December 31

It will easily take 2 or 3 entries for this day. Only because I have edited close to 200 pictures for this day. I will not show you all of them. But I will show you a lot of them.

Breakfast was fairly normal. Scrambled eggs with ham, rolls that remind me of Europe (hard on the outside, crumbly and soft on the inside). There were several juices we were unable to identify, instant coffee, corn flakes, and milk. (I just had eggs and a roll, and what looked like orange juice, but tasted more like a satsuma).

Our hotel, Hotel Finlandia




First was a tour of the city. This included some plazas and a church and some high vantage points for viewing a nice panorama. The pictures are captioned with more detail (if I can actually remember it).

At a high vantage point, people selling their wares


The crew taking pictures from this high vantage point


Views from this vantage point






a conquistador


a shot from the bus, of someone’s house/castle


we took some stairs up to this




passed some of these



inside there was an exhibition about New Years traditions




you should wear yellow panties


people jumping over burning puppets (more on this later)


the view looking away from this glass building gave us a great panoramic of the city. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the photo-editing software I would like on this computer (yet) so none of them are stitched together. Deal with it.







random Gothic church


look at me! I’m in Quito!


Frank took this picture of me taking pictures (although at that moment I was checking the playback)


drive-by of that random Gothic church




a city plaza…I don’t remember which one








a convent


bottom of statue


top of statue










a church that we were not allowed to take pictures in


the entire inside is gilded in gold, like this door


thanks to Google’s image search, I can show you this picture of the inside


this place is named San Francisco (and at this point our blue skies turned somewhat grey)




this looks somewhat like Bourbon Street, with two men (dressed as women) flagging down the bus


one of them boarded, and collected money


Now would probably be a good time to explain that Ecuador is not rampant with trannies. It’s part of the New Years celebration. I’ll copy and paste this: The tradition in Ecuador is burn an effigy of the old year and in so doing clear the way for good fortune in the new year. These effigies or puppets are sold all over Quito. They are strapped to the front of cars, beaten and abused, called unpleasant names and finally stuffed with fireworks and obliterated. There are also legions of cross-dressing party-hopefuls called "The Widows" who wear women's cloths and beg for money with which to party away the night of New Years.

There are lots of fun pictures to come of the puppet burning. Also lunch. So stay tuned…