May 10, 2021: Equator Tour with Happy Gringo (Author: J)
The day after our flight, we did not have anything planned until the afternoon. I assumed that, after our late arrival, we would want to sleep in. Unfortunately, my body did not cooperate. I was up before 7 and feeling a bit headachey given the altitude. Swissotel had provided us with several large bottles of drinking water, so I did my best to hydrate and caffeinate (using the in-room espresso maker, which is always a highlight of any hotel stay for me). P woke up shortly after I did and we spent time reading and enjoying the views from the room.
When D woke up, we headed down to breakfast, which was included in our room rate. After a quick temperature check, we were shown to a table in Café Quito. I was happy to see that the Swissotel was still serving a buffet-style breakfast despite the pandemic. To prevent contamination of food items, most of the cold items were individually wrapped, while a staff member served the hot items. There was a really nice assortment of items, including standard fare like eggs and some local specialties. I remember that I tried a seasoned corn cake along with my eggs, fruit, yogurt, and breakfast pastries.
After breakfast, we had some time to kill before our appointment at the pool. During Covid, Swissotel requires guests to reserve time to use the pool. This turned out to be the only day we were able to get a spot due to a combination of low capacity restrictions and the fact that residents of the neighboring condo tower can also reserve swim slots. We spent the time between breakfast and our swim watching soccer on the in-room television. When our swim appointment arrived, we headed down to the pool area. D then had to run back up to the lobby to get towels and bathing caps, which the hotel inexplicably requires guests wear in the pool.
Once we were properly attired, we headed to the pool area, which was full of lap-swimmers from the condo tower. We chose a corner of the pool where we thought we would be out of the way and jumped in. The pool was a pleasant temperature and offered the opportunity to swim through a tunnel to an outdoor courtyard. We decided to do so, carefully timing things to avoid interfering with those swimming laps. As soon as we were away from the wall, P started floundering. “You can swim,” I reminded him. “No! I’m drowning,” he screamed as he clutched at me. Somehow, we made it outside, which we immediately deemed much too cold. And so, we turned around to head in. This time, P crossed the pool by crab-walking along the wall since he still would not admit that he knew how to swim.
We spent about an hour swimming, including a chunk of time that P swam on his own (having somehow regained his ability to do so once mom and dad were not in the pool). Between my headache, shortness of breath from the altitude, and the pinchiness of the hotel swim cap, I was ready to leave when the hour was over. As always, we had to pry P out of the pool with (what would be unfulfilled) promises to return at a later date.
After our swim, we cleaned up and then had lunch at the Quito Deli, another of the restaurants at the hotel. We then planned to head up to our room to pack for our afternoon tour. We stepped off the elevator to the sight of housekeeping in our room; too late, we realized that the do not disturb sign would have come in handy. In broken Spanish, we attempted to ask how long it would be and were told an hour, so we headed back down to the lobby. After 30 minutes, we went back upstairs and found no one in our room.
We quickly packed our day bag and headed back downstairs where we met Jose Luis, our tour guide from Happy Gringo, in the hotel lobby for our equator tour. The equator turned out to be much farther from Quito than I had anticipated, but Jose provided interesting narration about the city and life in Ecuador as we drove. Since we hadn’t planned much time to actually see Quito, it was nice to get a sense of the neighborhoods as we made our way to our first stop.
One of the nice things about using a local tour guide is that they almost always show you sights that you would not have picked on your own, but which turn out to be highlights. Such was the case with Pululahua volcano, a volcanic crater filled with farms. We stopped to peek down into the crater from the scenic overlook and were lucky to get there just before the afternoon clouds rolled in. The crater was incredibly peaceful and seeing homes inside a volcanic crater was a novelty. On the way back to the car, I stopped to use the restroom, where I learned a lesson that I would keep failing to heed: many public restrooms in Ecuador do not have toilet paper.
Our next stop was the Inti Ñan museum. This is a small museum about local indigenous cultures that P was interested in visiting because he wanted to try out some of the equator science experiments — like seeing how water drains in different hemispheres and trying to walk along the equator — advertised on the museum website. While the museum grounds are beautiful and some of exhibits are interesting, this stop was something of a bust for us. That is because you cannot explore on your own and our guide (the museum guide, not Jose Luis, who had to wait in the parking area) marched us through the exhibits at a rapid pace, barking at us to hurry when we spent too long looking at any particular item. I would be curious to hear whether the issue was covid crowd control, or if the museum always rushes guests through.
Our final stop was Mitad del Mundo, a touristic complex at the location identified as the equator by a 1736 French scientific expedition. The expedition is the subject of The Mapmaker’s Wife, a non-fiction book that I started reading on the plane ride to Quito, but would not finish until several days after our return to the U.S. We started our time at Mitad by climbing the monument tower. Unfortunately, the exertion of climbing stairs before we had adjusted to Quito’s altitude just about did P and I in and we were not able to enjoy any of Jose Luis’s narration. D did his best to listen, while I took P right back down the stairs (at his request). From there, we were supposed to have free time to explore, but after eating popsicles, which, incidentally, did wonders for our headaches, we were too exhausted for further exploration. Thus, my dream of drinking a cocktail on the equator was crushed, but it was probably for the best given the aforementioned headache. As soon as we were outside the complex, we realized that we had left P’s sunhat inside. D ran back in while P and I did our best to avoid making eye contact with the creepy Mickey Mouse trying to entice tourists for photos. (He was about as endearing as a Times Square Elmo, but you had to admire the zeal with which courted the few tourists who wandered by).
We headed back to the Swissotel by a slightly more direct route, arriving in time for an early dinner at Sports Planet, a sports bar connected to the hotel. The food was rather uninspired Tex-Mex, but P was excited to watch soccer while he ate. After dinner, we went up to the room where we read before going to bed early. I was happy that I was finally starting to feel better, having realized that much of my “altitude-sickness” was actually dehydration.
Travel Monkeys 