Quito and visiting the Equator

Back to Quito

I'm not sure you can call it returning, because we'd only had less than 12 hours in Quito previously. We arrived around 5pm in the sprawling city that had houses perched up every mountainside you could see. They were reminescent of the favelas of Rio de Janiero.

With less than two hours of daylight left, after which it gets a bit unsafe for tourists, we decided to head out for dinner. We wanted to find a place called Vista Hermosa (beautiful view). We walked through one plaza to near another but couldn’t see it anywhere. Our map was pointing at an empty building on a random street. So we ended up having pizza in a small bar recommended by Lonely Planet, where everyone including the chef was glued to the football on TV.

We walked home and I was in bed by 9pm. The altitude doesn’t feel as bad this time.

Exploring Quito

We slept in today to counter our upcoming night flight. The breakfast wasn’t as good today, the bread was stale and there was no yoghurt. We spent the morning checking out the Old Town/Centro Historico.

First we went to the central market and saw some crazy fruit, a giant passionfruit with pale, sweet seeds, a small yellow dragonfruit and a custard apple thing. We didn’t really feel like eating it straight away so we carried it to the main plaza where some kind of festival/huge church service/protest was happening. It involved a lot of police cordoning off the area, dancing and people with huge banners. The sun was really hot and we walked to San Francisco square to find that market. Thanks to a nice lady in a tourist shop who warned us about robberies if we had our phones out, we found the market. Susie had a hot chocolate and I had a water.

Then we dropped off our fruit and we to La Ronda, a little street that used to be the edge of the city where lots of musicians had lived. Now it was restored in colonial splendour. We wanted to have lunch but basically everywhere was closed, so we had a very confusing lunch of strange empanadas and ‘bolon’, a ball of plantain deep-fried, basically a huge starch ball.

The Equator

We tried to get an Uber but had to go back to our hotel to use the wifi. It took almost 45 minutes to get there, but it was worth it to be on the equator! On the actual GPS equator there was this crazy kitsch museum that looked like a sad amusement park. A guide took us around and showed us all sorts of bizarre things – shrunken heads, traditional houses and statues.

By far the best part was the equator line and seeing the coralis effect. It really worked! Just two metres either side of the equator the water swirled down the plug in different directions. On the equator you could balance an egg on a nail. A strange one I hadn’t heard about was when all the men in our group held their hands above their heads and the guide tried to pull them down, he wasn’t able to off the equator. But on the equator line he could easily pull their arms down with only two fingers. Also, when you walk down the equator with your arms out and eyes shut (like a drink-driving test), you could actually feel the magnetic pull on both hands. But if you tried it either side, you could only feel it in one. It was quite amazing.

Then we went to a monument for the equator, actually 300metres off the actual line. That part was weird and we didn’t stick around because it felt so fake.

We got a taxi back, picked up our washing from the laundromat, and went out to dinner to find Vista Hermosa the second time. We eventually found it, with a lot of strangers' help and misunderstood Spanish diretions, despite memorising the map.

The view of twinkling buildings and both the north and southern hemisphere stars was beautiful from the rooftop. We had an enormous spaghetti bolognese and over-priced red wine. Then it was off home to bed to try steal a few hours sleep for our 1.30am airport pickup. Our time in Ecuador has really flown by and I don't feel like I got to know the country like in other places. But I've always wanted to go to Peru so I'm happy to have a bit more time there before we start our tour.