Quito at night and Manta

Last night, as Phillip and I were in the lobby of our hotel waiting for the blog posting to upload, the desk clerk told me in Spanish that if we went up the stairs, there was a terrace around the building that was beautiful. That’s how I understood, but when the blog finished, we walked up the stairs, it was a very high terrace, and the view was of all around the city, not just around the hotel. The pictures don’t do it justice, as we were above most other nearby buildings, and the lights of the buildings on the sides of the mountain sparkled. This is the famous statue that looks over Quito. The terrace did literally take our breath away. Since it was so many flights of stairs, we were huffing and puffing till we caught our breath at the top. Bless his little pointed head, Phillip did not complain at all when I asked him to go back down and bring me the good camera. We stayed up there for about half an hour, till it started getting chilly. I took this next picture when we were about 2/3 of the way back down. The top most white corner you can see in the middle is the landing before the terrace. The stairs and hallways wind thru the building.

Today, we delivered our spare nested suitcase to our final hotel and left it, then we walked around Quito for a few hours. We came across an assembly in one of the plazas, but we stayed back until we could determine that it was not a political rally. It was a school assembly, celebrating something or another that had several hundred teenage boys in suits, a band on a platform , and the teachers also in suits keeping watch over the boys. We walked closer about the time the assembly ended…. and like US teenage boys would, they were quick to yank those ties off as they headed back to their school and engaged in horseplay with each other.

We took a taxi to the airport, getting there 2 hours before our flight; however, the airline employees don’t get there until an hour before the flight to check you in. So, we waited in that airport too. We are getting quite proficient at waiting in airports. Unlike at DFW airport, you walk to the plane and then up the stairs into it. The ride wasn’t bad, only 45 minutes, but my ears have still not cleared after the descent into Manta. FYI, Spinks Airport is bigger than Manta Airport. We took a taxi to our hotel, checked in, had them bring us curtains for our windows, then walked along the beach. It’s quite warm here, so different from North Texas!

It’s time to find some pescado (fish) for dinner. The fish we ate for lunch was delicious ($5 total, including a beer for both of us), so we’ll find more… and more cerveza.