The country is populated mostly by mestizos, people of mixed indigenous and Spanish or African ancestry. The capital Quito, at 9,350 feet and surrounded by mountains, takes one's breath away (literally, during the day or two it takes to acclimate to the thin air). New Town holds the commerce, most of the hotels, a rash of Internet cafes and some unpleasant bus pollution. Old Town has ornate churches, colonial architecture and colorful houses climbing up mountainsides.
One morning, I hired a taxi to take me to Mital del Mundo ("Middle of the World," that is, the equator) about 15 miles north of the city. Agustin, my driver, waited while I wandered around the official monument to zero latitude, visited the museum and posed for the requisite picture straddling hemispheres. When I was done, Agustin drove me to Pululahua, a breathtaking extinct volcano crater with a dirt path downhill that passes through different microclimates. He came with me and we slipped and slid halfway down in our sneakers until I decided that was enough. We paused to let a couple and their donkey pass us on the way to the village at the bottom.
Llamas and alpacas are a common sight in the countryside below Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo.
(Ellen Perlman)
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Although our communication was limited to my present-tense-only Spanish and a lot of nodding and smiling, we struck up a friendship. I asked if he would take me around Old Town by taxi that night.
He showed up at sunset with his 6-year-old daughter, Ariana, in the front seat. We drove around to the churches, lit up in purples and yellows and soft whites. Guidebooks warn against walking around Old Town after dark, but between the city's effort to beautify the place and increased security, it seems the danger has eased. Many people were out for a stroll.
Agustin also drove up a windy hill to El Panecillo, a large statue of the Virgin, for a view of the whole city. On the way, Ariana serenaded me with a rendition of "Jingle Bells" that she'd learned in English at school.
On an excursion out of town, I traveled south by van and train through the "Avenue of the Volcanoes" with a tour group. We rode on the roof of a train, as Ecuadorians are wont to do, only ours was a tourist version. "We have no insurance for people who travel on the roof, but we have not lost anybody yet," Diego, our tour leader, joked with us. We climbed up the metal ladder and settled in. It was early and children were heading off to school. They waved at us and we waved back. Dogs hellbent on catching the train chased us along the tracks. We got an open-air view of snowy Mount Chimborazo, whose peak is the closest point on Earth to the sun (at about 20,000 feet it may be some 10,000 feet shorter than Mount Everest, but it's located on the bulge of the Earth).
Whatever impression I might have had that the equator is always hot and steamy is now gone. That's what I learned at 7 in the morning, at 9,000 feet, riding on the roof of a train. We were so chilled we asked when the next stop was so we could go inside. Diego knocked on the roof of the private train. It stopped right there, in the middle of nowhere. Two of us climbed inside and warmed up with hot coffee, returning to the roof later in the day when the sun was higher.
The train took us to the Devil's Nose, a steep portion of the ride where the tracks zigzag repeatedly to enable the train to make it down the steep slope. The mountain walls were so close we could inspect them for cracks.
A string of volcanoes runs down Ecuador's spine. On our way out of Quito we stopped to photograph Cotopaxi, a popular peak for climbers. At 19,350 feet, it is said to be the highest active volcano in the world. Suddenly one of my fellow passengers shouted, "Look, it's erupting."
But he wasn't talking about Cotopaxi. Instead, down the road, gray ash was spewing out of another volcano, Tungurahua, also known as the Black Giant. Tungurahua has been erupting for four years and geologists don't know when it will stop. The last time it blew, in 1916, the activity lasted for six years.
We were traveling on a Thursday, which is market day in the mountain town of Saquisili. I had a couple of hours to wander through the squares and streets filled with people and goods. Locals from the mountains all around come to catch up on the week's news and buy provisions. The women wear the brimmed hats, skirts and colorful shawls native to their region.
The locals spoke in Spanish and the native language, known as Quechua. Tables and goods were set up in plazas and along the streets. A woman walked by carrying a live chicken by its feet. A box full of live guinea pigs was available for, yep, dinner. A couple reviewed the merits of a small propane stove from among the dozen placed on the street. Tables were laden with mounds of fruits and vegetables, some familiar, some odd, like the bananas as thick as cucumbers and the pink-speckled potatoes small enough to fit on a teaspoon.
