A Few Days in Medellin, Colombia
When I told an Ecuadorian friend that I was going to Medellín, Colombia for a week, she told me that she would never go to Medellín, because, “I'm afraid.”
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The Beginning of the End of the Incas, Sacsayhuaman
I've been reading, for the second time, a book called The Last Days of the Incas by Kim McQuarrie. It makes traveling so much better when you know something about the history of what you're looking at. It's a terrific lot of historical research that reconstructs in great detail just how the Spanish destroyed the Inca empire, and fits in beautifully with Hiram Bingham's accounts of his rediscovery of the Incan sites, particularly Machu Picchu. (Did you know, btw, that Bingham was looking for Vilcabamba, the last Incan capital, and thought that's what he'd found at Machu Picchu? Oh well, that's another story for later, and to be told by someone else–scholars, for instance–who are interested in academic credit.)
A Quick Dash Through Lima, Peru
We've been in Peru for five days now, and the first impressions are that Peru is more prosperous than Ecuador, and that this is due to a few things: the people just seem to be more entrepreneurial, especially when it comes to tourism; and the government seems more interested in actually doing things to promote the economy instead of promoting itself.
We see some of that in Cusco, where we are now, but it was really apparent in Lima, where we spent two days before heading up to the mountains.
The Mariscal for Old People
To my mind, one of the major deficiencies of Quito is its lack of neighborhood bars. When we lived in Madrid and Barcelona, we could count on there being at least one bar on damn near every block in the residential neighborhoods. These were most often family places that opened early in the morning so you could get your café con leche and a croissant, served a hearty lunch at the beginning of siesta time, and were there for beer, wine and tapas after work.
No such luck in Quito.
We make up for the coffee ourselves by brewing a very strong pot every morning in our French-style press pot we brought from home. (We tried serving it to one of my students one day and he recoiled at the grounds that stuck in his teeth.) There actually is a place that makes pretty good croissants, but it's about a 20 minute walk, and we don't usually make it there in the morning.
Bottle dancing in Quito
Saturday and Sunday are the best days to walk around the city for two reasons: everyone else is doing it, and the city provides entertainment in the form of music and dancing.
First, the people watching part: both weekend days are big shopping days. On Saturday, all shops are open and are doing big business. Squeezing through the stalls of the Quiteño equivalent of a mall is an experience in itself. The shopping centers mostly resemble a U.S. storage locker facility where rows of 12 x 24 foot empty spaces face each other across a narrow hallway. Here, though, those lockers are packed to the top with merchandise of all types. One stall has underwear, the next has shoes, the next has small appliances, and the one next to that has mattresses (which reminds me, I need one.)
The Chapel of Guayasamín, Quito
Oswaldo Guayasamín, who died in 1999, is undoubtedly Ecuador's most famous artist. You see his images everywhere you go. Even the shops that sell Indian handicrafts appropriate his work for everything from sweaters to painted peanut bowls.
Inside the Capilla; you can see the scale
It was his final gift to his country to establish two incredible museums of his work–the Capilla del Hombre (Chapel of Man) and the Fundación Guayasamín. He was extremely generous.