Quick day in Quito

Wednesday May 25

Today we left Peru for Ecuador. We arrived at the airport characteristically early to find it full of folks which eased the painfulness of our punctuality. That is, until one of the gates opened up and everyone, I mean everyone left. I guess we were a little early ;-).

We had late night flights with a layover in Lima which ended up with our arriving in Quito, Ecuador at 3:15 on the morning. We almost did not make it out of Lima as Patti forgot a can of sunblock in her day pack. Security screening caught it and the first guard was trying to make heads or tails of it, then called his supervisor who also could not figure it out. Then in very broken English asked if we needed this. We did, but we needed the headache less.

Our touch down in Quito came with the biggest bounce that any of us had experienced and scared the passengers so much they clapped when we finally came to a stop.

We arrived at the hotel at 4:00 where we would have gone promptly asleep, but this was a 5 Star Sheraton that Patti, of course, scored for free. She does this to us every vacation. While we love the extremely nice accommodations, we dont like being the ratty backpackers in these high-end downtown hotels. The bellman took about 10 minutes to explain to us all facets of our room, which was very nice, but maybe for another time.

I brought the TRX along again this trip to maintain a little bit of fitness, which I think will have gone well this time as we are living and hiking a lot at elevations from 8,000-13,000 feet. The TRX caused a stir at the Sheraton though. There is a yellow block that sits outside the door and is connected to a loop on the inside of the room.  When we were leaving our room, at Noon! (sleep), there were about a half dozen folks outside our door including the head concierge and the head of security. Turns out they were very suspicious of this conspicuous yellow block.  "What is this package on your door?". I brought the concierge in and showed him a couple bicep curls and then he laughed and got very happy. Not sure what was going to happen there.

We headed out on the town to later realize that we had left the Kindle guidebook in the hotel, oh well. Our first stop was not where we were planning as the cabbie just kind of let us out, but it turned out to be one of the highest church visits we have had. At the Basilica Del Voto Nacional we were able to climb on the roofline of the church then high up into one of the spires. 

We discovered that Riley has a little fear of heights as we ascended and descended these very steep and exposed stairs. Further on in our walking tour, that did not have Kindle Guide (we were winging it) a torrential downpour struck and we ducked in and waited it out in a cool little courtyard area with stores, restaurants and homemade ice cream for the girls.  We were thankful that the storm did not find us on those stairs.

Next we toured La Catedral in the main square. If the Voto church was the highest then this one was the most uninhibited. No photos were allowed but it seemed we were allowed everywhere. Early in our walking the main sanctuary Tara and Riley spotted a secret doorway under the alter in one of the chapels. We wandered about so much and got a little lost that we ended up walking out of that secret doorway, pretty cool. No photos were allowed, unfortunately.

The rains were still rolling through so we opted for an early night so as to try to make up for some of the sleep lost in our late arrival.

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