Ecuador has always been a special place for me. When I was in Junior school our headmistress Mrs Knowles used to tell us about it, particularly because as a school we sponsored a little girl from there, Olga. We all tried to raise money by selling dubious looking cakes, or from holding '2p a go' competitions. These were held come rain or shine at break times, where we would huddle on the steps of the hut in the playground waiting for people to guess how many sweets were in the jar or to guess the name of the teddy, for an end of week total of approximately £1.37 (always an odd number, even at 2p a go). The money raised from all of this, and from the proceeds of every mufty day, went to Olga in Ecuador; we were sent a picture and a letter at least once a year of a smiling girl who never seemed to age, always wrapped in a red blanket. We even had a song that we sang about Olga in assembly -
There's a little girl in Ecuador, I'd like to be my friend
There are lots of ways to help her with the money that we send
I may never see her, it's a very long way to go
But the photograph shows that little girl is a great person to know.
(Credit to Jayne for remembering the words ;))
Having found out last week that Mrs Knowles had sadly died late last year, and as reminiscing is one of the things I do best, I found it hard to get the image of the little girl in the photo out of my mind, not to mention the song. Ecuador has been ingrained into me since I was 6 as a special and far away place to go, and because of that has always been somewhere I've wanted to visit. On top of that, visiting a brand new country was so exciting - we were both looking forward to exploring.
The first odd thing on arriving in Ecuador was that their currency is the dollar. We've been using dollars throughout South America, but they are usually interspersed with colourful, threadbare and mostly ruined notes from the local currency, Chile being the exception where they have adopted the plastic currency like Australia and New Zealand to name two countries - which is almost indestructible!
We drove off to Quito, a city which I knew little about other than it was again at high altitude, and surrounded by mountains. The new airport is quite a way out of town, but the new road hasn't been completed yet, so it is a trek to the airport. The old airport was in the centre of the city, it closed one day last February, and the new airport opened the next day, with most of the same staff - very efficient. The safety record at the old airport was not good, look on Wikipedia for the highlights... They have transformed the site of the old airport into a city park, where concerts are held, and a terminal for the new metro system is going to be built. This has happened really quickly, it was only last February. Not much of Quito was visible as we drove in, as the clouds had descended over the mountains.
Little change the next morning, buildings appeared through the clouds in waves and then disappeared again, and not a mountain in sight. We drove up to the teleferico, up a very steep hill above the city, hoping that the clouds would clear. When we got to the ticket counter the lady behind it looked at us as if we were loco - 'no vista'. Perhaps not the best day to try and get a panoramic view of the city then! The site of the teleferico station was very odd, Andy decided one particular building looked like a Cold War ice cream shop... Not sure where he got that from, but it was strange up there, particularly in the clouds.
Not phased by being sent away, we went back down the hill and found the joining point for the city tour bus. The smog and pollution on the streets of Quito can be quite debilitating, combined with the altitude there really is very little air to breathe when on street level walking along, so the bus was a welcome relief. We drove around the town seeing various sites, city parks, giant hospitals, and a mall being 3 of the scripted highlights. Unimpressed thus far we moved into the old town, a UNESCO site with steep cobbled streets and geraniums hanging from window boxes at every turn. We passed a beautiful church with twin spires, and the main square, which was much more in line with what I had been expecting from Quito.
I should explain that coming from colonial Cusco, with it's cobbled streets and unmistakeable South American style, in my head Quito was going to be similar but on a larger scale. I couldn't have been more wrong, Quito is a bustling, sprawling city of over 2 million people - spread out along the valley that seemingly stretches out forever. The buildings are certainly different, a multitude of colours and styles, with the unfinished aspect that we are now used to having seen it across the continent. In Quito it seems that the bottom floor of a house is built, with the beginnings of higher floors put in place, families move in, and when they have the money they build upwards.
The old town was really pretty, with its steep streets. We particularly liked the street of the seven crosses, a street with (as you would expect), seven stone crosses along it's length, of varying intricacy. We headed up the top of the El Panecillo area, where a giant statue of the virgin overlooks the city. The view was better than expected given the weather, although the signs explaining what we would see suggested that there were mountains and volcanoes out there - these were still invisible! Seeing condors swooping over the city was pretty cool, but I was really hoping for a view of Cotopaxi, the volcano dad trekked around for his charity trip 10 years ago, so the lack of visibility was quite disappointing.
One unusual addition to the view was a minivan with blacked out windows shaking. I hadn't noticed being oblivious as ever, but when I ventured too close to it to look at the view behind I was quickly extracted by Andy - who pointed out that there were clearly a couple of people inside the van enjoying their afternoon...! Temptation to knock on the windows was strong, if only so Andy could out the phrase - if the van is a rocking, don't come a knocking... I was quite shocked, Andy thought this was hilarious.
Thoroughly exhausted from a days sightseeing, and safe in the knowledge that we were coming back to Quito later, we went back to our hotel. Because we were joining a GAP (G Adventures) tour the next day, they had put us in a Hilton, on the executive floor - this gave us access to free drinks and snacks, so we were quite happy to settle into watching a couple of episodes of Homeland (the start of season 3), and an early sleep as we had an insanely early wake up call of 3.45am scheduled for the next day to go to the Galápagos Islands.
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