Wimps.
That's right, I said it. My little 14-18 year old teenagers wanted to get back to the hotel room to get some beauty sleep instead of exploring the beautiful downtown. Yo, really? Sleep when you are dead.
Fabian and I had an early meeting this morning where I met the other tour leaders from the Florida group. There is supposed to be another group coming from MI but they missed their flight yesterday. And today. As of now they are missing three days of their 10 day trip. Man, oh man, glad our trip has been uneventful so far!
We drove for 45 minutes to the middle of the world. Latitude 0 0. The equator! The Museo de Sitio Intiñan sits along the equator line where we were given lots of information about the local history and different indigenous communities around the country.
Then we got on the equator itself! Did you know that when your sink water goes down the drain it swirls one way because we live in the Northern Hemisphere? Move the water to the Southern Hemisphere and it goes down the drain the other way. Keep it on the equator line and it goes straight down. Yeah, we were amazed.
It's harder to walk a straight line when the line is on the equator which pulls you in different directions. BUT you can balance an egg on a nail. Just ask Travis as he is the holder of the egg placement diploma. Nicholas was able to move my hands down with one finger no matter how much resistance I gave.
Next we drove to the historical center where we went to La Basilica de Voto Nacional, one of the biggest places of worship in all of South America, clearly inspired by the Notre Dame. From there on, we walked several blocks admiring the colonial architecture to the center of the city. La Plaza Grande is the religious and political center of Ecuador with the Presidential Palace on one side and Vatican's connection to Ecuador Palacio Arzobispal on the other.
We toured the monastery and saw some incredible gold leaf work and carvings on the altar. The students who have been to Spain are getting to make some very neat connections with the moorish palace of Alhambra that we toured in Granada.
During all this walking we tried local bunuelos (dough smothered in honey), fava beans (some salty, some sweet) and scheduled the day we will try cuy. Google it, I'm not telling you what that is! I always love when students are open minded and try random things I shove at them as it is the best way to try something local. We learned that popcorn is used like crackers here and so just like the locals, we threw it in our soup. Yum!
Today was also our first trivia night. Students had to answer a variety of questions about Ecuador. Anything Fabian or our local guides teach us is up for grabs. For each correct answer they got to choose from several local gifts. We will do this every couple of days so hopefully everyone is paying attention!
After dinner at our hotel (beef soup, rice, chicken, steamed veggies and cookie ice cream with strawberries on top), we got into taxis and went into the old part of town. My personal highlight of Quito for now. We walked La Ronda, a narrow cobblestone street with cute shops, music coming out of every establishment and beautiful vistas of Quito lit up at night. There weren't many people out and we enjoyed the eve at our own pace.
As I write this, the students are hanging out in their rooms. Bed checks are at 11:30 tonight and we leave at 3:45 am to the airport. Gotta love it!
Mañana: Galápagos! Internet: who knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment