While Levi slept in, I went out to try to catch up on phone calls and blogging, but all of the internet cafes where closed!\u00a0 After our complimentary hotel breakfast, we headed south on Ecuador’s excellent roads, and enjoyed more fantastic mountain vistas.\u00a0 Every turn presented very picturesque towns, lakes, and volcanoes.\u00a0\u00a0 Altitude so high that the bikes ran very sluggish.\u00a0We briefly got confused when Quito was shown on a highway sign twice, in two different directions, but we quickly got passed that. \u00a0Somehow we missed the monument\/marker for the actual equator, so we do not have that photo.\u00a0 After one last long climb through some weird desert-like mountains, we entered Quito from the north.<\/p>\n
Quito is a huge, long and skinny city, located between volcanoes on the east and west.\u00a0 Levi navigated us to the central district, where we found a good hotel for $26.\u00a0 We took a trolley to centro ($.25) and checked out the amazing older city, amazing old churches and the ‘basilica’, centuries old government and commercial buildings, and very cool squares and public spaces. Then we went to a local market for a fabulous lunch of hornados for $2.50 – maybe the best meal I have had so far on the trip!<\/p>\n
Driving and road etiquette here is better than anywhere we have been in central or south America so far.\u00a0 Drivers are patient, and are less quick to use there horns.\u00a0 The annoying wolf-whistling and honking by taxis is much less prevalent here, and just in general, the streets are quieterand safer that what we have become used to.\u00a0 Hurray for Ecuador!\u00a0 But the soot and exhaust from the trucks and buses is no better, or worse.\u00a0 Ecuador has the cheapest gas we have seen so far – $1.50 a gallon for regular.\u00a0 Buses and trolleys are very convenient and cheap, and taxis are not expensive, either.\u00a0 Internet cafes abound, but connections are slow, and machines prinitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We took advantage of a sauna\/spa in the basement of our hotel, and that was a very pleasant and relaxing experience.\u00a0 All in all a very nice afternoon in a very nice, world-class city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Levi slept in, I went out to try to catch up on phone calls and blogging, but all of the internet cafes where closed!\u00a0 After our complimentary hotel breakfast, we headed south on Ecuador’s excellent roads, and enjoyed more fantastic mountain vistas.\u00a0 Every turn presented very picturesque towns, lakes, and volcanoes.\u00a0\u00a0 Altitude so high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[21,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1757,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}