South America Trip Day 7 - Quito to Guayaquil

We decided to go to Guayaquil from Quito by bus. Busses to Guayaquil all start from Quito's southern bus terminal in Quitumbe. The terminal was pretty awesome - very clean, big and also had free wi-fi. There wasn't a whole lot of rush at the terminal and we were able to get tickets by reaching there a little early. There are two reputed companies - PanAmericana Internacional and Transportes Ecuador - which have frequent busses to Guayaquil every day. We took the PanAmericana Internacional bus which was scheduled to leave at 8:20 AM from the terminal. While loading our luggage onto the bus, the conductor tagged the luggage and we had to hold on to the tags to get the bags back later. The bus stopped at several locations along the way and we got to see some very interesting sights as the bus took us through the Andes into the western plains.

Inside Quitumbe terminal

South America Trip Day 3 - Otavalo Market

On the third day of the trip, we decided to visit the world famous Otavalo Market near Quito. We were not looking to buy anything specific, but wanted to go and check out the market. The market is supposed to be big on Saturdays, but we were going to be in Mindo Cloud Forest on Saturday, so decided to visit it on a weekday.

Again the most suggested way to visit this market is with a tour (approx. $60 per person), but we decided to do it ourselves because the tours were quite pricey. We started from hostel around 8.30 AM and first headed to Carcelen (another bus terminal in the north of Quito) from where there are direct buses to Otavalo town. We took a feeder bus from Parque El Ejido to Carcelen bus station. As usual, we missed our stop and ended up going couple of stops further than where we wanted to go. So we got down and walked back to the Carcelen bus terminal. Took tickets from the ticket counter for Otavalo for $2.20 per person. $2 is the bus ticket and $.20 is the Carcelen terminal fee.

South America Trip Day 2 - Mitad Del Mundo

We decided to go to the "Line of Equator" on Day 2 in Quito. The most commonly proposed option was to take a day trip with any of the local operators - the day trip would include a tour of the old town and a trip to Mitad del Mundo. We had already wandered around the old town the previous day so instead of taking the tour, we decided to go to Mitad del Mundo ourselves by bus. Mitad del Mundo is not too far away from Quito but the bus ride is about 2 hours. We researched about the different ways to get there and found out that there is a bus to Mitad del Mundo from Ofelia (Quito's north bus terminal).

At the Equator

South America Trip Day 1 - Quito's Old Town

At Basilica del Voto Nacional

Getting to Quito

Quito was the first city we were visiting in South America. We had booked our tickets on LAN Ecuador and were set to fly from New York's JFK airport. Our flight was just a few days after hurricane Sandy and airports were still recovering. Luckily everything went smoothly and the flight left on time. We had exit row seats so the hostess came by to check on us and started speaking to us in Spanish. Neither of us understood a word of what she said and simple gave her blank stares. The moment she stopped speaking, I blurted out "No habla espanyol". She smiled and explained to us in her broken English and left. We looked at each other and just could not stop laughing and wondered how we would manage the entire trip without Spanish.