Bus tour part II

Happy Monday!

I am so worn out from this weekend- I have so much to blog about! For today, though, I'll finish telling you about the Quito bus tour...

Our next stop after visiting the Basilica was the beautiful church of La Compañía.  It was prohibited to take pictures for some reason...but I snuck a few when no one was looking:

The entire church is covered in gold!! It was really spectacular.  Chino went to a friend's wedding at this church last weekend and said it was even more spectacular with all the lights lit. 

We were pretty hungry for lunch at this point in the day, so after maybe 10 minutes in the church we set out to find somewhere to eat! I was hoping to find a nice sit-down restaurant with the typical $3 Ecuadorian lunch, but we were running out of time and patience and settled on some Ecuadorian comida rápida (fast food) at a place called La Caravana that serves chicken.  I got a two piece meal with rice and menestra (beans).  It was about $4/meal and came with a salad and a drink.  It was surprisingly delicious, but I passed on the mora (blackberry) juice that Chino ordered for me, in fear of getting sick.  It's best to stick with carbonated or bottled drinks here; sometimes juices here are made with tap water...which isn't always safe to drink.

After lunch we were just in time to catch the tour bus, and our next stop was El Panecillo, a large rounded hill named for it's shape, since Panecillo means little loaf of bread (a round loaf, like this).  Before the Spaniards arrived, the location was used as a temple for the Quichua/Incan sun god, but the conquistadors destroyed it and replaced it with an enormous statue of the virgin Mary.  She's standing atop a globe, her foot crushing a snake, and is the only statue in the world of the virgin with wings. 

Since the panecillo is located in the very dangerous South side of Quito, the tour bus stays at the location for 25 minutes, instead of just dropping us off.  Here are a few pics of El Panecillo and the Virgin of Quito.

Here you can see the hill called the Panecillo, and if you look close enough you can see the statue of the Virgin of Quito at the top.

Here is the Virgin of Quito at the top of the Panecillo.  As you can see from me standing below it, it's huge!

View of the city from El Panecillo.

Another shot of the Virgin.

El Panecillo was the last stop for us, so when the bus dropped us off where it began, we walked a couple blocks to catch the city bus called the Ecovia, whose route ends a block from the bus terminal at Rio Coca, which is where you can catch buses that go outside of the city, such as Cumbaya, Tumbaco, or Lumbisi. Since we finished our tour around 5:00, the Ecovia was unbelievably crowded with people going home from work. There was barely any standing room, and I was smushed up against a number of other people.  For this reason, the Ecovia is a common place for personal belongings to go missing, as thieves take advantage of the tight crowd.  I've never been on a more crowded bus in my life! 

What's nice about bus transport here, though, is it's incredibly cheap!  Each of our bus rides only cost 25 cents! And the buses that leave the city from Rio Coca are usually muuuuch less crowded and have comfy seats.


So, that was it for our bus tour, but I'm definitely hoping to do it again once more before my trip ends! There's no way to do all 12 stops in one day, and there are definitely a few more stops I would have liked to make, as well as stops I would've liked to spend another hour at.  


The next day after our tour, we woke up early again for our trip to Otavalo! Otavalo is one of my favorite cities in the country, much better than Quito.  I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!!


Hasta mañana!
xoxo