Quito - 3rd Feb 2018

We were driven back to Quito from Hacienda Alegria after breakfast and some fond farewells with Gabriel, Paty, Veronique, Janet and of course the horses.  Our hotel was very central so we dropped our bags and headed into the city.  Back at our favourite coffee shop, we booked hotels for later in our stay and then wandered towards the Cathedral, through the narrow, congested streets.  Traffic in Quito is terrible and the old town seems to be in the permanent state of gridlock.

The cathedral, built in 1926 is an enormous structure with layers of intricate stained glass windows running the entire length of the nave, each side flanked by individual alters to various saints.  Charlotte lit a candle for our travels and we hid inside for a while longer to avoid the heavy rain.  Wandering back to the old town, we stopped to do some shopping, checked into our rather groovy hotel and then back out to La Rhonda.  La Rhonda is a street by the original city wall, which is now famed for its artisan shops and restaurants.  We found a wonderful hat maker with a fantastic selection of hand made hats.  Charlotte treated herself to a green felt Ecuadorian hat (which wouldn't look out of place in the Alps) and I bought a panama hat for Duncan.  Result!


One thing we were both determined to do in Quito was to try cuy.  Or, in English, guinea pigs.  Roasted guinea pig is actually the national mountain dish of Peru, although for obvious reasons I'd been unable to sample any.  Charlotte was keen, but each restaurant we asked (with some trouble - at one point I resorted to imitating a guinea pigs squeaks, which definitely didn't help)  didn't have cuy on the menu.  About to give up, we ventured up some stairs to a courtyard restaurant and asked.  Yes!  They had them. Roasted to a crisp, it went down very nicely with red wine drunk out of tumblers, so that it looked like cola. It's a big voting weekend this weekend and consequently the sale of alcohol is banned while everyone goes to the polls.  Apparently in Ecuador, politics and drinking don't mix!

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