August 6, 2006

I forgot to mention yesterday, but I picked up a book called The Templars just prior to the trip, for some reading material during the inevitable airport layovers and such. It’s a history of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, commonly knows as the Templars. I’m about 70 pages in and it looks like a good read.

The view of Pichincha from the sun room at Hotel Los Alpes


Me outside my room at Hotel Los Alpes


With nobody feeling negative effects of 9000+ feet in elevation here in Quito, we ended up having a busier day today than we had planned. We had breakfast at the Hotel Los Alpes, consisting of scrambled eggs, toast, guava juice, coffee and milk (which was served warm). From the sun room at Los Alpes, we have a fine view of Pichincha, a volcano that looms over Quito to the west.

We’re now ready to head out for a day in and around Quito. It’s a beautiful day, with a few clouds, but clear enough to have good views, so we decide to head to El Panecillo (which means “little bread loaf), a sizable hill on the south side of Quito where a large statue of the Virgin of Quito stands at the top. We arrange for a taxi driver through the hotel, and we head out with our taxi driver, Walter, to El Panecillo. There’s a good bit of traffic in Quito and also pollution. When we go through a few tunnels, Walter has us role up our windows, as the pollution gets worse inside the tunnels. El Panecillo is quite interesting and provides us with excellent views all around, though some of the volcano peaks to the south are hidden in clouds. Mom and Walter are having regular conversations in Spanish that neither John or I understand for the most part, but Mom gives us a bit of interpretation at times to keep us in the loop.


Walter, the taxi driver, showing something to Mom


A view back towards Quito from El Panecillo


El Panecillo


After visiting El Panecillo, Walter takes us shopping, as John has realized that several pairs of pants he thought he had packed hadn’t made it into his suitcases. So he picks up two pairs of slacks for $10 each. Mom picks up a number of things (gifts included, so I can’t go into details!) and I pick up an Ecuador national soccer team shirt and a shirt for one of the club teams in Ecuador. The slacks John bought needed to be shortened a bit, so Walter drives us to his house, where his wife takes the requisite measurements and will have the slacks ready for John the next day for a very reasonable charge. Walter’s fine hospitality is shown, as he serves us Sprite while we wait for the measurements to be taken.

At this point we still have a good chunk of the day left and we’re feeling fine, so we decide to have Walter take us a little bit north of Quito to Mitad del Mundo, where the Equator passes through Ecuador (and where Ecuador derives its name). Mom keeps raving about how Quito is so much more built up than she remembers it (not entirely surprising given she hasn’t been here for over 50 years). Going to the Equator, about 20 kilometers north of Quito, we never really get outside of the city, a very different state of affairs than Mom remembers.

When we arrive at the Equator, we don’t go straight to the big monument, but first go to an interesting side museum called the Inter-Nan Museum. Here they have a number of displays about native customs and they also have the actual location of exactly where the Equator is (the big monument is off by a little ways, as they didn't apparently measure precisely where it is when they built the monument). We got the chance to shoot a blowgun into a target. They showed us a real shrunken head, a huge boa constrictor and skin from an even larger anaconda, gave use some samples of mote (a snack made from corn), and then they have a few interesting scientific experiments related to the Equator that they like to show visitors. One seems to demonstrate that a few feet either side of the Equator water flows down a sink in opposite directions (clockwise vs counterclockwise) and straight down the sink right on the Equator. It seemed to work that way, but I’m not entirely sold, as they initially poured the water into the basin in different ways that might impact how it went down the drain. I’ll have to review my video of that further! They also had a setup for people to stand an egg on the head of a nail right at the Equator (John and I both have official certificates documenting that we did it), and then there was a display of how right on the Equator people can’t hold their hands up with someone pushing down the way they can a few feet north or south (another one I’m not sure on, though John insists when he did it that it was legit!). All in all quite interesting. Mom then picked up a few more goodies at the gift store there, including several spoons to add to her collection back home.


A llama


John (or should I say King Juan) preparing to shoot the blowgun


Group picture at the real Equator


We then had a late lunch at the Equinoccio Restaurant, a nice place. Mom and I had Locro de Cuero (cheese and pork soup) and we were both surprised when it came and the pork was not real pieces of pork, but pork skins. We both ate it, but we wouldn’t likely choose to have it again.

We then headed to the big Mutad del Mundo monument. Mom’s legs were getting tired, so she sat and watched some Ecuadorian musicians and dancers near the entrance to the monument. John and I went to the monument, took some pictures, and went through the museum there, which documents the many different ethnic groups in Ecuador and their various customs and practices. By this time it was late afternoon and we were all getting a bit tired, so Walter took us back to the hotel. We rested for a bit and had dinner, with Mom and John having pasta and I had trout. We arranged with Walter for him to drive us over the HCJB tomorrow morning for a tour we’ll take of the “Voice of the Andes”, where Mom performed many years ago, and which is well established as a leading Christian radio outreach in the Andes Mountains.

And last, but not least, if you want to buy gas for under $1.50, all you have to do is come to Ecuador!