Cotopaxi
After my husband’s safe return from Cotopaxi, we stayed in Quito for a couple days visiting artisan markets.
Usually, we bring home from a trip a few small souvenirs because we prefer to travel light. This time, we bought a lot including some bulky items like a wool blanket. Arts and crafts in Ecuador are amazing – silver and semi-precious stone jewelry, wood carvings, folk clothes with intricate embroidery, and hats, sweaters, bags, rugs made from llama wool. Everything was strikingly artistically original and shockingly cheap.
Quito is located in the basin surrounded by the Andes. The city’s extremely polluted air cannot escape from the basin because the mountains around work as a barrier. My throat was red and scratchy from breathing that bad air all time while we were in Quito.
Because Quito is practically on the equator, it has no seasons as we normally understand them. Summer in Quito is the dry season that lasts from June through September, and winter is the wet season from October through May. The temperatures are mild due to Quito’s high elevation (2,850 m / 9,350 ft). I wore a sweater that I took off around midday if the sun was out. The locals don’t bother to change. They wear multiple layers of the same all-season clothes during warmer and colder hours.
Our next destination was Peru. Sergey bought bus tickets from an agent. The departure time was at 11 p.m.
We traveled by public transport to the address on our tickets as close as we could get to it, then walked through dark and deserted streets of Quito. We expected to see there a station or, at least, a bus stop sign. There was nothing of this kind, just residential houses with small businesses on the ground floor. All doors and windows were covered with metal shutters that were tightly closed. That included the house with the number indicated on our tickets.
Panicking slightly, we asked the only person on the street, probably a business owner who was locking up his shop for the night, if he knew anything about buses to Peru. He believed that they stopped somewhere around there but he was not sure. He suggested to wait until the departure time and left.
After that, just two of us remained on the street. It was 10 p.m. I already mentioned in a previous post that we did not see anything dangerous in Quito. Yet, we felt exposed on that wide and open avenue with no nook to hide.
My husband said that it was not safe to stay there. I wholeheartedly agreed with his statement. We were like sitting ducks for any robber who could be lurking around. Sergey thought that we should walk a couple of blocks back to a hotel that we passed on the way to the bus stop, sit in the lobby until 11 p.m., and then return. That, I did not like.
What if South American buses did not go precisely on schedule and we would miss our bus? Was it really safer to walk back and forth than to stay in one place? I preferred to be where we already were.
“Fine,” said Sergey. “You wait here, and I’ll go to the hotel. Back in one hour.” With these words, he picked up his backpack and walked away.