The Virgin of Quito

As usual, me and Mallory woke up late. Our goal for the day was to climb El Panecillo hill. El Panecillo means little bread loaf. The name makes no sense to me! However, our goal was to climb the little bread loaf. It looked so easy! Easy breezy .We could see the virgin of quito from the hostel's terrace. Throughout the historic district of quito over the past few days, the virgin had watched out for us. What better way to celebrate the virgin then to visit her on foot?

My plan included the following preparations:

1. snacks and bottled water (Mallory made this happen).

2. shoes- (we were wearing shoes!)

3. start walking toward the loaf.

4. climb the loaf.

5. give the virgin a kiss.

Oh how I wanted to kiss the virgin! In our minds the 5-step plan was infallible. Of course there was always a communication problem between me and mallory, but I think she knew the plan even though I never actually told her. The day before we had discussed the virgin: "we are going to walk up there tomorrow." She replied, "OK." End of discussion!

We got snacks and bottled water at the little shop close to our hostel. The weather had been a little chilly so I wore my brown north face fleece. Mallory had finally located her little backpack so we put our water in there. We started our journey at about 11am and we began walking in the general direction of the statue. It didn't take us very long to leave ALL of our familiar streets in favor of STRANGE streets. After 15 minutes of walking, we wandered onto a quiet little street. It seemed so quiet because so much of Quito is filled with noise. The houses seemed like they were at least 300 years old. (We didn't take the following picture, but this is just like the street we were on. Notice the virgin looming in the distance).

Through the entryway of a building, we saw a courtyard full of art. Naturally, we walked towards the art but an alarm sounded as we entered. We ran off! We kept wandering until we reached a dead end. Then we went down a flight of stairs to a very busy street. In a little market area, I gave Mallory advice on how to bargain with the little salespeople. Everyone is so little in Quito! My advice did not pay off, as Mallory left the market empty handed.

By this point, we had totally lost sight of the virgin. I gained a bit of comfort because I felt closer to her. As we walked on a median in a busy street, I realized we had left the tourist/historic district behind. I felt so white! I was a bit depressed because the virigin had physically abandoned me! How do you lose a 135 ft winged virgin!? The day had grown hot and I was forced to pry off my fleece and tie it around my delicate waste. Mallory kept calling me a delicate flower throughout this hike.

We ate our almuerzo (lunch) at this hole in the wall restaurant (calling it a restaurant is a reach, it was more like a small garage). This place had pepsi memorabilia all over! Even the table cloth had a huge pepsi logo. They did not serve pepsi though. Instead, we received a 'lemonade.' It was probably mixed with powder. I foolishly drank the concoction even though the bacteria could have destroyed my bowels. They were cooking on a dinky grill about 1.5 meters from our a table. The NASTIEST piece of meat was barely breaking a sweat on that grill. It looked a bit like chicken so I ordered the pork. Of course we were the only customers. The owner's baby (are 2 year olds babies?) kept fussing. Mallory ordered the chicken (I have no idea why!). We received our soup, then our meat served with salad, potatoes, and rice. My piece of pork was a big piece of fat. I nibbled on it though. Looking up from my meat, I realized I was looking at the virgin!! She was smiling at me so hope was restored! Mallory asked the owner how we could reach the virgin on foot, she looked puzzled and told us to take a taxi. The taxi did not fit with our plan though. Our lunch cost $1.50 per person. I paid with a $5 bill and the assistant had to run 'elsewhere' in order to fetch some change. Change is elusive throughout Ecuador.

Noticing an interesting flight of stairs we took out on foot again. These stairs led to a picturesque cobble-stoned street with 400 year old houses. Of course I'm just guessing at the age. We lost sight of the virgin again but she seemed closer than ever. We saw a sweet looking church that the road crossed over. Then we reached a nice plaza (in the following video, you can barely see the virgin in the distance).

Mallory asked a few more people and we continued our journey to the small loaf. However, Mallory self-admits that she is terrible with directions. I am good with directions, but things surely got lost in translation. a. Mallory asks the person in spanish.

b. Mallory confuses the directions in her mind, not due to language, but to her directionless mind.

c. Mallory gives me the directions in english.

d. We start marching go God knows where.

With the virgin in sight, directions be damned, we started out again towards the small loaf. Things seemed cool as we strutted towards our goal until we reached the first flight of stairs. Climbing a narrow flight of stairs, creepiness arrived as the city sounds evaporated. The staircase was in an alley lined with decrepit buildings. Trash was strewn about and incomprehensible graffiti laughed at us. At the top of the stairs, although we had narrowed the gap between us and the virgin, we still had some serious climbing to do. An 18-20 year old instantly appeared to us on the next flight of stairs. He was dressed nicely and had a camera case thrown over his back. He pointed to the top of the hill, gave a wide grin, and said, "The virgin is so near!" He continued to climb the hill and kept looking back at us. Other than this manboy, the remaining path was bereft of people.

I was scared!! I told Mallory and she immediately called me a delicate flower. I admitted my delicate nature and exclaimed that flowers are uniquely suited to cower when rape is near. We defeatedly walked down the flight of stairs until we reached a busier street. A taxi drove us to the top for $2. After we arrived, Mallory said, "Oh yeah! When I asked directions from that one man, he said that the hill-climb was very dangerous."

You have to love it!

At the top of the hill there were quite a few indians selling trinkets out of stalls. Mallory needed to pee and we finally located a permanent bathroom (it cost 10 cents for her to empty her bladder). Some nifty sales boys questioned my soccer skills by challenging me to a ball kicking contest. The price? $5. I'm not sure what the prize was but I doubt it was much. I ignored their jeers (primarily because I don't understand spanish) and we walked toward our virgin. We paid $1 apiece to go inside her. I thought we could go to the top of her but we only gained access to the base of the statue (still about 50 feet above the ground). I was scared of the height!

After this, we went to find some bargains! I bought a $3 alpaca scarf. Mallory bought a purse and some postcards. I was scared to walk down the hill and there weren't any taxis. We were able to locate an upscale restaurant and we decided to take a coffee break. Oh know! the power was out though (we knew this but we didn't correctly process that coffee needs power). Luckily, the restaurant called us a taxi. While we waited, Mallory realized that she had a erased all of our pictures!

Without her gaffe, I could have included more original pics in this blog post. We took a taxi to the base of the hill and we thought we were in a safe part of town again. However, we drifted into a bad section of Quito. The clouds covered up the sun and the temperature dropped. We were in another plaza area that looked nice at first glance, but we were clearly out of our element. There were several groups of men that eyed us suspiciously. We were close to a police station, but given the corruption levels of the country, that didn't make us feel any safer. I was wearing my alpaca scarf and I felt like a complete idiot. I felt exposed and I was ready to meet Ecuadorian mischief. We walked quickly, found a nicer section of town, and dined in a relatively pleasant restaurant. The power had been revived so we were able to snack and drank coffee.

Over the next few days, we discovered just how dangerous the hill and surrounding area was. Due to our complete lack of planning, we were so oblivious. We can all be thankful that the delicate flower identified dangerous situations correctly.

We walked back to our hostel and chilled until we left to party . . .