Tour Guides

Last week, we played tour guides for my Dad and Grandma. It was a blast to have them come visit and it gave us an excuse to go be tourists a bit.

They flew in to Quito late on Thursday night. We spent most of Friday around Quito. We went to the botanical garden, a place Ben and I had already been but wanted to share. Ecuador has amazing plant diversity and this exhibit highlights only the sierra portion of it. They have two orchid houses with thousands of amazing orchids, from huge to tinsy-tiny. Later that afternoon we went up the Teleferiqo. It takes you up near the top of Pinchincha, the volcano that towers over Quito to the east. It was a cloudy day so we weren't able to see the other volcanoes, but the view of the city was incredible! Our visitors were real troupers on this. Getting whisked up over 4100m on your first day at altitude is nothing to take lightly!

That evening we took a bus to Ibarra, a nice city 2 1/2 hrs north of Quito. It is also a half hour north of Otavalo, our destination for the next day. We had visited Ibarra a number of times previously and had found a great hotel for cheap. The next morning, we headed into Otavalo for the market. The Saturday market in Otavalo boasts the title of being the largest indigenous market in the Americas and it is quite impressive. It is amazingly colorful. People come from all over South America to sell their handicrafts, textiles, and other artwork making it an ideal place to pick up a few souvenirs.

Saturday evening we returned to Quito and took the family to a "traditional" restaurant. Not traditional as in real, but more traditional as in Ecuadorian food in the tourist section of town. Though I mocked it at first, it was great food! Grandma was introduced to seco de pollo, a chicken dish with a tomato sauce of kinds. We also got to shock them a bit when another patron ordered cuy, the traditional delicacy of guinea pig. Dad's vegetarian, so he was safe from our jokes but we kept offering to get one for Grandma.

On Sunday, we went to Black Sheep Inn. It is an amazingly beautiful area of Ecuador with stunning gorges, rivers, and plains. We spent two days relaxing and enjoying ourselves. We went on a bit of a hike on the second day down to the edge of the gorge.

We came back to Quito on Tuesday afternoon. After taking a nap to recoup from all the hardcore relaxing we had been doing, we went out to dinner at a Mongolian BBQ place. All the different international style restaurants we got to go to while we had visitors were kind of humorous. While Ecuadorian food is decent, not much of it is well suited for those vegetarian types. Their visit was a great change from chicken and rice!

Wednesday was their last day in Ecuador and coincidentally my birthday. We spent most of the day going around Old Town Quito. We toured quite a few churches, which is the thing to do in Old Town. That evening, we celebrated with dinner at a great fondue restaurant...cheese, oil with herbs, and chocolate. Can't get much better than that! Late Wednesday evening, we dropped Dad and Grandma off at the airport and said good bye.

It was so great to see familiar faces down here in Ecuador. I'd like to once again extend the invitation to everyone we know to come down and visit us!