Dog-legging it to South America

Quito, a new capital – for us

Volcano Cayambe to the east of Quito

Well, overnight in the airport hotel isn't what most people would consider a romantic start to the year but it is the lead in to five weeks in Ecuador, so it's bearable.  With a check in of 04.30 on 1 January it was the hotel or a coach from Ringwood at 02.30 and now we can just walk into Terminal 4 before first bird-chirp.  I've just remembered that my mother never said New Year's Eve, it was always Old Year's Night and I've never known if that was generational thing or a local expression from the East End of London.   Check-in didn’t open until 04.40 and the queue snaked more than a hundred yards across the terminal hall.  Half of the check-in counters were closed and it took us an hour and twenty minutes to check in.  People just behind us were told it was their fault for not getting there earlier.  We finally got to central security about five minutes before the declared cut-off time.  So now, as planned,we fly to Quito via Amsterdam which even the most geographically challenged amongst you ought to know is a bloody stupid way to get there.  However, we're flying KLM and I suppose the crew want to pick up their Netherlandish lunchboxes before heading south west across the Atlantic.

Flight – nothing happened which was excellent news.

Quito sits in a roughly north/south valley surrounded by hills and extinct volcanoes and as the plane began to descend we were treated to views of snow-capped peaks and closer hills with necklace wreaths of mist hanging around them.   Our bags were late enough onto the carousel for us to start wondering whether they were enjoying a different trip to us but then they arrived as almost the last luggage from our flight.  There were only three or four other people gazing hopefully at the carousel when we left.   The taxi into town is a set fare of US$26 (£18.50) and we got a Formula 1 wannabe who got us into a city which was unknown to us but looked vaguely familiar as a central/south American big town.   It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to realise that a city in such a situation will capture and hang on to all the air pollution.  We find out pretty quickly that the buses pump out black clouds of fumes, the old town where we are is clogged with cars and the subway, due to be completed in 2017, isn’t.

If you don't count Tibet's capital Lhasa (which I'm definitely inclined to count since Tibet was invaded by the Chinese), Quito is either the highest or second highest capital city in the world at a little over 9,300 feet depending what counts as a capital.  It's just that La Paz, in Bolivia is the seat of government and a place called Sucre is the administrative capital.  To be honest I'm not really bothered unless it comes up in a quiz.

Quito - Old Town

Our hotel faced an open paved square with a church on one side but it had an unprepossessing entrance with stairs behind it which led to a lovely open area with rooms on two floors grouped around it.  This had originally and obviously been a courtyard which has been translucently roofed.   The stairs and our bags together were not an easy climb but then we were at about 9,300 feet.   So having settled in to our room we set off in search of a restaurant, forgetting that it was New Year’s Day, all the jollity had been last night and so everywhere was shut.   We’d not yet got our bearings and so didn’t want to go too far.  Fortunately for us not everywhere was shut and so we had to settle on a small café almost next to the hotel.  Certainly not what we would have chosen but Rice and Vegetables for Heather and a couple of vegetable spring rolls and some chips had to do.  That and a soft drink was about $8 or £6. 

It had been our longest ever New Year’s Day, having got up at 03.45 to check in, fly via Amsterdam to get here and finally get to bed at what was about 03.00 UK time.

So, the next day we had to explore.   The Old Town here isn’t set out as is normal with most places where it would be surrounded by the New Town.  Here the New Town lies north of the Old Town and twenty or thirty miles further north is the equator.   The streets in the old town have most buildings opening straight onto a narrow pavement so we were able to enjoy the pollution better and the roads tend to be one-way.  

A closer view of Volcano Cayambe

The main through routes run roughly north/south and the valley sides slope upwards gradually, then more steeply and then alarmingly.  There are also to be fair quite a bit of pedestrian only bits but they seem to just run between roads rather than be very long.   Vegetation is limited to open squares which are not numerous but generally pretty agreeable.   Few tourists seem to be about (only one or two Lonely Planets spotted) considering that we’re in the capital and the locals themselves do not seem very European.   There is clearly a lot of indigenous blood in the population and it would appear to me, based on very little evidence that generally, the more indigenous blood, the lower that person is on the economic ladder.  Many of the people are tiny and by that I mean quite a lot of older adults are under four feet.  In retrospect, compared to Quito, the Japanese turn out to be quite statuesque.

We were following a walk set out in Lonely Planet and while interesting enough because it was different place, it wasn’t very interesting.   We did go into the Cathedral by mistake because we meant to visit a heavily ornate baroque church and got it wrong.  The Cathedral was in that gaudy gilt style that is just very catholic and being within the twelve days of Christmas a large nativity scene was laid out.  Brown paper crumpled over boxes with green paint sprayed made a very effective outdoor landscape.  There were lots of sheep, goats, llamas and shepherds, a hut with three wise men and the happy parents all looking at an empty crib.  Yep, no Jesus.  We saw another nativity later that had been Jesus-napped too so there must be some significance to this but I haven’t a clue what it was.

So we sat in the Plaza Grande with a coffee, people watching as you do and realised that there was a large police presence.   There are Tourist Police which we think look after tourist interests rather than protecting the locals from us, the Municipal Police (some on Segways) and the National Police.  I guess there’s a pecking order along the lines of “I look down on him but I look up to him” with the various Police Forces.  ‘Him’ to be taken to include the male and female gender in this instance for there were a lot of policewomen too.  However, after such a long day yesterday and the jet lag we decided that a shorter day was reasonable so we had a quiet afternoon back at our hotel.

Health and Safety anyone ?

Our friends Bonnie and Newt from Massachusetts were due to fly in late in the evening.   Around New Year the temperature where they live had been hovering round 0F, about -18C but they had had a cunning plan and had been sunning themselves in Mexico for the last month.