Off Topic - pictures from a trip to Quito Ecuador

[Guest]

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[tomviolence]

Hi

I figured some folks here might be interested in the land of Mifex. It is funny to see in real life people like the ones I loaned to, working at the same types of businesses. It makes loaning more personal, a little more real, knowing people like the ones you are walking by might be using a microloan to help their businesses. Mifex was out of the other large city, Guayaquil, I visited Quito, the capital. It is a shame Mifex imploded, I would like to loan more to Ecuador. I had two paid back, but two defaulted.

Quito is very inexpensive, a hotel room I paid $60 a night for was comparable to US ones in the $150-$200 a night range. Fantastic views, great food. The US Dollar is their national currency, which makes it very simple to know the cost of things. Taxis are handy and cheap, a 20 minute ride from one side of the city to the other was $5.

It has a colonial past, with some of the most spectacular church interiors I have seen. Quito itself is "the city [that] has the best-preserved, least altered historic centre in Latin America" per the UNESCO World Heritage site.

Church of La Compañia is a must see. It is supposed to have seven tons of gold covering every possible square inch of the ornate carvings. No photos are allowed in the church, so I did not take any.

Here is a link to the pictures I did take: http://travelwiththemind.com/quito/

[Diane R]

It looks so lush and humid there!  Thanks for sharing the photos; how long were you there?

It reminded me of some parts of Peru, and your mention of how you saw potential or possible microloan clients all around you is definitely a mirror of how I felt all over Peru.

Did you at least get some postcards of the interior of the Church of La Compañia, with its gold surfaces? 


thanks for the link,
--Diane.

[tomviolence]

I was there two days on business, and had just one afternoon to be touristy, actually just 3 pm to 6 pm. No postcards - I did not have enough time to really find some nice crafts. I did get the bird eats snake jug from a fair trade store that supports Andean people. Hopefully I will be going back in a few months on business, and might be able to swizzle some extra time.

Glad you liked the pictures. It really is fun going to places where you have loans. Tajikistan is high on loans list, but not on the places most likely to visit list.

Here is an image from the www - imagine the picture is .3% of what it is like being there.



If the link does not work, there is a slide show at jesuit website: http://www.sjweb.info/world/lacompania/index.cfm