Ee-cua-DOR!!
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Published: February 15th 2016
Calle Vicente Leon
Colourful street just behind the hostel.Ecuador. The country's name evokes thoughts of the Galapagos with it's exotic wildlife, the Pacific coast with its pristine beaches, the Amazonian rainforest and its lush vegetation, banana exports, and
">this. This isn't the Ecuadorian national anthem by the way. But imagine if it was!
In recent times, it has also evoked thoughts of danger and crime, particularly in Quito - where I was heading next.
Another journey another overnight bus ride. I didn't sleep well again on the bus - a bumpy, winding ride, a lack of leg room and a rather large lady in the seat next to me put paid to that.
Once in Quito, I took the EcoVia from the city's southern bus terminal into the city. The EcoVia is Quito's version of
Lima's metro - a bus with a dedicated lane through the main thoroughfares of the city. The only problem was that I had arrived at 7.30am which was rush hour. People were literally fighting each other to get on the bus. Once inside it was like sardines in a tin and I actually missed my stop because I was so far inside the bus to see what was outside, and then I missed the
La Compania de Jesus
Jesuit church considered one of the most beautiful in Ecuador. next stop because I couldn't fight my way through the crowd to get off the bus! Thankfully it was a painless and more spacious affair catching the bus back in the opposite direction.
My first impressions of Quito's city centre was that it was a lot like
La Paz, but a little less ropey and with rude, impolite locals. Well, some of them anyway.
The overall feeling of sketchiness wasn't helped by my ongoing iPhone 6 search, which started at a mall filled to the brim with cellphone shops - a good place to start. Or not. Most of the cellphones on display were quite obviously second-hand...and I don't think these phones became second-hand voluntarily.
I asked one young shopkeeper if he had any iPhone 6s only for him to reply that he hadn't, before asking me if I actually wanted one.
"Si", I replied.
"Dame cinco minutos", he said.
Five minutes later, he returns with a very scratched up iPhone 6 - it was someone's phone! Did he just literally go and rob someone on the street?
"De donde has conseguidolo?", I asked him.
"Es mio", he replied. "Vendolo a ti por quiniento y setenta dolares." He was selling
Little Donkey
There was a neon nativity scene atop El Panecillo with a view of Quito in the background. me his own phone for US$570. I politely declined...
The search continues.
Right opposite my hostel in the old city centre is the central market, where there are restaurants selling local dishes for the best prices in town. It was perfect for a backpacker - the chance to save some dollars while trying out the local cuisine at the same time. Among the things I tried were
llapingachos (fried potato and cheese pancakes - I think I prefer
papas rellenos),
moro juice (made from berries that look and taste a lot like boysenberries) and the undoubted highlight -
corvina which is basically fried sea-bass. OMG. It is basically like KFC except that it is KFF but is actually really QFF. The fish is perfectly cooked - so soft and fresh. The spiced batter tops it all off.
A good way to see a lot of sights quickly while learning about what you are seeing at the same time, is to do a walking tour. They can be a bit hit-and-miss but the one organised by my hostel was spot-on. It took you to the main sights, gave you history and information about what you were seeing but not
North View Of Quito
From the top of the Basilica de Voto Nacional towards El Panecillo. too much as to cause information overload, and you were given time to take pictures. That is all you want from a walking tour and that is what we got. I won't go into detail about what I saw on the tour - the photos on this blog entry and their captions will do that for me.
The hostel itself - big shout out to Community Hostel in Quito - was also quite brilliant.
It was one of the cleanest I have ever stayed at (almost spotless), it was spacious, the beds were super-comfortable, there were lots of organised trips and activities and the optional breakfasts and dinners were inexpensive and delicious. The pork breakfast burgers and the evening hamburgers were better than what you'd get at most restaurants. Bona fide cooks were brought in specifically to prepare the everything and these communal meals made it really easy to meet people.
My Quito crew however, of Arno (Netherlands), Dominic (Canada) and Stefan (Germany) was forged in our dorm and it was with these guys that I went up to El Panecillo for some great views across the city. The statue up there is not quite
Christ The Redeemer though and the lighting
El Panecillo
Statue of the virgin atop this hill is not quite Christ The Redeemer in Rio. up there leaves a little to be desired. It was up here though, that I tried another Ecuadorian culinary delicacy -
canelazo, which is a hot, alcoholic cinnamon drink that tastes very much like
gluhwein. It gets a bit nippy in the evenings here in Quito, so it warmed me up nicely too.
All the taxi drivers that I had in Quito were all really friendly and the guy that drove us up to El Panecillo, waited for us, and then drove us back down again, was no exception. I had read that taxis in Quito could be a bit dodgy but every taxi I took seemed safe and looked official. To crack down on "express kidnappings" where taxi drivers would relieve you of all the cash in your bank account at gunpoint, it looks like all taxis now have to be officially registered and this has cleaned up the industry.
The locals apart from taxi drivers here in Quito however, are a little more hit and miss. Much like Bolivians, the locals I have met here are either really friendly or really rude, but to even greater extremes than I encountered in Bolivia. I seem to be an
Plaza Grande
Square that represents the heart of Quito. object of curiosity here and get stared and sniggered at a lot more here than in other places. It only serves to keep my guard up even higher, given everything else I had heard about Quito.
One night, Niels - who I had met in
Mancora and who travelled to
Cuenca with me, randomly showed up at the hostel. It was good to see him again and he, my Quito crew minus Dominic (replaced by American Joe from the hostel for the night) and I went out for what became a lads' night out in La Ronda, a bohemian alley of bars and restaurants in the city centre. We started out at a restaurant that was unable to serve half of their menu but the fun really started when we went to the dive bar right opposite it called Happy Mondays. Complete with a curtained nave that could seat two people that we christened "the makeout cave", I presume that the bar wasn't named after the band because once inside it was all metal and hard rock. We were loving it though - most of us were all the same age so we were revelling in the Rammstein, System
Basilica del Voto Nacional
The twin towers of Basilica del Voto Nacional from the top of its north tower. Of A Down and Limp Bizkit that was being played, reliving our high school and university days. It was a night of beers and real lad conversations and it was fun. We even got Jenga going and it was a shame that the bar closed before we could finish what would have been one of the greatest games of Jenga of all time. Just when you thought there were no loose pieces left to pick out, every player would find one, somewhat implausibly, to keep the game going at least a couple of rounds longer than it should've. Alas, we will never know how far we could've got.
The next day, we visited the Basilica de Voto Nacional which was well worth it.
Perched atop a small hill near the city centre, the church has two soaring towers which you can climb up via some scary ladders on the outside of them. The views at the top were worth the climb however, which looked out over both sides of the city. The church itself was gothic and it reminded me of the
York Minster. It started to rain quite heavily when we were up there too, making the ladders slippery
and even scarier - but having conquered the 40m-high, cliff-side, harness-less ladders in the
Drakensberg in South Africa last year, this was a piece of cake.
Yes, the rain. I had neglected to check when the rainy season was in South America - to be honest I didn't even know there was one - but I had been lucky that it didn't affect me more, particularly at
Machu Picchu. It was affecting me now though as it was pummelling down.
A good thing to do when it's raining however, is to visit a museum - which is exactly what we did in the form of the Museo Guayasamin, the former home of the famous local and indigenous painter, Oswaldo Guayasamin. He certainly had a pretty pimped house and also had some pretty impressive paintings. I'm certainly no art buff, but I can and do appreciate good art when I see it. The Capilla del Hombre in the same compound, is an impressive, purpose-built gallery of his works.
Since I had been travelling mainly to small towns and have somehow managed to avoid all the party hostels all the way from Cuzco, I had not had a proper night out now for about a month.
Plaza Santo Domingo
Where there are often street performers and where the Iglesia de Santo Domingo is located. Well that was about to change with the hostel-organised night out and I was keen to let off some steam. Niels was keen too, and we headed out with what was mainly the workers from the hostel, with the aim to get dr-unk.
It was Ladies' Night tonight meaning that at the bar we were at first, ladies got free drinks. So that certainly provided us with motivation to speak to the girls - so we could get them to get us drinks of course!
In our effort to catch up with the drunkenness around us however, it was the tequila shots that did for us. We were well and truly hammered now.
At the next bar, we got talking to and started dancing with a couple of local girls who demanded that we follow them for the rest of the night. They knew what they wanted and were literally throwing us around the dancefloor. We were too helpless to do anything or to care. They even bought us drinks for our troubles. Ecuadorian hospitality at its finest.
I felt a little rough the next day although in Ecuador they have the perfect hangover cure in the form of
Plaza Foch
The centre of La Mariscal. Foch yeah! encebollado, a fish and seafood soup which again, was delicious. I am really digging Ecuadorian cuisine!
It did the trick, because I managed to get out and about that afternoon, visiting the Museo Nacional...which was closed for renovations.
Instead, I walked around the neighbourhood of La Mariscal, where we had been out the previous night. Unsafe to walk around in at night, it is different during the day and is where a shit-ton of bars, restaurants, clubs, hotels and hostels are, earning it the local nickname "Gringolandia". With its modern buildings and nice bars and eateries, the place felt like a tackier version of
Buenos Aires's Palermo.
On the way there, I noticed that Quito has quite a lot of parks and green spaces for relaxation and recreation.
And that pretty much ended my stay in Quito. I enjoyed my time here, met some good people and I felt the city was better than I had expected. There is still poverty that is plain to see here although probably not as pronounced as I had seen in Bolivia and Peru. I would say that the city is between La Paz and Lima in terms of development as a capital city, maybe
San Blas
Neighbourhood close to the city centre. a bit more towards Lima.
My search for a iPhone replacement and my resolve to spend more time in Colombia and Central America means that I am zipping through Ecuador pretty quickly and after visits to just Cuenca and Quito, I will leaving the country already.
Having heard not a single bad thing about the country plus many more raving about it, I am really looking forward to my next destination; Colombia!
Hasta luego,
Derek
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