Quito: "Touch the Sky"

And how cheese is that slogan? That's what all the tourism materials I received from the Ecuadorian tourism boards said. And I had to laugh, because Quito really isn't touching the sky so much as touching the smog, which starts in the morning around ten and hangs in the air (the city is a lot like Burbank in that it's couched in mountains and air tends to "hang" in the basin) until the fog from the mountains rolls in twelve hours later and disposes of it.

If the Amazon was our vacation, then Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, was the administrative part that needed completion before leaving for Cuenca. Quito does retain much of its heritage and culture, despite the large number of museums and lack of night life (but we managed to get by). The famous Latin American artist who took inspiration from Che Guevara and Fidel Castro worked out of Quito. His name was Oswaldo Guayasamin and his work is, well, provocative.

I truly enjoyed many of the exhibitions, though, as much as I may gripe about being completely ADD when it comes to museums. Perhaps it's just overwhelming attempting to take it all in, and thus, I try to parse out each chunk into manageable ones, only to the detriment of my gaining the entire experience. Oh well.

Next on the list of Ecuador entries: Cuenca