Ecuador

Ecuador : Tulcan, Quito, Mitad del Mundo, Huaquillas

09.04
F: Ipiales
T: Taxi Tulcan $3.5
T: Bus Quito $6
S: Quito
H: Milenka Colonial Suits $17

10.04
T: Terminal Ofelia
S: Mitad del Mundo $10
S: Quito
H: Milenka

11.04
T: Huaquillas 19:45 panamericana.ec 12h $14

12.04
F: Huaquillas 
T: taxi to Tumbes 40 S  (1 Peruvian SOL = 0.27 EUR)


I liked enormously Las Lajas and the kind people of Ipiales, but had to stick to schedule, now the plan was to be for Easter in Lima. It was an early sunny morning,  and I walked the road to the frontier, only 4 km away. The frontier was rather crowded, both on the Colombian and the Ecuador side, but I found a beautiful girl to talk to.

Natalia from Guayaquil

She was with her parents and we talked quite a lot, me already in my third "No hablo ingles" week.When we finally entered the Ecuador frontier building there were still long queues inside. Except for one counter saying "Jubilados 65+". I'm not yet retired but was just over 65 and faced the dilemna of staying in the general queues and talk to Natalia or go to the 65+ counter thus admitting my real age. The officer at the counter had just chased away some other people, looked at me and asked angrily what I'm doing at his counter. I don't look 65 at all, but had my passport for proof, so he stamped my passport, I turned to wave to Natalia and there I'm in Ecuador.  
Official currency in Ecuador is the US dollar. A taxi took me to the border town of Tulcan at the bus station there was a bus just leaving for Quito, price was only $6 for 225 km, the winding road with beautiful mountain scenery took 5 hours. The north bus terminal in Quito is quite far from the center, but there is excellent interurban rapid transport with isolated bus lanes in the middle of of the big avenues. Similar lanes were also in Lima and Buenos Aires. My room was in the Casco Viejo, near Teatro Sucre. 

Teatro Sucre

Coquette 

I stayed at Milenka Colonial Suites, a nice young lady was renting rooms, some people stayed for months. The room was nice and clean, but the washroom was 2 floors below and I was feeling the altitude when climbing the stairs. Breakfast was served in a pavillion in the courtyard, guarded by Coquette. The old town of Quito, the Casco viejo is the best preserved ensemble of Spanish colonial buildings in South America. Together with Krakow in Poland, it was the first city to be declared UNESCO world heritage in 1978. There are many fine buildings in the online album.  
In the Plaza Grande the supporters of Lenin  (no, not the Vladimir Ilich )- newly elected president of Ecuador Lenin Moreno were celebrating in front of the Catedral Metropolitana. 

Lenin elected president

Catedral Metropolitana, Quito

There was really a lot to see, the huge square in front of the San Fransisco church, the Jesuit church, the Presidential palace - Palacio Carondelet, the side streets, the small shops and restaurants. I especially liked the Centro Cultural and Palacio Arzobispal with their inner courtyards

Archbishop's Palace

Next day was a lovely sunny morning. With a bunch of papers I headed to the Bolivian Embassy, or at least where Here Maps thought it was. It wasn't. There was the library of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the same street though and they confirmed what Google Maps was showing - calle Eloy Alfaro. The embassy was open, but they had just changed the consul, so no chance. But I had another target for the day: La Mitad del Mundo, a memorial and museum right on top of the Equator, just to the north of Quito. You need to go to Ofelia terminal by city bus and take a bus from there.

Mitad del Mundo

With one part of you in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern, you start feeling a bit bipolar no? I had been already at the Greenwich meridian and started figuring out where it crosses the Equator so that I could buy the place and the double attraction would bring hordes of tourists, but it is someplace in the Atlantic and not on the mainland. I had also been to Fiji islands where the date line passes, so there it is like a time machine, you can step from today back into yesterday and then back into tomorrow, a bit confusing as you end up where or rather when you started. "It takes all the running you can do just to stay in one place", said the Queen to Alice. 

There is a Planetarium, a Cacao museum, Museum of Native Indians, A museum with city models and even a couple of lamas. But the most interesting exhibits were inside the monument itself: you are greeted by a hologram and above there is a real physics lab: wireless electricity transmission, Coriolis force demo and the inevitable two sinks where water whirls in different directions. And you weigh at least a kilo less at the Equator than at the two Poles, the Earth being a geoid flattened at the poles. 

In brief, you both enjoy yourself and learn. Back to an evening walk in Quito and the sermon in the Basilica del Voto Nacional, I went to climb the tower in the rear the next day.

Quite a climb and some stairs were vertical. Then there was a real torrential equatorial shower, that reminded me I had lost my jacket someplace between Colombia border and Quito. After the rain subsided a bit, I bought one of those $1 waterproofs and looked around for a jacket, but alas, people in Quito are not my size! I went back to Milenka to get my backpack and took the bus to the South terminal. 

The ride to Huaquillas on the border with Peru was a good 12 hours, and we descended again from 2850 m to sea level.  It was a market day in Huaquillas. The border passes right through the city and as it is impossible to control, the border building is quite far and I had to take a taxi, that would take me after the stamps to Tumbes. Did I mention that after Panama there were no more border fees?

 So after a full 3 days in Ecuador I crossed into Peru.