Sorry people! Due to a combination of lack of foresight, laziness, and a freak electrical outage Tuesday afternoon this is posting a day late. Good news is we are indeed still alive!
We have spent last week finishing everything on our list for northern and central Ecuador. This moment has been both extremely exciting for me (who doesn’t enjoy checking things off lists, right?) and massively stressful. Because once the list is done, we are left making decisions again. And even we have no idea what we will do… *sigh*
Our second to last stop was Mindo, a place just over 2 hours outside Quito that we had been hearing about since Panama. We had meant to meet up with a friend from the Colombian Caribbean beaches here, but the timing and correspondence didn’t work out.
We did spend some time exploring the area, walking around the cloud forest, and getting our laundry done. The area was beautiful! Birds, butterflies, and flowers everywhere.
But it is expensive, since all the Quiteños are so close by. This means that the many waterfalls nearby all have an entry fee, along with butterfly farms, tubing and rafting trips, and evening frog concerts. Tons of things to do, just all for a price.
The accommodation was also fairly expensive, so instead we pitched our tent and paid to use La Casa de Cecelia‘s bathroom facilities for $2.50 each. Very reasonable!
We woke up each morning next to a rushing river, birds chirping, and these strange pink bananas tempting us to pick them.
But how does one know when a pink banana is ripe? One butterfly in particular had a crush on Clifford and would cling to him whenever possible.
But the most memorable thing about Mindo was undoubtably the rain. The rainy season was early this year (the locals were all surprised with how much their climate had been changing lately), and it rained hard, daily, and for hours. The streets were rivers, drain pipes became angry waterfalls (where we would rinse off our coating of mud from our hikes), and parks were lakes. This put a bit of a damper on our camping, but we still made an effort to take walks, even in a deluge.
We were soaked almost constantly, but the views and local livestock were pleasant.
After three days we decided to move along back to Quito to dry out. Our last city on the checklist!
This was actually our third visit to Quito, since we had met G & M there in February, seen them off after their visit, and now decided to thoroughly explore the city. The thing about Quito is that it is ridiculously long. Not super wide, just a strip of endless city from north to south.
We settled into the middle, in the least expensive hostel we could find, El Centro del Mundo. $5.60 per person, including breakfast? What a deal! What we weren’t expecting was that everyone else in the hostel was planning on spending their savings on booze and drugs. And our bunks were in a hallway right near the common room. Yay.
After one of our worst night’s sleep and some commiserating with our friendly Belgian hallway mate we decided to get an overview of the city from the Teleferiqo just outside town. We set out on the trolley and shuttled to the far northeast of the city, where one of our guidebooks claimed there was to be a shuttle. Not so much.
So we climbed onto the metro and moved to the mid-northwest area where a friendly trolley employee had informed us there was a shuttle. Not so much.
So then we went to the central west part of town where we were supposed to be able to flag a cab for $1.50 or $2 according to the friendly information booth attendant. Except the cabs insisted on charging us $4. Not so much.
Our morning was at this point sufficiently spent. Ecuador had decided that we were not going to be visiting the Teleferiqo that day. Good news is that our entire morning adventure had cost all of 50 cents since we had managed to stay within the trolley-metro system! I glanced at my guidebook map and noticed that we were very near to one of our intended stops for a different day, Parque la Carolina.
We strolled over, played on the see-saw and tire swing, sat in the shade, and watched runners and paddle boats while we came up with our next plan.
We decided to hike uphill to the other side of town and visit the museum. Turns out one was closed (and the security guard looked at us like we were crazy, so it’s possibly permanently closed) and the other had doubled in cost. 😦 Against our promise to each other about paying for museums, we handed over the cash and looked at some seriously depressing, huge murals.
We cooked our dinner at the hostel, took advantage of free rum & coke night, primped, and went out salsa dancing. We found out that in general Quiteño clubs prefer electronic music, reggaeton, and American top 40 pop songs to salsa, so most of the salsa clubs are closed. From a collection of 5 suggested locations now there is only Wednesday nights at Aguijón and Salsa Studio in Plaza Foch (which we never saw open).
Salsa was good. Not great, but fun. I danced off the skin on the tips of my 4th toe and some girl opened up a cut on my foot so I’m probably slightly pessimistic about the evening. H was able to snag a job offer as a bio-chemist with Ecuador’s president, an invitation to cook breakfast for an adventure tour into the Pacific coast jungle, and a free beer. Nice.
We headed back to our hostel, ran into a friend from Colombia, and then returned to the drunken debauchery that free rum & coke nights had turned into. Worst. Night’s sleep. Ever. Ever, ever (including illness, heartbreak, college, and camping).
H told me first thing the next morning that we would be packing up immediately after free breakfast and moving hostels. Our new place, the Blue House, was so friendly and chill I nearly cried when they said they had space for us.
Then we hiked over to Guápulo to check out the expensive ambassador neighborhood. It was luckily a very quaint area, because the church we were meant to visit was closed for lunch when we arrived. We sat on our bench to wait out lunchtime.
We were there for almost 2 hours and made friends with the landscaper. Then, the church opened and we got to peek through high reflective glass into the pretty interior.
We drug ourselves back up and downhill and that evening went hunting for more nightlife or a film but instead we tucked into bed early.
Our last (planned) day was officially Old Town exploration day! Old town is beautiful, fun to explore, and dangerous. Many, many people are robbed here (also many robberies in our neighborhood in La Mariscal, but those are mostly at night). But we were not one of them (I believe our Ecuador robbery static requirements were met in the Amazon)!
We were able to climb the towers of the huge Basilica; for only $2 they set you free into the stairwells and we ran all over the church! There were seemingly endless stairs, balconies, catwalks, sketchy iron ladders, a belfry and so many windows. We were even able to scale the roof!
To take in the view
Best cathedral visit yet! We then sauntered to Parque Itchimbia for sunset. The place was a strange mix of shopping, medical center, recreational park, and reforestation but it had some spectacular views of Quito.
All while playing American classic rock from a strange furniture store/glass house/cultural center (?), and we sang loudly to Journey.
After the sun left us it got quite cold, so we headed to Parque la Alameda to enjoy their free light and music show. It wasn’t Vegas, but we enjoyed ourselves and the company of some local police watching over us.
The next morning we decided to put off our decisions for one more day and try to make it to the Teleferiqo again. We walked kilometers, missed our street, walked through a university, found some new ice cream, and eventually stumbled onto the right street, straight up the side of the volcano Pichincha. We finally arrived at the cable cars only to find that a ride is $8.50 per person. We went to a movie instead for $10 for both of us.
Then we had a decision to make. Which we did. In the middle of the night, using my very flimsy and incoherent night logic.
H
G
R:
Rule #2: Don't Die. 