As mentioned before, there is a giant hill, or a small-ish mountain in the middle of Quito, called Panecillo. At the top of the hill is a very large statue representing the Virgin Mary, which can be seen from all over the city, and appears in many of our photos. The statue has angel's wings and a barbed-wire-looking halo. It looks like it is made of metal patchwork. The statue faces the very Basilica we visited on the tour bus - and Panecillo was also a stop on the tour. From the top spire of the Basilica, we looked across the city to see the statue far away, facing us. When we visited La Virgen de Panecillo, we climbed up into the statue and viewed the front face of the Basilica, far away, from the circular observation balcony high up on the base of the statue.
Panecillo is in the heart of the Quito's historic district where all of the buildings (mostly large, terraced) are several hundred years old (and look it). Some of them are kept up nicely, but probably most of them appear more or less dilapidated. Lots of them are painted garish colors like pink and baby blue. Riding on the top floor of the double-decker tour bus was lots of fun in this area, because there are so many steep hills, and because being on top put you at eye-level with the upper-floor windows of these old buildings. Some buildings had boarded up, crappy-looking windows; some had beautifully intricate iron-work and gorgeous flower boxes; and surprisingly, a lot of them had both.
La Virgen de Panecillo is visible atop the hill in the distance. |
The steep climb to the top of Panecillo (on our way to visit the statue) was interesting. Before my arrival in Quito, Adam had eaten at a very fancy restaurant at the top of the mountain called Pim's with his business associates. His photos of that dinner showed an amazing night-time view of the grid of city lights in the valley below. But he also mentioned that there are packs of "wild dogs" roaming the hill top and there are so many of them that they held up traffic, and chased the cars. I saw them for myself. They are really just stray dogs from all breeds. They look just like cute pets, except they're scruffy and dirty. Some of them are not well-fed, but many of them seem to get plenty to eat. They are attracted to the mountain-top because it's a tourist attraction where there are always lots of people eating and sharing their food with the dogs. People don't spay and neuter their dogs there, apparently. And they also don't fear or shun the strays. On multiple occasions (both at Panecillo and at the park), I saw people feeding the dogs, playing with the dogs, letting their own pet dogs play with the strays, and even letting their children play with them. No one seemed the slightest bit concerned about disease. [I have a picture of some stray dogs, do you want to see? Okay, nevermind.]
On top of this Panecillo mountain, there is a park-like green area where the most popular thing to do is to fly kites. I don't know why it is so heart-warming to watch families fly kites, but it sure is. It also appears to be a popular date destination, judging by many couples canoodling while gazing at the view. But it should be noted that we saw a lot more PDA in Quito all around than you typically see in the U.S. I wondered why there were so many couples. Couples couples couples!
People flying kites on the edge of a mountain (Panecillo) |
That was pretty much it for the tour bus. That night was the night we had the adventure of getting the front desk to order us a pizza from Papa John's. I remember because it had started to rain as we got back on the bus at Panecillo, so we didn't want to go out walking in search of a restaurant. I forgot to mention that on the previous night (I think), the same day that we had gone to the Termas Papallactas hot springs, we took a stroll over to the movie theater at the mall and saw Jurassic World (there were several Spanish showings and one English one with Spanish subtitles - we went to that one). Jurassic World could've been better, but it was pretty good.
To Be Continued...
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