Thursday was my first real day of work. I started the day leading a hospital committee meeting over video chat. Those meetings are always a little painful, but only more so when the alternative is being on vacation. I had to actively remind myself many, many times during the meeting that a bit of remote work was allowing us to spend a month in Ecuador. This will be worth it. This will be worth it?
But an hour later, the meeting was over and I could rejoin the other 7 people who weren't working that day. Our plan that afternoon was to head out to the historic district for lunch and a bit of sightseeing. Like most South American historic districts, Quito’s revolved around a series of Spanish churches. On Alicia and Isaias’ advice, the destination we picked for that day was the Catedral Metropolitana, the primary seat of the Catholic Church in Ecuador and a decade away from being 500 years old. The building is absolutely filled with history (and bodies of many church benefactors), but all of that was lost on our kids. The real attraction was a tunnel behind a hidden door that leads to the rooftop. And for a measly dollar, they'll let you go in it! Yes, please. It took me at least half of the hike to really believe that they were letting us do this.
But our adventuring that day was limited by more than just a healthy fear of heights and small spaces. I had a bit more work to do, and it was unmissable. I'm responsible for an annual presentation to our hospital's Board of Directors about various projects we're working on. I don't pick the date, and as luck would have it, this year’s board meeting was barely two days into our trip. So I hustled back and reconnected to our work network from Alicia's top-shelf Embassy-grade internet provider. The talk went great, but just like the one from this morning, there was a whole lot of introspection between powerpoint slides. Worth it. "Next slide." Worth it? "Next slide." Worth it...
The upshot of me being tethered to an internet connection is that it kept the vacation pace very tranquillo. We had another delightful dinner at our friends' place and tucked the kids in for another good night of sleep. They were still clearly catching up from the jet lag.
Friday started with a bit more work in the morning, but was mostly vacation. So we took advantage by going on our first little excursion outside of the city. Ecuador obviously gets its name from its location straddling the equator. It also gets quite a bit of tourism revenue from that. The municipal government of the small town right on the equator built a monument to the site that is now the most visited tourist destination in Ecuador. They chose the exact location based on the findings of a French expedition in the 1700s that set off to find the center of the world, or Mitad Del Mundo.
The problem, however, was that their “exact” measurements were later determined using GPS to be off by about 800 feet. But you can’t blame the early explores, it was the best they could do with 300 year old technology. Except that it wasn’t. Nearby pre-Inca ruins that were dismissed by the French expedition were actually located on the exact equator. The Quitu-Cara culture had nailed it almost exactly a century earlier. Yet another example of how advanced the pre-Colombian cultures in this area were.
But no one lets that stop a few good photo ops, us included.
That second photo was taken by "the guy" who has been set up at that spot since the monument opened. He poses tourists in one of two poses (the second one is what the kids are doing above) and snaps their photo for a single very well-spent dollar.
But it wasn’t a long stay. The jet lag and 9,500 foot elevation were catching up with all of us. So we headed back to the apartment for an early dinner. It was punctuated by yet another power outage, but we would have been pretty oblivious if my aunt hadn’t texted to ask how we were doing. Apparently the reporting on this in the US was pretty apocalyptic. We had barely noticed, but it’s a good example of how occasionally the news abroad is reported with a bit more urgency and hyperbole than what matches the scene on the ground. We experienced the same thing with the crime reporting going on right now. It's easy to find pretty terrifying news about the security situation in Ecuador right now. But as I sip my cappuccino and look around the street in from of the coffee shop, I'm not seeing it.Saturday was my first day of the trip without any work responsibilities at all. Accordingly, I slept like a baby the night before. I finally felt like I was on vacation. And we weren’t going to waste the opportunity. We were excited to head up to another classic Quito attraction, Teleferiqo. It was our most ambitious excursion of the trip so far. It started with one of the world’s highest elevation aerial lifts, going from just over 10,000 feet to nearly 13,000 feet in about 20 minutes. It’s enough to give some passengers altitude sickness. For real. Aimee and I caught ourselves taking extra big breaths every now and then to be able to keep up with our completely unfazed children.
Even beyond the stunning views, the mountain top had a bit of everything. Swings for the kids, a hiking trail, and even a baby llama photo op.
If this photo recorded sound, it would just be Aimee incredulously saying "stop it" over and over again as she melted every time the baby llama did so much as twitch its ear.
But the real surprise was that there was a little horseback tour along one the trails. Well, that wasn’t the surprise. People here use horses for getting around everywhere. The surprise was that I enjoyed it.
I’ve been traumatized on more than one horseback ride. Actually on every previous horseback ride. But this one was delightful. The horses appeared healthy and content. One of the guides walked beside Quinn’s horse the entire time, and the trail was only marginally close to a cliff face.
At one point, Mimi’s horse galloped for a few steps. Mimi was absolutely enthralled, and simply giggle-squealed the whole time. I, somehow, didn’t absolutely lose it. Which says a lot, since as I write this a week later, I’m going into a cold sweat as I play it back in my head. But something about the combination of factors (probably the extremely low oxygen concentration, now that I think about it) just came together for a delightful afternoon.
After a lunch in a little hut at the top of the mountain, we took a taxi back home. That reminds me, our driver out to Teleferiqo was delightful. Dayana was the first driver we had in that city that didn’t make me question how I could have put my family in this situation. So of course, I asked for her contact information and planned on calling her again every time we needed a driver that month.
The rest of the afternoon was particularly quiet. At least for the adults, among whom there wasn’t a single one not napping while all four of our kids somehow still had energy to play throughout the apartment. That afternoon made me realize that this is the first trip we’ve taken when we didn’t have to rush home by 1 pm to make sure we got in a gremlin-preventing nap time for the kids. Or maybe we never did, and I was just projecting. Either way, nap time isn't going anywhere for our family. It's just optional for the kids now.
