Faces of Quito

As a project to keep our task-oriented selves occupied, an excuse to infuse interesting questions into daily conversations, and as a way to document our month trip in Ecuador and Peru, we decided to start this Mundo de Vagabundos blog. We plan on documenting some of the interesting interactions we have with people we meet along our journey. Let's start at around 10 pm, thousands of miles above somewhere in Colombia...


Mercedes

Mercedes was the passenger randomly assigned to sit next to us on the last leg of our trip- Panama City to Quito, Ecuador. She kindly asked me to help her read the immigration form as she squinted behind her glasses. That opened up the conversation to everything from New Jersey winters to airplane food and tourist attractions in Ecuador. When asked what her favorite place in all of Ecuador was, she responded with a bashful twinkle in her eye: "Well, my house of course. It's beautiful." She has been living in queens, New York for 15 years and was anxious to get home and help her son plan his upcoming wedding. When we left the plane, she gave us her phone number. "You never know." She said. "You never know," we responded.



Luis aka Monchito

At first he was just our waiter at at a small restaurant in old Quito, but by the end of the meal, we were taking selfies together. We realized (too late) that we had eaten our soup with dessert spoons and dessert with soup spoons while Luis just watched and laughed. He must have taken that as an invitation to come over and sit down for a while, and so we digested our lunch as he told us of his favorite tourist destinations in the world. "London! My favorite place would have to be London. You must go to the British museum there."

When we asked if we could put him on our blog, he responded without hesitation: "as long as I can put you on mine." We laughed, took an awkward selfie with families looking curiously on, and waddled back to our hostel for a mid day nap.







 José

 Our exploration of antiguo Quito felt more like a pilgrimage than anything else. Because Quito is has some of the best preserved colonial architecture in South America (earning the title of Unesco Global Heritage Site) the best thing to see are the catholic basilicas and cathedrals. The interiors of these building are some of the most ornate I have ever seen; everything is gilt and more often than not includes a smattering of baby faces. Despite, of perhaps because of, the generous application of baby imagery, these churches have a decidedly mystical ambiance. They are somehow wilder and more personal than the cathedrals I have visited in European. It is no wonder that these beautiful buildings are being meticulously cared for and restored by dedicated Ecuadorians.
One of the churches we entered was under heavy construction, and I struck up a conversation with two of the artists working on the restoration. I asked Jose, who was on his hands and knees painstakingly recreating a mural on the base of a pillar: "when you finish something like this, aren't you dying to sign it?" With a look towards his fellow restore (and superior) he said: "I did once, in a spot where only I could see it." If you are ever in Quito, look carefully at the interior the San Francisco cathedral and you may see Jose's signature.