Quito, Ecuador

So... I've decided I like "second largest cities" in South American countries MUCH better than the largest! I arrived (after a 9hr busride and a REALLY annoying guy who wouldn't shutup) in Quito late yesterday afternoon. I knew we had gone way up in the mountains, lost the humidity and cooled down a bit, passed waterfalls and houses with monkeys running around the yard... we had stopped in plenty of typical Ecuadorian towns, of stilted houses and rickety bridges over beautiful rivers, to pick up more passengers. Sidenote, a guy got on the bus with a little teeny tiny baby monkey on his shoulder! So cool!
What I didn't know is how darn beautiful the actual city of Quito was going to be! I got in my cab ($7... a bit of a jump from Peru... everyone had said Ecuador was just as cheap or cheaper than Peru, but they were lying!) and from every twist and turn of the 35 min. ride from the bus terminal to my hostal was filled with amazing views of neighborhoods built on mountainsides, giant old churches, and just really beautiful green mountains everywhere! I really enjoyed my ride to the hostal on all the crazy roads, but let me tell you... after last night and today... this town is HARD to navigate! I like to think I have a pretty good sense of direction and that mapreading and I get along pretty well, but I have been lost a great number of times on these twisty turny roads with tons of parks to interupt main streets and a trolly system that makes it close to impossible to cross streets! I finally felt like I was starting to get the hang of it after 7 hours of walking around today! Whew... SOOOO many stops to sit down and get out the map... not only that, but it's much like san fran... the hills are beautiful, but NO fun to walk up... especially if you walked up one in the wrong direction... more than once! :)
So I'm staying in a beautiful hostal with my own little room. There's a nice outdoor patio and pizza place downstairs (I think I'm about to go give that a try)! OOO... and they did my laundry for me within 24 hrs for just $3! After all the rain, mud, and sweat of the Machu Picchu trip I was dying to do laundry, and then in guayaquil there were no laundry mats and the hotel wanted to charge me $1 for just one shirt!!! SO, I don't think I've ever been so happy to have clean laundry in a very long time! Now the negatives... like everything else here, this hostal is built on a hill but I wasn't imagining having to lug both of my huge bags up not one, not two, not three, BUT four flights of stairs! When I followed the lady up with just my big backpack and little backpack, I quickly decided that I would be leaving my other giant bag downstairs in the storage room (whether I needed anything out of it or not... it WAS NOT worth it)! :) The only other negative is that it's currently under construction. Boo! Now, my lovely lonely planet book at mentioned a sauna, a fireplace, etc... let's just say in their place I have found a lot of dust, noise, and makeshift floors etc! oh well, it's still pretty cheap for the city and there's really friendly, helpful people!
I got to explore new town and old town Quito today. Old town was by far my favorite. The buildings were SO old and there were tons of churches and plazas etc. I can't really explain the feel of it, but if you look online you're bound to see some of the cool pictures I wish I could have taken. On that note, I now have a working camera so I won't feel so bad at the end of every day not having pics of my favorite scenes of the day! Yea! Speaking of favorite things or scenes of my day... I ate the local favorite maracuya yogurt/juice and yuca bread balls this morning, followed by cherries that I bought from a woman on the street (the BEST cherries of my life), next it was on to find a famous restaurant that serves giant bowls of tropical fruit smoothered in somekind of sauce and homemade whipped cream (YUM), after that I had read about a local favorite of sugarcoated nuts, habas (dried beans), coconut, etc... so I found the original establishment (a doorway in a shady neighborhood) with a giant kettle like pan filled with a sugary brown substance and a whole lotta nuts placed over an open fire... I bought the token things to enjoy on my journey the next couple of days. Now, I know it seems like all I did was eat, but that's not true! Next it was off to find some things that I was advised to bring to the jungle, like stickers for the kids, and of course the really important things like chocolate for the adults! Now, the fact that there's no chocolate to be found in this indigenous community was NOT in my contract (oh yeah, what contract?), I just may have to reconsider! :) jk! Oh, and then I had read about this convent in town where the nuns (who still have to live 5 years locked in a room when they first enter the convent and even after that can only talk to each other or watch TV for one hour each day... WHAT?) make all kinds of homemade remedies and lotions etc. BUT, the unique part is that they sell to you through a kind of little revolving door with shelves so they stay hidden. I decided I just had to see this for myself. Sure enough... I joined a room of about 10 women waiting in line, all giving there requests to a wooden shelf... then all the sudden a product would appear on the shelf as it turned and they would place their money... and so on went the exchanges. Now, I just knew I had to try something... there was everything from a cream to help with acne, to a type of water to drink to make your ovaries more healthy (I know... weird), to strangely flavored shampoos. I had been meaning to buy some more shampoo to take with me to the jungle, so I decided to go for the apple vanilla shampoo. Now, as I was "ordering" the voice asked me if I had blonde hair, I said "no," she said well it's for blondes, but it doesn't really matter, here you go. Hahaha! I got a good laugh out of that... now if it's some sort of magical potion or something and I go blonde, I might not be laughing so hard! :)
Oh yeah, then I ate again... I couldn't help it... I was walking by this doorway with a great smell and I looked over to see these giant puffy pastry things. I asked what they were and was told they were cheese empañadas and they were only 50 cents. Well, I couldn't pass that up! Then they put sugar on it... I wasn't too sure, but it tasted GREAT! So anywho, I made it back to my hostal early tonight (had a bit of a scare walking alone last night, so decided to make it an early evening).
Hopefully tomorrow it's off to the "mitad del mundo" or "middle of the world" as they call the equator site! I can't wait to jump back and forth between the northern and southern hemispheres! AND, I have a camera (knock on wood SOMEONE SOMEWHERE, please!) to actually document the event! Woo hoo!
So, hope that I've caught everyone up to date... I know I'm still lacking on the Machu Picchu stories and pics, but I promise I will get them up soon. Also look forward to a retrospective post from Brittney Smith and here wonderful adventures with Luis and I in Peru!
Until soon,
Kate