Quito, Ecaudor

When I go on my plus one vacations, I always want to go some where exotic. I am trying to go to every continent. I picked Ecuador solely for no visa in South America with the added bonus that it was below the equator. I later found out it used the US dollar. Do you know how nice it is not to exchange your money? You actually know how much your spending. I spent less than $400. Crazy huh. You would be amazed at people asking you why Ecuador, so now you know.

Our first day Chante and I went straight from work to Quito and arrived that night. I can't believe how quick it is to get to Quito. It is the same distance as Atlanta to LA. I thought I was going somewhere crazy far with bad jet lag, but I stayed in the same timezone and was only tired because it was midnight. I think I will go to South America more often!

We almost broke the bathroom door because it slides instead of opening. 

Saturday night entertainment outside our apartment.

Couldn't start a fire though.

Local tagging art.

Our first adventure was getting a taxi to downtown Quito, the taxi driver didn't know where our apartment was, we had to go online since no one knew the address, and find landmarks before someone could get us there. Our apartment was nice and cheap. It made us feel like we lived in the city and had followed someone home. It was cold at night as they didn't have central heating and on top of crazy high mountains, but we loved it. We had to deal with pressurization just walking the uphill in the streets. It was a good thing both of us were use to quick altitude changes.

The disturbing thing about the bathroom was the huge windows from the bathroom leading to a courtyard. There were no curtains, it made it a very "free" experience when showering and going to the bathroom. I have a slight obsession with bathrooms in foreign countries since it is the same act, but people have many ways and accessories on how you do it.The neighborhood we were in was a touristy area because everything was more expensive and more nice looking. It also was an arty area where there was a community center that had art classes, salsa dancing, and yoga. There was tagging and wall art with night entertainment. It was also super safe as cops were just walking around keeping peace. Another surprising thing was how many women were police. We even met some people from Mexico who came to train with their police.

Otavalo Market and Town

We went to Otavalo our first full day since it was all about the Saturday market.  We had to take the bus two hours north of Quito. The public transport is crazy awesome. My brother-in-law, who lived there, said to take the bus every where, but I thought it was like American buses, very few not very often.  Instead it was nice motor coaches that left every five to ten minutes. At the market we found locally made woven scarfs, beading, carved spoons, chess sets, and my favorite yarn! Oh how I love yarn. I was so excited I forgot to take a picture of the stall. We only saw one stall, but the rain had come out and people were packing up so there may have been more yarn stalls.  I bought 9 yarns for $11 bucks. The stall owner thought he hit the jackpot because I didn't even bargain. I spent way more on yarn earlier in the week, so we both were happy. This is not the end of my yarn obsession because I found the yarn shops in old town and spent two days buying yarn. I ended up with 20 balls. I still don't know how I got it all home because I was packed so tight before I even got there. We had to spend some of our nights winding yarn. Chante was such a  good sport to help me wind, of course she got four projects made for her, so it worked out. We had heard that there was a great leather town, Cotacachi. We got a taxi and drove up a beautiful windy road with some street food we found in Otavalo. I was able to get a purse, a clutch, and some completely impractical leather shoes.  I ended up spending $75 total; it was awesome. A bit high class touristy, but a great little city.

Hmm Food

This day taught us many things such as the wonderful public transport, but that Ecuadorans like mixing things together. Out street meat was a variation of what we ate the entire time. Chicken (on the bone and it was fried and tasted unreal...when was the last time I had a real piece of chicken on the bone?) with some veg such as shaved cabbage, mayo, rice, and fries. Fries don't really seem like they mix with rice, but somehow it does. We may have changed our meat, but we always had our rice and fries. Other thing I loved was fresh potato, plantain, and taro chips on the street. I had taro chips at Kroger in their chic health food section and they are pretty good, so when I saw them I went nuts.


Our next day was Sunday, so we went to church in Quito. It was great because the ward was so warm and happy that we were there. I had no idea what was said since I had no Spanish experience, but I did know the word Mariposa, butterfly, which someone said during their talk. Chante was my translator she was working off of one semester of Spanish. It was funny because my second language was French and Chante's was Croatian, so we would flip into that when we were trying to communicate. People would give us strange looks, but were kind and tried to keep talking to us until we understood each other.

After church we took the bus to Mitad de Mundo, the middle of the earth, the day before the fall equinox, which doesn't really make a difference when you are at the equator, but I thought it was cool to see it during that time anyways.  We didn't go to the original monument set up in 1736 because it was a tourist trap and there was museum that was roughly 50 feet away that GPS had plotted as the real equator. Which considering technology 200 meters off is not too bad. I guess it has even moved from there according to Wikipedia. They also had a cultural museum attached and we learn about burial grounds, the shrunken head tribe of the Amazon. It was ridiculous fun and I was glad we went to the little museum instead of the park with a big monument, with no experiments.

This is suppose to be a child's shrunken head.

I didn't edit, but this is me trying to walk the equator straight and can't do it! It was the best experiment of them all. It was crazy because you could kind of feel the pull of each pole on  you while you try to walk straight.