A brief note on Quito

Quito, official name San Francisco de Quito, is the highest capital city in the world. La Paz is higher, but its only de facto capital and not official capital city of Bolivia. Quito stretches over 60 Kms. as a narrow patch sandwiched between the Andes mountain range and Pichincha stratovolcano.

Although there are only 2.6 million people living in Quito, it looks much more overcrowded while roaming around in the city. There are houses and apartments everywhere - on the road sides, on the base of mountains, stretching up to higher slopes. The infrastructure is quite good with wide roads for both cars and the pedestrians, and although there is not much traffic sense, they don't honk and they keep proper distance between vehicles. Public transport didn't seem that nice with crowded and uncomfortable bendy buses, and there is lot of air pollution around.

Quito literally means middle of the world, and is home to the zero degree latitude that divides north and south hemispheres.

Sunset Rainbow in Quito

On my first day in Quito, I was a bit scared for safety and so, just took my point and shoot camera with me on a small 4 mile hike up the hill from where I got these sunset rainbow photos.

Journey from London to Baltra in Galapagos

1.1 London to Bogota

Currently, there are no direct international flights to Galapagos, and you have to fly in from either Quito or Guayaquil in Ecuador. But this will be changing soon since Galapagos National Park authoroties are planning to upgrade the Baltra domestic airport to an international airport in the coming years. This plan is of course being heavily contested by the two affected airports in Quito and Guayaquil since this will hugely affect their tourism and aviation industry. There are approximately 250,000 tourists that visit Galapagos every year and this number will grow much higher once they start receiving direct flights from international locations. 

Sunrise at Bogota airport

In our case, we had two options - either fly via Madrid or Bogota. The former option entailed 19 hours of wait time at the Madrid airport, so we opted for a less painful 6 hour wait at Bogota in Colombia by flying with Avianca airlines. The aircraft was ultra modern with lot of leg space, touch screen entertainment, usb charging ports and reasonably good food. I watched half a series of "House of Cards" on the flight.

Sunrise at Bogota airport

HDR photo of the sunrise (taken with vivid HDR app on iPhone 4)

HDR photo of the sunrise (taken with vivid HDR app on iPhone 4)

Whatever be your notions about Colombia, I was pretty impressed with their international airport. It is massive, super clean, very modern (much more than our Heathrow airport), and they even have free internet for all waiting passengers like us. The 6 hours wait time was definitely not as uncomfortable as originally perceived.

Bano (Toilet) at Bogota airport

Boarding Gates at Bogota airport

Bogota is at an altitude of approx. 8500 ft. and I could feel it in my heavy breathing just walking to the boarding gate. But, this was still lower than the the 9,350 ft. elevation of Quito, capital city of Ecuador, the next leg of our journey.

1.2 Bogota to Quito

We had to change flights at Bogota, and board a much smaller aircraft with no in-flight entertainment and just a small snack breakfast, before reaching Quito in just over an hour. After a quick immigration check (British passports don't require a separate visa), and collecting our bags, we headed straight to the prepaid taxi booth. It cost us $25 to ride from the airport to the Renaissance hotel in down town. There are no decent hotels near the new airport - all the good ones are an hour ride away into the heart of the city.

Bridge under construction - on the way from airport to the hotel

We had around 20 hours of halt at Quito before the final leg of journey to Baltra in Galapagos. The alternative would have been to fly from Bogota to Guayaquil and then its a shorter duration direct flight in to Baltra.We just had a quick lunch at the hotel and then slept for an hour, before stepping out on a 4 mile town exploration walk (incline of 790 ft). Thanks to the Motion-X app on my iPhone 4, it was easy to navigate in an unknown place without an internet connection.

Road side view from the cab to the hotel

Road side view from the cab to the hotel

First impressions of Quito

Quito is surrounded by tall mountains on all the sides and they have used all the space right till 70% of the height of mountains for building houses. There are a few skyscrapers at the bottom of the mountains but then relatively low rise houses on the mountain slopes. The city is not particularly clean but not too dirty either. The roads are three times the width you see in London and even the pedestrian paths are twice the size. Do not attempt to use zebra crossing: that road sign is meaningless in the fast moving traffic. There are too many vehicles on the road and thus cause a lot of air pollution. 

   

 

      

All the travel books had warned on the safety aspect, so I didn't carry my SLR around, but I found the city to be generally safe. I didn't encounter a single other tourist in my evening stroll..One touching scene I witnessed on the roadside was of a very poor child passionately reading out from a picture book to his very attentive father... Life is a struggle here for many but even the poorest want to use education as a path out of misery. Language is a big problem here and virtually no one speaks English, so it's either Spanish or universal sign language + expressions. Towards the end of the walk, I was rewarded with a splendid view of sunset rainbow from the hill top - it was amazing!

1.3 Quito to Baltra, Galapagos

Quito airport

We had to take an early morning 6:30 flight from the Quito domestic airport, so had to wake up at the unearthly hour of 3 in the morning! You need to get your baggage scanned for any prohibited items like seeds, organic fruits/vegetables, etc. before checking it in - these checks are carried out to avoid introducing any unwanted species of plants and animals in Galapagos. You also need to pay an entry fee of $100 to Galapagos National Park authorities and also a separate $10 fee by way of the new airport tax. Allow for good one hour to complete all these formalities before check-in of your luggage.


After a two hour flight, we finally reached our destination - Baltra, in Galapagos! It took us good 40 hours to reach here from our home in London. Phew!