Quito and Canoa

¨Look at that building!¨ ¨Notice the doors on that church!¨ ¨Oh, how beautiful!¨ You´d swear that Mrs. Risnero was the one visiting the old city of Quito for the first time, but in fact she was just a proud local excited to share her amazingly restored city with a tourist. Felipe, my CS host for the next couple nights had given me directions to meet him at a coffee shop. Upon arrival at one of, what turned out to be, his three coffee shops in Quito, he and his mom asked me if I wanted to take a night tour of the beautiful old city. As we drove around checking out the sites with his enthusiastic mom giving the tour in Spanish from the back seat, I could not help but think of the time when Mom and I met a German au pair in DC and gave her a tour of our favorite spots. This was my introduction to Quito and another wonderful CS experience. I ended up spending 10 days here seeing the sites, doing the requisite equatorial tour of the Mitad del Mundo, meeting many of Felipe´s family members, teaching (?) Ecuadorian girls how to Gringo Salsa and checking out another futbol match - this time a World Cup Qualifier with Bolivia. One of the neatest things to do in Quito is climbing to the roof and towers of the old cathedral and scurrying around the outside ledges. Definitely cooler and scarier than most amusement park rides and fits neatly into the ¨wow, they wouldn´t allow this in the states¨ category. Though Quito has a reputation of being a little dangerous, I absolutely loved my time here.

After Quito, I ventured off to the tranquilo little beach town of Canoa to relax for a couple days before heading to the Galapagos. Due to some miscommunication (okay, so the bus company lied to me), I had to stay in a little town in the middle of nowhere for a night because there were no more buses to Canoa. Though disappointing at first, it actually turned out to be a great experience being completely away from the tourist route for a little bit and I met a really nice family at their tiny little street side restaurant. Once in Canoa, the chillness of the place did not disappoint. What a great place to relax and do nothing but surf, swim, walk on the beach and...eat burritos while watching a cockfight in the shadows of a 10 piece mariachi band. It turns out that it was Mexico´s Independence day and one of the owners of the hostel I was staying in was Mexican. This is a tiny little town, more like a village, where word travels fast. No one from miles around dared miss out on the opportunity to have a beer while listening to the sweet sound of mariachi.

As an interesting (or maybe not) side note, the Ecuadorian government controversially changed currencies to the US dollar a few years back and it was a little weird to all of a sudden be using dollars, quarters and pennies again.