Day 14: Quito
We returned to Quito after our Galapagos cruise and had two days to look around. We thought about visiting the Volcano Cotopaxi on one of the days. Vinicio, our birding guide for Mindo, even offered to give us a tour of Cotopaxi where we could see Andean Condors. However, the weather was bad a Cotopaxi so we decided to focus on Quito. Quito, along with Krakow, Poland were the first two UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites. Hotels in the city are quite reasonable and we stayed at a French Hotel called Antinea. It was very cute and had the best hot chocolate we had ever had.
Quito has one of the largest, best preserved city center in the Americas. There are about 130 monumental buildings and over 5000 heritage properties. In the background you can see a statue of the Virgin Mary on El Panecillo hill that we get a closer look at later.
There were an amazing number of churches in the city center.
We made our way up to the famous statue of the Virgin Mary. Here we picked up two Alpaca jackets for Gowri and myself that we still wear today.
Here is Gowri in her Alpaca jacket ready to return home after an amazing tour of the rainforests of the mainland and the Galapagos. We all really enjoyed this trip. My mother got to see South America and held up great both in the rainforests of the mainland and the Galapagos. Gowri and I decided we definitely want to return to see more of these amazing places in South America. Definitely a trip of a lifetime!
