Heaphy South American Trip 2013: Quito and Mindo

Back again!

Quito lies between two mountain ranges and its altitude is 2,800 metres. It is the capital of Ecuador. It was founded in 1534 on the ruins of an ancient Inca city. Today, two million people live here. It was the first city to be named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978 (along with Krakow in Poland!) Now that's the history lesson over!

We are now back in Quito for the third and final time, the first being when we flew in from Cusco and then when we got back from the Galapagos, after that we headed to Mindo for a couple of days to get out of the big smoke. None of us particularly like big cities, you have to constantly watch your back. Saying that, we did try to explore the old city, when we first arrived, but having being ruined out from the Sacred Valley we didn't really do it credit and Andrew was sick at the time as well. However we did find time to walk around and soak up the old Spanish buildings, the neat cobbled streets, the many churches, and the general chaos of a Capital City.

Quito now has a new airport, (with the longest runway in South America), which was quite reassuring as our first descent into Quito was pretty hairy! It is well out of town and takes about 1.5 hours to get to the City, mainly due to the excessive traffic jams everywhere, this traffic doesn't get any better in town and to go anywhere it seems to take all day! The local trolleys and buses are constantly packed and have a bad reputation for pick pockets. Below are some photos of the historic centre.

Main church on Plaza de Aramas - Quito

Palace in historic quarter

Selling shoelaces on the street!

Typical Spanish architecture of historic centre

We did manage to visit the centre of the world! - Mitad del Mundo. This complex, built to commemorate the site where a French explorer calculated the world’s equatorial line, may be a shameless tourist mecca, but it made for a fun day trip. There was also a museum close by which had the real equator line, the French guy got it wrong by 240m!!!

The real equator line!

The not so real equator!! Good fun though.

Holding the Ecuadorian flag

There is a museum on the now apparently real equator, which was quite interesting, they did the water down the sink test on the northern, southern hemisphere and right on the equator line. I have done it before and told Andrew about it who wouldn't believe me until that day! The guide could have been a good magician of course - Dynamo eat your heart out! He also gave us all the "egg challenge" right on the Equator line, the idea was to try and balance an egg on its end on a nail. Apparently it is impossible to do it anywhere else other than the Equator - give it a go at home!!! Curtis managed to get the "egg head award".

Egg head!!

Doing the drunk test on the equator!

The most uncomfortable hat in the world!

Volcan Pinchincha

When we returned from the Galapagos we spent a night in Quito and headed straight out to tranquil Mindo - in the Ecuadorian rainforest for a couple of days R and R!!! The bus ride was in true south american style, the driver was a maniac and drove at top speed on the straight and bends with no regard to the fact there was a centre line or another vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Beautiful scenery passed us by in a blur whilst we clung on to the sides of our seats and bags for dear life! Curtis slept through it all! It was a 2 hour trip we did in 1.5 hours! Relieved to be off the bus, we found our lodge which was 4km out of town set right next to a river and in the middle of rainforest. It was a wonderful setting, great for bird watching especially hummingbirds, parrots and toucans.

Our digs in Mindo

Green- crowned briliant Hummingbird

In the afternoon we went for a walk through the rainforest to a cable car which we took across a gaping canyon to see some waterfalls. You might now be picturing a cable car you might see at a European ski resort - now try the one below!!

Cable car - Yeah right!

View from cable car to river 200 m below!

The next day we had more adventure by booking in for a zip line experience, 10 zip lines above the rainforest canopy. We thought we might see some wildlife, but we were whizzing far too fast for that and were around 200m + up in the air!

All kitted out

Andy

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Returned to Quito on an early bus, had a very different experience than two days before, although we still had a couple of hairy moments when the driver was intent on getting in front of every bus that we saw so he could pick up the people waiting on the side of the road. We were on the early bus from Mindo, so when we reached the outskirts of Quito we started to pick up commuters every 100m it seemed. One woman got on and sat just in front of us and proceeded to do her makeup and put her hair in curlers! How she didn't poke her eye out with the driver constantly breaking and swerving in and out of traffic i don't know. I would have ended up wearing it on the rest of my face, however she looked just the ticket, even though when she left the bus she was wearing a huge pair of shades - what a waste! We are now heading down through the middle of Ecuador on our way south towards Guayaquil where we catch a flight a week today to Santiago.

Here are some more photos;