We’ve been in Quito for just over two weeks and did what we set out to do. We picked up our permanent residence visas/Ecuadoran ID cards a couple of days ago, looked around town a fair amount, and decided Quito is not likely to be our home. Well, we didn’t set out to write off Quito. We set out to see if we might want to stay here. Most of it isn’t bad. It’s just we have both lived the big city experience, and having everything available isn’t that appealing. Slower is appealing. We can always come back or go to Guayaquil for a symphony or something.
These days we are definitely more looking at towns and cities with an eye toward living there. All we want is everything. Quiet yet having at least most big city amenities. little as possible traffic (preferably a sizable pedestrian only center of town), the good bread and other stuff you find in expat places, good health care nearby, no mosquitoes, someplace where Myung’s throat problem doesn’t bother her, not hot. Quito had most of the requirements, but is just too busy. It’s also a little expensive, at least by Ecuadoran standards. All that said, I recommend it as a place too visit.
The colonial old town is at least as appealing as most of the better colonial old towns in Latin America. It’s also nearly the oldest, as Pizarro’s contingent landed north of here and proceeded south, founding a colony and church here even before defeating the Incas. In fact, one of the feuding Inca brothers Pizarro played off against the other married into a ruling family from near here. Normally, the churches don’t much appeal to me anymore, but the ones in Quito are quite nice and have been completely demolished as many times by earthquakes as the ones in Antigua.
The most impressive church from the outside is La Basilica del Voto. It was actually built over several decades in the 20th century.
It’s hard to get far enough away from this to get pictures from any other angle.
So here are three distant shots and one very distant shot at the front. It is definitely the most dominant architectural feature of Quito.
There are other churches which are nicer on the inside. Of all the places in Latin America I’ve been, I think Quito has the best churches. I don’t usually go off too much on church visiting, but this city is special in that regard.
These pictures are mostly vertical and don’t fit well on computer screens, so I made them small. Remember, to see larger versions, just click on the picture.
I’m still learning how to arrange pictures and insert text. I have time today, as it’s rainy and cold, and we don’t feel like going out in it. As I write, I’m figuring it out.
I’m sure I don’t have options on how to make the pictures a size between these and the large ones. So, maybe from now on I can fill these kinds of white spaces.To the right and below is the best church, La Campana de Jesus.
I don’t try anymore to remember all the sites, all the churches, all the dates, and so forth. After, what, maybe 13-14 years on the road, it is way to much. I just try to enjoy the present, to look around and drift.
I got into taking pictures of the stained glass windows. Most of the old glass in Central America, where we have been except for a couple of weeks in Colombia and a few years ago when we were in South America last time, has been broken by earthquakes. These windows are from the 18th century. That’s old in earthquake countries. They aren’t as impressive as many European windows, but very nice still.
We were lucky most of the time to be in the churches with nice windows when the sun was out and colors bright in the dark interiors.
The old town is really large and takes hours to walk around. We have many pictures. Here are just a few.
A lot of old town has been fixed up….
… and some renovation is still in progress.
As I said, it’s a good place to walk around, especially if you like going up an down at 2800-2900 meters (9300 ft+) elevation.
The rest of our experience in Quito wasn’t particularly photoworthy. We went to some museums, shopped (Myung especially liked the existence of Asian stores), and enjoyed a couple of nice apartments we rented for a week each. We looked at the Cumbaya and Tumbaco suburbs as places to maybe live but, nah, burbs are burbs.
I suppose it’s of interest we went Mitad del Mundo, Middle of the World. The equator is about 30 km north of the Quito center. Mitad del Mundo is a kitschy park not even exactly on the equator. There’s a monument which pretends to be on the equator and a line which is actually off by a couple hundred meters. The real equator is in some rough terrain to the south.
Here’s the view from the top of the monument.
That’s going to do it for now. We plan to leave Banos for Cuenca in about a week. Likely we’ll stay in Cuenca for at least a month. We have some things to do, like set up a bank account so we can get health insurance. If we opt for the national plan, we’ll both be insured for 100% of all health care costs and most meds. We may buy private insurance and have health care as good as if not better than in the US. Anyway, we have that and some other stuff to take care of.
Be well, all of you.
