surface.
Old Town:
Its a nice old town totally, totally walkable etc. but no stand out buildings. The most interesting part of the day was stumbling upon what appeared to be a womens rights march & protest that ended in front of the Palacio del Gobierno (governers palace). Unfortunatly, nothing crazy happened like a riot, I guess its because there were so many armed guards out front. Also cool was hiking to the a hill top at the south end of the city and checking out La Virgen de Quito. It was roughly a 600 ft climb but in the altitude felt much higher. I didn´t have any nasty effects of altitude sickness, I just got winded quickly and had to rest.
View of the Virgin of Quito, Christians have a strange obsession with virgins…
View from the Virgin of Quito
Otavallo Market
So on Saturday I went to the Otavallo Market with a crew of my Hostel mates. It´s was a great time checking out the Animal Market, Cascada Peguche (peguche waterfall) and the Cuicocha crater. It was an all day thing and the Irish guys were a blast. They were drunk before noon and were haggling down the shop keepers at the market.
Cow for sale at the Animal market…
Pig at the Otavallo Market, I wanted to eat some but the food handling practices looked… uhh questionable.
Tour Group Photo at Cascada Peguche
The Irishmen on the Bar top at Tequilla Sunrise making Mother Ireland Proud
The Equator:
Going to the equator exceeded expectations. That is I had no expectations and when it turned out to be mildly interesting I was surpised. When we got to the equator you pay two bucks to get into the monument park. It´s a crazy tourist trap. The cool part is that you leave he monument park and walk about 200 meters north where you find the real equator. Apparently, the french guy who laid out the equator monument site screwed up. With GPS they figured out that the real equator was 200 meters north of where they placed the monument. We went to the the Museo Solar Inti Ñan which apparently has the real equator running through it. It was a great tour which had 3 interesting experiments to “prove” that we were on the real equator. There was the toilet test (you know,when you flush north of the equator water spins one direction and when you are south of the equator water drains the other direction), the you have no strength on the equator test (didnt work so I won´t get into it) and the balance an egg on the nail test. The water draining demonstration was the most interesting. Our tour guide had a movable tub with a drain. She first put the tub over the equator line and pulled the plug. Amazingly,the water drained straight down (no spin). Then she moved the tub south of the equator and it drained counter clockwise. Then she moved the tub north of the equator and the water drianed clockwise. I saw it performed twice in a row…
Me sucessfully balancing an egg on a nail head at the Equator
You ate the food in South Korea, that was some questionable food handling and preparation techniques, and survived.
Great blog so far, Clay. But it’s making me very jealous of your travels.