Pretty, isn’t it? I didn’t buy any, but I probably will in Peru.

I have a day in Quito before I fly off to Lima, Peru, tomorrow, to join up with the people that I’ll be travelling around South America with. Val, Liz and I said goodbye to our Galápagos group, and we’re hoping to catch up with them in the Amazon rainforest.
(What a ridiculously glamorous sentence to say!)

Today I took a city tour with another group who are Galapagosing tomorrow. Liz and Val thought the tour started later and so we missed them, which was a shame.
This was the first viewpoint, called Mirador. The gateway to the journey towards El Dorado. Yes, this way lies the Amazon.

I then had a little goal for this trip fulfilled. I’ve never seen a hummingbird. You might remember that 2 years ago Megan got buzzed by one in Alaska, and boy, was I envious!

I was crossing my fingers I’d see some over here. To my delight, the trees just below the lookout were full of them. I wasn’t listening to the guide… I was drinking in the sight of all the hummingbirds. They were moving so quickly!

And then one landed on a wire.
Ok, it’s not a great photo, but this is MY hummingbird.

This guy with the amazing hat was the first Spanish guy who discovered the Amazon. Quite a few other people who lived in the area had realised it was there before he came along.

Later in the day, our guide told us a sad story about one of the first Amazonian expeditions. The leader – maybe this guy, maybe someone else – had the brains to know that he knew nothing about the countryside he and the other Spanish were heading into. He conscripted 4,000 indigenous people to go with them.

Unfortunately, these indigenous people were from the mountains, so they knew nothing about the Amazonian jungle either. Most of them died.

Our next stop was the Basílica del Voto Nacional, which was a crazy mishmash of all sorts of building styles.

Despite all of the gothic trimmings, it’s the newest church that they have in the country, built in 1874.

The thing I really liked was that the gargoyles are animals of the regions. Tortoises, iguanas, dolphins, you name it. In one tiny section, they have proper gargoyles, just so the people can see what they’re like.

Here’s a different view from inside the church.

It looks like the Rose Window at Notre Dame.

We climbed the Condor Tower, which is 90 metres high. Fortunately there’s a lift that covers most of this. Our guide kept asking if we were ok with the altitude.

Zoom into the top of the hill. That’s our next stop.

There aren’t any Incan remains in Quito because the Inca had just conquered the Quituns and were just building a new city when the Spanish arrived. The Spanish killed the Incan king so in retaliation the Inca burned the brand-new city to the ground. Fun times.

16 volcanoes surround the city. Volcanic soil is excellent for agriculture, so this place has been inhabited for 10,000 years.

As an aside, Christopher Columbus‘s granddaughter was educated here, which shows just how important Quito was.

Virgin of Quito. Made from 4,000 metal pieces, covered with concrete.

3 metres taller than the statue in Rio. The Brazilian one just looks bigger because it’s on top of a bigger mountain, apparently. I’ll judge for myself in a few weeks.

The snake is on the top of the world, and Mary has a chain, tying it up. She is known as the Apocalyptic Virgin, keeping evil from destroying the world. Or something.

One thing I liked here was that the shopkeepers have built kennels for the homeless dogs.

Many window boxes have geraniums.

On the way to the Golden Church, we popped into a Panama hat shop. We saw how the hats were made.

Here’s a fun hat for a short person. It’d be wasted on anyone too tall for anyone else to glance down and see the top of the hat.

A dull- looking church from the street. Otherwise known as the Golden church, or St Ignacio’s church

1587 the Jesuits arrived in Quito. Every church currently there was bigger than the next, so they wanted to outdo everyone else. Hmmm… what could they do?

Our guide made us form a line, holding the shoulders of the one in front. We shut our eyes. She led us into the church. On the count of three, we opened our eyes.

You can’t top an over indulgence in gold leaf!

This is one of the important religious guys when he was young. He looks like he’d be great at a party.

This is him with a few more decades on him. He looks miserable…

This church has an interesting feature, quite apart from all the gold. There are two paintings either side of the entrance. On the June solstice, light falls from above and travels along this painting of the Revelation, or end of days. The last thing the light covers is Jesus.

On the December solstice, the same thing happens on the other side of the church, except this time, it’s a painting of hell. It’s being restored at present, but here are a couple of images from the larger work:

Dirty rotten adulterers.

Deceitful people, I guess.

We walked to a fabulous restaurant for lunch. On the way we passed through the main square.

This is the spot, outside the Presidential Palace, that President Gabriel Garcia Moreno was assassinated. He was a devout Catholic by day, but a dedicated womaniser by night. As you can imagine, this didn’t make him popular with husbands. I don’t know how the wives felt.

Anyway, he fell in lust with a young wife, so he sent her husband to the wilds of the Amazon. This guy smelled a rat, and came back to Quito with murder on his mind, and a sharp machete in his hand.

Men on the other side of politics also hated him, so after the husband had his go with the machete, the other guys shot him, just to make sure. Sounds a bit like the murder of Rasputin.

For some reason, this poster caught our eyes…!

No, it’s not the KKK. On a holy day, penitents walk the streets in their thousands, dressed like this. Oh, and they’re also whipping themselves.

Atheists don’t do this. Just saying.

Liz, Val and I met up for drinks before dinner. I had such a huge lunch that I’m foregoing dinner. If I get hungry later tonight, I’ll have a protein bar from Australia.

Tomorrow, we fly to Peru!

Dad joke of the day: