KICKIN' AROUND QUITO

Joelle McDonald
Jul 28, 2025
10 min read

Where We Stayed

Our draw to come to Quito was that Damon, a family friend, has been living here for work for the past few years. When he heard we were going to Peru, he said we had to come visit him in Ecuador, and we are glad we did! We stayed in an Airbnb in Damon's apartment building, located in the shopping and finance district. It was a very luxurious building with a pool, beautiful terrace, and all sorts of recreation facilities. Most importantly for us, it had a kitchen and laundry machines for our week long stay. Those are the real gold when traveling.

Fun Facts

Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar as its currency, which is convenient for us. Ubers run about $2-3 for anything in the city. Hannah and I each got no polish manicures for $5, and you can get a good Menú del Día lunch for about $3.
The road names in Quito are very odd. Most streets are named after days or places. A sentence like "go straight at Cuba and turn right on Africa before going left at Fourth of September" wouldn't be out of place.
Quito is the world's highest altitude capital city at about 9,350 feet above sea level.
Quito is a huge, sprawling city surrounded by volcanoes.
Ecuador's president is controversial in Ecuador. He was born in Miami with the head of Chiquita Bananas as his father. He moved to Ecuador to become president, and it is believed he may be involved in drug smuggling. Apparently a lot of drugs arrive in the U.S. in Chiquita banana boxes.
Ecuador was once a very safe country, but in the years since COVID, drug trafficking has become a huge issue. Many areas, especially along the coast, are now incredibly unsafe. Cartels demand payments from locals for safety, and tourists would be naïve to visit. People who work in the tourism industry are very grateful for our presence because tourism has taken an enormous hit in the past couple years due to safety concerns.

Eats

After eating other people's cooking for our entire time in Peru, Hannah and I are so ready to have a kitchen of our own. Damon took us across the street to go grocery shopping in the nearby mall at a Supermaxi. We are impressed that their shelves have everything we are looking for, even tofu! We cook most of our meals in Quito: overnight oats for breakfasts, taco bowls, tofu scramble, homemade popcorn, the works.

We are so happy. We do eat out a few times. After our walking tour, Hannah leads us to a vegan restaurant that ends up being a Menú del Día. We are well fed with a lunch plate, soup, and juice for just $3.75 each. The restaurant didn't serve Indian food, but there is some Indian influence in the decor. I imagine that's why this is a meatless restaurant. We also find a good vegan restaurant where we eat our last meal with Damon before we leave. It offers vegan versions of all sorts of "regular" food, like pizza and pasta.

Streets

Near our apartment, the streets are lined with banks and higher-end, mall-type stores. The sidewalks are lined with vendors selling everything from software packages to dog beds. It has the energy of any major city, but we particularly enjoy Parque la Carolina, the huge park right next to our building. Inside the park is a busy track, sports fields, fruit vendors, and even a botanical garden.

In the rest of Quito, the streets were perhaps less idyllic. Every time we go to the historic center, our Uber drivers tell us to be very careful and watch all of our belongings very closely. Everybody says not to be out after dark. Hannah and I take their advice to heart and are extremely aware of one another and our surroundings. In the historic center, churches line every street, and the roads are much more skinny, hilly, and prone to traffic jams than elsewhere in the city. The sidewalks have many vendors selling art to tourists and medicinal herbs and desserts to locals. Many older folk spend time in Quito's main square, which has given it a moniker that translates roughly to "Retiree Square."

Sights

We have quite a bit of time to explore Quito and see its highlights. We are lucky to have Damon to give us recommendations and accompany us when he can.

Quito has a Teleférico, or gondola, that takes you to the top of one of the volcanoes surrounding Quito. Hannah and I ride it up and spend awhile sitting high above the city, taking it in. It is impressive how easily we can feel like we are in nature, while staying in such a huge city.

The Presidential Palace in Quito is closed to the public with the rise of Ecuador's current president. However, since Damon works at the U.S. Embassy, he occasionally gets to visit it on highly-regulated state tours. One of those tours lines up with our visit, so Damon gets Hannah and I added to the list to tour the Palace. Unfortunately, the President is unexpectedly home and hosting meetings, so we have some delay and uncertainty as we wait at the gates to get in. We get the go-ahead while we are killing time at lunch with a few U.S. state department employees who are also on the tour. Since the President is in the building, we are only allowed in the main courtyard area, but it is super interesting to see and imagine how different this is from the White House.

After the Palace, we go to the Panecillo with Damon. This is a hill that juts out of the city's landscape where a monument of the Virgin of Panecillo is erected to look over the city. It is a beautiful viewpoint, and the monument itself is beautifully constructed with over 7,000 aluminum pieces. Damon gets a cool drone video of us here from a savvy street vendor, which is a super interesting street-based business model.

Another highlight in Quito is the Basilica del Voto Nacional, a Notre Dame-like basilica at the edge of Quito's historic center. Hannah and I visit, paying the admission fee to climb the church towers. The climb is surprising. Every few floors of the stairwell, we stumble upon a different full-on restaurant, all completely empty. We can't imagine how those get steady business, considering you have to pay an entrance fee and climb a lot of stairs to find them. When we reach the top, we are met with a beautiful 360º view over the historic center and surroundings. We highly recommend a visit you are ever find yourself in Quito.

We get a little culinary education on our free walking tour when we visit Quito's Mercado Central. Here in the city's central historic market we see brujería stalls (witch craft, or traditional healing), offering cleansing rituals, flowers so deadly they are illegal to grow agriculturally, and incense promising "love, health, and success." Our tour is then led to a table, where we learn about Ecuador's national dish and most famous hangover cure: Encebollado. It is a fish soup with an uncanny amount of onion, something I can't imagine someone enjoying after a night of going a little too hard. I thought that soup seemed strange, but it is immediately one-upped by seeing chicken ovaries, with a bunch of partially developed eggs lining the inside of the chicken. This is an important ingredient in an apparently nutritious soup. I had never thought about what partially developed eggs would look like inside a chicken, but now I know. We wrap-up our market tour with a much more comfortable trip to a fruit stand, where, at our guide's recommendation, we buy some Jugo de Mora (blackberry juice) to try. We get it without sugar, but I think I'd recommend the sugar.

One last sight that deserves mention is one Damon recommended to us: Quito's Botanic Gardens. These are located inside of Parque la Carolina, just a short walk from our apartment. An adorable field trip is here at the same time as us, making for some very fun small people watching. The gardens are along several winding paths, with a number of exhibition greenhouses. There are areas representing the tropics, carnivorous plants, orchids, very funky cacti, ferns, and even bonsai. The orchid houses are especially interesting because Ecuador is considered the Orchid Capital of the World, with a stunning biodiversity of species. These are not you average orchid house plants.

Adventures

Cotopaxi National Park

As Hannah and I sat at the top of Quito's Teleférico, we saw a huge, cone-shaped mountain with an icy top. It reminded me of Mt. Fuji in Japan. As we sat there, we realized we were looking at Cotopaxi Volcano. Well, we can't just look at something that cool and not climb it!

After a little research, Hannah and I booked a tour to visit Cotopaxi National Park and hike to its Refuge/Guest House, which sits just a bit below Cotopaxi's Glacier top. As we drive around in the morning collecting members of our tour, Hannah and I are in disbelief at the lack of preparation of our fellow tour go-ers. We are going to about 16,000 feet and people didn't bring jackets or snacks and many were wearing work clothes! What?! We make a stop on the way to the Park so people who didn't come prepared can get cash, buy snacks and jackets, and eat breakfast at a restaurant. It was a pretty weird start to the day.

Once we get to the National Park, we stop for Coca Tea (it helps with high altitude) before going to the visitor center. At the visitor center we learn just how interesting Cotopaxi is! Because Cotopaxi is so tall and Earth's sphere bulges at the equator, Cotopaxi is actually the closest point of Earth to the sun. It's even closer than the summit of Mt. Everest! Cotopaxi is also considered an active volcano, meaning it can erupt at anytime, the impacts of which would be devastating. Since the top of Cotopaxi is a glacier, the heat of the eruption would almost instantly melt all the ice, forming a violent river of volcanic ash flows that would have a huge path of devastation. Our guide tells us scientists have predicted an eruption of Cotopaxi could "wipe out" all of South America. That seems a bit dramatic to me. I'm curious about this definition of "wipe out."

After the visitor center, we drive to the trail head for our Cotopaxi hike. Along the way, we stop for pictures, and I notice how empty all the volcano's surroundings feel, almost like an alpine tundra. The parking lot for the trail head is quite a ways up the volcano's steep slope. By the time we get there, we are left with a hike that's about a kilometer, but it is by no means easy. The trail is loose volcanic pebbles and goes up at what seems like a 45º angle, not to mention that we start at 15,217 feet and end at 16,139 feet. I'm huffing, puffing, and pausing often with the lack of oxygen, but Hannah seems just groovy. Not cool.

After our climb, we stop for a snack at the Refuge (aka guest house). Inside is cozy and small, with flags hanging on every surface, signed by the people from its country that have made it here. Hannah and I skip signing the American flag because it was already so covered, but we do sign the guestbook.

The most fun part of the whole experience may be the way down. The volcanic ash is so thick and the trail so steep that the best way to get down it a run/slide. It is a lot like boot skiing. It took us about an hour to hike up the volcano, and only 13.5 minutes to get back down. I have a lot of rocks in my shoes by the time we get to the bus though.

Museo Intiñan - Visiting the Equator

Ecuador gets its name from its location, straddling the equator. The equatorial line lies a bit North of Quito's city center. I really want to visit it and hear there are some fun scientific experiments we can do that only work on the equator line, so I do some research and find Museo Intiñan. This museum is located right on the equator, but more than that, it also has cultural exhibits about many regions of the country.

We take an Uber to the museum and wait 10 minutes to join an English tour. The cultural part of the tour is fascinating! We see a traditional hut from around 1920, which was relocated to be part of the museum, complete with a pen of guinea pigs. Next, we step into the Amazon, entering a large, dried leaf structure that was built on site by an actual Amazonian tribe. A huge, hollow stick used for darting animals is on display, and we learn about a few customs.

Just two more cultural stops before the excitement of the equator! First is a structure filled with taxidermied animals from the Amazon and a shrunken human head. Yes, your read that right. When there was a leadership change, the victor would behead the fallen leader/challenger, remove their skull and organs, shove a small rock into the cavity, sew shut the eyes, nose, and mouth, and steam it over a vat of herbs until the skin was tightened around the rock. The head was then worn around the victors neck. The practice was common among the Amazonian tribes but is now only practiced on sloth heads to preserve the tradition without murder.

Our last stop before the equator is a recreation of a tomb of a male ruler. When the male died, he was buried with many possessions, including his wife…even if she was still living. She would be given a drink that would cause her to fall asleep, then lay down in the tomb with her husband and never wake up. That leaves Hannah and I’s eyes wide.

Okay, moving on from the traditions that feel gruesome from the Western gaze… THE EQUATOR! The museum presents the equator with a painted line, with many exhibits displayed atop it.

A basic monument to take pictures while straddling the equator.
A globe, positioned on its side, so the globe’s equator line matches exactly with the real one. That is a super interesting perspective of the world!
A sundial, but it is a bit cloudy so it doesn't do much for us.
Does a drain swirl different directions in the Northern and Southern hemisphere? Yes! We get to see it with our own eyes in a simple basin with leaves in it, so we can easily see the direction of the swirl.
We are challenged to walk a straight path heel-to-toe on the equator line with our eyes closed. Apparently it is supposed to be easier here because equal pressure on the fluid in each ear helps with balance, but I definitely wobble off the line.
Our guide instructs us to stand feet together with our arms clasped high in front of us. He pushes down on each of our arms, and we are supposed to resist upward. The weird part: when we stand one step off the equator line, we can easily resist, but with our feet on the line, our guide easily pulls us off-balance and we fall forward. Only one person is able to resist with their feet on the equator. It is so weird. I’m still not sure how that works.
We are given an egg and instructed to balance it on the flat head of a nail. While some struggle, Hannah quickly gets the egg to balance, which is said to be easier at the equator due to balanced gravitational forces. I also get mine to balance, and we each receive certificates stating that we balanced an egg on the equator. Woohoo!