Old Quito, Ecuador

With a population estimated at close to two million, Quito is Ecuador’s capital and second largest city. It also claims to be the second highest capital in the world after La Paz, Bolivia.

Quito’s air may be thin, but the city is thick with history. Quito sits on the ruins of an Incan city that the Incas burned to the ground rather than have it fall into Spanish clutches. The Spanish Conquistadors established the city of San Francisco de Quito in 1534. They proceeded to Christianize local Indians and use them as laborers to build splendid churches, convents, and monasteries. Most of these architectural treasures are still around. In fact, downtown Quito is so well preserved that it was declared a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 1978.

I felt protected by an angel while wandering through old Quito’s plazas and labyrinthine streets. Wherever I went, I could see the winged Virgin of Quito, hovering above the low-rise colonial architecture like a guardian angel. This huge statue stands on a hill called El Panecillo or “Little Bread Loaf” to the south of the old town. It is said to be the only depiction of a winged Virgin in the Americas. The monument was apparently modeled after an apocalyptic vision from the biblical book of Revelations. Quito’s unusual Virgin wears a crown of stars, and she balances on top of a chained dragon and a large globe of the world.



The heart of Quito’s Old Town is the Plaza de la Independencia, which locals usually call the Plaza Grande. This large square dates back to the 16th century and is flanked by some of the city’s most important buildings, including Quito’s austere-looking cathedral, and the white presidential palace or Palacio de Gobierno with its handsome colonnades. Looking like a wallflower on the north side of Plaza Grande is a nondescript modern administration building that was built to replace a crumbling colonial structure. Tall marble columns surmounted by a bronze statue of Liberty marks the center of the plaza.

The Plaza Grande is one of the best places for people-watching in old Quito. I visited the plaza on a Sunday when it was packed with Quiteños – as people from Quito are called – relaxing and chatting on wrought-iron benches. Quito is a conservative place, and most of the older people were dressed in their Sunday best. Some ladies had brought parasols to protect themselves from the strong equatorial sun. Children were running about dipping their hands in the splashing baroque fountains, chasing flocks of pigeons, and dodging people strolling to and from the area’s numerous churches.

I soon discovered that it was difficult to walk more than two blocks in old Quito without bumping into a church. Quito’s churches tend to be plain and formal on the outside. However, I found a notable exception one block west of the Plaza Grande. La Compañia de Jésus church has the most ornate baroque facade in Ecuador. It reportedly took 160 over years to build La Compañia and carve the collage of cherubs, sacred hearts and other icons ringing its stone entranceway.

The church’s gilded nave and towering altar smothered in gold leaf are truly a Conquistador’s dream come true. Tourism brochures often refer to La Compañia as “Quito’s Sistine Chapel.” Peering up at the church’s vaulted ceiling, I could see why: Moorish geometric designs inlaid with gold glittered in the diffuse light, and dozens of somber paintings depicting saints and religious scenes hung from the sweeping arches.

If Plaza Grande is the heart of Quito, then the Plaza San Francisco is the city’s soul. This vast cobblestone square is ringed by colonial buildings and bordered on its west side by the high white walls and twin spires of the San Francisco Church and Monastery. The plaza was built on the site of the original Inca city’s marketplace, which buzzed with traders from all over the northern Andes.

When I was there, Indian women wearing their signature narrow-brimmed fedoras approached me hawking multicolored weavings, and men bent double under enormous loads strapped to their backs plodded by. I joined the Sunday crowds filing into San Francisco Church. Once inside the church’s dark interior, I found myself engulfed by a sea of glinting baroque carvings and the echoes of hundreds of feet shuffling across creaking wooden floors as they have for centuries.

IF YOU GO

Quito’s Old Town has few services for travelers. Most stay in the Mariscal Sucre district in new Quito. This compact neighborhood northeast of the old town is full of budget hotels, restaurants, and stores catering to tourists. The best way to get to old Quito from Mariscal Sucre is on the efficient and inexpensive (fare $0.30) trolley bus system. The trolleys have their own lanes and can zip right through Quito’s frequent traffic jams. Taxis are also cheap and plentiful. Most of old Quito’s museums are closed on Mondays. The tourism information office on the Plaza de la Independencia supplies a good map of Quito and brochures.

Below is a slide-show featuring some of my Quito photos. Move the cursor over the screen to view captions. Click on images to see larger views and for information about ordering prints or leasing for personal or editorial use.


Old Quito, Ecuador - Images by John Mitchell

Oswaldo Guayasamín Museum in Quito, Ecuador

Oswaldo Guayasamín isn’t exactly a household name in North America. In fact, I had never heard of him until I visited Ecuador last year. Guayasamín was born in Quito in 1919, the eldest of 10 children. His father was indigenous and his mother of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. Guayasamín rose from poverty to become Ecuador’s best known painter and sculpture. Throughout his life, he championed the rights of Ecuador’s indigenous peoples and criticized social inequities and oppression in his homeland and around the world. A museum dedicated to Guayasamín's life and work stands on a hillside in Bellavista, a hillside residential neighbourhood southeast of downtown Quito.



The complex, set in pleasant gardens adorned with Guayasamín’s modernistic sculptures, consists of three separate venues: the Museo Guayasamín showcasing 250 of the artist’s most important paintings, an archaeological museum with over 3000 pre-Columbian artifacts collected by Guayasamín, plus a museum of colonial art amassed by the artist. Guayasamín used bold colours in his paintings, and figures often seem to reach out from the canvasses in pain and anguish. His powerful works left me with the impression that he was an innovative and compassionate artist deeply concerned about the stark realities of the human condition. Oswaldo Guayasamín died on March 10, 1999, and Ecuadorans consider him a national treasure.



The Museo Guayasamín complex is located at Calle Bosmediano 543 in Bellavista. It can easily be reached by taxi or bus from new or old Quito. Opening hours are Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Admission is US$2.

GUAYASAMIN VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.COM

Old and New Guayaquil, Ecuador

I was a bit apprehensive before visiting Guayaquil last fall. Ecuador's largest city and main gateway to the Galápagos Islands has long had a reputation for being a seedy and dangerous place. However, I was pleasantly surprised. This metropolis of over two million people on the Río Guayas has been spruced up in recent years with a number of ambitious urban renewal programs.

Guayaquil's rundown waterfront has been replaced by an attractive 2.5-kilometer (1.6 miles) pedestrian walkway known as Malecón 2000, which has restaurants, shopping areas, botanical gardens, plus a new Anthropological and Contemporarary Art Museum (MAAC Museum) and theatre complex. Many important buildings around town have also been refurbished, and 100-year-old houses in the historic Las Peñas neighbourhood on Cerro Santa Ana have been restored and painted bright colours.



Another new addition is the Guayaquil Historical Park across the river from downtown. This 8-hectare (20 acres) tropical park is divided into three zones: a Wildlife Zone with interptretive trails and local animals - many of them endangered species - living in natural settings; a Traditional Zone highlighting the rural lifestyles of Ecuador's Pacific coast; and an Urban Architecture Zone with handsome wooden buildings from the early 20th century that were transported from Guayaquil by boat. Projects like these often seem contrived to me. But I thought that this one was well done, and the tranquil park made a welcome break from the crowded city centre.

The Parque Histórico Guayaquil is located across the Guayaquil-Durán bridge. It is open Tueday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Admission is US$3 for adults and US$1.50 for children. The park is wheelchair accessible, and there is a pleasant restaurant.

The Green Labyrinth

Some people view travel as a means of escape, while others see it as a quest for adventure and understanding. Canadian writer Sylvia Fraser, author of clearly fits into the latter group. In her most recent travel book The Green Labyrinth: Exploring the Mysteries of the Amazon,Fraser ventures into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon to study the practices of shamans, native healers who use herbs and psychic methods to treat their patients’ emotional, physical, and spiritual problems. She also wants to experiment with ayahuasca, a powerful visionary plant medicine whose name means “vine of the dead.”

Fraser stays at isolated shamanic retreats where she revels in the tropical rain forest’s beauty and its diversity of flora and fauna. As someone who “missed the psychedelic sixties and rarely takes so much as an aspirin,” Fraser admits that the prospect of drinking ayahuasca terrifies her. She confronts her fears, however, and ends up ingesting ayahuasca eight times with the help of shaman guides. Along with visions, the powerful medicine causes bouts of intense nausea and vomiting. Fraser persists despite these ordeals, and her experiences with ayahuasca yield some surprising and valuable insights into the mystical world of South American shamanism.

The Panama Hat Trail

Good travel books on Ecuador are hard to find. One that I can heartily recommend is The Panama Hat Trailwritten by American writer Tom Miller during the mid 1980’s. The author sets out to understand Ecuador through one of its principle icons and biggest exports, the so-called “Panama hat.” Miller begins by explaining that these popular straw hats are correctly called sombreros de paja toquilla. They came to be known as Panama hats because 19th-century American prospectors used to buy them in Panama while en route to the gold fields of California.

Miller tracks the production of these symbolic hats from the weaving town of Montecristi, which is famous for its fine quality hats, on Ecuador’s steamy west coast to the high Andes. His revealing tales about the exploitation of indigenous hat-makers and his speculations about the role the Panama hat trade has played in shaping Ecuador's history make for an instructive and entertaining read. Above all, Miller shows a genuine love of this beautiful South American country and its welcoming inhabitants. Here is one of my favourite lines from the book:

“To me, Ecuador has been a country with its head in the clouds, its heart on its sleeve, and its groin to the ground.” –Tom Miller

Quito's New Teleférico, Ecuador

One of the first things I did after arriving in Quito was to take a ride on the city’s new teléferico, a cable car that whisks passengers from an altitude of 2950 metres (9,676 feet) to a lookout over 4000 metres (over 13,000 feet) above sea level in only ten minutes. Quito's teléferico, which opened in July 2005, is located on the eastern side of Pichincha Volcano, one of Quito’s defining natural landmarks.



The teleférico complex has restaurants, stores, and even amusement park rides. However, spectacular views of Quito and the distant snow-clad-peak of Cotopaxi Volcano more than make up for the commercial atmosphere. The lookout at the top is an excellent place to get oriented before exploring Quito. There are also some hiking trails leading through the stark Andean landscape.

Can you spare some change?

If you're going to visit Ecuador, take along plenty of small-denomination bills. Ecuador now uses U.S. dollars, and apparently there aren't enough to go around. Twenty-dollar bills can be difficult to change, $50 bills a real nightmare, and $100 bills virtually impossible to spend. I took a taxi in Quito one night, and the driver couldn't break a $5 bill. I ended up having to short-change him for the $3 fare. My hotel in Quito had a fit when I presented them with a $50 bill. They had to send a bellboy running to nearby stores before they could cobble together the right change. If you only carry large bills in your wallet, you could end up on the street asking passers-by for spare change.

La Mitad del Mundo near Quito, Ecuador

On my recent trip to Ecuador, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Mitad del Mundo or "Middle of the World" monument about 22 km (14 miles) north of Quito. This 30-metre-tall (98 feet) cement pyramid topped by a globe is supposed to pinpoint the exact location of the equator, and a yellow line running from the monument allegedly marks 0 degrees latitude. Tourists (myself included) inevitably have their pictures taken standing with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern Hemisphere. Little do they know that they are not really straddling the equator. Modern Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology has revealed that the equator actually lies 300 metres (984 feet) to the north of the current line. Plans are in the works to erect a new monument on the correct spot by the end of 2008 and to build a theme park around it. The old monument will remain. And who knows? It may prove to be more of a curiosity than the new one.

Humboldt's Cosmos

One thing that I would like to do in this blog is pass along the names of worthwhile books that I come across in my travels. During my recent visit to Oaxaca, I bumped into Humboldt's Cosmos at the wonderful Librería Amate bookstore on the Alcalá pedestrian mall. This well-researched and highly readable book by Gerard Helfrich deals with the life and writings of Alexander von Humboldt, perhaps the most famous and influential of the New World's 18th-century explorers. Charles Darwin was inspired by Humboldt's writings, as were many other great thinkers. Here is what Ralph Waldo Emerson had to say about Humboldt:

"Humboldt was one of the wonders of the world, like Aristotle, like Julius Caesar...who appear from time to time as if to show us the possibilities of the human mind, the force and range of the faculties - a universal man."