Day 10: Back to the Start

Maybe it is a Chinese thing, or maybe it is a human thing, we tend to run in circle. After 9 fantastic days in the Ecuador mountains area, now I am back to Quito. My 10 days in Ecuador did not even scrape the surface of what this country has to offer. Technically, there are 4 diverse regions in Ecaudor: the coast, the mountains, the amazon basins, and Galápagos islands. I have only focused on the mountains in this trip. My next Ecaudor chapter may be visiting the coast and Galápagos. I have been also thinking about doing a trip to travel to the countries along the Pan-American Highway, it would be even more grand if I can start from Alaska to Argentina! I won't be able to drive obviously, but maybe I can do some combination of train and buses, and just stopped here and there.

Last day in town, I specifically did not plan anything special, partly because I was so tired from the hike yesterday to the Cotopaxi volcano. And I was also going to meet a local today and let him be my guide. Freddy, a young kid who works in a pet shop and studies at night, has been my guide today. He first took me to the central shopping area I guess, where we had lunch, and my first record shop in Ecuador. Too bad, they literally only have 4 records in the store: Radiohead's OK Computer, AC/DC's Black in Black, and another two hard rock kind of stuff. I wouldn't mind to get some latino progressive rock or some classics from the 60s or 70s. I don't think they existed in this country.

After the central shopping area, we took an uber to La Floresta, an artsy-fartsy neighborhood with some arthouse theaters, and lot of cafes and street murals. But there were just too many hills in Quito to really walk around, unless you had the endless energy like this 24 years old. We sat in the Ocho y Medio Theatre Cafe for a while, I had an iced espresso con leche, which just gave me enough energy for one more stop at the Basílica del Voto Nacional, which is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas. There are actually a lot of "largest", "highest" things in Ecaudor, I just realized. The basilica was beautiful and worth a visit. It was raining though, and I had no energy to climb the tower, which I normally would.

After another uber ride home, I bid goodbye to Freddy. I just retrieved back to the airbnb, started packing, had some light dinner. Darwin, the driver will come pick me up at 5:20am for my international flight at 8:20am. So, I will need to wake up at 4:30am or so. I will probably go to bed at 9pm. Tomorrow will be a whole day of traveling. Tuesday will be back to work. Don't even want to think about that just yet. I would not mind to keep waking up to seeing this view actually.

I know I will be back to South America soon enough. I just love her too much to not come back again, but hopefully I will be good and go back to learn some real Spanish before the next trip. In this trip, I really find that I need it if I want to go to the less developed part of South America.

See all Day 10 photos here.