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Published: August 8th 2006
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Mitad del Mundo
The line between us separates the world in two, the north and the south, as it indicates also our different worlds... We left our base in Ecuador, Guayaquil in the early morning of the 3rd of August. Our bustrip, which had a small delay of an hour caused by the compagnies fault, brought us to the capital of Ecuador, Quito. We arrived after a beautiful trip of 9 hours, through the coastregion and the highlands. ( the weather and circumstances were perfect to take some nice shots!)
Marco´s uncle , who is living and working in Quito, picked us up and after a short touristtour around town, he brought us to his really cosy apartment, which is gonna be our base for this three weeks. Time goes quickly, so I found the way to my bed very soon and ended up in dreamland before Marco even could say¨"goodnight"... ( that´s me...)
The next days we spent our time in the northern Andean highlands of Ecuador. This is the region around Quito, only two hours more to the north. It is one of the most popular travel destinations in Ecuador and I can garanty you that is amazingly beautiful with breath-taking views over lakes and vulcano´s and with friendly locals.... A good spot to start our first short trip of a
couple of days, only the beginning of a three weeks expedition...
Day 1: exploring Quito-city and feeling the vibration while standing on the middle of the world! .
it´s something unforgetable, my dear friends. This is the most famous local excursion to the equator. This is the place where, in 1736, Charles-Marie de La Condamine´s expedition made the measurements that showed that this was indid the equator. These measurements gave rise to the metric system and proved that the world is not perfectly round, but that it bulges at the equator. The equadorian goverment made this location as a touristic atraction and built a village around it with shops, expositionrooms and restaurants.
We spent also a few hours in the historical centre of Quito, centered around the presidential palace, the main plaza and a church, acording to Marco´s uncle the first three construction that the Spaniards built when they had captured a town. We could´t spend enough time to see everything, so we hope to get ( or do we have to create one ourself?) another oportunity later during our expedition
day 2: Purchasing amazing handicrafts at Ecuadors most famous market in Otovalo.
day 3: enjoying a
lovely Helado de Paila in Ibarra, buying some nice and cheap leatherstuff in Cotacachi and relaxing with a beautiful vieuw over the vulcano lake of Cuicocha. The Cuicocha is an old eroded volcanic crater famous for the deep lake found within. The view over the lake is impressive and so is the surroundings! The helado de Paila is still handmade and they only thing they use to prepare this delicious and iresistable sorbet is a wooden spoon, a copper bowl and ice. Rosalía Suárez founded this recipe in 1897 and she used ice carried down from the Volcán Imbabura and the pure juice of local tropical fruits. This lady died a couple of years ago but her grandson is running the shop now, which is still a really popular place. we passed the shop around 11am and it was almost full!
day 4: this was a get off- get into the bustrip with stops on the lake of San Pablo, the centre of Cayambe and Calderón to end up in Quito again. .
The lake of San Pablo is on the footh of the Imbarbura Vulcano (4609m) and is really beautiful. We tried to reach the lake via a small
and muddy path( where pigs were taking a daily mudbath) but finally we had to follow the more and boring traditional way... The view that we had from our spot was amazing, but also pretty freezing so we couldn´t stay long. From the lake we took a bus to the next stop, Cayambe. This little town is famous for cheese, cheeseproducts and Bizcochos ( saltcrackers). The town itself was under reconstruction, but the local shops with fresh products were still reachable. We tried the saltcrackers and some Queso de hoja, but at the end we decided that we preferred the saltcrackers of social club and that the fresh trip was not really the trip worth. But although it was a nice experience. The last stop on our way from Otavalo to Quito was the village of Calderón. Not that much to see in this town, but the locals are always bussy making all kind of creations with breaddough, called Masa Pan. I couldn´t resist and my next christmasstree will be decorated with some lovely Masa Pan-sheeps! The locals are really very nice people and with their help we found easily the right bus to our apartment in Quito
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