Colonial buildings, a gold-lined church and relaxing in Quito

Well, when I wrote the last blog entry, we were thinking we were going to leave Quito on Sunday to head to Latacunga (two hours away) to start a five-day journey around a volcano crater lake. Well, we are going to be in Quito until tomorrow (Tuesday) because we decided that spending a couple of days in Quito would be nice to take in some of the sights and experience Quito when we aren´t in a rush to get somewhere else. Quito is a beautiful city, especially the old-town, the area where we are staying. Most of the buildings are colonial style buildings that range from over 400 years old to about 100 years old. We spent the last two days exploring the old town, checking out the gothic syle churches, old convents and presidential buildings that occupy the old town. Sunday is more or less a family day in Quito. Many of the streets are shut down for the day and opened up for biking. There were groups of serious bikers out, old couples out for a leisurely ride and families riding with their youngest children on tricycles. The youngest kid we saw was this little boy, maybe 2 or 3 years old, riding a little tyke tricycle as fast as he could down the cobblestone street.

We spent a good part of the day people watching and checking out the colonial squares in the old town. After that we headed to the Basilica de Voto Nacional which is a gothic style church built in the early 20th century. It has spires the stretch over 100 metres above the street below. Volcan Pinchicha, directly behind the church, provides a stunning backdrop. This is the church that we can see when we sit on the rooftop terrace of our hotel.

Today, we spent the day wandering around the old town again, this time we decided to spend some time in the buildings and looking around at some of the history of old-town Quito. We ate lunch at a cafe in the basement of the oldest church in Quito (started in 1536) which also had an art display of some of the traditional art work found in Ecuador. After that, we went to one of the premier churches in Quito, called La Compania. The outside of the church is similar to most of the colonial buildings but the inside is absolutely stunning. The whole inside of the church is lined with 7 tonnes of gold and it sparkles everwhere. There are beautiful wood carvings, wall-size paintings and lots and lots of gold. It is too bad that pictures weren´t allowed because it is almost impossible to describe what it looked like. We do have a couple of postcards though so when we get home, we can show what it really looked like.

Tonight, we are relaxing and meeting our friend and then tomorrow heading out to do the Quilatoa Loop.

Cheers,

Lee

---

---