A couple of Quito surprises

During my visit to Quito and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, I learned several things, despite the research that I did prior to making the trip.

Quito is a large sprawling city of about 3 million people and from a distance the city looks wonderfully bright and colorful, but upon closer inspection …  At more than 3 million, Quito sometimes seems to be about to burst.  Once in the city, you see how stressed Quito’s developing infrastructure is.  For example, trash collection seems to be a problem, the roads need repair, and there is immense poverty, particularly among indigenous people like the Andeans.  Despite the poverty and disrepair of many buildings, I was amazed at how beautiful and ornate the churches and cathedrals are.

If you are traveling from a pedestrian friendly country like Canada or a continent like Europe, please be careful and forget that your drivers take great precaution not to kill you.  Bad taxi driving seem universal, but not only do taxi driver not respect the right of pedestrians, no one does.

My biggest surprise was that roses [the flowers] are a major export for the country.  The United States and Europe are major importers.  As we were riding around the country, our tour guides kept pointing out greenhouses.  Roses are incredible inexpensive in Quito … about 25 for US $1.

I was also surprised at how nascent tourism seemed to be.  A true measure of the strength of tourism for me is how many souvenir shops there are … there are few in Quito.  There are a lot of trinket and gift shops in Quito, but nothing tacky that we Americans would buy.

Perhaps, the greatest surprise of all was how much the dollar buys.