A Visit to Quito

Have you every been on a swing and challenged yourself to go higher and higher until you felt like you were flying?  I did this often as a child; but as I got older, this activity seems to have faded into the past...but I remember the feeling.   In the center of the world, in Ecuador on the equator, you can go high up the mountain top and get on a swing and swing over the city… like you are flying.  It looks scary, it feels scary, it is scary...but you should do it anyway, because you will never forget the feeling you have in that moment and it will be a memory for a lifetime.

We had the greatest time in Quito.  It is a charming, beautiful city at a high elevation with cool crisp air  and the chilly weather you feel in the mountains. We stayed at a little boutique hotel, Vista del Angel Hotel Boutique, that looked like it used to be a big house turned into a bed and breakfast. We found it on booking.com and it was a great find.

My husband is a major foodie and his favorite part of travel  is trying all of the delicacies and local cuisines of the places we visit. I am a big history and science nerd. If I can learn something or experience something, I am all in.   This trip was a beautiful combination of both of these passions.

There is a museum on the equator. The science of the equator is incredible and here you get to see it in action. You really can balance an egg on a nail. It takes patience, but it is possible and such a feat when you do it. Ou can experience the impact to your balance.  You can stand in  the center of the world.. and then put one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern. Outside of flying over the city on my swing, this was one of the best times I have had.. at least at a museum.

And then, to please the other party on this trip, we did a foodie walking tour.  It was advertised as a guide walking us around the city and eating the food the locals eat, places most tourists don’t know of or wouldn’t even try. We were all in.  We met at an old historic theatre in downtown Quito and began our walk. It started through an indoor flea market of people selling everything from car parts, old appliances, household goods to vinyl records and old musty books.  At the end was a little bay of kitchens set up with Ecuadorian women cooking the meal of the day. The place was nothing to look at, just a few tables set up, no menu, no prices, no info. He was right, we would have never stopped here or even knew it was a place we could eat at. We all 3 shared one  dish… it was so much food and everything was delicious. From there, we had ceviche in a hole in the wall near the schools where the kids go on lunch breaks, then we had the most delicious cheese empanada I have every had.  We moved on to a seafood fish market  and had crab that was like nothing we had tasted before.  

Our stomachs ready to burst, we headed to the last stop on the foodie tour, a chocolatier. There is an age old debate on whether Ecuador or Colombia have the best coffee and chocolate. They, of course, believed that everything Ecuadorian was superior. My consensus… the coffee is better in Colombia, but the chocolate in Ecuador is the best in the world.

In addition to our foodie, science and history day, we also spent a full day at the Quilotoa Lagoon. Quilotoa is a caldera, crater lake in a volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes formed following an eruption about 800 years ago and it is spectacular to see. You can hike the entire perimeter. We chose to hike down into the crater and kayak across the lagoon. The water is emerald in color and with the surrounding volcanic cliffs, create an fantastic scene.  Kayaking across the calm, cold waters was both exhausting and peaceful.  Although we hiked down, we rode mules up out of the crater. I highly recommend the full experience and I am confident when I get back to Ecuador, I will dedicate more time to experience this area.

Ecuador- food, friendly people, beautiful nature, history, science, alpacas. We really should have dedicated more than a weekend for this country. I am 100% positive this will not be my last post on this place... because I am already planning on returning.