Ecuador day 1: Quito? Quitacular!

Woke up this morning and it was a beautiful bright spring morning. The hostel is lovely, with a gorgeous little courtyard and great views out on the city. Even the bathroom has a great view out to the western mountains.

Courtyard! We breakfasted outside, it was great.

Then it was time to get moving! The Weather Channel predicted a sunny morning followed by rain and thunder in the afternoon, so we decided to hit the Teleferico first. It's a gondola up one of the westerly mountains, and at the top there are the most amazing views of Quito. 

Quito! A very long and narrow city, it's apparently 35km long and less than 10 wide.

There are more amazing views when you turn around and look west. 

Mountains! Farmland!

There's also a volcano you can hike up, called Ruku Pichincha. I tried for a little bit, but it turns out my lungs aren't quite ready for 10,000 feet elevation. I wimped out after a few measly hills. But we wandered a bit more and Patrice pointed out some cool different parts of the city. And I got to use my binos!! It was awesome! 

So I mentioned yesterday that I got a water bottle thing from Burgerville because they suckered me in with a free milkshake. I've decided to call it the Burgervillain and keep using it for travels. It kept my water cold for the whole day!

The Burgervillain surveys Quito.

We meandered back to the Teleferico to go back down, and I noticed something that looked suspiciously like Scotch Broom. It doesn't seem to be invasive here, since the place wasn't covered in it. 

When we got down to slightly lower elevation, we took a taxi to the historic old city center. It's very well-preserved, with some absolutely beautiful buildings.

La Iglesia de Compania de Jesus: the interior is pretty much completely coated in gold, but you can't take pictures and we didn't go inside anyway

We had lunch at a pretty little cafe where Patrice did all the ordering because she can speak the language and whatnot. Lots of delightful traditional Ecuadorian food, like mote (hominy, apparently) con chicharron (pork), an empanada, a quimbulito (a cake that tasted like very light cornbread), and an humita (like a tamale). Thanks to Patrice for all of the names! To drink Patrice got a tree tomato juice (didn't taste like tomato), and I got a jackfruit smoothie. It was excellent!

After lunch we hit up the old Bank of Ecuador, which used to be the official bank but is now a museum. 

Another gorgeous building

Ecuador's currency, the sucre, had massive inflation problems and collapsed in the late 1990s; they have since adopted the US dollar. We enjoyed looking at the various Spanish and Ecuadorian coins, but the best part was the giant tub of sucres we could just paw our hands through. 

It was really fun.

Maybe a little too fun.

By this point I had developed a pretty massive headache so we just strolled back to the hotel. I showered, relaxed, downloaded the Duolingo app to learn more Spanish and almost opened it, but then I decided to take a nap instead. 

Then we went for dinner and salsa dancing! It was pretty fun, except not knowing the language is always a bit of a challenge, even when you barely have to talk to the lead. The night started pretty slow, so I dragged Patrice out for some salsa and also a bit of illicit west coast swing. After the night really got going, it was fun just to watch all of the dancers. Some of them were really good; their footwork was entrancing. 

Then we walked fifteen minutes back to the hostel and prepared for bed. An excellent start to the trip. Tomorrow we're taking a bus to the equator!