My family arrived in Quito around 1am, and with next to no Spanish, they managed to arrive to the Airbnb that we stayed at during our time. We woke up the next day and headed straight to Ibarra, which is a 45 min taxi ride to the bus station in Quito, and a ~2.5 hour ride north from there. The family enjoyed the bus experience- it’s so convenient to be able to catch a bus to any destination at any time of the day; no planning ahead needed! And it’s cheap. Once we arrived at the house in Ibarra, we just spent a relaxing day walking around town, getting ice cream, watching the Christmas events that were going on in the parks, and drinking wine on our rooftop for the night. Sadly, we only had the day in Ibarra and headed back to Quito the next morning after some fresh OJ and bread.
Back in Quito, we headed straight to almuerzo, ate some delicious quimbolitos (corn cake-ish dessert), and discovered 50 cent ice cream cones that we couldn’t get enough of. We headed over to do the Free Walking Tour that I did when I first arrived in November, and Mom thoroughly enjoyed learning about the history of Quito, and most specifically why Ecuador uses USA dollars. Basically, the short version is that Ecuador was in an economic collapse with their own currency, Sucres, and people started using dollars to save their earnings, and eventually the government converted to USD fully. After a very tiring morning and 
afternoon, we headed to Plaza Foch, which is the New Town area of Quito where a lot of the nightlife is.We met up with Elaine and the other co-founder of CRECER, Susy, for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant to my sister’s delight. It’s awfully hard to be a vegetarian in South America- nearly all dishes come with chicken or some type of red meat. At this point we started getting smart in asking for juices without sugar. Since Ecuadorians add a TON of sugar to their juice, the tartness of non-added sugar juices tastes delicious. And of course, after dinner, we had to go to a bar for a few drinks per my brother’s request. Mitchell always suggests we grab drinks wherever we are, and he was happily surprised that the drinks here are much stronger than in the States.
The next morning we found a great breakfast place just down the block from our Airbnb. You can get a coffee, fresh juice, bread + cheese, and meat dish or eggs for under $2. I think we went back to this place 3 more times during our time in Ecuador because it was such a good value and also delicious. Mitchell especially loves ají, which is like a hot sauce. It is made of the ají pepper, tree tomato, onions, cilantro, and other ingredients depending on the recipe. Every restaurant in Ecuador has ají, and we needed 4-5 bowls per meal just for Mitchell to drench all of his food in this salsa. I will admit it is so delicious! We then headed to the Basilica del Voto Nacional, which I have a picture of in my first blog post. This time, there was nearly no one visiting, and we had the whole tower-top viewpoint to ourselves which was magnificent. It also was a semi-sunny day with clear views; when I arrived in November, my three days in Quito were filled completely with clouds and rain. After the many stairs up the towers, we headed back down to the bottom and further into Old Town to the La Ronda area. Here, we tried canelazo, which is the hot drink with aguardiente liquor, orange or blackberry juice, and cinnamon- tasty! Towards the end of the afternoon, we headed to the airport with a taxi driver we befriended. After we initially met him, he ended up driving us to the airport four times or so. We were headed to Peru now, and this was to be my mom’s favorite country of the trip.
My other blog posts contain travels from Peru and Chile for the following two weeks. But once flying back from Chile towards the end of the trip, we arrived in Quito for another day and a half or so. Our layover in Bogotá on the way back from Chile was delayed 3-4 hours, so we left Bogotá at 2
am, arrived in Quito at 4am, and got to our apartment via our driver, Levin, around 5am. Needless to say, we were exhausted, so we slept until noon. For the afternoon, we scheduled transport to Mitad del Mundo, otherwise known as the Equator. We first stopped at the equator museum, which is where the true line of the equator is based off of GPS systems. It was very interactive, and the guide showed us different tricks with water based off of being in the northern or southern hemisphere, and we got to try to balance an egg on a nail on the line of the equator. After being here, we headed to the Old Equator, which is where the French placed what they thought was the true line. It was only a few kilometers away, so really they were pretty accurate given all the technology they didn’t have back then! The monuments here are much, much larger as it is more of a touristy spot. Now we can say that we’ve been to the equator!
Read on upcoming posts about our time spent in Peru and Chile. Somos una familia tanta afortunada!