Off to hang with the finches

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Bright and early tomorrow morning, I´ll be hailing a cab to take me to the airport, clutching my binoculars and butterfly catching net. (I wish I had either of these, it would make me look so much more authentic. I´d like to do the whole thing in the style of a 19th century lady naturalist, actually, with fifteen men to carry my boxes of captured animals, and a parasol.)

I have ludicrously high hopes for the trip. I´m expecting it to be more successful than my last couple of days of tourism, at the very least. Yesterday was a bit of a flop, you see. I´m exagerating; I went round the cathedral, La Compania and another church whose name escapes me, all of which were stunning. I also did loads of walking round the pretty Old Town, and had my first empanada, which is a bad Cornish pasty.

But, I had the worst cup of "coffee" in my life, and then got a bus to a good museum which was closed for it being Monday. A slow learner, I got in a taxi and asked him to take me to the Vivarium, where there are snakes (I was running low on tourism ideas). We got about half way when I realised it would also be closed for the Monday reason, which I confirmed from a leaflet I had on my person, so I just had to do a little round trip in a taxi for $1.50. I went home for a nap instead.

Today, I visited the equator at the Mitad del Mundo. It could have been any area of land, just with a red line painted down it. Not the most impressive sight I´ve seen. And, it´s not even in the right place. The real equator is 300m away, but I thought I could just imagine that without trying to find it. In some of his memoirs, Italo Calvino is travelling through America, and he writes that he couldn´t be bothered to go to the Grand Canyon or the biggest desert, as he´s seen examples of these things already and imagines the biggest desert will be just a bit more deserted than the one he has seen, and the Grand Canyon just a bit more Canyon-like. I felt the real equator would just be a bit more equator-like than this mistaken equator. But at least I managed to get to the place and it was open and eveything.

Hope you´re enjoying the new photos. Just wait till the ones of giant turtles come rolling in...

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Comments

[Lali]

bad corn pasty?
Probably you tried a cheap empanada...spend a bit more and you wil get the finest empanada ever, start to treat yourself better. I was in Quito 2 months ago and it was "fantastique". The church you don't remember the name is called "Sagrario". I think you need to spend more time in Quito to apreciate the beauty of this unique city, listed as world heritage.

[Maria]

The photos are amazing Liz, the sky is brilliant and the colours are so vivid, much better than the grey here in england. Feeling quite jealous again. Also, the story about the crazy german - funny. You see stories about other people can be amusing. Other people are weird (its not just me). xx Ps Death road looks well cool, there was no way you couldn't have done it.