Travel Piece on Centro Historico

SFgate, what could you expect? All those nuveau riche techies, its a wonder he wasn't sniffing out Quito wine tasting rooms to entice his reading audience. Mo' monney.

We stayed in Quito for about 10 days in a nice place in the old historic center, on the main street about 3 blocks from the Presidential palace. We had our own little balcony where we spent a lot of time.

From our balcony there at Main & Elm every night we watched a woman who seemed to be the safekeeper of drugs for delivery operation. She wore a voluminous poncho and would stand on the corner where she could see for blocks in every direction, her cell phone at the ready. About a dozen runners would go back and forth for hours, give her money and she's reach under her poncho to retrieve something, and the runner would then dash off. Return a bit later and do it over again. They were all there every night, all the same people.

Fascinating to watch. Plenty of police about. They never paid her any notice.

We wandered a lot of back streets of the area including places that hadn't been gentrified for the tourist trade. Some pretty sketchy areas back there. The farther you went up the hill, the more olde time Quito it became. Did you ever hike up those back streets?

BobH wrote:

Interesting travel article on Quito's Centro Historico. I lived in this neighborhood. It's a good place to live or visit.
http://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Ma … to-6971610

The writer did a solid job of taking us into the rarely-seen world of the "limpias" and recounting the renovating of Centro Historico that has taken place over the past 14 years.

He had one factual error of note in his second sentence.  Quito is actually in the Southern Hemisphere, about 15 miles SOUTH of the Equator.

cccmedia, Quito

cccmedia wrote:

He had one factual error of note in his second sentence.  Quito is actually in the Southern Hemisphere, about 15 miles SOUTH of the Equator.

Yeah, I noticed that. He had another near the end, in this sentence:

Quito is a long, narrow city, and getting from one neighborhood to another can take a while. So plan to stay where you'd like to spend the most time - in my case, the Old Town. Others might prefer to be around the central district, with its hip cafés and metropolitan night life.

He sounds like he's saying 'Old Town' (a term I never heard used by any Quiteno) is not in the central district. It is.

I think what he is referring to as the 'central district' is La Mariscal, which is in the north.

Oh well -- small errors in an otherwise good article.

gardener1 wrote:

We wandered a lot of back streets of the area including places that hadn't been gentrified for the tourist trade. Some pretty sketchy areas back there. The farther you went up the hill, the more olde time Quito it became. Did you ever hike up those back streets?

I lived on a side street between Santo Domingo church and La Ronda. Loved it, though the steepness was tough to adjust to in my first days there. There are definitely some streets that it would be wise to avoid.