| Galapagos 2025 part 9: Quito: TelefériQo Cable Car, Basílica del Voto Nacional; home | |
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Slide show option — just for looking at the pictures. | |
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We stayed at Rincon de Puembo in Quito; one of the places recommended by the LatinTour / Nemo team. It was very nice and it would have been nice to be able to have had the planned extra day to enjoy it (missed due to canceled flights). The staff were very friendly and accommodating; while we checked out Monday morning, the flight back to Atlanta was a red eye. So we left our bags, did a bit of touring and came back to have one last dinner together before taking advantage of the hotel's airport shuttle. The saga of the bags: Delta never managed to explain what happened to our missing bags. And we spent some time in the Quito airport trying to track them down, or track down a Delta agent to ask for an update. The Delta office was closed and there was no information to be had. However, when we checked back in at the hotel, our bags were there! There was much rejoicing as we were worried about having to spend more time at the airport when the Delta office was open. That delivery freed us to enjoy our last day in Quito. |
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Our first tourist stop was TelefériQo Cable Car which took us from just over 10,000 feet (in Quito) to just under 13,000 near the top of Pinchincha Volcano. Our timing turned out to be perfect: clear and great views on our way up. And it stayed clear for a while before the clouds came in (and the temperature dropped). It was also really clear that none of us (back to our 7 Atlanta flight friends and family: Steve, Helen, Aaron, Jerry and Nancy — along with Sarah and I) was used to that altitude. We walked around a very little bit before bowing to the cooling temps and thin oxygen and heading back down. |
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| I wonder what time of year you need to visit to actually be able to see the volcano summits noted on this sign. I'm sure it's really impressive — it was impressive even in the clouds. |
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Our second stop was The Basílica del Voto Nacional in old Quito. It an impressive complex but not as old as it's designed to look. We enjoyed looking around and had planned to poke around old Quito more, but just after we got out of the cab outside, we heard the thunder as a heavy storm rolled in. That spurred us to spend a little more time in the basilica before grabbing cabs back to the hotel. |
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| The trip back was much less eventful than our trip down. Not without issues: the flight Sarah and I had to DC was delayed, we found a nice, neither stressed nor overworked Delta representative in Atlanta who rebooked us on an earlier flight. And on a flight back to National Airport rather than Dulles. That was a nice win. Our bags missed that flight but made the next flight to National — we just had breakfast at the airport waiting for the bags to catch up. |
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After our time at the equator, it was a bit of shock to come back to Alexandria in a winter cold snap. The flight attendant questioned by choice of footwear as we got on the plane :) (Yes, that's a bit of ice on the Potomac as we came in to land.) Truly an epic trip made even more fantastic by the great group of folks we shared it with. |
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