Monday, July 16 (Part IV)
After visiting the Quito cathedral (post here), we grabbed a taxi to the cable car — aka El TeleferiQo (the “Qo” portion is in reference to Quito). The cab took us directly to the gondola station where we purchased our roundtrip tickets — $8/person for the fast pass, which allowed us to jump the line. Normally, we wouldn’t have paid extra, but we had to be back at the hotel before 6:00p to check-out of our room and we were fast running out of time.
This Google Maps image shows the TeleferiQo (green marker) in relation to our
hotel (bed marker) and some of the other sites we visited in Quito.
The TeleferiQo went into service in 2005, giving visitors an easy way up the mountain. A ten-minute ride in 6-passenger gondolas takes visitors from the foothills of the Pinchincha Volcano at 9,527 feet (2,904 m) to the Cruz Loma overlook at 13,451 feet (4,100 m).
Our ride is here!
Through the scratched up glass, we get to watch as the gondola starts its ascent.
Behind the station (white building between the cable car wires) is Parque vulqan,
a popular amusement park.
The further up you go, the more expansive the city views become.
We arrived at the top station to distinctly colder temperatures, but staying in the sun as we wandered around kept us warm enough. The air was thin and it was easy to become breathless if one rushed about. Keeping our pace slow allowed us to walk around and enjoy the scenery. There’s supposed to be a medical station at the top where those having problems with the altitude can get oxygen, as well as shops and restaurants; but none of them were open. We got the sense that this attraction is not nearly as popular as it used to be. Of course, that it was late afternoon on a Monday may have had something to do with the lack of visitors. We weren’t alone, but there were a lot fewer people up there than I expected.
The top station; to the far right is a small café, the only eatery open today.
Two to Travel at one of several overlooks on Pinchincha Volcano.
View of Quito from the overlook.
A dirt path would have taken us up another 700 feet (215 m) to the summit, but we simply didn’t have time to do it at a leisurely pace. Instead, we walked a short ways up the path to Ermita La Dolorosa (Hermitage of the Suffering), constructed on the centenary of the Miracle of 20 April 1906, which some might recognize as the date of the “big one” that struck San Francisco.
This small church was built to honor
“the mother of sorrows on the centenary of the Milagro del 20 de Abril de 1906.”
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The altar and one of the stained glass windows of Ermita La Dolorosa.
Instead of backtracking our steps to the gondola station, we climbed a short, but steep dirt path that ran from just outside the church to the summit path to check out the views from there first.
Looking East towards the city, there’s quite a bit of haze from the fires that
have been set to clear fields in the distant valley, But …
… if you look closely, you can see the JW Marriott in the center (circled in red).
We have 60 minutes to get back to the hotel — time to take the gondola down.
We shared the gondola ride down from the mountain with an Ecuadorian family. They all spoke good English; particularly the 10 year old daughter — it turns out that they live in North Carolina and were here to visit family! Small world!!! And to make the world even smaller, the driver of the cab we flagged down had lived in Baltimore, Maryland for a while!
On the way down, we catch a glimpse of La Basilica el Voto Nacional.
Rush hour traffic was heavy, so we made it back to the hotel just in the nick of time. Not sure if the Marriott would have charged us for the room had we been a few minutes late checking out, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out ;-)
We debated leaving our bags with the bellman and walking to one of the few restaurants nearby. In the end, we decided we weren’t hungry yet, so we just chilled in the lobby, chatting with some of our cruisemates who were in the same boat as us — roomless until the Celebrity shuttle came to take us to the airport at 8:30p.
And that takes us back to the plane … which is where I am. Writing all this didn’t make me drowsy like I hoped it would. Lucky Mui; he can snooze anywhere, anytime. But I’ll stop writing now. It’s the wee hours of Tuesday, the 17th … I’ll write about our flights back to the US when I get home.
