Whoa!

I got invited to see another person's blog and I completely forgot I still had one. Maybe I'll have to start doing this again. :) Thanks for the reminder!

Hi there. Me again. I know, right? Who else would it be. I'm back in Quito. We came back a few days ago and got a nice break to be tourists for two days after some hard work in Santo Domingo.

This is on the drive back from Santo Domingo to Quito. There's the volcano, Cotopaxi, off in the distance. We're going to climb it later. We did sort of already, but we're going to go up another side this time.

Now I'll show you some touristy shots. This is Cerro Panecillo, which is a big hill above the old part of the city. The statue is the Virgen de Quito. This hill was a lookout for the Incas. From this hill, they could see almost 40 miles to the north and south of the city.




Here is a plaza in El Panecillo.



This is the home of the Archbishop in Plaza Grande.



And someone's random house.


This is the statue in Plaza Grande.




Taken out the window of La Basilica del Voto Nacional. This is the newest church in the "Old Town", or the oldest part of Quito. You can climb all the way to the very tip top of the towers. Not just to the windows in the towers, up beyond the bells and clock, literally to the tip top. And once you get up as high as you think you can go, there's a gutter looking thing to climb up even higher. I didn't brave that one. There were a few people going up there, but with nothing between me and the streets below except 275 feet of air... no thank you.

Here is the church from a distance so you can see how high up it is that you can really go!
And here's what it is like looking down. :)



This is a courtyard, that I think belongs to a hostel. I'm not sure, but it was just begging me to take its pictures.





I think this was from Plaza Independencia. I can't remember. :>





Welcome to Mitad del Mundo, the center of the world... the equator. It runs right through here. You can stand with one foot in either hemisphere. Very fun. They have all kinds of attractions here. The monument itself is a museum to the different types of people who live in Ecuador. The round ball on the top is a stone carved Earth. The area around the monument was built to look like a typical Ecuadorian village with a main square, a church, a cockfighting ring, homes and shops. There is a yellow/orange line that runs down the middle of the equator. This is the place where the ancient Incas thought the center of the earth was. They were pretty smart, huh? Turns out, with modern GPS technology, they were only 250 meters off of the exact spot. That's not bad!


Here at the little museum on the 'equator', they have all kinds of fun activities. You can balance an egg on its skinny end (you really can - I saw people do it!). You can also go up to this tub and pull the drain plug to see that there is no Coreolis Effect here on the equator.

P.S. I have no idea who she is - she was just there and wasn't looking like she was leaving anytime soon and I was in a hurry.

This is part of the museum. This is the typical Ecuadorian village house.
This is inside, and these are cooking utensils (of some sort).


Here is the egg thing! See? It really can be done on the equator.


At the museum, you also learned about other traditional things like blowing darts. This is a cactus leaf that people could aim at with the blow dart gun. There also was an exhibit on shrunken heads. I put those pictures at the end though. That way, if you're squeamish (and I was), you don't have to see them.


Now, let's go see the real equator.





Time to go see Cotopaxi again. Cotopaxi is the world's second highest active volcano. The word "Cotopaxi" means 'smooth neck of the moon'. They have a tram that takes you part way up, so we took that this time instead of walking.


This is from the tram.


That's a glacier we could see from the tram. When the volcano was first climbed in the 1800's, they didn't need ice gear because it had recently had a lava flow. Now, the volcano is covered in ice and glaciers.


These are clouds!

More clouds..... and the way down.


Didn't believe me, did ya?


We took a night hike, too. We saw mushrooms...

...and a poisonous spider...

I forget where I saw this little bird, but he was cute.


Some random scenery...
... and goats.

...and a pretty shot of sunlight through the trees.


These are rain indicators. The more of these that are on the ground, the more likely the chance of rain.



Now we're going to the Otavalo Market. This is an Indian market. You can buy everything here from brightly colored textiles to fruits to meats. There is an animal market there as well. This is one of the streets to the Otavalo Market.


Here is a textile/souvenir booth.




This is the animal market. Notice all the bright colors worn by the Indians at Otavalo.


Indoor part with a fruit/vegetable stand.


Here is an Indian woman who was selling beans and other vegetables.


Even the beans are brightly colored.


More fruit stands.


Cooked figs and potato balls.


An Indian couple.


Fresh snails.


Some kids hiding in a doorway.



A lady selling candy and other things.



Fried potato balls.



Things from here down get kinda gross.



This guy was roasting and selling pigs.



Some tongues in a window.


Meat bits..


I have no idea what this guy told me, but that's a pig... somehow.



Roasting cuy. Which... *gag*... are guinea pigs. They have been eaten there as food for eons.


:S


And here...



is a real shrunken head. They had a poster on the methods for this. It was used as trophies from battles, but now they don't do human heads. They do, however, still shrink some animal heads to keep the tradition alive.







Adios.
Hasta luego!