MAGIC BEAN QUITO ECUADOR FULL

We continued walking towards Basillica del Voto Nacional with the intention of going up to the top of the spire to see the view. We did not hit anyone! But it did not handle like my carbon tri bike. We rode around the park completely out of control yelling “caution, caution” at anyone dumb enough to get in our way. We rented one for 30 minutes it cost us $3 which I am sure was too much but we took it anyway. We noticed that they were renting peddle cars for kids, bikes and even some elderly looking tandem bikes. We bought a fruit salad from a street vendor for $1 and ate it on a bench. We stopped at Parque El Ejido a popular local park.

It was a long walk but we had ridden part of it on bike Sunday so we knew where we were. The prices were almost North American, the highest we had seen in Ecuador. We did not have any but the pancakes looked great. The hot chocolate was excellent not so sure about the cheese. The cheese was cubes of the local soft cheese. I was not sure what I was going to get but it turned out to be exactly that. I ordered chocolate con queso, a hot chocolate with cheese. While we were in the neighbourhood we stopped at The Magic Bean a hostel and coffee shop. We also discovered latter that they would hold your bags for you. We had to prepay but we left feeling pretty sure the taxi would arrive. They spoke English and went well out of their way to help us book a cab for 3:00am New Year’s Day. We also found a tourist info/ help place just off the plaza. We talked to a number of travel companies and ended up booking a tour to Cotopaxi with Gulliver Expeditions a one day trip for $45 each. There are several adventure tour companies and even more night clubs. We set off to the new town, la mariscal on a new bus and discovered Plaza Foch, which is backpacker party central in Quito. We don’t speak Spanish well enough to call a cab and explain where we are in the middle of the night and we were told the airport taxi would not take a reservation for that day. Very cool but it was also going to make getting a cab at 3:00 am on New Year’s Day difficult. A sort of out with the old and in with the new. At midnight everyone sets fire to them in the street.

MAGIC BEAN QUITO ECUADOR FULL

The traditional homemade ones are made with old clothes but there are also stalls full of viejos of cartoon characters and masks of famous political figures which can be put on your homemade viejos. New Year’s is a big deal in Quito there are parties in the streets and every family either makes or buys a life sized straw puppet called a ano viejos ” the old ones”. We made the mistake of booking a 6:25 am flight from Quito to Manta on New Year’s Day. The first was to book a tour to Cotopaxi and the second was to book a taxi to the airport for our flight to Manta.

Magic bean quito ecuador