The sprawling city of Quito, Ecuador
I only spent a handful of days here, but it was long enough to take in a fair amount and get a sense of the energy of this town. Bustling at 9895 ft above sea level, with lovely people and, incidentally, a great trolley system; Quito had a lot to offer.
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| View from the plane as I flew in(I wanted to avoid flying during this trip but this was the only way to get to Ecuador in time to meet my sibs). It felt like we were about to crash into the city. |
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| A great mural on one of the university buildings. Not sure who the artist is but it is sort of similar in style to Oswaldo Guayasmin (see below). |
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| A super creepy Jesus in one of the churches on the old section of town. He kind of looks like a junkie. |
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| Can you see those mannequin heads in the window? They can see you. |
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| View from an amazing cable car ride up to a lookout point on the edge of the city. You can only see a sliver of Quito here...it's probably 4 times this in length...huge. |
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| A taxi driver had this interesting little shrine on his dashboard. I should have asked what it meant but instead I just told him I liked it. |
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| Outside the Capilla del Hombre, one of two sites dedicated to the artwork of Oswaldo Guayasamin, who was a sort of patron artist to the city of Quito. He's got a lot of really amazing figurative pieces but I'm sort of partial to his still lives (reproduced here). |
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He also has a series of paintings of Quito that are really cool. Here are reproductions of a couple of them.
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| Just north of the city is a museum located on the equator, covering some funny facts about the science of the location and a little about indigenous groups of Ecuador. There's the equator (that red line). If you walk on it with your eyes closed and your arms out it's really hard to balance. |
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| And some shrunken heads. Why not? There were also painting all around this little box giving really clear instructions on how to shrink a head yourself. So useful! |
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| You can also try to balance an egg on a nail while you're on the equator. Nealon pulled it off and got a little certificate. Look how excited that lady is behind him. It look like he's holding her face. |
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| This guy did a dance for us, too (part of the tour...I wonder if he hates doing this). I really want a pair of those furry chaps. |
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| OK, there was also another site/location for the equator which was apparently calculated first but was wrong. There was a giant statue there and sort of a Disneyland-style park surrounding it. It was cool but I chose to focus on the authentic deal. There was a cool painting of a bull fight there, though. Here it is. |
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| And finally, you can get a crazy design shaved into your head in Quito. Nealon went for it literally minutes before he had to get to the airport. Totally worth it. |
