2016 South America - Quito Day 1

After spending a few days in the jungle, travelled back to Lima, where we spent our final night with Amy and Adam at the local KFC. For no specific reason..... As our fellow Inca Trail / Amazon Rainforest Alumni headed back to Canada, Tim and I were off to Ecuador. We were headed for the Galapagos Islands, but before we went off to enjoy the sun, sand and sea, we had a day and a half in the capital - Quito.

We arrive in the mid-afternoon and after checking into our hotel, our first port of call is to drop off our dirty laundry at the local laundromat. We try to speak to the proprietor in a mix of Spanish and hand signals. Fortunately, "mañana" was something we could say and we settled on collecting our laundry the next day at 8am.

After our holiday "admin" was out of the day, we decide to head up the Teleferiqo - a gondola that runs from the edge of the city centre up the east side of Pichincha Volcano to Cruz Loma, where you can get panoramic views of the city. Couple of things we didn't realise about Quito - (1) it is very hilly and (2) it is actually 2,850m above sea level, which is considered high altitude. So after ~~walking~~ struggling up hills for about 45 mins, we decide to hail a taxi to take us the rest of the way to the Teleferiqo. Let's just say it wasn't very far - but it was just too hard.

The Teleferiqo is located just next to Vulqano Park - a theme park with rides and the like. So, we were quite surprised when we arrived to find the area quite empty and the Teleferiqo difficult to find. After asking some random punters for directions and eventually make it. We're not sure if it was the time of the week or year or if it was considered too cold, but there was hardly anyone in line for tickets. We jump into a gondola, which takes about 20 mins to travel 2,237 linear meters to the top. The Teleferiqo in Quito is actually one of the highest lifts in the world starting at 3,117 m (10,226 ft) and ascending to to 3,945 m (12,943 ft).

Despite being freezing cold, the top of the Teleferiqo delivers on its promise of panoramic views. From here, you can see almost all of Quito's 324 sq km. From here, Quito looks so large and so dense but comparison, Singapore is more than double Quito's size at 719 sq km. We ask our tour guide (who we meet the next day) about this and discover that Quito is 60km north to south and only a measly 7km east to west. Housing 2.2 million people, the is the second largest city in Ecuador after Guayaquil, which is home to 3 million people.

Riding the cars with strangers.

We spend some time at the top admiring the view and stop for a hot chocolate to warm up before making our way back down. In our gondola, we meet a couple of locals and tourists. We strike up a difficult conversation - the locals only spoke Spanish, while the other tourists translated occasionally. At the bottom, we spoke to the other tourists about the best spot to catch a taxi back into the city. As we spoke, there just so happens to be a van, chock full of other people leaving the area, which happened to be pulling out of the car park. They stick their heads out the window and the other tourists have a quick chat to them. Unfortunately for them, the van isn't going anywhere near their destination but for 2 USD each, they agree to take us to our hotel. One day in Quito and we were already getting into stranger's cars.

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