Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Finally! The Basilica! Michael will complain if I don't mention he's already been there twice, four years ago and yesterday, but today was my first day. If you go to Quito do not miss this, I'm serious. Unless you are afraid of heights. Latin America is full of extremely lovely churches, cathedrals and basilicas, but this is different.

Lonely Planet says, "climb the church's clock tower for superb views of the city." That's crap. Sure there are great views, but how could they not even mention that you can climb around the innards of the church like Quasimodo? I've never done anything like it in my life, and it was so cool.

To get there we got to ride the city's "trole." Ok, I don't know where they get off calling these busses trolleys. But it's a pretty cool system. The "trolleys" have their own lanes and special enclosed bus stops in the middle of the street. You put a quarter into the turnstile to get into the stop and then enter the trolley through any door. The stops even have a glass booth where a woman sits with quarters at the ready if you need change. I think the abundance of change is the most amazing thing about El Trole, because change is at a real premium down here.

The trolley took us to the Old Town, where we had a quick lunch on the way to the Basilica, because Michael knows well that things don't go right when I'm hungry. Old Town has dozens of lunch spots to choose from. I rejected the Menestra Memin place immediately. I don't care what the pro-arguments are or what you want to accuse me of, I cannot get down with Memin Pinguin. Sorry. Maybe if he were not drawn like a monkey we could talk.

At the spot across the street we learned another Valuable Lesson, but this time without penalty. "Almuerzo" means lunch in Spanish, but in Ecuador it can also mean the set lunch. So when the waiter asked if we were there for almuerzo we said yes and he immediately started to run off. We're quicker now at noticing when we've messed up, so we hastily called him back and straightened everything out.

I did end up having the almuerzo, which was some kind of soup with popcorn in it, followed by fried fish, rice, fries and salad, and a glass of mystery juice. Michael had the churrasco. The waiter accidentally brought him a cup of bright pink hummingbird nectar instead of the promised soda, but that worked out for me. Michael doesn't like the shockingly sweet sodas here, so when he is given one, I get to drink it. Not bad. Our lunch set us back $2.75.

Walking through Old Town was nice. In Quito, as in any city, you can stay wherever you want, but there are usually particular hotel-heavy areas that guidebook-toting people gravitate towards. Quito has the New Town's Mariscal Sucre neighborhood, where we've been staying, and also the Old Town. If you're on a long trip and you miss international foods or fancy coffee houses, or if you want to go drinking every night, you might want to stay in the Mariscal. But if not, check out the Old Town, it's pretty cool and much more "authentic" and the food is way cheaper.

Then the Basilica. Quito is at a fairly high elevation, 2850 meters. It's high enough that altitude sickness is a possibility, but it's by no means the highest city out there. I had been fine thus far, but climbing the not-very-steep hill to the church I started to feel it. Michael has mentioned being short of breath a couple of times, but I just assumed he's out of shape. I would have assumed I was out of shape if I'd felt merely short of breath.

But it wasn't just plain old shortness of breath that Michael was talking about or that I eventually experienced. It was a weird feeling that my heart was beating too hard and my chest was hollow and there wasn't enough air. Not that I was panting and couldn't take air in fast enough, more that I was breathing fine but there wasn't air for me to breathe. We assumed it was the altitude.

But there is another possibility - I am extremely suggestible and have small (yes, small) tendancies towards hypochondrism. Example: I was once convinced I had cat scratch fever when I got a cold the day after my new feral kitten scratched me. So it could have been altitude, but maybe it was Michael's mention of the altitude.

Then again, Michael felt it too and he's not a hypochondriac at all. He won't even get his moles checked. Anyway, after a nice, long, people-watching rest, we went and bought tickets. The church part of the Basilica is free to enter, but it costs $2 to clamber around the innards and towers.

And once you get past the third floor with its normal stairs, clamber you will. Luckily for me the place was deserted, so there was no one to rush me as I timidly climbed the winding staircase to and through the clock tower (where you can see the clock faces from the inside!) and then up the ladders to the bell tower. Above the clock face the walls become concrete gingerbread, with nothing to stop the cold wind from whipping through.

Michael paused to shoot and I kept climbing, slowly moving from one icy-cold metal ladder rung to the next, though I was terrified that I would be too scared to climb back down. I got up into the bell tower where the bells are right there to be touched, should you choose, and then up into the very highest platform. The view was incredible. I could see El Panecillo, the large hill topped by a statue of La Virgen de Quito, also popular for views, and Quito to the horizon.

After Michael took about five hundred photos, we went back down and crossed the length of the church between roof and ceiling. We walked on a wobbly wooden bridge over the concrete arched ceiling, the plain outside that one never sees. At the end of it was another ladder. The ladder led up and outside to where we could climb into another tower.

The stairs were just slanted enough to save them from being called ladders and the drop was no joke. To add a bit of excitement to our climb, thunder rumbled and it started to rain lightly. (Yesterday when Michael was here alone, he claims the church was struck by lightning and the only other person there fled.) Inside the tower the floor bounced and popped under our weight like the safety button in the lid of a previously opened jar of peanut butter.

A school group followed us up, the first other people we'd seen. One of them approached Michael and his fancy camera with, "If I give you my e-mail address, would you send me some of your pictures?" He had a Kodak Funsaver and was afraid his photos wouldn't be very good. Michael gave him our info, but told me later that those disposable cameras can be really great in that kind of light. So maybe the guy will be pleasantly surprised when he gets home. But you have to admire a kid who's not afraid to ask for stuff.

The guy seemed to think our trip was cool, but his girlfriend didn't even bother to fake a polite interest. But maybe she gets around a lot. It turned out the group was from a school in Texas, 6th to 12th grades, and had just gotten in to Quito the night before. Last year the group went to Kenya. Kenya. Ok, why was it so hard for my school to get it together to take us to Six Flags Great America? Not that I would have been able to afford a trip abroad - I wasn't even allowed to go to Great America - but still.

One of the kids had a real problem with all the names and initials carved and scrawled everywhere. "Why would you want to graffiti in a place like this? Why?" he kept repeating. To be honest, I didn't have much of a problem with the writing inside the tower, but I was appalled when we finally went down into the church itself and saw all the carvings on the glossy wooden pews. It didn't take much away from the gorgeous church, but it seemed incredibly disrespectful. I mean, God's house, what happened to that?

Well anyway, it was great to see some of Quito, finally.

 

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Basilica from the outside.

Entrance, Basilica, Quito.

Inside the clock tower, Basilica, Quito.

View of Quito from the Basilica.

El Panecillo, Quito. View from the Basilica.

Between the ceiling and the roof, Basilica, Quito.

More stairs, Basilica, Quito.

Stairs, Basilica, Quito.

Basilican graffiti, Quito.