Ecuador is South America in a capsule – it has high mountains, rivers, ocean, islands, beaches, volcanoes, jungles, … and it is relatively small (a bit smaller than Poland).
It’s a cheap country: a two-course lunch or dinner in a local and so-so clean restaurant costs less than 2$. You pay on average 1$ for a one hour bus ride. A middle size pig is 100$ and a big guinea-pig is 7$. The latter is relatively expensive, because it is a specialty in the local cuisine. (We ate one in Bolivia several years ago, it was quite greasy and chewy.)
We quote the above prices in US dollars not accidentally. Indeed, to simplify the life of tourists (and maybe also to counteract a serious economical crisis), in 2000 Ecuador introduced US dollars as the only currency.
According to the sunset schedule, the day starts and ends very early here. At 8pm, large part of a city dies out and it is hard to get a dinner. (In contrast, in Argentina most dinner places only opened after 10pm.)
After Argentina and Chile, we loved Ecuador for its Spanish – articulated slowly and clearly. A great country to learn the language. The only significant and funny deviation is abusing diminutives. You can hear at every corner “Pollito y papitas con salsita por uno dollarito”, which translates to Polish “Kurczaczek i fryteczki z sosikiem za dolarka” and to something like “Chicken and French fries with sauce for one dollar”, except that all nouns should be turned in their diminutive forms (English is really poor at it). Another example ‘Permisito seniorita, donde esta el banito? Tiene papelito?’. Marta was called “gringita” several times. 
Another linguistic peculiarity are the words ‘tomar’, ‘agarar’ and ‘coger’. They all mean roughly ‘to take’, e.g., a bus or a drink. The first two are safe, but the meaning of the third one in some countries changes into the famous ‘f’ word. Although we were told that this is not the case in Ecuador, our ‘Donde se puede coger un bus para Quito?’ made a group of teenagers laugh earlier today.
The buses in Ecuador are equipped with funny LED-lights that blink when the bus breaks, turns or stops. This often reminds us of Christmas with its Christmas Tree. The LEDs together with a loud and stylish horn attached to the roof are essential for all long distance buses in Ecuador.
QUITO, a beautifully located capital city at the height of 2800m, spreads in the shape of a long sausage of 50 km and spills out of the valley up to the feet of volcanoes surrounding it. It’s one of the first two cities enlisted as the Unesco World Heritage Site. The other city is, of course, Krakow, Poland.
Quito is surrounded by mountains. One of them shoots up almost from the center up to more than 4000m. Since 2005, one can reach the peak with a cable car, which claims to be the highest in the world (according to this it scores 3rd). The view from the top is terrific. We didn’t regret at all the first three hours we spent on the top waiting until the clouds go away. It was worth it. You can see almost all 50 kilometers of the city. Some time ago the city completely swallowed its airport – the planes fly really low above the buildings every 5 minutes. The new airport is on the way in the adjacent valley.
Quito has a beautiful old town. Like most Latin American cities, it is planed on a grid. It is a patchwork of various piazzas and parks. From the dense urban soup here and there emerges a green hill or mountain crowned with a cross or a statue of a saint.
People in Quito are very friendly and helpful. The city has a bad fame of being dangerous after sunset and the locals confirm it on every step by repeating to the curious backpackers: ‘be careful’, ‘hide your camera’, ‘don’t go there’. Unlike in Argentina or Chile, the Spanish spoken here has a very formal character, and strangers always refer to each other as to ‘sir’ or ‘madam’.
Blog entry location:See entire map here!
Hi Tiago! For me ok, for Marta way too high
Maciej, how is the temperature over there?
Bardzo podobaja mi sie ludzie, szczegolnie dzieci, w kapeluszach i kapelusikach. Piekne zdjecia!
The views in some photos looks unnaturally, like they were painted by a poor painter. Today I read in the Rzeczpospolita newspaper the reportage of a man, who much travelled throuh South America. He says that buses almost completely replaced trains in those areas for people transportation, even as a long distance means of communication.