My plan had been to sleep in as much as possible to catch up on sleep debt...well...that plan unfortunately failed due to a hotel wide fire alarm that went off at 7:30. I guess my not being able to fall back asleep after that was for the best as the front desk later delivered some forms from our cruise operators informing me the wake up call tomorrow would be at 4:45AM!! Yeah, that's 1:45AM California time. Yeesh.
Today I had a fairly full day of meetings planned but there were a couple hours before the West Coast day would begin, so we piled into Yeye and Nainai's rental car for some exploration. First stop: Teleferico Quito -- or apparently as some have dubbed it: TeleferiQo. This cable car takes you up to the top of the Pichincha Volcano where there are some fantastic views. Unfortunately, I had to stay at the bottom to take all of my work calls. I heard after the fact that I should have gone up and sat in the coffee shop with amazing views of Quito (I think that's a more visible shot of Cotopaxi).
The others report that it was a nice ride up, pretty long, maybe 15 min or so? Some options for hiking around at the top and also mountain biking too -- apparently Yeye kept scanning the mountain looking for ways to back country ski down.
First attraction: check!
Now it was time to drive down to Old Town. The original plan was to do a quick skip over, find a place where they could park and I would continue taking my calls. Well...turns out this is the weekend of Quito's birthday celebration or something like that. Cue LOTs of crowds and mobs of cars. We literally spent about 90 minutes circling around the tiny streets of Quito before we called it quits. Here are some shots from the car. I was trying to capture a shot of all the wires strung up EVERYWHERE (no wonder I had great reception throughout the ride!) and all the broken glass shards that they would put at the top of each wall to prevent thieves from scaling over (very reminiscent of Rio). Unfortunately I didn't manage the latter, but at least you can sort of catch all the wires (the picture really doesn't do it justice).
The traffic was really endless. As evidenced by the large number of vendors hawking drinks, snacks, and random things to all the cars moving at a crawl speed.
Here is the Church of Santo Domingo right at the heart of the Historical Center of Quito.
And also a shot of Basilica del Voto Nacional (Basilica of the National Vow) - very cool looking!
After we realized stopping somewhere was not going to be very easy (much less finding decent parking), we decided the tour from the car was going to have to suffice. Off to our next stop: lunch. We considered this option in honor of L&R...(yes apparently Ecuador enjoys boba too!)
But opted eventually for this local diner instead. Very authentic -- everyone else there was a local family or group of coworkers it seemed. Prices were extremely reasonable, like $3 for one plate. Chow down time!
With lunch (and perhaps a quick gelato stop) in our bellies, we went off to the true highlight of the day: Mitad del Mundo! (Middle of the World). I am being slightly facetious. I am pretty sure I was the only one who was super excited -- I mean being able to be at the single point in the world where you are in both the eastern AND western hemispheres AND North and South of the Equator? Gotta do it, no?!? As the museum exhibit would tell us -- this is THE most popular tourist attraction in all of Ecuador.
Update: turns out that is not the coolness of the location. Though my explanation would be a lot better and more unique, no? Turns out it's only famous because this is the location where a French scientist back in the day confirmed the location of the Equator. I guess that's less geographically cool but a bit more historically relevant?
Obligatory trick shot. There are some others of us balancing the ball on the tops of our heads but this one seemed a bit more tasteful:
Requisite shot of me straddling the N/S line:
It was actually a surprisingly well built out little area. Had we arrived earlier in the day, I could have seen us check out more of the side exhibits and shops and such. There was even a little museum with some science exhibits that include a toilet that swirls the other direction (Baba tells me that is a hoax, which is probably true, but who cares - it still seems cool 😆). It did remind me of some of the tourist parks that we visited in Xian, fewer people though (didn't even have to use AI to remove any people from this shot):
You could actually take an elevator to the top of the monument which had some decent views of the area.
This is also where I had the first-time-in-my-life experience of looking unusual enough (read: apparently East Asian tourists don't get out here much?) that a bunch of kids actually stopped me and asked to take a photo WITH me. I was very confused. I thought they wanted me to help them take a photo! I hear this used to be a fairly common experience for Yeye and Nainai in China (20 years ago...I feel like Westerners are a bit more common throughout China now) but this was my first experience in being the foreign curiosity during travel.
As we finished up here the sun was starting to get lower in the sky so we called it a day and set off for the rental car return office. How was driving in Quito? Well...a mix I would say. Merging in/out at roundabouts and certain exit turns can get a little hairy. You definitely have to be a bit aggressive otherwise people behind you will complain. The roads were in generally pretty good condition, but be prepared for a LOT of large speed bumps even on main thoroughfares. I think I probably would just opt for the taxi if I were to return.
Once back at the hotel, we met up with the National Geographic representative, got our luggage tags, our water bottles, and a run down of what to expect tomorrow. All sounded pretty good except for the 4:45 start time. With that in mind, we did a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant (satisfactory, not great, also very overpriced compared to lunch, but great for convenience and peace of mind in food safety for consumption). Got luggage tags placed on our bags and off to bed by 9:30.
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