Ecuador 2023 - Arrival in Quito

Arrived in Quito from Edinburgh via Amsterdam on time at 4pm – a smooth ride through customs and immigration after a long easy flight with too much bread on the last boring menu for a month. Ecuador (English translation = equator) aims to be kind to tourists as my first few hours confirm. Online travel advice that taxi drivers can’t always be trusted - now wide of the mark if my experience is typical - and knowing I’d be spaced out after a 12 hour stretch in a flying cigar tube, I booked a pick up through the tour company. Expensive at NZ110 but a good choice. The chatty driver, also a freelance tour guide, answered all non-trivia questions on a 55-minute drive on busy but well-built roads to the city and helped shape my plans for the next three days. My over-tired Spanish put in a brief appearance before falling pathetically back to sleep.

 

 

First impressions from 20,000ft – Quito’s urban sprawl has crept up the sides of ragged green velvet hills and crossed many leafy canyons over the past few hundred years. A colorful patchwork quilt of 2million+ residents is ready to welcome the return of post-Covid visitors. Tourism matters to the economy and, unlike some countries, the government here didn't step in to prop everyone up over lock down.

 

In true G Adventures (tour company) style my hotel, Ikala Quito, is modest but full of character; a grand old homestead extended for modern use with shady courtyards, white walled en-suite rooms, rooftop terraces with splashes of local art and a couch lined lobby for social gatherings. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A colonial past is never far below the surface.

 

A quick trip to the supermarket sets my mouth watering at the range and size of the fruit counter. I scan the coffee and chocolate aisles for later souvenir shopping. Why pay $20 for a fancy wrapper when better quality product is on sale here for less than half the price? 

 

 

 

 

I resist the urge to stock up on juicy mangoes, babaco, papaya and giant tamarillo as I don’t have tools and breakfast is included in the very reasonable room rate of NZ$80 / night. The supermarket proves a poor relation to roadside fruit stalls dotted around and outside the city. 

 

The big red pods are cacao. A few days later in an Amazon jungle home stay we learn how to roast the beans to make chocolate and eat delicious bits of the plant never seen outside the growing area. The local delicacies of chubby live maggot-like bugs and guinea pig never crossed my lips.

I’ll stop there as day 2's $3 taxi ride to a place as special as La Capilla del Hombre y Casa Museo  Guayasamín can’t share a post with something as commonplace as a supermarket.