Quito and the Cloud Forrest of Ecuador ~ Where are the Jays

We are in Quito for just 2 days. Happily, we have booked a tour guide for both days so we can make the most of our short time in Quito. Personally, I have concerns about visiting Quito - it is a very high-altitude city as it is aptly named city in the clouds. I have had a mild case of altitude sickness before at a lower altitude. So I took meds, but truthfully, I never felt quite like myself while there and unfortunately Jeff was fighting a cold the whole time. We did enjoy ourselves just not perfect.

We get into the Quito airport in the early afternoon. The airport is nice modern new airport and an hour away from town. We get a taxi for a flat rate of $30 for the 4 of us and off we go. The road right outside of the airport is 6 lanes most of the time and also new. Most of the housing I see on the way looks quite nice. Then our driver points out the city of Quito to us - it is way up high and partially in the clouds. I see lots of new modern high rises. We unfortunately leave the nice new road and start up a narrow, winding, tile like road up the mountain to Quito. The driver tells us this is the road of the conquistadors. They built it all those hundreds of years ago. Now it is a 2-lane road with lots of speed bumps and lots of stop and go traffic. I am happy when we make it to the city. However, the city is full of steep roads too and we are heading to the old town for our boutique hotel. We are close, oh so close when we are stopped: there is a carnival parade going down the street we need to go on. Seems Carnival/Mardi Gras has found me. We can't see a lot, but we do see a couple of pick-ups/floats with gold and blue balloons and can see part of a traditional dance troupe and hear a band. Finally, the parade and all the walkers with it are past and we can fight traffic to try and get to our hotel! After several round the blocks are driver deposits us at the front door which happily has been opened by the staff; else truthfully, I never would have found it!

We learn our hotel is a UNESCO world heritage site and in fact would later learn that all of old town Quito is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The hotel is called Hotel Basilica Quito. Not sure where the name came from since it is 4 blocks away from the basilica. It is however an interesting and gorgeous building. It was built in the Andalusian style as in Southern Spain. Originally it had several balconies and courtyards the open areas have now been covered with large skylights. Right as we were getting in the door it started to rain; a few minutes later it poured and we could see it well on the skylights. The building is full of beautifully stained and varnished woodwork and lots and lots of murals plus some gardens. The room Jeff and I had included a mural painted on one wall that had a doorway which was the doors to our closet. That night the hotel escorted the 4 of us around the corner to a well-respected Ecuadorian restaurant.

Courtyard now a breakfast and lobby area by adding a clear roof

Each room has a mural of a local church

Mural of street the hotel is on

Day 1

First day of our 2 day tour and it is a Saturday key to point out that we are visiting on a weekend. Our guide would like to stop at the memorial they have for the equator, but all 4 of us have visited the equator before so we decide to skip. Instead, we are starting at a rose farm that is about 45 minutes outside of the city - good decision.

Honestly, I don't know what I thought a commercial rose garden would look like, but I was surprised and amazed at what I saw. For starters, the rose plants are grown in rows like grapevines and are taller than me as in no competition. We are visiting one of the larger commercial growers in Ecuador right before Valentine's Day, so they are quite busy.

This is there showroom of flower varieties

Our host, pointing out the qualities of this sample

They take us into the processing plant which is a 1 story building with 3 large rooms. The first room was where the newly cut blooms first come. The flowers are wrapped in a plastic grid like material and in large bins. One of the employees would grab a packet of flowers turn them upside down and dunk them in a disinfectant and put them in a different bin. They wanted to be sure there is nothing growing on the flowers because that will decrease their lifespan.

Next room: quality control and first level of packing. The bins are brough in and a couple of ladies would grab individual rose compare their length to a chart and look at the quality of the bloom. Based on those 2 criteria they would place the rose on the appropriate shelf of a tall metal rolling rack. Another group of ladies would be grabbing roses from a particular shelf to package them in groups of 25. The roses are packed quite tightly in a square container (just the bloom portion). Then the lady would place a wooden popsicle stick with a color in the package and place it on another cart. The stick signified who had packed that since they work on a quota and bonus system related to quantity,

Sorted by stem length

Inspection

Packaging

Last room. Box, refrigeration and shipping. The groups of 25 were brought in and now the stick was gone but each had a sticker with information on it that said rose type, and when packaged. Like roses are now packed in bigger cardboard boxes. Oh, I should add this room is cool - like close to freezing temperature so the roses stop maturing. When the truck comes to pick up a load there is an insulated door that the roses go thru to the cold storage truck that will take them to the airport for shipping overseas.

Boxes for different stem length

Interesting facts we learned:

Americans prefer their roses to be more closed than Russians although it really does not mean longer life
Russians love long stemmed roses as in a yard tall; that evening Jeff and I looked up on the internet and saw vases built for super tall roses.
The scent has been purposely bred out of the roses. Scent attracts bacteria and the blooms are shorter
A rose plant will produce for 15 to 25 years at which time the entire row will be replaced
All of their roses are bred off of white roses because they have the best root system
The reject roses are sold to Ecuadorians quite cheaply so you see gorgeous roses everywhere.

Lastly, I should add that we had 2 extra guests on part of our tour - 2 wild turkeys decided to join us.

Next stop is a church as we are part way up the hill to town. Iglesia de Guapulo. She is the cloud lady as Jeff and I called her. It is a very old church that people will do pilgrimages to from town. In fact, our guide said as a schoolgirl she had to walk down the hill to this church when she was 6 or 7 years old. Supposedly the mother of God appeared to some people, so they built a church here in 1620. The area around the church is a desirable place to live. We drive up a backroad to a good look out spot and take some photos.

View of church

We keep going up. We go to a huge statute of Virgin of the Panecillo. This is a statute that was built in the honor of Ecuador's independence from Spain. There is of course a lot of symbolism in the statute. It is on top of a hill that was a Spanish fort during the way. A cistern is still in the area, but the rest of the Spanish fortress is gone. The statute was built in Italy and shipped to Ecuador in pieces. Each piece was numbered so it could be put back together. While we are up there our guide points out the old town boundaries to us and the various plazas and churches. Old town is a UNESCO site because it is so well preserved.

View of Quito

After checking the monument/statute out. Our driver takes us to the oldest road in old town. Now a days it is safe and has various artists shops. But in the day. It was a spot where the brothels were and then in the 70s and 80s lots of drug dealers. Now it is nice and colorful. We visit one shop. It is a man whose metalworking skills can be traced back to the schools established to build the Iglesia de Guapulo and then later the other gorgeous churches in town. In modern times, he has to develop many of his own tools to work the metal in the traditional manner. He is well known and in fact has a piece hanging in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

At the end of the road is a museum. We are eating lunch at their cafeteria. It is run by a young well respected chef who is doing good things with the traditional dishes. Vivian, our guide, had spoke highly of their version of a potato soup so 3 of us order it. It is quite good, but you would probably not recognize it as potato soup since it is a golden color. The traditional version has avocado in it and newer version has more ingredients. We all enjoyed it. After lunch we spend just a few minutes in the museum. It was the first hospital in Quito and was in use until the 1970s. It has a courtyard and, in the room, set up as a recreation each bed was a cubby in a wall. We are told that it was mainly for the unwanted children - kids whose mother was Ecuadorian and whose father was Spanish. It was also a safe spot for travelers to stay. As we leave there is a large mural on the wall that is a map of old town painted many, many years ago. None of us can find where we are standing on the map - oh well.

Onward into the old town. Until not that long ago, Roman Catholicism was the only religion in Ecuador - official religion of the country, had to be one to be president, etc. I tell you that because there are several large, old pretty churches in Quito and they are all in important places. Each of these churches had their own plaza nearby. The first one we headed to we could not go in since there was a wedding. See that beautiful rose arch; our guide estimated that it cost $300 of which 50 was for the roses. Also notice in the photo that they had people outside the church representing different entities from local beliefs.

Onward we trekked in Old Town to our next church Iglesia Catholica San Francisco so the church of the Franciscan order - the different orders of priests did not always play nice here. It is very ornate inside with lots of gold and silver highlights. Because there is a very strong Sanish influence in the churches and because the Moors were in Spain for a very long time, you see the moors' influence with more geometric patterns in part of the church.

Our last church has a nickname of the "gold church". Its real name is Church of La Compania. It is the church the Jesuits built. The Jesuits were the last order to show up in Quito, and they did not have vows of poverty like the other orders so they had money. They also stressed education and the sciences. Since they were late to the scene so to speak they had to buy up land to build a church (outside does not look like a church). They also bought land for a college right next door. After 10 years or so, they had the land to start to build the church and other buildings. They went through several architects along the way and finally finished it 160 years later. The church is known as the gold church because its interior is practically covered in gold. It is quite impressive inside, but then you learn that it was even prettier at one time. You see, the Jesuits scared the Spaniards so only a couple of years after the church and college were completed (1767), the Spanish King evicted them and only allowed them a suitcase each to leave. Many of the paintings in the church were taken over by Spanish Royalty. Eventually the Jesuits were allowed to return to Quito and got the church back, but not the college. They have a couple of well-known paintings in the church. In recent history, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis visited the church when they visited Quito.

do you see the organ in the center back - it was from America and only a few exist

After the gold church we headed to a chocolateria. A small chocolate shop in an intricate shopping arcade. It is run by a husband and wife team. The husband is from Switzerland, so he brought the chocolate making knowledge. They work with small local providers for their ingredients and can tell you where the cacao came for their various chocolate bars. They also have experimented with how high of a percentage of pure chocolate cane they go as in how dark is their dark chocolate. Answer very dark as in 90% and above. We tasted and saw how much sugar, coco butter and cacao is in a variety of types of chocolate. It was all quite good and yes we bought some.

shopping arcade with the chocolate shop

Then we were going to head up the 4 blocks to the basilica when I could tell it was pouring up there already. In the end we made a dash for our hotel where our driver met us so we could get our roses that the rose farm had given us. End of a good day.

Day 2

If you remember, I said we were in town over the week end so day 2 is a Sunday. Seems that Quito regularly closes many streets in the Old Town on Sundays and lets people bike ride, etc on the car free streets. We had made a wise decision the day before to head out of town today. We are heading to the Mindo Cloud Forest. It will be a 2 hour drive to get there. It is popular spot with the locals, but Vivian is counting on it being light this weekend since the following weekend is a holiday (Carnival).

view of the caldera valley from above

While it starts on a nice well paved 2 land road, it is windy because we are going slowly down the mountains. Our first stop was early in the trip. We stop at a small park for a volcano. We are at the top looking down. In the caldera below us there are farms and some popular hot springs and retreats. The government closely monitors this volcano because it is still active. Based on current findings, they believe it will be 200 years before it erupts. We get back in the car and after a while, Diego, our driver turns onto a lesser road and then eventually onto a dirt road. It is bumpy and has a little gravel on it, but there are some serious potholes. There are many things you can do in this area and several small hotels. We decide to start with a hike to a waterfall and then an elevated ride.

by the waterfall

Fast water river

Our next stop is a butterfly sanctuary. We eat lunch there and enjoy the sanctuary. There is an enclosed building with an area with chrysalis and also lots and lots of butterflies flying around. It is kind of magical. There is some fruit sitting out in places for some food for them. Adjacent is an open area covered in netting with even more butterflies. When we have had enough of the butterflies. We move onto the Orchid Farm.

Click here to watch the butterflies of the cloud Forrest

I guess this too could be called a sanctuary. The lady in charge of it has rescued all of the orchids from trees that have fallen in the local forest. These orchids are very different from the ones you are used to seeing at stores. They range in size from large to so small we need a magnifying glass to see the flower. Right as we enter there is a strange looking flower, but oh does it have a strong orchid scent about it. We see orchids that have little faces, we see some that are kind of ugly, there were over 250 different orchids in the farm, and it is a small place.

Orchid with the gorgeous scent

notice these flowers look like little people

Dracula orchid

Our last stop is a bird site. The cloud forest we are in is known the world over for its birds. In fact, a big international conference was in this area a few years ago. The wife of a well-known bird tour guide runs this spot. She goes through 100-150 bananas a day and 100 pounds of sugar a week. First, we stood in an open building watching birds on a couple of fee ding spots (she puts bananas on logs for the birds). We saw all sorts and then did get an intruder. We walk down the hill just a little bit to a clearing that has several feeders for hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are everywhere!