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| Main Square Quito |
2) People in Ecuador have much less Inca-proud heritage compared to people in Peru. The Incas took over other pre-Incan groups throughout Ecuador, so the Ecuadorians have more allegiance to the indigenous and pre-Incas. The Incas actually only made it as far as Quito about 60 years before the empire fell. Many people outside Quito still speak Quechua.
3) Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar in the late 1990s or 2000 after instability in their previous currency, the sucre. People were forced to exchange their sucres into U.S. dollars at a rate of 25,000 sucres to $1 (yes you read that correctly). They still really struggle financially. Ecuador has to buy their dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank and pay extra fees and taxes. So it is not a fabulous deal for the people. The president who decided this was apparently air lifted out of the palace, received asylum in the U.S. and is a professor at Harvard. It made me really sad hearing about everything the US gets involved with on an international level.
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| Band playing in the square!! |
4) Free national healthcare = lots of ex-pats.
5) Ecuadorians don't believe in using the term "illegal alien" to refer to any person who is inside their country borders. So even tourists can use the public healthcare (according to Free Walking Tour Guide, we did not test this statement). Universities are open to everyone and the government will even cover tuition and living costs for Ecuadorians to receive a degree abroad with the expectation that they return to teach in Ecuador for the same number of years they were abroad.
6) Canelazo: drink served all over Quito. A hot mulled cider, can be served with or without a shot of sugar liqueur.
7) Calle de la Ronda: popular Bohemian colonial street with cafe and restaurants. Here is where you find locals going out to enjoy their evenings. We ate here and enjoyed a cup of canelazo!!
After a quiet day to catch up on laundry and writing, Holly and I booked a trip to Volcan Cotopaxi. The volcano was active just last year and they had to shut down the national park for most of 2015. They are slowly reopening parts of the park over the course of this year. We took a bus into the park and then climbed up to a base camp at 15,000 feet. From the base camp, climbers will attempt to summit the volcano. The entire volcano was covered in clouds and fog and we could literally see NOTHING. We hiked back down to the bus, rode bikes down to a lake, caught a very brief glimpse of the volcano before it was covered in fog again. I think the trip would have been really amazing if the weather was agreeable, but following the beach vacation trend, we were rewarded with only rain and more fog. One fun fact I learned about Cotopaxi is that in Quechua it means "god (coto) of death (paxi)" or they would also sometimes refer to it as the "neck of the moon."
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| At base camp! feeling hardcore and out of breath |
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| view of Base camp. Can't see far |
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| Quick peak of Cotopaxi on our way down |
Next, off to Latacunga to start the highlight of Ecuador - a 3 day trek on the Quilotoa Loop, to a crater lake!
