Quito - An important celebration
The capital city of Ecuador has been described to us as unsafe, dangerous, but at the same time one of the best colonial city in South America. Well, for us it hasn’t been neither of these things.
Of course, we took extreme care during daytime, but especially after dark, but we haven’t felt unsafe at all. On the other hand we didn’t fall in love with its well preserved city centre. It’s nice, but that’s it.
We arrived in Quito on an early afternoon, after a bus journey from Otavalo and the even longer (on scale) journey from the bus terminal to La Mariscal suburb.
We are in the rainy season, hence the weather is nice in the morning, but it can turn really bad on afternoons. At that was the case on our first day, it started to rain as soon as we arrived. We wouldn’t have done anything special anyway.
We walked along La Mariscal, first to ask some info to a salsa school for some lessons that we didn’t take at the end, then we went to an american bookshop and we bought a book to learn Spanish. After that it started to rain heavily so we find a refuge in a chocolate shop to drink a nice hot chocolate. We also learnt about the importance of cocoa plantations in Ecuador...who knows if we have the time to check one of them out?
After few other little shopping tasks, we came back to the hostel and rested a bit. Oh, I was forgetting that at the hostel, which had the same name as the one in Otavalo, we found HIM: Marcelo, the guy who was looking after the hostel in Otavalo until literally the same morning we headed off to Quito. What a surprise to find him here too with his happiness in pronouncing Erika’s name...Erikka, Erikka Canuti! Buenas noches Erikka. What a weird but gentle man!
We then went to a restaurant for the night because we were celebrating our first month of marriage. So we dressed up with our brand new traditional clothes and we made the other westerns talk on our back. The dinner was nice and we enjoyed chatting about our recent wedding and how much we loved the celebration, despite all the difficulties.
On the second day in Quito we joined a “free” walking tour through the city center. Our guide though was not worth a tenth of our beloved Mariluz who showed us Medellin in Colombia. She was repeating way too often that a tip at the end was expected and well received and she stopped in too many places to encourage us doing some local shopping. But, putting this aside, the tour was nice. We went to the local market where we got to know some typical fruits and dishes, that we then had for lunch (cebollata and cervina...delicious). We then visited the main square, the most important churches and some other interesting building. She spoke a bit about history, politics and why Ecuador uses US dollars as official currency.
After the tour we continued wandering around the centre and we reached a cathedral that looks like NotreDame...well, they tried! Once we got there the weather started to be threatening and we decided to head back taking public transports. Well, that was a sage decision. When we were in the bus it started to hail so hard that we waited under the bus stop for a while before walking to the hostel.
We rested in the hostel for the rest of the afternoon, but we were too tired to cook. We went to a cheap (but fat) fast food to then go back straightaway.
In the morning we had a supernice breakfast at the hostel with some yogurt and all the local fruits we bought the day before at the city market...so yummy! It was then time to leave to Latacunga, the base for the Quilotoa Loop!
