Published in the San Antonio Express-News
April 29, 2007
City at the Center of the World
Quito and environs offer breathtaking views, colorful heritage and pristine wilderness
By Analisa Nazareno
QUITO, Ecuador - Back in the "good old days," my husband would brag, he and his kin would climb a mile up a steep mountainside called Cruz Loma, a so-called "hill" in his family's native Quito, Ecuador.
It was an all-day affair that left everybody gasping for air - because of the sheer physical labor of zig-zagging uphill for hours and because of the lack of air when you're 13,250 feet above sea level. At the top of this mountain - technically a foothill leading to the still-active Pichincha Volcano - little other than native grass and ground cover would grow. No trees. No flowers. Not much up there. And yet, they'd go. They'd go for the vast, panoramic view of their mountain city spread out at their feet, and for a chance to glimpse on the horizon the snow-capped Cayambe, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo volcanoes.
Today, nobody in his family actually climbs up this hillside. That's in part due to time and the mobile nature of modern families. That's also in part due to the fact that climbing the Andes has become more dangerous. And now because of the city's latest public-private tourism endeavor - the construction of a gondola cable ride/theme park called the "Teleferiqo" - nobody will ever have to make that trek again.
For $4 for each adult (or $7 if you want to hop to the front of the line), eager and impatient mountaineers can get to the top of Cruz Loma in just 15 minutes. We made that climb this summer during a 10-day visit that included several outings with my husband's family members. The Teleferiqo was a new experience for us, as well as my husband's cousins.
"I believe this project is the most important attraction in Quito," argues the Teleferiqo's administrator, Fabian Yepez.
It's a controversial statement among locals, given the tremendous efforts to preserve historic centers, native forests, and riverfront parks.
"Quito has its grand and beautiful old churches. And of course visiting the Mitad (the demarcation of where the equator lies near Quito) is important to do. But I believe it's an obligation to come here to the Teleferiqo." The city of Quito, along with its private partners who built the $12 million complex, opened the Teleferiqo to the public in July 2005. Since then, they've taken 1 million people up Cruz Loma's steep walls using steel cables that inch along soaring columns and 18 cabins that each sit up to six people.
To get to the cabins, visitors must hike past the Vulqano theme park, past the Go Karts, the Discoteca that stays open until 3 a.m., and the Las Cumbres shopping center.
As the cabins climb at 45-degree angles up Cruz Loma, they sway with the whipping winds; notices warn riders not to make any sudden movements or panic if they stop without warning.
"When you get to the top, you're high enough to get the most amazing, beautiful view," Yepez said. "So many people wouldn't be coming here month after month if we didn't have such a beautiful view."
Atop the hill, visitors can listen to local musicians playing Andean flutes and order delicacies such as humitas - a local tamale wrapped in corn husk - café con leche, or French fries at the Café Santo Amaro. If not out of breath because of the altitude, they can walk along the half-mile trail, or rent a horse to do the walking for them, to admire the untouched mountains beyond Quito. Visitors who are indeed out of breath can instead catch some oxygen at the emergency center adjacent to the trails.
Climbing breathlessly by foot up a mountainside rumored for assaults might be some people's idea of a great adventure - and some still do so. But for many others, perhaps most, a soaring and steep cabin ride amid fast-moving winds to a man-made trail and a café with some good food may well be enough.
Whether the Teleferiqo is truly "the most important attraction" in Quito is really in the eye of the beholder, say my husband's relatives. They remind me of the fact that the city was named an UNESCO world cultural heritage site 28 years ago.
The international organization describes Quito as "the best preserved, least altered historic center in Latin America."
Built atop the ashes of an Incan city in the 16th century, Quito is laid out in classical Spanish colonial form, with an array of plazas and churches serving as the nexus for bustling streets criss-crossing in a grid.
The city sits 9,250 feet above sea level, nestled in an Andean highland valley, surrounded by active volcanoes, on the banks of the Machangara River, and within a taxi-ride's distance of the imaginary line that divides the Northern Hemisphere from the Southern.
When UNESCO declared the city an international historic center in 1978, prostitutes, beggars and street thugs still owned the downtown streets.
Since then, the streets have been swept and tourists and accompanying services to meet their needs have taken over. Internet cafes, bars, shops selling all forms of souvenirs, museums, and the ubiquitous horse and buggy rides found in most international tourist centers make up the colonial cityscape.
A quarter-mile walk east on Sucre Street takes history buffs from San Francisco Church and plaza - the city's oldest and most storied of churches - past La Compañía, Cathedral, and Sagrario churches, to the Santo Domingo Church, which was completed in 1620 and now houses a religious art museum.
"If you stand here in the middle of the (San Francisco) Plaza on the hour, you will be serenaded by a concert of bells," says one of my husband's uncles, Carlos Bonilla, an information technology consultant in Quito. "To the north, you have the Basilica, the Cathedral, San Agustin, La Compañía. To the east, you have Santa Catalina and Santo Domingo. Each church has its own bell and each bell has its own tone. Some have more bass. Some have more tenor. It's like a magnificent song of bell tones. It can also catch you by surprise if you're not expecting it because it's also very loud."
Standing in the middle of San Francisco Plaza, this uncle turns into storyteller and recounts the legend told over the centuries about the church, which took 69 years to be built and was finished in 1605.
"The architect was running out of time to complete this church. So, he made a deal with the devil to finish it," he says. "The devil had a deadline of Tuesday midnight. And at the stroke of midnight, he was one stone short. So, the deal was called off and his soul was saved. I don't believe this story. But, everybody who comes here has to look for the stone that was missing."
Of course, he added, no one can really find it. Rumor has it, though, that it could be located on one of the lower steps of one of the church's stairways.
Inside the church, which visitors can enter for free, a treasure trove of paintings and tapestries, statues and carvings keep Latin Americanists busy for hours.
Inside the Basilica, the Santo Domingo, or any other church or museum in the colonial downtown, the same can be said about the ornate statuaries, the elaborate ceilings, and the deeply detailed paintings.
"If you like history, art, museums, and architecture, then the Downtown is a really good place to visit," says cousin, Lucy Bonilla, a Los Angeles high school teacher who spends her summers in Quito.
"The Mindo National Park is a beautiful place for families with children to visit," says aunt Mercedes Bonilla. "It's a nature preserve where there are tall trees and people go to watch the birds and butterflies."
The Bosque Protector (protected forest) Mindo-Nambillo sits about a three-hour drive west of Quito. Its native trees and wildlife are largely protected from visitors, with the exception of a few stretches of unrestricted reserves. With more than 400 recorded species of birds making the forest its home, it's a must-see for bird watching devotees.
"Really, there are many things you can do and many things to see here," says Maria Belen Tinajero, another cousin.
This particular cousin, a public relations director for a local radio station, served as a guide and driver for a daytrip to Otavalo, a small town famous for its market square. There, indigenous artisans sell hats, jewelry, tapestries, handbags, ponchos, and other wooden and woolen crafts.
The path to Otavalo is a treacherous, winding two-hour trip from Quito on the Panamerican Highway, which grips the cliffs of the Andean mountain range and goes past verdant forests and stretches of farmlands.
Once in town, pie shops, restaurants, and coffee shops catering to foreigners - all of whom are called gringos, regardless of race or heritage - line the streets around the market squares.
It's the kind of place where one can pick up both CDs of the Beatles and folk songs sung in Quechua at the record store around the corner.
"It's a market town, a good place to go shopping, to see indigenous Ecuador," says my husband, Richard Milk, who has traveled to Quito dozens of times over the years to visit his mother's family. "It's a good daytrip for people who have been around the city and want to go somewhere else."
The best day to bargain with local artisans, we've learned, is on a Friday, right before sunset, when vendors are readying themselves to go home.
For those staying around Quito, the best marketplace for local crafts is the Mercado Artesenal La Mariscal, in a neighborhood just north of downtown that locals call "Gringolandia." It is in the Mariscal where Spanish-language schools operate to educate foreigners. And it is here where one can dine at Thai, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, and Cuban restaurants.
"There are so many Mexican restaurants here because foreigners think because they're in Latin America that they should have Mexican food," cousin Karina Bonilla jokes.
Whether the Mexican food is any good, we don't know because we go for the Thai restaurant.
We left town before we had the chance to visit the Mitad del Mundo, the park with the monuments and exhibits just north of Quito that mark the exact "center of the world."
And this time around, we didn't get to scale up the side of the Basilica's 300-foot towers for a bird's eye view of downtown.
"With so much to do here in Quito and so little time," cousin María Belén Tinajero says, "you have to come again and again."
April 29, 2007
City at the Center of the World
Quito and environs offer breathtaking views, colorful heritage and pristine wilderness
By Analisa Nazareno
QUITO, Ecuador - Back in the "good old days," my husband would brag, he and his kin would climb a mile up a steep mountainside called Cruz Loma, a so-called "hill" in his family's native Quito, Ecuador.
It was an all-day affair that left everybody gasping for air - because of the sheer physical labor of zig-zagging uphill for hours and because of the lack of air when you're 13,250 feet above sea level. At the top of this mountain - technically a foothill leading to the still-active Pichincha Volcano - little other than native grass and ground cover would grow. No trees. No flowers. Not much up there. And yet, they'd go. They'd go for the vast, panoramic view of their mountain city spread out at their feet, and for a chance to glimpse on the horizon the snow-capped Cayambe, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo volcanoes.
Today, nobody in his family actually climbs up this hillside. That's in part due to time and the mobile nature of modern families. That's also in part due to the fact that climbing the Andes has become more dangerous. And now because of the city's latest public-private tourism endeavor - the construction of a gondola cable ride/theme park called the "Teleferiqo" - nobody will ever have to make that trek again.
For $4 for each adult (or $7 if you want to hop to the front of the line), eager and impatient mountaineers can get to the top of Cruz Loma in just 15 minutes. We made that climb this summer during a 10-day visit that included several outings with my husband's family members. The Teleferiqo was a new experience for us, as well as my husband's cousins.
"I believe this project is the most important attraction in Quito," argues the Teleferiqo's administrator, Fabian Yepez.
It's a controversial statement among locals, given the tremendous efforts to preserve historic centers, native forests, and riverfront parks.
"Quito has its grand and beautiful old churches. And of course visiting the Mitad (the demarcation of where the equator lies near Quito) is important to do. But I believe it's an obligation to come here to the Teleferiqo." The city of Quito, along with its private partners who built the $12 million complex, opened the Teleferiqo to the public in July 2005. Since then, they've taken 1 million people up Cruz Loma's steep walls using steel cables that inch along soaring columns and 18 cabins that each sit up to six people.
To get to the cabins, visitors must hike past the Vulqano theme park, past the Go Karts, the Discoteca that stays open until 3 a.m., and the Las Cumbres shopping center.
As the cabins climb at 45-degree angles up Cruz Loma, they sway with the whipping winds; notices warn riders not to make any sudden movements or panic if they stop without warning.
"When you get to the top, you're high enough to get the most amazing, beautiful view," Yepez said. "So many people wouldn't be coming here month after month if we didn't have such a beautiful view."
Atop the hill, visitors can listen to local musicians playing Andean flutes and order delicacies such as humitas - a local tamale wrapped in corn husk - café con leche, or French fries at the Café Santo Amaro. If not out of breath because of the altitude, they can walk along the half-mile trail, or rent a horse to do the walking for them, to admire the untouched mountains beyond Quito. Visitors who are indeed out of breath can instead catch some oxygen at the emergency center adjacent to the trails.
Climbing breathlessly by foot up a mountainside rumored for assaults might be some people's idea of a great adventure - and some still do so. But for many others, perhaps most, a soaring and steep cabin ride amid fast-moving winds to a man-made trail and a café with some good food may well be enough.
Whether the Teleferiqo is truly "the most important attraction" in Quito is really in the eye of the beholder, say my husband's relatives. They remind me of the fact that the city was named an UNESCO world cultural heritage site 28 years ago.
The international organization describes Quito as "the best preserved, least altered historic center in Latin America."
Built atop the ashes of an Incan city in the 16th century, Quito is laid out in classical Spanish colonial form, with an array of plazas and churches serving as the nexus for bustling streets criss-crossing in a grid.
The city sits 9,250 feet above sea level, nestled in an Andean highland valley, surrounded by active volcanoes, on the banks of the Machangara River, and within a taxi-ride's distance of the imaginary line that divides the Northern Hemisphere from the Southern.
When UNESCO declared the city an international historic center in 1978, prostitutes, beggars and street thugs still owned the downtown streets.
Since then, the streets have been swept and tourists and accompanying services to meet their needs have taken over. Internet cafes, bars, shops selling all forms of souvenirs, museums, and the ubiquitous horse and buggy rides found in most international tourist centers make up the colonial cityscape.
A quarter-mile walk east on Sucre Street takes history buffs from San Francisco Church and plaza - the city's oldest and most storied of churches - past La Compañía, Cathedral, and Sagrario churches, to the Santo Domingo Church, which was completed in 1620 and now houses a religious art museum.
"If you stand here in the middle of the (San Francisco) Plaza on the hour, you will be serenaded by a concert of bells," says one of my husband's uncles, Carlos Bonilla, an information technology consultant in Quito. "To the north, you have the Basilica, the Cathedral, San Agustin, La Compañía. To the east, you have Santa Catalina and Santo Domingo. Each church has its own bell and each bell has its own tone. Some have more bass. Some have more tenor. It's like a magnificent song of bell tones. It can also catch you by surprise if you're not expecting it because it's also very loud."
Standing in the middle of San Francisco Plaza, this uncle turns into storyteller and recounts the legend told over the centuries about the church, which took 69 years to be built and was finished in 1605.
"The architect was running out of time to complete this church. So, he made a deal with the devil to finish it," he says. "The devil had a deadline of Tuesday midnight. And at the stroke of midnight, he was one stone short. So, the deal was called off and his soul was saved. I don't believe this story. But, everybody who comes here has to look for the stone that was missing."
Of course, he added, no one can really find it. Rumor has it, though, that it could be located on one of the lower steps of one of the church's stairways.
Inside the church, which visitors can enter for free, a treasure trove of paintings and tapestries, statues and carvings keep Latin Americanists busy for hours.
Inside the Basilica, the Santo Domingo, or any other church or museum in the colonial downtown, the same can be said about the ornate statuaries, the elaborate ceilings, and the deeply detailed paintings.
"If you like history, art, museums, and architecture, then the Downtown is a really good place to visit," says cousin, Lucy Bonilla, a Los Angeles high school teacher who spends her summers in Quito.
"The Mindo National Park is a beautiful place for families with children to visit," says aunt Mercedes Bonilla. "It's a nature preserve where there are tall trees and people go to watch the birds and butterflies."
The Bosque Protector (protected forest) Mindo-Nambillo sits about a three-hour drive west of Quito. Its native trees and wildlife are largely protected from visitors, with the exception of a few stretches of unrestricted reserves. With more than 400 recorded species of birds making the forest its home, it's a must-see for bird watching devotees.
"Really, there are many things you can do and many things to see here," says Maria Belen Tinajero, another cousin.
This particular cousin, a public relations director for a local radio station, served as a guide and driver for a daytrip to Otavalo, a small town famous for its market square. There, indigenous artisans sell hats, jewelry, tapestries, handbags, ponchos, and other wooden and woolen crafts.
The path to Otavalo is a treacherous, winding two-hour trip from Quito on the Panamerican Highway, which grips the cliffs of the Andean mountain range and goes past verdant forests and stretches of farmlands.
Once in town, pie shops, restaurants, and coffee shops catering to foreigners - all of whom are called gringos, regardless of race or heritage - line the streets around the market squares.
It's the kind of place where one can pick up both CDs of the Beatles and folk songs sung in Quechua at the record store around the corner.
"It's a market town, a good place to go shopping, to see indigenous Ecuador," says my husband, Richard Milk, who has traveled to Quito dozens of times over the years to visit his mother's family. "It's a good daytrip for people who have been around the city and want to go somewhere else."
The best day to bargain with local artisans, we've learned, is on a Friday, right before sunset, when vendors are readying themselves to go home.
For those staying around Quito, the best marketplace for local crafts is the Mercado Artesenal La Mariscal, in a neighborhood just north of downtown that locals call "Gringolandia." It is in the Mariscal where Spanish-language schools operate to educate foreigners. And it is here where one can dine at Thai, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, and Cuban restaurants.
"There are so many Mexican restaurants here because foreigners think because they're in Latin America that they should have Mexican food," cousin Karina Bonilla jokes.
Whether the Mexican food is any good, we don't know because we go for the Thai restaurant.
We left town before we had the chance to visit the Mitad del Mundo, the park with the monuments and exhibits just north of Quito that mark the exact "center of the world."
And this time around, we didn't get to scale up the side of the Basilica's 300-foot towers for a bird's eye view of downtown.
"With so much to do here in Quito and so little time," cousin María Belén Tinajero says, "you have to come again and again."
Résumé
