June 26 – Quito

Trouble getting to sleep last night, two hour time change but then no problems.  The altitude doesn’t seem to be much of an issue, until you start climbing stairs…then even a couple of flights and you feel it.  The forecasts were for showers, but this morning is perfect, sunny, puffy clouds and temperature around 70F.  Time to get in a taxi and go to the museums and markets.

Back from our outing.  The taxi from the hotel to the museum was totally painless.  The doorman called the taxi, told him where to take us and off we went.  Turned out, we could have done that ourselves since the driver spoke excellent English.  The museum is arranged chronologically, starting the the early inhabitants who probably walked across the Alaskan land bridge about 40,000 years ago.   They have an excellent collection of beautifully worked obsidian arrow and spear points.  It then progresses through the development of both the Andean and seacoast tribal artifacts and then into the conquest of the entire South American coastal area by the Incas from Peru.  Unfortunately, the “Gold Room” was closed for renovation but they did have one incredible golden mask on display.  Shortly after the Incas unified the country, the Spanish arrived and most of the local cultures were wiped out.  I guess it is amazing that as much as they have still exists considering how the Spanish and the “Padres” tried to destroy anything that related to the “pagan” culture.  The museum then follows the evolution into the Spanish era with an extensive display of 17th and 18th century church art, but how many Madonnas can one person take?   The timeline then follows into the revolutionary period and into the modern.  We stopped at the revolutionary stuff.  From the museum we went to a local craft market.  Row after row of very similar objects.  Some very much mass produced and a few, actual crafts.  After lunch at a local cafe, we found a taxi on the street and returned to the hotel.  One thing making this excursion easier is that the national currency is the US dollar.  Ecuador doesn’t even pretend to have their own currency, everything is the good olde green back.