Quito, Ecuador and the dollarito

-written by Michelle

We returned to Quito from Otavalo and spent a week in the city. It is the capital of Ecuador and is full of beautiful churches, plazas and museums. There is plenty to do here, you just have to find it. Online information is few and far between. Quito is also an UNESCO world heritage site with all of the historical buildings.

Cathedral on the Central Plaza

The churches and presidential palace are brilliantly white and contrast nicely with the blue sky!

San Francisco Monastery

The inside of the very famous church “La Compañía de Jesús” is almost completely covered in gold! Gold was plentiful in the colonies and the local artisans made use of these treasures.

The owner of the apartment we rented is an artist and helped to renovate this church. 

“Ice Cream - One dollar, one dollar, one dollar”

In Quito, there are street vendors everywhere calling out their wares and we learned that the there is even such a thing as a dollarito! This must mean “small dollar”, though I did not run across any. They use the US Dollar in Ecuador but have their own coins that do not look anything like the ones we have in the USA. While sitting in your car during a traffic am vendors will even bring you lunch. Maybe a grilled banana or some beans. You never have to go hungry in Quito.

This woman is serving beans and potatoes with salsa straight out of her basket for “un dollar” it is a common lunch which is sold in a plastic bag warm which the locals eat with their fingers.

Calle Cotapaxi

The apartment we rented through airbnb had fantastic views of the city and El Panecillo. El Panecillo is the mountain in the middle of the town which has a huge statue of the apocalyptical “Mary” on the top. I thought it was just your standard angel statue but South Americans like drama. This was explained to us during our tour of the city with Martin, Uli’s old classmate from highschool who is a priest in Quito.

View from the apartment of the El Panacillo

Apocalyptical Angel

Those views come at a price. It was quite a steep walk up to our place and had us huffing and puffing while carrying our groceries home.

This is our steep street to the apartment

The apartment was on 3 levels and had a kitchen so that we could make our own meals. This was great after almost 2 months of eating in restaurants. We were starved for vegetables!

Apartment had wood floors and original art

Balcony was a good place for eating ice cream

Old classmates in Quito

We met Uli’s classmate Martin in Quito.  Martin is a priest in Quito and gave us a great tour of the city topped  off with dinner at Pims on the El Panecillo. Over dinner, good wine  and conversation we had a fantastic time. It was great speaking english and german.  Spanish is not yet a language that I can do more than order a beer and tell someone where I live.

Martin is responsible for all the projects of the Munich catholic church in Ecuador. We learned many interesting things about the people, the government and the church. We admired him, because of all the wonderful things he did for the church and the people in Latin America.

Uli and Martin at Parque Itchimbia

Martin gave us a nice tour of the city and we saw the Basilica. The basilica is a neo-gothic combination of European and South American features. There are gargoyles on the church, but if you look closely you see that the gargoyles are iguanas, turtles and frigate birds.

Chapel of Man

One of the most famous South American artists, Oswaldo Guayasamin, master painter and sculptor of Quechua and Mestizo heritage is from Quito. The “Capilla del Hombre” is a memorial to the Latin American natives and their continual suffering. Both the building’s architecture and the art within are monumental and worth seeing. It gave me goose bumps!

Chapel  of Man - with the volcanic dome

The inside of the chapel has many very large murals. One of which is painted on the dome.

Mural portraying suffering of the  native south americans

The chapel is dedicated to indigenous people of South America. There is also an eternal flame buring below it.

More Art in Quito

We both really like modern art so we also visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cultural Center and saw many great pieces of art.

Titled "Third world sputnik"

South Americans have a good sense of humor. My favorite piece of art was this. It is called the “Third World Sputnik”…. And it is made out of trash.

Jugo - fruit juice

Ecuador has the best juice I have ever had. We tried all kinds of juice like the tasty tree tomato, papaya and guayavo. Fantastic. There are juice stands all over the city selling fresh juice  for only one or two dollars.

fresh juice from the tree tomato

Quito was wonderful end of our South America trip. We are going to be sad to leave South America! We will definitely be back - just for all the fantastic juices.

Adios South America