Ecuador Day One

Day one started out bright and early. Literally like less than 5 hours of sleep early. Our plane landed in Quito at about 10:30 PM, and Ecuador is currently the same time zone as Kansas City. So by the time we got our luggage, waited for the rest of the group, took the bus to the hotel, and got situated it was nearly 1 am which is way, way, way past my bedtime. Then we had to have our suitcases outside the door by 7:00am. So I was up at the ridiculously early hour of 6am. I only get up that early on vacation and Black Friday.

Anyways we started the morning with a city tour of the Old Town. Did you know that Quito was the very first UNESCO World Heritage sight? Well now you do! Our faithful followers know that we adore UNESCO World Heritage Sites. So basically our city tour consisted of walking from bathroom break to bathroom break (all modern toilets, no pre Colombian Inca toilets). I think we had 3 during our 2 and a half hour walk. I took advantage of every one of them because I didn’t realize that there would be so many.

We saw many beautiful buildings and went inside one of the most fabulously ornate churches I have ever seen. It was gloriously golden—7 tons of gold to be precise. And NO PHOTOS ARE ALLOWED! It was the most tragic thing ever, maybe even worse than not being able to take a Buddah selfie in Sri Lanka, or for those of you that don’t know that feeling imagine if the ice cream shop were closed and you could only look longingly through the window dreaming of the cold creamy goodness just beyond your reach. Yes, it was that kind of horrible tragedy. My fingers were itching so bad to take a picture. It was so hard! I had to console my aching heart with a couple of postcards, but I am sure my own pictures would have been much prettier.

Don’t worry though. We were able to buy several scarves and friendship bracelets during our walk as well. All is not lost if you are able to buy things, I mean stimulate the local economy.

Then we got back on the bus, and headed to the Middle of the World Monument. But we made the best pit stop ever, and I do mean ever! Ice cream! I scream! You scream! Thetwinsontour scream for ice cream! We watched them make some too. Basically you take some ice and salt, a copper bowl, and fruit juice and sugar. While you are stirring it, you spin the bowl super fast. In 5 minutes you have delicious ice cream. Now for the epicurean review: the starring flavors are sour sop and blackberry together which is what my sister got. It’s a delightful mixture of sweetness and tartness that makes your tastebuds explode in ecstasy, or so I am told. I got the sour sop (a much underrated flavor in the United States) and a local type of passion fruit. It was yummy! The icecream is more of a slightly melted, icy sorbet of exotic fruit flavored goodness. Any tour that stops for locally crafted ice cream before lunch gets a perfect $10 Kohl’s cash rating from thetwinsontour!

Ecuador is named Ecuador because it is on the equator. The monument is very nice with neat equatorial displays inside, but we didn’t have time to stop and look at it because we spent most of our time waiting for our lunch. We both had a typical meal called Churasco (which I may have had before in Guatemala?) I know you all mostly care about the ice cream review, but please humor my mother. You know how she worries about us not eating enough on vacations. It is a thin, chewy piece of steak with a delicious strong and salty flavor, white rice, and a fried egg. When we ordered it, the waiter told us it would take 12 minutes to prepare. Unfortunately 12 minutes means about 35 minutes in Ecuador. So that left us running around frantically trying to get the requisite equatorial selfies before the bus left. This also means that we took 8 flights of stairs to get to the top of the observation tower rather than wait in the slow moving elevator line.

The next stop was our hotel which I wish we had more time to enjoy. The beautiful flower filled lakeside landscape was the ideal backdrop for the miniature golf course and rabbit petting zoo. Yes, the hotel had a petting zoo! Unfortunately it was full of rabbit turds which I did not particularly want to get wedged in the crevices of my shoe treads. So I just took pictures instead.

And I guess that pretty much sums up Day One in Ecuador.

Love,

thetwinsontour

ps- while we were at dinner, they lit a fire in the fireplace and put hot water bottles dressed like chickens in our bed. We just love a good hot water bottle!