Quito

I know it has been a few days since I arrived in South America, but today is the first day that I have actually had the time to find an internet café and actually blog. There is a ton to share with all of you and I do not have enough time for everything, so I´ll give you a break down of the last couple of days.

Feb 3rd- We arrive in Quito at night and the only thing we had the time or energy to do was eat, so we headed to a plaza right by our hotel. Right away we found a tapas restaurant so we decided to sit outside and enjoy some wine and try a number of different dishes. The food was pretty lousy but the wine was great and we were so hungry and tired that it did not really matter.

Feb 4th-We woke up first thing in the morning and met a guide. As soon as we walked out of the hotel we realized that the night before the fog had totally concealed the mountains all around the city. At first sight Quito is a beautiful city sprawled throughout small but lush and gorgeous mountains. We headed directly to the equator which was actually really interesting and we had a great time. There is a giant party of the city that was built around what the Spaniards thought was the equator a long time ago and most tourists believe that this is the true sight of the equator, but our local guide informed us that this was wrong. He then took us to the true location which was identified with gps technology in 1985. The indigenous people of Ecuador have been living in this location for hundreds of years and established their village there because they knew that it was the true division of the northern and southern hemispheres. There is quasi hands on science/indigenous culture museum that was kind of odd but fun and very informative. We had a great time there and did all kinds of equatorial experiments with our guide.
After the equator we drove just a few minutes to check out the largest crater in South America. The view from the top was absolutely spectacular and there is a really cool farming village at the bottom. Ben and I did a great hike to the bottom which was pretty exhausting, but was definitely worth it.
We then headed to a restaurant overlooking the crater called “el crater,” I’m sure you all can figure out what that means. After lunch we went to the old city and visited two of the most famous churches in Quito. We even climbed to the very top of one the bell towers which was actually quite scary since we had to scale ladders that were at a 75% angle and had no safety measure to prevent one from falling hundreds of feet to their death. Once we were at the top we realized it was worth it because it had an unreal view of the whole city, and the architecture of the building was extremely intricate.
After that we went across the city to look at a giant statue of the Virgin of Quito. It was massive and we pretty much had the entire park around the statue to ourselves. After having learned so much about Quito and its religious background, seeing the Virgin was a great way to end the tour.