Southern Exposure

Wednesday, January 21

We woke up early, had a quick grocery store breakfast of oatmeal cookies and yogurt and were on our way to Quito.

We continued riding through the Andes, surrounded by mountains on both sides, though not as spectacular as in prior days, the scenery was still very pleasant and we stopped frequently to take pictures.

We were riding through a countryside and were amazed at how far up the steep slopes people were farming.

Since we didn’t have to cover too much ground that day, we stopped for lunch at Otavalo. This town about 30 minutes away from Quito has one of the largest crafts markets in Ecuador on the weekends. Unfortunately, it was a weekday, and the town felt pretty sleepy. The restaurant we chose from the book was in the Ali Shungu hotel, owned by a charming American born woman Margaret, who was very welcoming, impressed and enthusiastic about our journey. The food was all organic sand absolutely delicious. I had a tomato soup and avocados stuffed with tuna salad and Matt had a grand veggie sandwich. It was the best lunch since I can remember.

On the way out of town we passed the market square, and although it seemed like we could probably get some cool things at the weekday market, we didn’t feel like stopping, finding parking, securing our gear, etc, so we kept on going to our next destination – the equator.

There are two equator markings in Ecuador – the proper one at 0 latitude, which is the one we were going to visit, and a touristy monument outside Quito, Mitad del Mundo, that you see in all the pictures, which is actually off by a number of degrees.

We pulled up to the site and were the only people there. There was a young kid who told us we could ride our bikes right into the round plaza that had a pole and an equator division line in the middle of it. The whole thing was a sun dial, so when it’s sunny you could actually tell the time. It was cloudy, so we couldn’t. The kid turned out to be a guide from a non-profit organization that performs equator research, he had a number of story boards, photographs and maps set up, and explained to us how to use the sun dial. This area had been marked as the equator by the Inca and their predecessors, with monuments built marking the equator and the two equinoxes. This is the highest spot on the equator in the world which makes it a great place for stargazing as both the constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere are visible. It was a nice educational impromptu lecture, so we bought a dvd and a couple of maps from him with proceeds going to the non-profit. We tried giving him a tip, but he refused it. Imagine that!

We took all the necessary photos, thanked him for his time and got going. After about 15 minutes we were pulling up to Quito. The city is huge, spread out lengthwise within a narrow valley – 4 km wide and 30 km long. We were anticipating a traffic nightmare trying to find our hostel in an unfamiliar city, and it did turn our quite maddening and tiresome, especially since all the maps and directions we had were worthless. It took about an hour and a half to first locate ourselves in the right part of town, then in the right neighborhood, then match a street to any of the streets on the map, find the right street and the right corner, ride around the block a few times until we finally noticed our disguised hostel.

By the time we unloaded the bikes and settled in, it was time to find some dinner. We stayed in the newer part of town called La Mariscal, which had a lot of restaurants to choose from. We originally chose an Indian place from the book to go to, but could not find it, so ended up in an Ecuadorian restaurant where I had a very delicious local soup called locro, made with potatoes and avocado.

When we were unpacking Matt noticed that he left his watch at the hotel in Tulcan. He was very upset as he really loved that watch. It was our alarm clock and it was left wrapped around the headboard in the hotel.

We also noticed that for the third day in a row our laptop was not picking up the wi-fi signal where wi-fi was available. We tried a few coffee shops and internet cafes in addition to our hostel and had the same problem everywhere. A possibility of our wi-fi connection being broken worried us a lot, so the day ended up on a sour note.