Post #50! More about Ecuador

This is Warren, again.

In this post, I'm going to cut down a bit on the sort of dragging details I included in the first post about our Easter week in Ecuador. My thought is that, due to spending several days doing similar things in the same place, my memory's gotten hazy. Plus, I taught six hours today and I'm a little beat.

I forgot to mention on our way to Quito, we passed through the Mitad del Mundo, which is a monument erected by a French expedition in the 19th century to mark the exact place on the globe where the equator passes. Apparently it's special, because everywhere else on Earth except for Quito the equator passes through either teeming rainforest or ocean. The monument itself is interesting but not amazing, though I do have a cool photo here marking where the equator should be.

And by should, I mean surveyors later discovered that the French had been mistaken about plopping their monument down, because the true equator was actually a few hundred meters away, where the Indians told them to build it. Of course, being brilliant Western academics, they had to go and prove themselves wrong just out of spite.

So, after locating our hotel room, Melody got depressed at how unlike its online description it turned out to be. Read her thoughts in the post below if you want to know exactly what she was thinking. Basically, the place smelled like fish sticks, our window faced loud traffic, there was internet but no connectivity, and there was shower water that was at best lukewarm.

We went to Gringolandia, a neighborhood in Quito where all the foreigners hang out as business-owners and tourists. We agreed to go on a later bikeride with the Biking Dutchman, and had lunch/dinner (lunner?) at Red Hot Chili Peppers (Mexican food). Our first night was honestly blah.

Day two, Wednesday, we woke and walked to the government square where some protesters were shouting. We signed up for a personalized tour of Quito for Saturday. We went to a museum about ancient Ecuadorian cultures as well as colonial religious artwork. Weird combination. Paid for our biking trip to the volcano Cotopaxi for Thursday at Biking Dutchman. Bought cheapo fridge magnets and keychains later. And later still, we lined up outside the symphony hall for a free concert in which the orchestra lacked a string section but still insisted on playing some classical style pieces like Barber's "Adagio for Strings." Ironic choice, eh?

Thursday morning we woke in the dark and took cold showers before heading to Gringolandia and hopping in the Biking Dutchman Toyota Land Cruiser for our excursion to Cotopaxi. We had a bilingual biking expert lead us, a Spanish-speaking driver, and there were two other guys along for the adventure--Camilo, a Colombian engineer from Bogota who worked for Mazda, and an ex-pat Brit named Oliver who recently left his job as high school math teacher in New Zealand. We were eclectic, but we all meshed somehow.

We saw Cotopaxi volcano's snow-capped peak much sooner than the two hours it took us to traverse the Pan-American Highway to get there. We stopped along the way so that we could take pictures. It was both cool and cold.


Riding down was definitely an experience. We bundled in coats, gloves, and stocking caps (I bought Melody gloves and a cap made of alpaca wool at the entrance to the national park) to battle the fierce cold. The first eight kilometers were downhill on a curvy, steep, pothole-encrusted, more-dirt-than-gravel road. Hurts your hands from all the shaking. When the land flattened out again it was easier on the hands and harder on our lungs. Thankfully we stopped for water and pictures every so often.

Everyone had lunch around a hut meant to demonstrate what the ruins of the Incan hut at the top of the next hill would have looked like. We ate excellent hummus and pita, cheesy pasta, and some kind of lasagna, washed down with warm green tea and finished off with brownies.

More tomorrow... I still have to write about the el Gran Poder procession/parade that featured thousands of people dressed in purple robes and hats that strongly resembled KKK costumes.