Yesterday afternoon I went to Guapulo with Miriam, Kim, Stephanie, and Mitchelle. Guapulo is the oldest barrio in Ecuador. Unfortunately, all of the cafes and restaurants were closed when we went, but it is said to be the artsy, bohemian district of Ecuador and has a hipster influence. I didn't see any of this, so I'm just taking Lonely Planet's word for it haha.
To get to Guapulo, we had to take the bus to Orellana and walk until we reached a roundabout, where we then had to turn left onto Gonzalez Suarez until we passed Hotel Quito. After Hotel Quito is a nice little gondola with information about the barrio and a map showing where Cumbaya and the new airport are. It was a stunning view.
The climb down was incredibly weird because it's so streep, that your body feels like it's going to topple forward at any given moment, so our legs were shaking at the bottom. It was a nice walk, with tons of graffiti covering the walls, gorgeous old homes lining the winding streets, and cute Spanish-influenced restaurants and cafes, too. The people that we encountered there were a mixture of amazingly sweet and little assholes. These guys were on top of a roof shouting, "GET. THE. FUCK. OUT. OF. GUAPULO!" Then these old men were hitting on us and staring at our butts. We met an old couple who gave us directions and told us to enjoy our time in Guapulo, so that made up for all of the annoyances. We stopped to get ice cream after our long walk, then made our way to the bus stop to make it back to Quito. Who can beat a $0.50 ice cream cone? I couldn't. Stephanie's ice cream tasted like egg nog and my cone tasted like a fortune cookie, so I guess we got a little taste of home yesterday lol.
After we got on a bus back to Quito, it started to pour rain. We weren't exactly prepared for it either. After walking to another roundabout, we decided to rest in a bakery for a minute and ordered breads, cakes, Fanta, yogur, and tea. It still wasn't letting up, so we just had to walk in it. On our walk we saw some more amazing graffiti and at one point it was raining so hard we had to stand under a bush and wait it out haha. It was a great walk, and I had a fun time. After we got to the bus station, everyone left Miriam and I to go shopping at Quicentro by ourselves, so we went to El Espanol and got cappucinos (mine: hazelnut. hers: caramel) and talked for a while. It was spectacular. Then we went to the grocers and Miriam bought food for dinner. It was such a lovely day :).
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