At the money museum in Ecuador Kerri was rich beyond her wildest dreams.
Matt was less more practical, trying to figure out how to fit the bills into his wallet.
There were lots of old coins.
Quito
At the money museum in Ecuador Kerri was rich beyond her wildest dreams.
Matt was less more practical, trying to figure out how to fit the bills into his wallet.
There were lots of old coins.
The mountain goes up to 4696 meters.
But we were feeling sick and only made it a bit past 4050m.
And Quito is already at 2850m.
And we took the gondola to 3,945m.
So we really only climbed a bit over 100m.
There is a church at the top, because this is Ecuador.
And a kid spraying Mardi Gras foam.
There seemed to be practically vertical farms on the other mountains.
Matt gave Kerri a flower for Valentine’s Day, because he’s super romantic.
This is a Carunculated caracara.
Which sounds even funnier than chicken-hawk, which is what we were calling it.
It is closer to a hawk than a chicken. It is a falcon. Which is why it flew away when Kerri chased it with the camera.
This is a millipede.
Look at all of those legs.
We climbed to the top of the Basilica to see Quito from above.
The stairs were built for short people and a bit maddening.
This is the space between the curved ceiling inside the church and the pointed roof.
At the end of that we still had to go further up.
And then further up on the outside.
This is the inside of the clocks in the tower.
The view at the top was spectacular.
That is the hill with the statue of the Virgin Mary on top.
They have police stationed at the bottom of the hill warning tourists not to climb it to see the statue because they will get robbed.
We decided to admire it from afar.
Which with Zoom meant we could still get a pretty good look.
The Basilica was big on the inside too.
Very big.
It wasn’t crooked, we were just too lazy to take a straight picture.
It had holes for artistic reasons.
The stained glass had been damaged in some places. The replacement glass did not blend in.
Even where the damage was smaller it was like they didn’t even try to fix it properly.
Even the ones that weren’t damaged at all had kind of weird patterns.
This is the big flower at the front.
There were little flowers in the big flower.
It was huge.
This is the balcony of the Palace in Ecuador.
This is Kerri being guarded.
This is a pretty fountain in the courtyard.
This mural is of the Spanish expedition into the Amazon rainforest.
3000 native people died in this expedition.
The rooms in the palace are very fancy.
This is the dining room.
The dishes look expensive and ugly. And probably not dishwasher safe.
We were not allowed in that room.
This is the little chapel in the palace.
This is mask for the Diablada celebration.
This is another big fancy room.
The flag has silver and gold thread in it.
So does this presidential sash.