Heading to Latacunga.

Colonial buildings and Quito's "Redentor" guarding the city.
Originally uploaded by Henrik & Barbara.

Again everything didn’t turn out as planned. We took the trolley to the old part of Quito early in the morning. The old part which supposedly should be a beautiful concentration of colonial-style houses. We write supposedly because we never actually made it into the buildings. The whole area was closed with tall fences and loads of cops because of a big political demonstration according to a nice helpful Ecuadorian woman, Glòria. (The presidential palace is located in the middle of the old part of Quito). What a disappointment – but not really a surprise since there is going to be president election a month from now. We shot a few pictures of some of the famous buildings through the fences…not really the same. After a short walk in the area to get a sense of the city anyway – which actually is quite beautiful with the colonial style, we rushed to our flight agency to change our flight ticket home… Now we have a reservation from Santiago to Madrid departing the 21st of December.

Not wanting to spend another day in Quito, we thought it was time to move on and found a bus to Latacunga.
Buses in Ecuador are really easy to deal with. When you arrive at a bus terminal, you are quickly approached by personnel from the bus companies and within seconds you have bought a ticket, thrown you backpack in the luggage compartment and found a seat. Best of all: you only pay a dollar per hour on the bus. Very cheap!
The funny thing about the Ecuadorian bus companies is the pro-policy for street vendors… or should we call them bus-vendors.
Every time the bus makes a stop - could be to collect passengers but also just waiting for a green light - the vendors jump on the bus to sell the passengers everything. The bus ride to Latacunga takes 2,5 hour and in that time we got a very nice demonstration of 2 colored pens, fake watches and several chances to buy seco (a Ecuadorian meat stew), barbeque spears, drinks, fruits, dried bananas and loads of candy.

Latacunga is a small town with a center full of tour agencies selling trips to the three main attractions in the area: A giant crater lake (Quilotoa), an active volcano (Cotopaxi) and the Thursday market in Saquisili. This is why we are here – so within in a couple of hours we had booked a guided trip for the next day.