Quito Old Town and Equator

The Avianca plane out of JFK is an airbus A319 with a couple extra rows thrown in to keep my memory of Royal Airlines alive. The plane is entirely full. Not a lot of leg room and worse, we end up in row in front of an emergency exit so seats don't recline. I go to my happy place and suffer 5 hours that I won't get back, the noise cancelling head set is awesome . We land in Bogota before 7:00AM, a modern airport, reasonably efficient. A bus soon takes us to load into an Air Galapagos A320 airbus with normal leg room for the final 1:45 minute flight to Quito.

Marriot gifts

Immigration and customs in Quito is very efficient and we are soon heading out of the windowless government areas into the sunshine where a man is waiting with my name on a sign. It's great when stuff works.... A 20 minute ride and $15 for the complimentary transfer and we are at our hotel, the Quito Marriot. Woohoo... A day of rest and reorganizing a well completion project back in Canada awaits. With Skype and wifi can get stuff done as good as if you were at the office.... The hotel gift shop has many local items, also a delightful 10% scale giraffe family as well, no doubt made in China.

A blue hair bus tour awaits us in the AM, yes its come to that... We visit old town Quito.

Winged Virgin of Quito Monument

Lovely ladies (wearing hats they will part with for $75US) surround us at the bus stops offering scarves at 2 for $5US, it was like they knew we were coming. A major landmark high above Quito depicts the Virgin Mary with wings. Apparently modeled after a nineteenth century wood/silver carving seen in a local church.

Wooden Winged Virgin of Quito

We see many old buildings, mostly religious structures. Very impressive monuments to oppressive times. Interesting how fear was used to steal the lives of the indigenous followers. Promises of a wonderful afterlife in exchange for slavery and misery in real life. I suppose in the absence of religion the same conditions would have been imposed with military force and disease until the people were weak and broken. The fantasy of heaven no doubt seemed attractive....


There is a morbid fascination with death and discomfort that is pervasive in the icons of the church. Crowns of thorns, skulls, crosses.... No doubt useful in scaring little children.

Note the size of penis on the boy

There apparently was even competition among the religious orders.

When one group built a new church another sect with an adjacent building placed a carving of a boy with a large member pointing toward the church. go figure, and its still there....

We move on to the source of the country's name.. The Equator. Just off the highway there is a carnival like government owned and operated village, La Mitad del Mundo, marking the mid point between the poles with a painted yellow line.  A 100 foot monument tower with a 15 foot diameter globe on top has been erected to assist us to get a better look and feel the grandeur and importance of the location.

 An elevator takes us up to an observation deck where we are treated to a panorama of the surrounding hills and the added benefit of the ability to locate where the bus is parked for latter reference. All good, except for the fact that we later learn  that the Equator is actually some 800 feet north of the painted yellow line.. apparently it was a better location to build the structure....No doubt in the days before GPS this was not an issue, always hard to keep a lie going indefinitely.... One would think that there might be somewhere in Ecuador that actually is on the Equator that is suitable to paint the equator line....

On the bus ride back to Quito we are treated with a political discussion from the tour guide on the merits of current president and his wealth transfers to the poor in exchange for votes. Almost like he was practicing a speech to be used later for a more interested audience.



Our luggage is packed, we head to the airport. It is a first rate full service airport they have in Quito, even a special place to unload your pistols prior to boarding.

Onward to the Galapagos......