January 31, 2026
We got up and decided to spend the morning checking out a museum and doing some souvenir shopping. The museum wasn’t open when we got there so we opted to walk back into the historic district. Took a bunch of pix along the way. We just generally really like this city. It’s a nice place to walk and it turns out there are about 12,000 foreigners living there, almost all American.
We got the souvenir shop that we had discovered a few days earlier. This place was… eclectic to say the least. Rich bought a hat and I bought a necklace, and we bought a painting done by a local Ecuadorian artist. We like to have something to hang on the wall from our travels.
After our adventures in shopping we headed back to the Pumapungo Museum which was filled with relics from the area and had an area outside that was under excavation. Almost all of the displays were in Spanish, so it was lost on me, but it was still cool to look at.
I recorded several minutes in an Uber because I loved the music he was playing, and to just see the streets, and so that Rich could hear himself actually conversing in Spanish.
We went for a late lunch at the Chocolate restaurant and then went back to the hotel to await our ride to the airport, but not before I realized that I had left my hoodie in the restaurant. So an emergency uber ride back to the historical district and back to the hotel with about ten minutes to spare.
We got our flight back to Quito and stayed by the airport again and just had a quiet night in, repacking and getting ready for a LONG travel day home.
February 1, 2026
Got up super early and went to the Quito airport for what felt like about the tenth time. Gonna miss you weird monkey-alien statue!
I also bought another necklace in the airport. 🙂 Seemed appropriate.
We had to fly from Quito back to Bogata. At least this time we got to walk through Bogata at a leisurely pace instead of run madly to catch a flight. Gotta say, Bogata airport? Not my favourite. The lounge was meh, the restaurant we ate at was meh, although apparently typical?
We browsed and took in the airport sights….
We arrived home around midnight to a lot of snow and a very happy dog.
Some summaries
- Trip was s 14 days
- 8 flights
- 6 different airports
- 4 guides
- 2 Unesco World Heritage Sites
- 4 different hotels
- 3 fine dining meals
- 10’ish snorkeling excursions
- a bunch of new friends!
There were hardly any stray dogs. We almost always see stray dogs but not there. Ecuador has insanely cheap Ubers and food. The people seem happy and I want to go back!