Blogs from Historical Center, Quito, North, Ecuador, South America - page 13

It has turned out that the biggest celebration of the year in Quito has coincided with our a arrival. The city celebrates its founding from Dec 1-6. There has been live music on the streets and in the parques all over town. On Friday they had two bandstands set up in Parque Grande and it was like the battle of the bands, one group right after the previous. About 8:00 PM there was a fantastic fireworks show that lasted about 15 minutes. Our favorites with the music have been some of the bands we have seen scattered around town, made up of young musicians, playing traditional music with a little modern flavor. One group had 10 members and they all changed instruments after every song. They had lots of percussion and were really good. One of ... read more

We didn't expect to be Quito fans. It doesn't have the best reputation amongst travellers, often cited as the place in the (generally exagerrated but nonetheless scary) horror stories you hear. We only had 3 days here but we really enjoyed ourselves. We explored the city and climbed up to the bell tower of the basilica (cue another Indiana Jones moment due to the lack of health and safety!), and ate lots of typical ecuadorian food. Our favourite has been Seco de Chico, a lovely goat stew. You will also be interested to know that Steve has now tried 'cuy' or guinea pig.. (Where will his strange food obsession end I ask!?)  During our time here we have also visited the equatorial line where we entertained ourselves for hours taking all the embarrassing tourist photos! Well ... read more

Hey everyone, sorry it has taken so long to get these pics up, we have been busy and the internet is really slow so it takes a long time. We are having a lot of fun here and were getting really excited to go to Tena tomorrow into the amazon... i dont know what their lodging is like or if they have access to computers, so it might be about a week or so until you here from us again... hope everyone is doing awesome! miss ya and love you! Randi and Quinn... read more

Moin Moin! Melde mich zurueck aus Quito/Ecuador. Bin jetzt schon seit Donnerstag hier und hab wohl alles Sehenswerte abgearbeitet. Die haben hier eine recht schoene koloniale Altstadt mit ziemlich eindrucksvollen Kirchen. Eine war im innern komplett mit Gold verziert. Schon ziemlich schizophren wenn einen Kilometer weiter die Armenviertel beginnen und ca. 1 Millionen Menschen unter der Armutsgrenze leben ( haben weniger als 1,25 $ pro Tag zur Verfuegung). An einem Tag bin ich mit dem Bus 1,5 Std. zur "Mitad del Mundo" gefahren. Dort verlaeuft die exakte Aequatorlinie. Allerding steht das Monument nicht auf der exakten Linie weil die sich damals irgendwie verrechnet haben. Die richtige Linie verlaeuft so 500 m weiter und dort ist auch ein Museum und man kann witzige Experimente machen. Zb stellt man ein Wasserbecken exakt auf die Linie, zieht den Stoepsel ... read more

Ola, We are in Quito now. We flew out of Bogota, again, and it was painless once more. Aero Republica and El Dorado airport have treated us fairly well so far this trip! We arrived in Quito and there modern airport but Peter and Val both got differing entry stamps so it is going to be interesting to see if either of them have any problems exiting the country. We´ll keep you posted on that front. We got into town late and went to bed around midnight so we didn´t see much before the morning. Peter woke up first, because some lovely Germans decided that it was necessary to rustle incessantly at 630am! He went up stairs and was instantly blown away by the view over the city. From the rooftop terrace, one can see the ... read more