Today is unfortunately my last full day in Ecuador, and I couldn't be more sad about it. Ecuador is the first country on my trip where I felt like there was so much more I could have done, and it will be great to come back here someday (hopefully soon) and explore the place a bit more in depth. I would also recommend it to my gringo friends, particularly the ones who don't speak Spanish, because it's a very accessible place, very safe, the people are incredibly cordial and it has a well-developed tourism infrastructure. Plus, in terms of sights, it's a very small country that packs awesome beaches, the Amazon jungle and the Andes mountains all in one place. Oh, and the Galapagos Islands as well (!).
From Guayaquil, I took a bus to the town of Cuenca, which is basically Ecuador's third city, in terms of both size and importance. Cuenca is kind of like an Ecuadorian Salamanca: it's a university town with very evident Spanish influence (as opposed to Guayaquil, which was a bit more cosmopolitan). It has about 75 different colonial churches, ranging importance from the cathedral (shown above) to small chapels in the surrounding countryside.The highlight of my time in Cuenca was a trip to a Panama hat maker, where I bought a Panama hat. What's that, you say? Panama hats...in Ecuador? Well yes, mi amigo, Ecuador is the world's main producer of Panama hats. Carlos says that he's not even sure if they make them in Panama. The guy who I bought mine from (pictured in the first photo) was awesome. He was mute (probably a case of too many cigarettes) and so we communicated by gesturing. He was quite an artisan: the hats are all made by hand, out of this one specific variety of straw, and then steam-ironed so that they are about as thick as paper. The best-quality ones are so tightly woven that you can roll them up tight enough to fit through a man's ring, and then unroll them and they will go right back to their original shape. Mine's currently rolled up in a box, so we shall see how good quality it is when it needs to pop back.
I also took an excursion outside of Cuenca to the most important site of Inca ruins in Ecuador, known as Ingapirca. Cuenca was an important stop-over place for the Incas, as it is close to both the jungle and the sea, and well-located between Cuzco (which, as we ALL know, was the capital of the Inca empire) and Quito, which is about as north as the Incas got before the Spaniards arrived.
After a nightmarish (literally) overnight bus to Quito, I got right into things here, where I have been since yesterday morning. Yesterday I didn't do too much, since I was so tired: just 2 big excursions a bit outside the city. One, as you can see, was to the actual line of the Equator, which is just north of Quito. So I'm not QUITE in my home hemisphere yet (I was for one brief moment there), but I will be starting tomorrow. Which is a big milestone: Go north, young man.
Yesterday's other big excursion was to the Osvaldo Guayasamín Museum. Guayasamín was Ecuador's most important artist, and his paintings reflect the struggles and themes of the Latin American continent (mostly from a fairly leftist perspective, although some of the values reflected in his paintings were quite traditional, such as the idea of the family as the center of society). Some of the themes include: mestizaje, the class struggle, dictatorships, the dignity of the poor, and civil wars. He built what he called "The Chapel of Man," which houses most of his paintings today. The painting I posted here is actually a giant mural, and it depicts a condor, which represents the cultures of the Andes, dominating a bull, which represents Spain. 
As this is my last day in Ecuador, and I realized that Quito had way more to offer than I initially realized, I had to fit a lot of things in. So I started my day early at the Presidential Palace (pictured here), known as Carondelet. You can't go inside but I realized that that was probably ok, as I have had about enough of presidential palaces to last a lifetime. I then explored other areas of Quito's colonial quarter, including the Jesuit church (plated with 7 tons of gold--I would have posted a pic but you aren't allowed to take pictures inside--you can probably google "iglesia de la compañía quito" and see better ones than I could ever take), the Dominican church, and the Panecillo, which is a hill where a winged Virgin Mary presides over the city.
I also managed to hit the Mariscal, a neighborhood known as "gringolandia" because of how Americanized it is, and go up to the top of a mountain next to the city via cable car, where you go from 2800 m to 4100 m above sea level in about 15 minutes. I even had time left over to buy some books and see the movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and...Spring," which was awesome by the way. It came out in the US like 3 years ago (came out in Chile like a year ago, I don't know why they're so behind here) so you can rent it.And that's all for now. Tomorrow I am off to Colombia. The first stop for the night will be the colonial town of Popayán. Will I make it? Stay tuned!
