Looking for Karl Malden

About the title, youngsters will have to Google Karl Malden, mature readers will know when I show the pictures. We walked alot today, in the Mariscal Sucre area, with level ground and beautiful parks. I am ever amazed at the care of the Ecuadorian parks in the cities. We were in this one a little before lunch time, so it hadn't filled up yet. Notice the bike trail on the left of the walkway.

After the level Mariscal area, we went back to Centro Historico, the old part with all the churches where we are staying. Some churches have traditional gargoyles, but as we approached this church,

we noticed that instead of gargoyles around the edges, it had native animals, some scary-looking, some not:

This last picture is of the llama decorations. This church was halfway up the top of a hill, a real hill. We decided to go to the top of the hill, and found that all of Centro Historico seems to be uphill. No matter where you are going, even if you think you want to go downhill, you end up going uphill. I take pictures at the top of the hill so I can stop and rest!

Here's where I was looking for Karl Malden or Michael Douglas, the young Michael Douglas. The other activity we did today was to take a taxi to the TeleferiQo and ride the cable car to the 4100 meter observation area. The taxi ride was an adventure itself. The front seatbelt was broken, so I held it over like it was hooked so the taxi driver wouldn't get in trouble with the police (they have a seatbelt law). The exhaust had a leak, so it was LOUD; it needed a turne-up bad as it wasn't burning all the fuel (Phillip smelled gasoline from the back seat), the engine died every time he came to a complete stop at a red light. The last thing with the taxi was that the transmission went out as he turned into the TeleferiQo driveway, it would only go into third gear and he couldn't make it any further up the hill. So, we paid him, got out, and commenced to walk up the side of the mountain.... again. This time, on the sidewalk, not a goat path.

The TeleferiQo took us to 4100 meters, but we were actually OK with the altitude, as we've had time to acclimate. From the top, we had a spectacular view of Quito.

This is what we rode up in, not too scary for me after the ziplines.

The cables from the white building on the right take to cars to the top of the mountain you see in the distance. Although we enjoyed the views, there wasn't anything else to do at the top. No oxygen bar anymore, no shops, only one selling overpriced sodas. Ah well... Tomorrow we go to the cloud forest for two days. We may not have internet there.