July 16/17 - Quito, Ecuador

When we purchased the Garmin GPS maps for South America, there weren't any Ecuador maps available, so I had made a mental note to pick some GPS maps from other web sites. Well I kinda forgot and had to rely on the good old fashion paper maps...which was fine...until we arrived in Quito. We didn't have a city map, we had country maps!

The drive up the Andes from Santo Domingo to Quito was quick and easy... a mere two and half hour drive on a great road.  It was going perfectly until we were 14 km outside of Quito and the highway split... of course the sign didn't indicate "Bert go here" nor was the GPS any help by showing a car in the middle of nowhere... Marnie suggested  " why don't you stop and get the other map"....nope... I just kept driving hoping the sign with personalized directions would magically appear.  Eventually, I pulled into a gas station and asked for directions... but it wasn't much help....so I pressed on and eventually came to a toll both.  The lady was very specific that I needed to turn around and loop around...back to Quito.....easy right?

The "problem" was that there was no easy way to turn around, plus the fact I had lost perspective of where Quito was in relation to Sangolqui (the town we were approaching). Also our maps were large country maps with no detailed city information, so what looked to be a close on the map was in fact 24 km away .... by the time we reached Sangolqui, there were no roads signs telling us which was Quito was., so we (I) decided to then continue driving to Pifo and enter Quito from another direction all together.  For those of you who have been to Quito, it's not a FLAT city.. .it's surrounded by very large mountains and it's constant up and down, needless to say I made several bad calls that afternoon.

Eventually we entered Quito via the E28 and slowly made our way down to the "New Quito" and found our hotel, a 2.5 hour trip turned into 4.5 hours... no one had lunch...kids were cranky and I had worked myself up into a knot...Marnie was calm and collected as usual.  At least the Hotel was in a great location and the Defender actually fit in the underground but only by scrapping the top of the roof tent on the metal beam, it didn't rip the protective cover on the roof tent...but boy it came close.

We had been told that we should attend the Colombian Embassy to obtain our vehicle importation permit before reaching the border, we all jumped in a taxi, found the Colombian Consulate only to be told public hours were from 8 to 12 noon ..really? but don't they know who we are?

Needless to say the first afternoon in Quito didn't go as expected but Marnie found a great Asian Fusion restaurant called Uncle Ho's. We had some excellent food and ended the night on a high note.

The following day we visited "Mitad del Mundo"....it's a cheesy park with a large monument marking the half way point between the hemispheres ... but it was cool to be standing in the middle of the world, on the equator!

Then we went up the teleferico for a birds eye view of all of Quito...at an altitude of 4100 meters we certainly felt the lack of oxygen and it was cold!  

There was another cheesy amusement park with some rides at the base of the gondola and with the kids begging to go on the rides...we caved.  

We then explored the historical old city and just wondered around. The spanish influence was apparent everywhere you looked...especially in the Churches. 

We ended the night by tasting some Poutine from Casa Quebecua, a Canadian owned restaurant that opened recently.  They served "authentic" poutine with home made beef sauce and cheese kurds.