Unsurprisingly, Quito has some beautiful and old churches, from the gothic to the baroque to those with Moorish influences:
I took a tour from Quito to this crater right near the equator where a volcano, allegedly the highest mountain in South America, blew up 2500 yrs ago. Exciting no doubt, but the feeling might have been of short duration, so glad I was not around for that. But the crater itself was quite stunning, as consisted of beautiful farmland surrounded by towering mountains waiting their turn to blow up. Sadly, the weather was very cloudy and views were restricted.
Of course Equator is most famous for being on the equator. There is word for that but it escapes me at the moment, but I did spend some time straddling the hemisheres-
In any case I took a bus today into the Andes backcountry. The buses took about 6 hours to get me to the village of Chichillian near the famous Quilota Lake perhaps 80 miles from Quito. They set me back $5.80 which seemed a little stiff to me. The buses were a bit of an 'authentic' experience (the kind every tourist desires but doesn't really want). The plan seemed to be to stop at everyone's house along the way (includng mine at the end) where I found a little bit of England in the Andes
at onne point, a clown got on the bus and proceeded to enact some sort of clown act to entertain the locals and one tourist (as far I could tell). Of course my lack of spanish made some of the jokes go over my head, but I am not sure how funny he was after watching the tips. But a unique experience for sure.
Finally ended up my inn for the night- The Black Sheep Inn. Seemed to fit me where I found:
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"The kind every tourists desires but doesn't really want" killed me. Filed under "funny because it's true."
ReplyDeleteWhat are the chances of finding TWO clowns on the same bus in the Ecuadorean backcountry?
Hope you're gaving a blast, Ken!
As a side note: as some kind of cruel cosmic joke, I had to click through a data privacy acknowledgement to post a comment here.
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