Ecuador, Summer 2019 (Part 6 - Quito, Continued)

On Saturday morning we had breakfast in a bit of a hurry as we were going to be picked up by my cousin Daniel around 10 AM. After picking up his girlfriend and meeting with my other cousin Gabriel, we all drove towards the city of Otavalo about two hours north of Quito.

We made a quick pit stop on the way to Otavalo at a little shop named Miralago overlooking the San Pablo Lagoon. We purchased some snacks, snagged a few pictures of the lagoon, and took a picture with a little boy and his alpaca.

Otavalo is a small town of roughly 40,000 but what it is best known for its outdoor artisan market which is the largest in South America.

Saturday’s are generally the liveliest days to visit the market as everyone comes out to sell their goods. I have to admit it’s a bit of a maze but people come from all over to shop here. Several tourists can be found with massive duffel bags of goods they shopped for here. You can find artisinal hand crafted sweaters and hoodies, table runners, blankets, quilts, hammocks, leather goods, street food, and tons and tons of knock off designer items.

Seeing as how I was trying to get rid of my old hoodie, I felt like this was as good a place as any to buy myself a new sweater, and I have to say, hand knit alpaca is ridiculously comfortable and a fraction of the price of cashmere.

After making off with a few gifts for people back home, we were in search of something to eat. My cousins suggested this place called “Fritadas Amazonas” which was conveniently on the way to our next stop.

As the name implies, this restaurant is best known for it’s fritada, a typical dish in the area made of braised pork which is then fried and typically served with hominy and potato cakes. The food here was to die for and the portions were all very generous. I was particularly impressed by the super bandeja, a meal meant for a whole family which is served on a 26x18in sheet pan.

With full bellies we got back on the road towards the town of Cotacachi where one can find the Cuicocha lagoon, a crater lake formed nearly 3100 years ago. In the native Kichwa, the name means “Lake of the Guinea Pig” as they believe the small island in the middle of the lagoon is shaped like one. For $3 you can get on a small boat and ride around the lagoon.

When we got back on dry land, the sun had already set behind the ridgeline so it was time to head back to Quito and to our hotel to get some rest before the next day’s adventure.

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We agreed to meet my cousins at noon which afforded us the opportunity to sleep in a little. At 11:30 I tried getting an Uber to pick us up at our hostel but they all seemed to cancel on us. I called Gabriel who said he’d swing by to pick us up but informed us that all the streets in the old part of town were closed off to cars, a common practice on Sunday allowing for a weekly bicycle event.

The closest he was able to get was the basilica we visited two days earlier, a little under a mile from the hostel. We hustled over there as quickly as we could, but as I mentioned in the previous journal entry, hustling is really difficult at this altitude.

When we finally found him and his car, we rode to the Teleferiqo, a gondola lift that opened in 2005 that takes you up the east side of the Pichincha volcano.

Once at the top, there are several lookouts you can hike to with varying degrees of difficulty. On a clear day you can see several other volcanoes from this vantage point. Unfortunately, Pichincha’s high altitude makes it prone to fog so we were unable to see much.

There would be small breaks in the cloud cover which let us see the city of Quito as it spread as far as the eye could see in the valley below. It was also extremely cold up there on that day and combined with the light drizzle our stay up there wasn’t extremely pleasant but we made the most out of it.

After taking the gondola back down, we stopped at my uncle’s place for a bit before heading to Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, or the Middle of the World City, about 15 miles north of Quito’s city center. The main attraction at Mitad del Mundo is a 30 meter tall monument indicating where the equator is according to a 1736 expedition known as the French Geodesic Expedition.

Unfortunately, since the monuments completion in 1982, modern GPS technology was able to conclude that the true equator runs about 800 feet north of the marked line. There is a small monument depicting the real point at which the equator crosses but it is far less impressive than the “wrong” one.

Nonetheless, it's extremely impressive that they were able to get so close to being right without all the luxuries afforded to us with modern technology.

Inside the monument itself is a multi-floor museum highlighting Ecuador’s geography, its past, and displaying several science experiments one can do at the “center of the earth.”

After the museum we headed back to my uncle’s home for dinner and to catch up before my cousin Daniel drove us back to the hostel.

We had originally planned to leave Quito the next morning but the bus we planned on taking to Baños was full. This meant we would have to wait until Tuesday to leave town. Fortunately the hostel was able to accommodate us the extra day.

We used our unexpected extra day in Quito to have a leisurely day through Old Town Quito. We visited the Church of the Society of Jesus, an iconic church near Independence Plaza known for its extreme use of gold leaf to cover huge portions of the interior. All in all, about 115 pounds (52 kg) of gold leaf remain on the walls worth roughly $2.6 million USD as of this writing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting eating, drinking coffee, and chit chatting between ourselves. When we got back to the hostel we packed our bags to get ready for a very early departure the next morning.