Saturday - Quito

I arrived back in Quito on Friday afternoon and took a taxi to my hotel. I got the same room as I had a week earlier. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon taking a much needed nap, and then wandered around the Mariscal district (gringo Quito) for the rest of the evening. I decided to have dinner in an Italian restaurant a few blocks from my hotel, and walked in to find Hildegard and Klaus. I joined them at their table and we had a nice dinner. They then walked me back to my hotel, since it was on the way to theirs.

On Saturday, I debated whether to catch a bus to Mindo for the day or even Otovalo. Instead, I decided to check out the market at El Ejido park. When I got there, I wasn't in a very shopping mood, and wandered around for a while, but really didn't feel like dealing with the crowds or looking at stand after stand of practically the same stuff. There were a few nice paintings, but they wouldn't have fit my decor, so I wasn't really interested in them.

Since Carolina Park was fairly close, I hopped in a cab and headed over there to visit the botanical gardens. The park was huge, and the gardens were on the opposite side of the park from where the cab dropped me off. I'm glad I didn't tip him!

As I walked through the park, I watched a dog obedience class for a while. There were also several exercise classes going on - aerobics, T'ai chi, etc. Despite all the families and activity in the park, there were also quite a few people that looked unsavory. I felt a little uncomfortable walking through the park alone. In fact, I had that general feeling of discomfort througout Quito.

Once I found the entrance to the gardens, I paid my $2 admission and went in. Once inside, I felt a little safer. I decided that a criminal would probably mug somebody in the park for free, rather than pay $2 to do it in the garden (and then have to pass security on the way out).

The gardens were fairly small, but had quite a bit of diversity, and were nicely laid out. One of the highlights of the garden is that it houses 1200 orchid species, along with representative plants from a half dozen ecosystems in Ecuador.

There were lots of benches so you could sit and enjoy the plants and birds. As I was taking a nice break and just enjoying the gardens, I saw the weirdest looking bird. It looked a lot like a large humming bird, but had a tail nearly three times its body length. It was difficult to take a picture of, but I got a quick shot of it when it stopped to drink out of a puddle (see pink square in the picture).

I think it is either a black-tailed trainbearer or a green-tailed trainbearer. These links take you to better pictures than what I took. Just seeing that bird was pretty cool and worth the trip to the gardens!

After leaving the gardens, I headed back to my hotel for a late afternoon nap. After waking up, I walked a few blocks for an early dinner. My flight was at 6:30 the following morning, so I needed to call it an early night and get everything packed and ready to leave the hotel by 4:00 am. The next morning, I said goodbye to Ecuador.

[I finally edited my Day 1 in Quito entry to include pictures of historic Quito]