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Quito marvellous day out

8th April 2018

After the relentless tourism of the Galapagos, we flew to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and, weatherwise, a very different proposition from the scorching heat of the islands, being a refreshing 19°C or thereabouts. Our guide, Paul, delivered us to a lovely hotel in the old town of Quito, the Casa Gangotena.

(it’s the white building on the right). It’s a very splendid place, old school posh, with remarkable decor, great service, and very good food in the restaurant. It was once the family home to a pair of sisters who had one bathroom and 15 servants each. For the last 6 years, it’s been a hotel and one I’d thoroughly recommend.

Paul took us around the old town of Quito the next morning. The first thing he did was to lead us up some streets to a local market. The streets are fascinating; colourful, ramshackle and quite scruffy, and some areas are really quite dangerous, although Paul assured us that things are much better than they have been.

Shops are normally openings in the side of larger buildings, selling a bewildering variety of things, many quite unfamiliar to European eyes

Although there are plenty of people just selling things on the street.

The market, called the San Francisco market (named after the saint, not the Californian city, and styling itself “Quito’s 1st Market”) is interesting to wander around, although I have to say I was glad Paul was there (a) to explain to the stallholders about the weird tourists he had with him, and (b) to tell the tourists he had with him about some of the weird produce which was on offer – a staggering variety of fruits, vegetables and meat, mainly organised in sections.

For example, this stall had more varieties of potato on it than you could shake a stick at.

There was even a food court there.

And in the meat section, Jane was particularly taken with the cows’ feet on sale.

Paul then took us back to the square outside our hotel which features a huge Franciscan monastery and church, and is a stone’s throw from six other churches. We visited the Jesuit church as well as peeking in the Franciscan church, and they are both absolutely stunning inside. Neither permit photography inside, which is understandable but annoying to me as a keen photographer. So here are photos of postcards we bought, to give you an idea.

The interiors are extraorinarily ornate and sumptuously decorated. In the photo below, one of the two staircases up to the organ loft is actually trompe l’oeuil, just to maintain symmetry!

After that, we went on to the roof of the city library, which was once the Jesuit college and which had a relief model of the city, showing its extraordinary geography, situated above major fissures in the ground.

The library roof gave us a couple of nice views. Just as well, really; Quito is at quite some altitude (2800 metres, or one-and-three-quarter-miles, high) and lugging my camera backpack up two flights of stairs left me feeling pretty breathless, so I’m glad the view was worth the climb.

And it became apparent that something was brewing in the main square outside the presidential palace. Crowds had gathered for a weekly event, the changing of the guard, which is overseen by the Ecuadorian president. This being so, people use it as an opportunity to stage protest rallies – there were several groups shouting out about their particular grievances before the guard change took place. It was a colourful, noisy scene

with marching bands of the guards taking the weekly pledge to guard the president, Lenin Moreno (the chap in the wheelchair) who was watching the proceedings from a balcony in his palace.

I captured a lot of video of the proceedings, but you’ll have to wait until I can produce some kind of edited footage. It was good to have seen this piece of weekly theatre, anyway.

After this excitement, it was time to depart for the actual equator, which, for those who didn’t pay attention in geography lessons in school, is what gave Ecuador its name. There’s an attraction called the Intiñan Solar Museum, some 40 minutes drive north of the city. It’s a bit cheesy, but guided tours ensure you get a few nuggets of science and history out of a visit.

Today’s Ecuador was shaped mainly by invading Spanish forces, who arrived in the 16th Century, only a few decades after the Incas. The indigenous peoples (who predated the Incas by many thousands of years) were of several tribes, but had worked out that this region was on the Equator. They called it “the middle of the world” which sounds presumptuous, since the equator passes through land in other places, of course. However, pride of place is claimed on the basis that Ecuador’s equatorial altitude is higher than any of the others – the assertion is made that one is thus typically two pounds lighter standing on the equator line here than at sea level.

There is, of course, a line marked in the ground to show where the equator runs. Yes, you can have your photo taken on it. No, I’m not going to share it. You can have this one instead.

The tour offers some demonstrations and challenges for visitors’ amusement:

Coriolis force is demonstrated by emptying a bath through a central plughole into a bucket. On the equator, the water goes straight out of the plughole without rotation, whereas either side of the line it rotates as it leaves the bath. (This demo was somewhat fixed in my view, but, hey, it’s a bit of fun.)
Visitors are challenged to walk the equator line (heel-and-toe) with eyes closed. Since I can hardly even stand on one leg with eyes open, there was no point in my trying this.
Another challenge is to balance an egg on the head of a nail. Jane was successful, not just once but twice

and got a certificate for it, too.

As well as all of the flummery around the equatorness of the place, some serious nuggets can be gleaned about the indigenous pre-Inca inhabitants. Apart from anything else, the Shuar people (part of the Jivaro tribe) were headshrinkers, and the process of headshrinking is described: decapitate the subject; remove and discard the skull; seal the lips, eyes and nose; simmer the head in a boiling pot for a couple of hours; dry and smoke the head; and finally brandish the head on a spear (to scare others if subject had been an enemy), or wear it as a necklace (if subject had been a respected person). Whatever, the result looks like this.

On the way back from this museum, we even caught sight of Quito’s best-known volcano, Cotopaxi.

Paul had one more delight for us; a visit to a hill call El Panecillo, which features on it a giant statue of the Virgin Mary, the only one sporting wings (based on text describing the Woman of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation in the Bible). You can see the statue in the background of the first picture in this post. From the top of the hill where the statue stands, you have a 360° view across Quito, and you see what a sprawling place it is.

Quito is a remarkable place, one I’m glad to have seen, although not necessarily one I’d be keen to walk around by myself, particularly at night. The hotel was lovely, and our guide Paul did a great job in making sure that we’d been able to see and understand some important aspects of its life, history and culture.

Surprise-o Valparaiso

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30th March 2018

The next major segment of our wanderings around the left-hand side of South America will be a trip to Ecuador and (of course) the Galapagos Islands, which will challenge the abilities of my brain to accept and retain an even greater density of information than was on offer in two days on Easter Island. A return to Santiago with a day of conventional tourism (wandering round taking photos of stuff) seemed a fairly restful way of bridging between the two. First of all, we had to get off Easter Island. Malena got us to the airport nearly three hours before the departure, which on the surface of it seems a bit excessive, given that the airport, small as it is, only has to deal with a maximum of two flights a day. As it turned out, it was no bad thing, as it gave us the chance to claim a reasonable place in, you guessed it, a queue.

This wasn’t the check-in queue, though; it was the queue to get into the check-in queue as your bags went through the X-ray scanner. Then we could join the check-in queue. Then we could go and sit outside whilst waiting for the chance to board. Serendipity gave us the chance to chat to a(nother) nice Australian couple with whom we’d actually exchanged a few words en route to Easter Island. They were on the last segment of a two-month trip and really looking forward to getting home; it made me wonder what my threshold will be. But we got some useful tips about Galapagos and Machu Picchu, because of course they’d already been there and done that.

The flight back to Santiago gave Jane the opportunity to watch “Thor – Ragnarok” for the third time on this holiday alone, which shows true dedication to watching whatever it is that Chris Hemsworth has to offer. Nope, still don’t get it. I watched “Kingsman and the Golden Circle”, because I like classy entertainment, me.

Anyhoo…the break in Santiago was scheduled to include a tour of Valparaiso (a major port) and Viña del Mar (its neighbouring holiday resort), which meant we had another chance to meet our charming guide with the unusual portfolio career, Ronald. (Apparently, we were his last tour of the season, and he’s going to spend the winter concentrating on finishing and rehearsing a musical he’s writing).

Valparaiso is some 65 miles from Santiago, and lies on the other side of the coastal mountains. So the journey there takes you westwards through a 4km tunnel into the first of a couple of fertile valleys, and then another into the second. The first valley is where a large amount of fruit and vegetables are grown; the second is lined with vineyards, growing mainly chardonnay and sauvignon blanc grapes. As we went along, Ronald explained that Valparaiso was Chile’s capital city in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, capitalising on its significantly important location as a Pacific coast port. However, starting in the 19th century,the important and influential families left the city and the Panama canal damaged its standing as a major international transport route. Its standing has been damaged even further by a recent development which saw another (neighbouring?) Chilean port, San Antonio, win the cruise liner business after Valparaiso’s port workers staged a strike. It has strong French, German and English communities (the local football team is called Valparaiso Wanderers, and Viña del Mar’s is called Everton) and this is reflected in the architecture and the naming of places.

After something over an hour we got to Valparaiso, which was completely different from the completely erroneous picture I had allowed to build in my mind of a relatively dull industrial port. For a start, it is enormously hilly,

with separate neighbourhoods on separate hills, and it makes San Francisco seem merely slightly lumpy by comparison;

it is ramshackle and graffiti-covered;

the wiring has a distinctly South American character;

and parts of it are reportedly very dangerous.

On the other hand, it has considerable charm: lots of the buildings are very colourful;

(above – the Hotel Brighton) many of them are unusual, like the Palacio Baburizza, built by a Croat and gifted to the city in his will;

street art of all sorts abounds;

with innovative use of resources such as drinks bottles

and bathroom furniture;

and the various hillside neighbourhoods are served by funicular railways (some working, some in disrepair).

;

Yes, it is an industrial port, but on a sunny Good Friday, with the holiday crowds out

and the entertainers plying their trade

Valparaiso shows that it is unique, vibrant and appealing. (The puppet master shown above had his Pavarotti wander over to the money tin after the last aria, peer in and shake his head in disappointment; a lovely touch.)

Ronald made the visit even more individual by performing some of his pieces in a local café called Columbina for us, on an appallingly out-of-tune piano, which is why I’m not providing the video.

So by the time we’d seen that and got to Viña del Mar, there was really only time for a nice lunch at a decent, busy, buzzy restaurant called Los Pomairinos, where we were served by Ian McShane, or possibly Robbie Coltrane

(actually much more genial than he looks in this photo), and then it was time to go back to base, as we decided that there wasn’t much to Viña del Mar beyond beaches, proms, apartment blocks, sunshine and general seasidery. We had an engaging detour to say hello to Ronald’s sister, which you don’t get on your average private guided tour, and then we were back at our hotel, to prepare for a 5am start to our journey to Ecuador. We will report in on that in due course, but will likely be off-grid for a week whilst filling memory cards with photos and videos of all the Galapagos Islands have to offer.

Laters!

In transit 2 – Bariloche to Puerto Varas

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24th March 2018

Our time at the very swanky Llao Llao Hotel was all too short, and so we embarked on the next stage of a transit which would eventually take us to our next major segment of our South American odyssey, a couple of days in Easter Island. But Tierra del Fuego to Easter Island is a major schlepp, and so we did in sections, taking in some popular tourist sights en route, as described in part 1. Some more sights awaited us in the second part of the transit, as we travelled from Barioche to Puerto Varas. This is a well-established tourist route, having first been undertaken in 1913 and, notably, by Theodore Roosevelt in 1916 (it was apparently Roosevelt who, basing his knowledge on the recently-established Yellowstone National Park, suggested that the areas surrounding this route be set up as a national park before modern life could damage it too much; and so it came to be, in around 1927). We had catamarans and buses instead of sailing boats and wagons, but essentially the route we travelled was the same; and we had a guide called Eduardo to explain to us what was going on, which was occasionally reassuring.

We started in Puerto Pañuelo, which is conveniently located a few hundred yards from the Llao Llao Hotel.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Mar 24, 2018 at 5:33am PDT

The boat took us to Puerto Blest, which is very scenic, but not very photogenic (WALP Factor 8, but all rocks and forests), so people spend a lot of time feeding seagulls.

where we joined a very short bus ride to go to Lago Frias, a volcanic lake. At the end of Lago Frias is the Argentinian end of the border, where passports are checked and you have a chance to see a replica of the motorbike that Che Guevara rode across the Andes back in the days before Andrew Lloyd Webber became a national hero.

The border crossing is a multi-stage process. At the far end of Lago Frias, the Argentinian border staff leave the boat before anyone else is allowed to, so that they can set up their computers and so forth in a hut beside the above bike and another small hut selling snacks. They check passports and then get back on the boat to go back home, as did our Argentinian guide, to be replaced by a Chilean guide called Victoria. She and the ongoing passengers then board a bus, which grinds its way up a rough and winding track to the actual border. A few hundred metres further on, there’s a photo stop to see a local volcano named “Tronador”, or “Thunderer”, so-called because of the noise that the glaciers make as they break up.

We were very lucky with the weather, as we could actually see something. Given that this area receives on average three metres of rain (yes, ten FEET) every year, and that it rains some 228 days a year on average, I think we got privileged access.

After this, the bus grinds on to the Chilean border, at a small village called Peulla, where everyone has to get out and open their luggage so that Chilean border guards can check that you haven’t brought anything illicit in. Once again, I had an agony of indecision as to whether to declare all four of the cameras I had with me, but decided not to; and the customs officer couldn’t have shown less interest in my luggage, which made this a good decision.

Peulla is a lunch stop with a choice of two local hostlelries, one of them being a hotel where we had grilled fish with vegetables (Jane) and fried fish and chips (me). We ate in the hotel’s conservatory, which featured a rather novel idea – a sprinkler (arguably a length of hose with holes in it) cascaded water on the transparent roof, and the sunshine through this made rather lovely patterns in the room itself.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Mar 25, 2018 at 4:09pm PDT

There’s one more boat trip after lunch, which takes the journey on to Petrohué. This is the longest ride, but features nice views of another volcano, called Puntiagudo.

(translated: pointy tip) which looks a little like a local version of the Matterhorn, and another volcano, called Osorno, which I would think that many people would think was Mount Fuji, if they didn’t know better.

After this final boat ride, you take the last bus journey, 50km journey into Puerto Varas. However, the excitement doesn’t dim, even at this late stage, as there’s one final tourist attraction to visit, and time presses. In fact we cut things so fine that we had to sneak round the side of the visitors’ centre to get in to see the Petrohué waterfalls. I’m very glad we made it, as this is a splendid sight.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Mar 24, 2018 at 7:09pm PDT

And our vulcanological insight was further enhanced on the last kilometres into Puerto Varas, with views of Calbuco, an active volcano which has erupted, and violently, as recently as 2015.

Puerto Varas is a pleasant town. We stayed at the Hotel Cumbres, which styles itself as the best hotel in Puerto Varas, and I see no reason to gainsay this. We had only one day there, and so, since the sun was shining, we decided to go for a wander around. Before we did this, though, we saw an astonishing morning mist on the lake (Llanquihue).

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Mar 25, 2018 at 4:59am PDT

There’s little to make Puerto Varas out as exceptional (the hotel receptionist couldn’t when pressed, suggest a single thing worth visiting), but it’s a nice town, with the colourful buildings that we’ve seen elsewhere in Chile and Argentina.

and the same rather alarming approach to electrical wiring.

It’s called the city of roses, for good reason

and has, at one end, a hill which has been pressed into service as a park, named after a significant founder of the city, a German called Bernardo Philippi. One can climb the 500 feet to the top, where there is a giant cross, which is illuminated at night.

So, this was our transit, from Bariloche to Puerto Varas via Petrohué

Tomorrow we’re off to Puerto Montt, to fly to Easter Island via Santiago. I’ll report in from there in due course – stay tuned!