May 27- La Ciudad Vieja (The Old City)

With this being the equivalent of 4th of July weekend in Ecuador, we still haven’t really been able to make a lot of headway on the research. Today, we went down to Quito’s Old City to see the colonial buildings and churches. The architecture is just fantastic in its Spanish Colonial style. My digital camera was nearly dead, so most of my pictures from today are on film. The highlight by far was climbing to the top of Basílica de Voto Nacional. It’s a huge baslica on the northern side of the Old City. First we climbed the stairs to above the ceiling of the sanctuary, and crossed a wooden walkway that ran the length of the ceiling across the arches to climb up to the lower steeple. Then we climbed up a bell tower. First we were on stairs, then iron stairs, then a spiraling iron staircase, then rebar ladders, then rebar ladders with half as many rungs. At the top, we were above the bells with a truly unbelievable view of the whole city. We even climbed out to the ledge and let our feet hang over. The pictures really don’t do it justice (those are Neil’s feet).