Ecuador, Summer 2013 (Part 2)
THE FOLLOWING BLOG POST WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THIS WEBSITE WAS EVER CONCEIVED ON MY OLD TUMBLR ACCOUNT. IT HAS BEEN EDITED FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORM FOR GRAMMAR, PACING, AND TO MAKE IT AN OVERALL BETTER READ.
I woke up early on June 7th to head to the offices of “Transportes Ecuador,” a privately owned bus company specialized in higher end bus travel within the country. I made it in time to catch the 8:50 AM bus to Quito. The ticket for this 270 mile, 8 hour trip only cost me $10 which is a pretty hard price to beat.
I made my way to the platform where the bus would depart and was greeted by the driver. He offered to put my backpack in the baggage compartment below but I personally felt better just having it with me.
I got the seat in the front of the bus as it offers the most legroom, an invaluable commodity when you’re 6’4. That being said, the extra legroom was still not all that much and I was pretty crapped. The unfortunate reality is that people Latin America are on average a lot shorter than people in the US so things are going to be designed for smaller people. Including the amount of legroom.
The seats on this Brazilian made Marcopolo Paradiso 1200 were arranged in a 2-2 configuration with a bathroom in the rear. The interior felt a lot like being inside an older CRJ200 or some other type of regional aircraft.
There were two LCD screens showing movies that folded down in the middle of the aisle. These made it rather difficult walking towards the back of the bus as I had to duck down underneath them. Also the front-most screen was basically right next to my seat so it didn’t really offer the best viewing angle, not that I was particularly interested in the movie they were showing.
The drive through the mountains offered beautiful views of the landscape as well as the day to day in the lives of people outside the major cities.
We made it to the town of Ambato, about halfway between Guayaquil and Quito to make a quick pit stop. We were given roughly fifteen minutes to stretch our legs, go to the restrooms, or buy snacks. I definitely did all of the above.
With a couple of sodas and a few bags of Tortolines, I was ready to continue the rest of our journey. We rode North for another four hours before finally arriving to Quito two hours after our scheduled arrival. This was partially due to the unbelievably bad traffic in the city.
Quito is situated in a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. Because of it’s geographical constraints, the city is incredibly long and narrow so traffic can only flow predominantly in a North/South direction with no real way to go around it all.
My uncle in whose guest room I’d be staying in picked me up from the Juan Leon Mera bus station. We watched the World Cup qualifying match between Ecuador and Peru with before I went to bed for the night.
The next morning, my uncle and I went to see some of the sights around the city. The first stop on our tour was the “TelefériQo,” a gondola running up the side of the Pichincha Volcano.
Quito is really high up. In fact it is the highest capital city in the world with an elevation of 9,350 feet above sea level. That’s almost twice as high up as Denver.
The TeleferiQo drops you off near the Cruz Loma lookout point, just under 13,000 feet above sea level. From here you can hike on a path a little bit higher up the Volcano or you can even hike down if you’re so inclined. The air at this altitude is extremely thin and it gets really easy to run out of breath.
The views from up there are breathtaking.
We took the gondola back down and headed north to the Middle of the World Monument.
The 30 meter tall structure, erected in 1982, sits in the middle of the geographic equator, or at least what was thought to be the equator until GPS technology placed its true location 240 meters to the north of the marked line.
After taking a few pictures, we went to eat at one of the restaurants located within the Middle of the World complex. I got one of my favorite Ecuadorian dishes: fritada, a regional dish popular in the mountainous areas of the country consisting of pork which is braised and then fried and is usually served with things like potato cakes (known as llapingachos in Ecuador), hominy, and white corn.
Awkward posture. True to form