Quito - Ciudad Vieja y TelefErico

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Our next few days in Quito were a nice opportunity to acclimate to the altitude and get to see a little bit of the city. Our second day in Quito after enjoying a nice breakfast of fresh fruit, fruit juice, cafe, eggs and toast from our plesent staff at our hostel we made our way to the old town. Quito is huge (which we will describe later) but has what they refer to as new town and old town. We made our walking tour pretty much through all of old town. The walking tour is about 3.5 km one way but it ended up taking us the better part of 6 hours as we made many stops along the way. We passed by a couple nice parks on our way to DT. The second park was awesome becuase it had a small man made lake passing through it that you could rent a paddle boat. We stopped there and paddled around for a while. There were many Ecuadorians there relaxing in the park and enjoying an afternoon siesta. After our that we went and got some food for a little lunch in the park. We had "choclo con queso" which is a great concept as we are cheese lovers. It is pretty much sweet corn and cheese and you take a bite of the corn and then a bit of the cheese and eat it as one. The only difference is the corn is HUGE. It is the hominy type corn so it is quite large and very flavorful. We also had some fruit for lunch too. Then we continued to DT ciudad vieja and it is quite beautiful. They are much older colonial style buildings and the "plaza grande" is the main square of ciudad vieja. Here is where the hustle and bustle of the city is ... but we sat in "plaza grande" and enjoyed a little cultural observation there. We actually finished with our self guided walking tour in time to walk back to our hostel while it was still daylight.

On Tuesday we made our way up to the top of the Andes mountians in one day ... 4,200 meters which is about 13,800 feet. Well, we did not do it on our own ... we had a little help from the Teleferico which did about 99% of the work. The teleferico is similar to a ski lift but enclosed that takes you from the city to one of the near by high points of the Andes which surround the city. The second we got off of the teleferico we could feel the thin air. Just climbing up a few stairs and you were out of breath. Once we got off of the teleferico we hiked around for a little bit on some trails but we did not push it too much because of the altitude. But the views from the top were AMAZING!! Quito is about 80km long and pretty much takes up an entire vally within the Andes. From the viewpoint of the Teleferico you could see it all, pretty much its farthest expanse to the north and to the south and the Andes mountians on either side. We saw the soccer stadium, the bull ring, the main cathedral, the airport and much more. It was really neat way to see the entire city. After that we decended and upon reaching the city center which is about 9,500 ft altitide that no longer seemed to be a problem. Before heading back to our hostel we stopped by a museum wich held some pre colombian and colonial art. The works and technology of the Incan and pre Incan civilizations were quite impressive. We then came back to our hostel area and had a great dinner of fine Ecuadorian food. A potato avacado soup, chicha (rice juice) and llapingacho (potato cheese dumplings) and empanadas. We really enjoyed Quito, it's a great city, but we were ready to get to a more tranquilo city out in the country. Ciao de Quito!

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Comments

[Cramer]

I LOVVVVEE CHOCLO CON QUESO!!! Also-love the "cultural observation" in the park--bet it was just as good as the barron county fair HA! Beautiful pictures of the city views-Breathtaking