Tuesday 3rd – Cuzco to Quito

Another early start, though not as early as yesterday—a civilized 5:30 a.m. wake-up call. We actually had time to sit down and eat breakfast before heading for the bus to the airport.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our hotel, in Cuzco, the Palacio del Inka, was a remarkable hotel. It offered excellent food, luxurious rooms, and brilliant staff. There was also a lot of history associated with the building. We didn’t get time to appreciate it. Because of the schedule we were on, we might as well have stayed in a Travel Lodge.

This is my only criticism of the holiday. I would have liked this phase to have been slowed down a bit. An extra day in Cuzco would have been good. Our son did a tour of South America a few years back and said that he really loved Cuzco.

On with the journey.

To get to Quito from Cuzco, we had to fly via Lima. The first flight left Cuzco around 9 a.m. and arrived in Lima about an hour and a half later. We had about another hour and a half to wait for our flight to Quito. That flight took about two and a half hours. By the time we had cleared immigration and customs and got the bus to our hotel, it was 6 p.m. There was not much to report about today. The quinoa bars that Latam Airlines serve as an in-flight snack are OK. Still, I would have preferred a packet of crisps.

Our hotel was another Marriott hotel. All the hotels we stayed in were Marriott hotels. This was The JW Marriott Hotel to be exact. It was a modern glass and concrete building, but reasonably attractive. The rooms were comfortable and the food was good.

Wednesday 4th – Chocolate, policemen and The Centre of the World.

We had a moderately sane start to today—our tour left at 9:30 a.m. Waking up at 7:30 a.m. gave us enough time to actually sit down and enjoy breakfast.

Chocolate

Ecuadorian chocolate is probably the best in the world. A visit to an artisan chocolatier was the first stop on our tour of Quito and its surrounding area.

Indemini Baez has been going for about twenty years and is the product of an Ecuadorian-Swiss couple Bertrand Indemini and Cristina Baez. The chocolate pedigree is there. We were given a short history of the origins of chocolate. We were then introduced to how they make their chocolate. Their beans are carefully sourced. All their beans are fairly traded, and they track the source down to the community and plantation level for each batch.

We were given a demonstration of how the chocolate is made. Samples of their various products were tried. Most of their chocolate is in the 55% to 100% cocoa solids range. (The 100% stuff is an acquired taste.) They also make an interesting white chocolate, based on cocoa butter and barley.

They also add ingredients such as chilli, black walnuts, and Inca peanuts to their bars.

Obviously there was an opportunity to buy some of the chocolate, which we did, with the intention of taking it home as presents. Some of it even made it back to the UK. It is very good chocolate.

Policemen (and Jesuits)

Following our chocolate experience, we went for a walking tour of central Quito. We walked to the Plaza Grande, home to the Presidential Palace, various other government buildings and more police than you could shake a stick at. They were all very friendly, almost cuddly. (Unlike some of the police we met later when we were stranded in Guayaquil, more of that in a later post). I think they were meant to be a reassuring presence, which they were. But there were a lot of them.

Moving on from the Plaza Grande we visited the Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús (the Jesuit Church). It is, to my taste, a bit over the top. They have overdone the gilding to the extent that if the church were melted down, it would probably solve Ecuador’s national debt. Check out the gallery to see what I mean.

By this time, it was more or less time for lunch. We were whisked off to the El Cráter Hotel, which as the name suggests is on the edge of a volcanic crater (no longer active). The Cráter Pululahua to be precise. The views from the terrace were impressive.

Moderately interesting useless fact: the city of Quito is built over the craters of seven inactive volcanoes.

The lunch was also good.

The Centre of The World

After a short llama encounter, we travelled on to Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World). Ecuador, as its name indicates, is bisected by the Equator. Quito is very slightly to the south of the line. It was fun to stand with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern. Giving Diane a kiss across the hemispheres also had to be done.

Other than taking a few photos there wasn’t that much else to be done there. There were a few shops and places to get a coffee. There was a reasonably interesting display of the history of Ecuador inside the tower, but other than that nothing to keep you on site for longer than an hour.

It was then back to the hotel for what we thought would be our last night on mainland South America.

There was a bit of time to kill before dinner. As the hotel had a pool I decided to have a swim. I had sort of forgotten about the altitude (2,850 metres). Being about five hundred metres lower than Cuzco, and because I was becoming acclimatised to it, I was no longer getting out of breath just walking. Swimming was different. I found I could only manage about ten meters before needing to stop for a rest. It was nice to have a swim though.

Then it was dinner and bed, before another early start as we headed off to the Galapagos Islands and the reason we had spent the amount of money we did.