Quito - First impressions

Quito is a vibrant city set between lovely mountains. It is blessed with a temperate climate and many lovely parks. The city is home to about 3 million people and about as many buses and cars. Like New York, public transportation (in the form of buses and trolleys) and taxis are plentiful and cheap (a bus from one end of town to the other only costs $0.25). Though many of the gazillions of buses spew black soot from their exhaust pipes and there are limited restrictions on emissions from cars, the level of visible pollution is remarkably low and the air feels good.

The Old Town (or El Centro) as the locals call it, is filled with very old colonial buildings set on streets that are invariably steep. Streets and sidewalks are cobbled. In the 1940´s, for reasons I´m still not clear on, the rich decided to abandon their Old Town homes in favor of ¨New Town,¨ a mile or so to the north. The divide between the two is almost palpable.

In the New Town one finds several first-class shopping centers and hotels, the kind that make you feel like you could be most anywhere in the world. All the newest movies play here at large multiplexes. (Sadly the ones I want to see [Ratatouille and The Simpsons] have been dubbed into Spanish and the ones with Spanish subtitles are just the ones I don´t want to see [the latest Harry Potter and The Transformers]). In New Town, everything is very ¨de la moda¨ (fashionable). In some ways Quito feels very familiar because, like in the US, there are ads EVERYWHERE for everything -- from fitness centers and spas to cellular phones and consumer goods.

In Old Town one finds most of the tourist attractions -- the gilded churches, the lovely pedestrian plazas -- and many of the poor. It is here that one can experience the richness and sadness of the indigineous residents. Though there are prosperous indigineous communities throughout Ecuador, they are not much in evidence in Quito.

On the inevitable TV´s in restaurants, cafes and bars one sees FOX Sports LA (Latin America), HBO LA, Direct TV and highly polished programs in which the only difference between those in the US and here is that the language is Spanish.