Mancora and Quito

Our month in Mancora, Peru at our rented beach house was great. We had a very relaxing time and our travel ambitions were definitely rejuvenated. We spent a lot of time just hanging out, reading books and working on different projects. It was great to take a break from constant travelling, but after a month of sitting still we were quite ready to move on and continue our journey.

We spent a lot of time in Mancora planning for the next couple of months. When we arrived we had no plans whatsoever. We were debating on Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, all of Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. In the end, after a lot of research we’ve settled on Mexico. We realize that it’s quite a jump from Peru to Mexico, but we figure that we can explore Mexico and go further south into Central America if we so desire. From all our research, the information we read regarding Mexico excited us the most, so that’s where we’re headed. To get there however, we would need to get to a city with major airport first, so we decided on first visiting Quito, Ecuador for a few days. On June 3rd we took an overnight bus across the border into Ecuador, and arrived in Quito the next morning.

We immediately loved Quito. Quito is a city with definite contrasts. There’s a modern metropolis feel to a lot of the city and there are historical districts with interesting colonial buildings. The food in Quito was also fantastic, and we spent a lot of our time sampling the food from small vendors all over the city. Empanadas, humitas, quimbolitos, gelatos, shwarmas, coffee, chocolate, tropical fruit, and freshly squeezed/blended juices were available everywhere and we tried them all. The city is perfect for just wandering around. There were large beautiful parks, interesting markets, and great streets for walking around people watching and checking out the sights.

On Monday, we took the bus out of the city a short ways to visit the equator. The equator runs just north of the city, and there are a number of tourist attractions there. There is the main tourist site called “Mitad del Mundo” which has a giant monument along the line. This site was created years ago and it is a great tourist spot for taking photos of you standing on the supposed equator line. Unfortunately around 20 or 30 years ago, when someone first brought a GPS to the location, they discovered that the actual equator is around 250 meters away from the monument and line at Mitad del Mundo. After checking out Mitad del Mundo, and getting the required tourist photos, we walked down the road, where there is now a museum which show the real location of the equator determined via GPS. The museum was pretty neat. They had scientific demonstrations of the Corialis Effect. They showed water draining directly down out of a sink instead of swirling out. You can also balance an egg on the head of a nail. It was all very interesting.

So after a busy and enjoyable weekend in Quito, we’re now (Tuesday morning) off to the airport for our flight to Mexico. We’ll be arriving in Mexico City this evening and we plan on staying there for a week or so before moving on to visit other areas around Mexico.

Joh will post some photos of Mancora and Quito as soon as possible.  I'm typing this at the airport in Bogata, Colombia while we wait for our connecting flight.  There's not enough time here to upload all the photos.  Once we're in Mexico City and we get connected we'll put the photos up here.  Hopefully sometime in the next day or two.