Quito, Ecuador

Disclaimer: I took a lot of pictures while there and there is no way that I can put them all on the blog and I promise that eventually I will uploadd them somewhere on the Internet for viewing. I will try to put some of my favorites up here while talking about the trip.

The plan was for me to meet Ben in Atlanta and then fly from there to Quito. Well I made it to Atlanta and was waiting and waiting for Ben to get there, for some reason I thought that he was supposed to get there before me, well as I waited they started boarding the plane way early, I then asked the lady if his flight had landed and she said yep just did, he should be here soon, well they kept pressuring me to get on the plane and I was like not til my friend gets here. They kept asking me if I was going to go if he didn't make it in time and I was like no I am not leaving him here and on his own to travel to some place where he knows none of the language, we remember that it is still like 25 minutes til our scheduled take off, they kept pressuring me to get on and I said no I am not getting on if he isn't here. Well he got there about 5 minutes before they said the wouldn't let anyone board, funny thing is it was still like 15 min before scheduled take off.

Funny thing was after all that we sat for at least 25 min on the plane before it was time to take off.

So we made it to Quito no problem after that. We spent the next day walking around old town Quito and then in the afternoon walking around the newer part of town, it is pretty big city I think over 2 million people, but it had a lot of neat stuff to see.

This is plaza is called Plaza San Francisco, the photo doesn't show it but the church that is there is the oldest church in Ecuador, it was built in 1534. Quito had a ton of old churches and we went inside as saw the insides of them but I didn't think it was right to take pictures of the inside of churches when there are people inside praying

The front of the Oldest church.

There was a fairly large plaza that had many important buildings around it, one of which is building which is the equivalent of our white house. We had read that the president is often there conducting business, now granted I wouldn't know the Ecuadorian president if he started talking to me. Anyway we walked by once and nothing was going on a little later we walked by and there were a few protesters hanging out in front of the building, and more people were starting to gather around. so we decided to sit in the park and watch and see if anything happened.

I am not sure what we witnessed since I couldn't understand anything but I am pretty sure the president made and appearance. There was numerous times that a band played and people in some crazy uniforms standing all around the palace. Then all of sudden people on horses paraded by and then they were in the park doing some formations. It was pretty cool, for all I know though it could have just been the raising of the flag for the day or it could have been something big and important.

Next we hiked over to what is called the Basillica, ok not hiked walked the streets we checked out the inside of the church and then paid the dollar that is cost to climb up to the top. The front of the Basilica

(it is decorated with turtles, birds and other sea creatures instead of typical gargoyles)
It was to big to fit it all in one picture

We climbed up to well above the clocks that you can see.

Stained glass window we saw on the way up

So let me tell you about the climb. It was scarier than shit!!, but super fun at the same time! At times I thought that the ladders that we were climbing would give out at any moment and they kept getting narrower and narrower, and railings were rusted out. At one point we crossed a bridge that reminded my of Indiana Jones. and just when you thought you couldn't go up any higher there would be another ladder or stairway. Dont forget about that as you are climbing sometimes you would see pieces of the building crumbling away

View from the top
(eventually we would climb to the top of the tower in this photo)


View of part of the city


Detail work on the one tower



Indian Jones Bridge



View of Clock tower that we climbed to the top of.


Staircases