¡ECUADOR!

We made it to Ecuador safely for our next adventure. We´ve actually been here for over 2 weeks now, but I have just now had time to catch up with some blogging. We have been very fortunate here because Scott has a friend of a friend, Dan who lives in Quito and has been extremely kind to allow us to use his home as a home base for our travels around Ecuador. It´s been very nice to be able to stay in a real home again after so long. Quito is a city at over 9000 feet in altitude and I definitely noticed this as we walked around the city. It is almost twice as high as Denver, if you can imagine that!




One day we went up a cable car to a place call Teleferico. The altitude at the top is 4100 meters, which is almost 13,500 feet! From the top, you can see the beautiful peak of the Cotopaxi volcano in the distance. The views of the city were incredible. We had a glass of wine at this height, so that we could put more of a reason to our already drunken feeling. In talking to Dan, we learned that there has been a history of much political unrest in Ecuador. Apparently, they have not been able to have a president complete a 4 year term in many years because there is always a turnover due to the indigenous people revolting. We found this very interesting and very much enjoyed speaking with his co-workers and friends one night when we went out. Apparently, there is a lot of racism against people of different colors of skin in the country. The country is split up so that most of the pure indigenous people are in the north, the mestizos (people with split blood between the indians and the Spanish) are mainly in the center and the lighter skinned and haired Spanish people are mainly in the south.

Quito is by far the most developed place that we have been since starting our travels. The roads, malls, etc. are just like what you would find in the United States. However, the infrastructure for getting things done is even further behind than the last two countries we have visited. We had to spend a full 2 days to book the tours that we would be taking on our stay in Ecuador. It was quite stressful, but makes us again feel lucky to have the infrastructure that we have in the US.


There are still many children and poorer families begging in the touristy sections of town. After breakfast one day, we took our pounds of potatoes to go so that we could share some of the food that we wouldn´t finish. Within a minute of walking into old town, as I was about to take a picture of Scott in the center, the cutest little boy walked right up to Scott and took the food out of his hand. He ran back to his family with a huge smile on his face for the food he was able to bring to them.



Quito has many beautiful churches, especially in the Old Town section. This one is called La Compania church and was constructed starting in the 1600´s and finished in 1765. It was a church built by the Jesuits. The inside was incredibly ornate with gold on almost everything you could see.