Day 3 - July 26, 2018 Quito, Ecuador

Quito is quite a developed city in my mind.  Every street I've been to has a sidewalk.  There are trees and flowers/plants all over the city streets for beautification.  There are lots of parks and facilities for citizens.  Traffics are in good orders, mostly.  Public transportation is orderly and plentiful.  There are not much honking around, unlike other chaotic cities.  There are relatively few garbage on the streets.

We spent our second day in Quito to first explore the Basilica del Voto Nacional.  It is a surprisingly new structure, only finished in 1988 having started in 1892.  It is the largest Neo-gothic basilica in the Americas.  Although the outside looks grand, the interior is rather bland and austere.  We then walked to the nearby Old City to explore some more.  By chance, we walked into the Museo Metropolitano which is hosting an exhibition by Yoko Ono.  Truthfully, the exhibit is disturbing, featuring nudity when lots of families with young kids are visiting.

We walked to the Mercado Central to try out one of the top rated seafood restaurants in Quito:  Las Corvina de Don Jimmy.  It is located in the food court and features down to earth deep fried sea bass with cerviche and potatoes.  We shared one order (huge) which costs USD 6!  What a deal!

We next went to check out one of the top rated museums in Quito:  Museo Banco Central, now known as MuNu.  It has three floors of exhibits featuring pre-colonial periods to modern era.  We were surprised that the admission is free for such high quality exhibits.

Gold mask in museum

View from our hotel room

Volcano Cotopaxi from our window

Day 1 & 2 - July 24-25, 2018 Quito, Ecuador

We arrived at Quito, Ecuador just before midnight via Houston and Denver.  This airport just opened recently for few years and is actually quite far from the city itself.  It took our taxi over 30 mins to get to our hotel without any traffic.  According to locals, it is a great improvement compared to the old airport which was located right in the city and they claimed you could actually see residents cooking dinner or playing in their backyard while landing rapidly!

Quito is the second highest capital city (2850 m) in the world after La Paz, Bolivia (3640 m).  I am surprised that it is higher than Thimphu, Bhutan (2648 m) since Bhutan is near Himalayas.  I was worried about altitude sickness when we just air-drop in like this.  Other than feeling slightly out of breath initially, we have acclimatized nicely.

Our hotel is a serviced apartment which is quite roomy and quiet.  After a good night of sleep (not much of a jet lag since their time zone is only 2h ahead of Vancouver), we woke up to a good breakfast before heading out to ride the Teleferico (cable car) up to Cumbre Rucu.  The teleferico ride will bring you up an elevation of over 1000 m to an altitude of 4000 m in 18 mins!  Of course, we felt like an old couple up there not having acclimatized to Quito yet and now went up further to 4000 m!  The view however is worth it.  We could see the whole Quito city spreads out before us from North to South as well as several volcanos surrounding Quito.  The funny thing is once we rode back down to Quito elevation of 2900 m, we felt like we have a oxygen mask back on, and we could breathe so much easier!

Taxi here is similar to other Latin American countries where you have to haggle with the driver how much is the taxi fare.  Although there is meter in each cab, they don't use it.  From the Teleferico to the Old town, all taxi demanded US 7 even it is a short 3.5 km ride away.  We were lucky to split the fare with another couple we shared the cable car down earlier.  This type of gouging made me quite mad and more determined to find out how to use local bus transportation.  Quito has three lines of trolley rapid bus running North to South so it took me no time to figure out how to ride these buses and skip using the taxi altogether.  To top it off, the bus fare is insanely low at US 0.25!

By the way, Ecuador adopted USD as their currency since 2000 due to rampant inflation and rapid devaluation of their old currency Sucre.  They are eager user of American $1 coin here but I don't recognize their 0.50 coin.

We explored the Old Quito starting in Plaza Grande.  The Presidential Palace on one side and the Catedral on one side.  Interestingly, the ground level of both buildings are occupied by stores and vendors selling foods, clothings, etc.  I think this is the first time I have seen this arrangement.  We continued our walk to Iglesia de San Francisco (beautiful santuary) and visited Casa del Alabado which has a superb Museo de Arte Pre-Colombino.  They specialized in Pre-Colombo native arts collections.  We then walked to Calle La Ronda which is a revitalized historic district where Old Quito used to be like.

After the walk, we took the bus to New Quito and wanted to check out the recommended (by our hotel) restaurant.  Unfortunately, it was closed so we tried a paella specialty restaurant nearby.  We then walked back to the hotel after dinner, exploring the new part of Quito.