When I was flying from Bogota to Quito, I was thinking this was going to be a place I’d do a little sight seeing just in the city, get everything ready for my venture to the Galapagos, and if I was lucky, I would find a bar somewhere to watch the Broncos-Patriots game. Boy was I wrong!
From the moment we started descending, I was in awe of the scenery surrounding the capital of Ecuador. Quito’s airport is one of the highest in the world, so as you can imagine, I was kind of surprised to be flying so low to the mountains (I have never flown to Vail or Aspen so it was the first time I ever landed in the mountains). The mountains are also different than what you see in the Rockies. The vegetation is a lot more tropical being almost a hybrid between evergreen and jungle.
Completely opposite of the disastrous and unorganized customs experience in Bogota, Quito’s took literally 4 minutes to get through, but that could be due to the fact that I only had 12 other people on my flight. I walked outside seeing a guy with a sign saying The Secret Garden. I walked over and told him I had reserved the bus ride and that I was Sam Zuber. “Ehhh, sorry you are not on the list,” the driver stated. “I am here to pick up a Dan Ayetsbur. You make reservation?” I told him I had, and showed him my ticket with my flight number, which he used to track when it was landing. Seeing that I was the only who had made a reservation from that flight and that the other 12 people were not approaching him, he figured that I must be Dan. It was about a fifteen-minute drive to the hostel, which is located in the old quarter of Quito. For $8.00 a night, it was great although I only have this to compare with a slum in Eilat. The only bad part was that it was five stories and I was on floor four so lugging my bag up four flights of uneven stairs was definitely my workout for the day.
I got settled into my dorm room and decided that I wanted to explore part of the old town by myself while it was still light out since I was strongly recommended by the girl working at the reception desk not to go out by myself, unless I wanted to get mugged. I ran uphill towards the basilica where I was told you can get some of the best photos of the city, but unfortunately it was closed, so I decided to continue uphill via 1000 steps to reach a park that was located just outside of the old section. It was very serine and peaceful as I view the entire old section of Quito. Because of Quito’s layout on the top of a mountain, the city itself is incredibly narrow, but extremely long. After being there for an hour I headed back for dinner where I met some Brits, Aussies, Dutch, and one American. Since this was my first time really in a hostel and I was flying solo, I wasn’t really sure what to expect and was a little nervous and quiet. You realize though after talking to a couple people that basically everyone here is either by themselves or with one other person and that everyone’s story is different. We schmoozed for the next few hours until the hostel bar closed and we headed out into town. We started at this Irish pub called Finn McCools where to no surprise, I saw some Israelis. Apparently there is an entire hostel in Quito that is more or less for Israelis. I assume the reason is that the Israelis are not really accepted anywhere else they go as the word on the street is that many travelers and hostels aren’t too fond of them. It was good to spit out the Hebrew though especially cause my Spanish is still pretty basic. We stayed at the pub till around 2am and then went dancing at Tequila Sunrise with a couple of local girls for an hour before the place was practically bombarded with police officers. Fortunately for us, the Ecuadorian girls we had met knew just where to go when everything else closed and we ended up at this dance bar called Blue. This Cuban guy Pedro (who Shauna would have absolutely fallen in love with at first sight) we had met had joined us en-route and we danced to 80’s music and techno. Me and Pedro got into a dance off and I used my Adagio moves along with some things Robby taught me from home to at least be able to stand my ground. Watch out NYC! We were there till around 5:30 in the morning, stopped off for some late night/early morning food. We gave our cab driver a couple extra dollars to wait while we ate, but he decided to come in instead and play cards with the other cabbies leaving us to have to find a cab at 6 in the morning.
The next day aka four hours later, I woke up to find almost every person in the hostel decked out in yellow Ecuadorian Jerseys. Saturday was a big day for Quito and Ecuador as there was a qualifying match against Uruguay in Quito. Some of the people wanted to go and scalp off some tickets, but it was a little too pricy for me. So a couple of guys I met and I, decided to go and check out the city for a few hours before heading to a plaza to watch the game with a bunch of Ecuadorians who were unable to get tickets. Of course we were all starving so we went to get some food. As we were walking we see this guy holding a sign with a chefs hat and big slippers on his feet dancing in the middle of the street yelling at us to follow him to his restaurant. It should be noted that we were right in front of a different restaurant at the time so I’m sure the owners were not too pleased with this foolish looking man. We had all gotten to Quito the day before and could not believe how cheap food was here. You could get a quarter of a chicken, with soup, salad, rice, beans, and a drink for 2 dollars. Of course you get what you pay for and our soups had pieces of chicken in them that I had never seen in a soup before. Mine had a nice delicious foot in it. While strange for us, Ecuadorians eat the entire animal. The main course chicken though was actually really delicious. After lunch we went to the basilica, which was now open and climbed all the way to the top. One of the guys I was with, Rob, was scared out of his mind about climbing up these steep ladders, which I obviously found amusing (sorry Rob). The view was incredible as you basically had a 360 degree view of the entire city.
In the old quarter of the city, there is a hill with a huge statue of the Virgin Mary dressed as a guardian angel. The first thing I was told when I arrived at the hostel was you just don’t go there or it’s almost a guaranteed mugging. We figured since we were four guys we could cab it up pretty safely and we did. The statue was cool and the hill provided more views of a section of Quito that were unseen from the Basilica. It was cool to see these low clouds sweeping in and blanketing the hills next to Quito.
Around 3 we headed back to the hostel very quickly and then headed with some more people from the hostile to a plaza to watch the Ecuador v. Uruguay game. The plaza was entirely swarmed with yellow. There was an enormous screen running stream of virtual billboard like advertisements in the plaza and we were all excited to watch the game on it with the entire Ecuadorian population. As the starting lineups were mentioned, we saw the entire crowd walk toward the three patio bars where there were these small 20 inch plasma TV’s and concluded that the game was not being played on the big screen. It was funny to see because you could barely see the game from the back and a lot of the way the crowd reacted was from watching others. We decided only to watch the first half before going back to Finn McCools for the second half where we could actually see what was going on. It ended up being a disappointing 2-1 loss to Uruguay so the crowds were not going anywhere near as crazy as they would have had there been a victory. I stayed at the bar until around 10:30 and headed back home because it was erev simchat torah and I wanted to check out the Chabad House in Quito. Unfortunately, I started getting sleepy and my 20 min power nap lasted till 2am when one of my roommates Martin got back. We went downstairs and chilled for about another hour before going to sleep.
I woke up on Sunday around 9 since I wanted to get a head start on the day. Colin, Martin, Rob, and I decided we were going to meet up with one of the local girls, Tifa. Along with the rest of her family and family friends, we drove outside of Quito and into the Mountains. The scenery was majestic. After viewing the equator from a distance (both real and fake), we headed to a chair lift in the middle of the mountains. What an incredible drive. As I had mentioned before, these mountains are a lot different than the ones you see in Colorado with much greener vegetation. When we got to the chair lift, I got a little nervous. There were no towers to keep the cable up like in Colorado except at the beginning and end and the chairs were legit plastic patio chairs you see outside in restaurants with a seatbelt that would be loose on a 300 pound man, who would break the chair. Rob was absolutely freaking out. The view going up though was surreal and it was such a blast!
After the cable trip, we headed to the fake equator and took some pictures there. I asked Tifa to dance with me because lets face it, when am I ever going to do that again? It was a first for Tifa also so we Salsa’d a little before getting out of the park. After a long day, we ended up back in Quito at Mulligans where I was able to connect with some Americans and watch part of the Indianapolis vs. Tennessee game. I found out the BRONCOS HAD WON!!!!! And was overjoyed! It was definitely the best day of the trip so far and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we went to a place most tourists don’t go to outside of Quito so I have to thank Tifa and her family for letting us partake in such an amazing experience! We said our goodbyes and headed back to hostileft where I packed and got ready for my 7 am flight to the Galapagos Islands.
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