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Visit Quito, Ecuador

A Great Latitude

The remarkable Galapagos Islands are undoubtedly Ecuador’s top tourist attraction and many trips to the islands start out from Quito. The city itself has plenty to offer the visitor. We were lucky enough to undertake a largely land-based Galapagos tour but gave ourselves a couple of days on the Ecuadorian mainland before and after this trip, predominantly to give ourselves some days in hand in order to make sure we could catch our connecting flights, but also because we wanted to explore the city and surrounding area. There are all sorts of day trips available in and around the capital when you visit Quito.

Visit Quito

Quito is the second highest capital city in the world, located virtually on the equator and at an altitude of 2850m above sea level. If you’ve not spent time at that altitude it is really important to take it easy, even climbing a flight of stairs can leave you a little breathless when you first arrive. Many hotels in South American countries offer coca tea which is supposed to help with the effects of altitude sickness, although if you do feel ill make sure you seek medical attention.

When you visit Quito, the Centro Histórico is a great place to stay. San Francisco de Quito was founded by Sebastián de Benalcázar in 1534 and the colonial architecture is considered to be so important that the city is designated a UNESCO world heritage site (along with Krakow in Poland). It also has some of the best bars and restaurants in the city. Our hotel had a good view over Santo Domingo Plaza, one of many colonial plazas.

It is very pleasant just wandering through the city.

Basílica del Voto Nacional – Basilica of the National Vow, a Roman Catholic church, is located atop a hill. Apparently it is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas and is still officially unfinished. There is a local legend that when it is finally completed the end of the world will be nigh.

La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús, known locally as la Compañía, is a Jesuit church which was completed in 1765. Its interior is decorated with wood carvings, gilded plaster and gold leaf in an astonishingly ornate style.

The Plaza de Indepencia is a focal point with its expansive square.

There are lots of shops and restaurants in the area but, notably, just around the corner from the Plaza is a chocolate shop which offers the most amazing chocolate delicacies. To be fair, there are loads of chocolate shops offering amazing chocolate delicacies (Central and South American countries are quite rightly famous for their chocolate), but it was in this one that we discovered Pacari chocolate. The chocolate isn’t cheap but it’s the best quality we’ve ever tried. The company is really ethical as well; a fair trade organisation they support local farmers in Ecuador by paying a good wage and working with them directly. The chocolate is also 100% organic and absolutely stonkingly delicious.

We brought home a multitude of different chocolate bars: the ‘pure’ choc – at 60% cacao – but also some of the flavoured ones. Many are flavoured with fruits: passion fruit and cherry really captured the flavours of the fruit, lemon verbena’s zing was a lovely contrast with the smooth, silky chocolate. We had enjoyed corn in various guises throughout our trip so toasted corn kernels in the chocolate added a satisfying crunch and the corn flavour also came through very well. Of course we had to try the chilli chocolate. It’s surprisingly subtle – the first flavour you taste is that of dark chocolate then, after a few seconds comes a gentle warmth (definitely not the fiery heat of a chilli) that lingers on the palette long after the chocolate has gone.

It is possible to buy Pacari chocolate around the world (they also try to offset their carbon footprint) but we’ve found that it is significantly more expensive than in Quito (and it’s pretty expensive in Quito, but emphatically worth every cent), so if you do find yourself in Ecuador, we recommend stuffing every square centimetre of spare space in your luggage with the chocolate before you travel home.

Visit Quito – City Tour

There are lots of city tours available when you visit Quito and most hotels will be able to put you in touch with a company that can suit your budget, whether it’s a group tour or a private guide. Some of the guides are very flexible and can adapt a standard tour to suit your interests so it’s definitely worth asking what options are available.

The Equator is one of the most popular tourist attractions (after all, the word Ecuador means ‘equator’) and it’s difficult not get excited at being able to stand in both the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time. There are two sites, located a short drive of around 25km outside Quito. Amusingly, the official equator site at La Mitad del Mundo (the Middle of the World) isn’t quite on the equator itself, thanks to an error by a French expedition in 1736.

It seems it was the Incas who, several centuries earlier and without the use of GPS, managed to locate the correct location for the equator so we headed over to the Intiñan museum which is just a few minutes away from the incorrect official monument. The museum has an official equator line and also some exhibits showing traditional culture. You can also undertake various activities such as looking at the Coriolis Effect (whether waters swirls down a plughole clockwise, anti-clockwise or straight down depending on which hemisphere you are in – it won’t make a spot of difference), balancing an egg on a nail or walking along the equator with your eyes closed. It’s all ridiculous and hugely touristy but it’s enjoyable fun nevertheless.

Anyway, whether you are standing on the real equator or not, it’s great to take photos astride a line – whichever one it is.

We made a brief stop to view the Pululahua Crater. It’s a caldera (from an extinct volcano) although you can still see a couple of volcanic cones. The area has plenty of fertile soil so farming here is profitable. It’s possible to walk in the area – the caldera is about five km across – but we only really had time to enjoy the view.

Back in Quito, the Teleferico offers a cable car lift to the top of Cruz Loma which affords fantastic views across the city as well as ‘Volcanoes Avenue’, a splendid vista revealing fourteen peaks across the Andes… if the weather is co-operating. Otherwise it’s a nice ride up and down a mountain in a cable car! It’s located in Pichincha and the site also offers an amusement park, restaurants, a shopping centre and other activities, so there’s plenty to do if the views aren’t spectacular.

A slightly more unusual stop was a visit to the Fundación Guayasamín Museum, the house with an adjacent art gallery of local artist Oswaldo Guayasamín, widely considered to be one of Ecuador’s greatest artists. The house is located on a hill overlooking Quito in the Bellavista neighbourhood and has been left as he lived in it. It contains many artworks; his own as well as an impressive collection of pre-Columbian, colonial and modern art, and you can also see his studio. We were invited to watch a video about the artist so that we could learn about his life and works.

The adjacent gallery, known as the Chapel of Man, has an exterior on the form of a massive cube with a conical dome atop. Inside it offers multiple levels in which to explore a range of artworks. Guayasamín’s art is big and bold and very much reflects Ecuadorian landscapes and culture. He was also particularly interested in the inequalities in society and many of his works are powerful – and moving – representations of injustice. Photography wasn’t allowed inside the gallery.

Visit Quito – Day Trips Further Out

There are loads of day trips to explore the area surrounding Quito. Again, your accommodation will likely be able to help you find and book a trip that suits your interests, even if it might be at quite short notice. (We arrived from the airport late in the afternoon and managed to organise a day trip for the following morning.) Many companies offer coach trips that can pick you up from your accommodation (and a whole bunch of other tourists up from their accommodation, so bear in mind that the first hour of the trip could well involve sitting on a coach collecting people – which was fine for us as we could doze for a bit to catch up with the jetlag). But the greater the number of people that join the excursion, the lower the cost, and it’s often nice to have company on a day trip as well. Full day trips usually include lunch at a local restaurant.

Quilotoa Crater Lake

This was a full day trip, primarily to see the crater lake, which is located some 180 km from Quito. The journey takes a couple of hours direct from Quito, so other activities were incorporated into the trip to break up the day.

First stop was a market where we could see local produce for sale…

…And then onto the lake itself. It’s a caldera caused by the collapse of the volcano when it erupted in 1280. The crater filled with water over the years and now forms a lake, some 3km in diameter. It is possible to walk around the rim on a trail (it’s about 7.5 km) but we didn’t have enough time for this, so there’s a pleasant half hour stroll to the lake itself. It’s worth remembering that you are at altitude so the hike back up to the rim may take longer if you have not yet acclimatised. Also bear in mind that the sun is strong, even on a cloudy day, so make sure you have sun protection. The caldera itself is beautiful.

We also stopped off at Tigua to visit a local family home.

And in the late afternoon, as we headed back into Quito to do the reverse of the hotel pickups, we just happened to pass by the Cotopaxi volcano at sunset so the driver stopped off to let us all have a photo stop. Well, with a view like this it would have been rude not to.

Cotopaxi volcano Quito

It’s also worth noting there are lots of trips and activities at Cotopaxi – from climbing up it to mountain biking down it (at vast speed) as well as horse riding and jeep tours. Local tour operators and hotels will be available to find something that suits.

Bellavista Cloud Forest

We had long wanted to visit a cloud forest and booked directly with the organisation. They arranged a pick-up from our hotel in the central district – very early in the morning – to take us and a group of other people on a drive to the cloud forest that took a couple of hours. After breakfast at the lodge we embarked on a guided walk. Unfortunately the best time to see the birds is around 6:30am – about the time of our Quito pickup. Some people stay overnight in order to be able to take the early morning walks in order to get a greater chance of viewing the birds. It’s also worth noting that we found the experience to be expensive. Still, the walk was lovely and the guide knowledgeable. These are actually colour photos but the forest was so wonderfully cloudy they have an evocative black and white feel to them.

It was also nice to be able to see gorgeously colourful and beautifully iridescent hummingbirds, and other birds, using the feeders that were located around the lodge, flitting, darting and hovering.

Even if the Galapagos are your primary reason for visiting Ecuador, there are loads of activities in the area when you visit Quito – whether wildlife, activity or cultural – and it is definitely worth incorporating these into your itinerary if you have time.

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45 Comments

    • Thank you so much! We were surprised at how many trips were available. And yes, that chocolate was just dreamy!

    • Thank you! It’s definitely worth making time for some activities in Quito if you are planning a trip to the Galapagos.

  1. Quito is an amzing city! We luckily had a clear day when we went on the teleferico, but we missed that great chocolate shop and these fantastic day trips. That picture of Cotopaxi is stunning!

    • So glad that you got a good view on the teleferico! We weren’t lucky with the weather then but sunset at Cotopaxi definitely made up for it.

  2. Fingers crossed they’ll never finish Basílica del Voto Nacional haha… 🙂

    I’ve been fascinated by Ecuador (and Peru) for a long time. It’s been great to travel there vicariously through you.

    Living in a country where the biggest elevation is 1,345m and the highest city is 325m (max elevation within city boundaries; average altitude 169m) it always blows my mind to read about major Latin American cities well into the four digits.

    Every time I tried Latin American chocolate I liked it, so far. I’d definitely give the Quito variety a shot.

    How funny they got the equator wrong..!! They did a pretty decent job with the volcano and the crater lake, though.

    • Thanks so much. Yes, hopefully the Basílica del Voto Nacional will remain uncompleted and the world won’t end! We thought the wrong equator was really funny – but it’s fun taking photos astride a line, whichever one it is! You definitely have to take things easy when you first arrive if you’re not used to the altitude. So glad that you’ve enjoyed the posts, really hope you get to visit Ecuador and Peru one day.

    • Thanks so much for your comment. Yes, it is funny that they got the wrong equator! We highly recommend visiting South America- it’s an amazing place, full of contrasts, with delightful people and really tasty food.

  3. Quito looks like a great place to spend a couple days. I love the views you found at Pululahua Crater and Quilotoa Crater Lake. The second crater reminds me of Crater Lake in Oregon. The altitude in Quito would definitely take me a few days to get used to since I’m so used to always being at sea level.

    • Thanks so much. The area surrounding Quito is really picturesque. Yes, you really have to take it easy when you are at altitude for the first time – even climbing a flight of stairs can make you feel breathless.

  4. This city has incredible architecture and natural beauty. Thanks for sharing the great pictures and information. Ecuador is one of the places we are researching for becoming snowbirds or retiring abroad. It’s gorgeous and affordable.

    • Thank you so much for your kind comment. Quito really is a splendid city and the surrounding area absolutely gorgeous.

  5. I never realised Quito has the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas, quite a record. South America is still unexplored for me. I have massive plans to spent a couple of months travelling around it next year so reading all this on Quito has made me want to do it sooner. You absolutely had me at the mention of chocolate and your descriptions are tantalising. You said that the Pacari chocolate is expensive but how much was it per bar? The museums and culture you mention are just what I would head for. The tours you went on sound fabulous – very jealous!

    • We do hope you get to visit South America. It is a truly wonderful place – such diverse landscapes, lovely people and amazing food. We’d go back in an instant! The Pacari chocolate was $2.60 (US) in Ecuador for a 50g bar. In the UK, it’s about £4.60 (around $6 US at the time of writing) for a similar size. But it really is the most divine chocolate and ethical too!

  6. I didn’t know that Quito was the second highest capital city in the world! There’s so much to see and do in and around Quito. The Crater Lake sounds amazing and I love chocolate so would love to try some here.

    I’m pining to travel to South America and this post on Quito makes me want to visit even more.

    • Thank you so much for reading and commenting. The crater lake was so beautiful and the chocolate utterly yummy! We do hope you managed to travel to South America, it’s a wonderful place to visit.

  7. Such a lovely and in-depth post! I never knew there were so many things to see and do in Quito. I also loved the details and history of the area you gave. It’s a shame sometimes when an area is overshadowed by another area or activity, kind of like Quito gets overshadowed a bit for the Galápagos Islands. Goes to show there’s always more than meets the eye to locations!

    • Thank you so much! It’s true that we planned our visit to Ecuador based around a trip to the Galapagos Islands, but it was a pleasure to discover the charms of Quito and the surrounding area.

  8. Wow I did not know how much Quito had to offer. We have always wanted to visit the Galapagos Islands. If we ever make it over there, we should definitely visit Quito. I love the crater lake!

    • Thank you. We travelled to Ecuador primarily for the Galapagos Islands, which we wholeheartedly recommend, but absolutely love Quito and the surrounding area. Do hope you get to visit!

  9. What a wonderful post that brings back memories for us. Ecuador is just incredible. We were fortunate enough to visit 10 years ago (our first International trip together!) when Andie’s parents lived there for a few years. Quito is amazing. We also spent a couple of days in Mindo, and hiked to a waterfall in the cloud forest! And yes, you MUST get the obligatory photo at “the equator.” What a cool experience. Thanks for reminding us what a beautiful place this is!

    • Thank you so much! You’re right, Quito really is a very special place and it’s so lovely that you have some great memories of it. Yes. we had loads of fun posing astride the equator line!

  10. I enjoyed reading about reading about your time in Quito. I didn’t realize it is the 2nd highest capital. I would love to try their 60% cacao and visit the market. I also like how you can quickly get a tour there.

    • Thank you so much for reading and commenting. We were really glad that it was so easy to find tours and we thoroughly enjoyed the ones we did. The chocolate was divine!

  11. What a fabulous trip you enjoyed! I would have loaded up on the chocolate, for sure!

    Guayasamín isn’t an artist I’m familiar with (although that’s not surprising considering ALL my visual arts education has come from travel) but I love the work (as I took a delightful tangent from your blog to find more examples of his work). Thank you for introducing me.

    This area of the world is a huge draw for wildlife fanatics and bird-nerds like myself and it’s time to organize my own trip.

    Lyn | http://www.ramblynjazz.com

    • Thank you! I’m so pleased that we’re not the only people who enjoy discovering art whilst on their travels and really happy that you were interested in discovering more about Guayasamín. We were blown away by his art. If you are interested in wildlife we thoroughly recommend Ecuador, not only for the Galapagos islands but also for the cloud forests and it’s also possible to visit the jungle. Sadly, all the chocolate has been consumed – but it was delish!

  12. I always knew I’d have to go through Quito to get to the Galapagos but I didn’t know that the city itself was so vibrant. I think it would be a great to spend a few days there exploring – especially Quilotoa Crater Lake! Beautiful.

    • Thank you. We were really surprised at how much there was to do in and around Quito. We visited Ecuador with the intention of getting out to the Galapagos (which were splendid) and gave ourselves a couple of days in hand to make sure we could catch connecting flights in case of airline delays. And we were so glad we did – we thoroughly enjoyed exploring the area.

  13. You had me at fancy ethical chocolates! Or the cable car ride with a view – because what’s an extra bit of elevation on top of an already high up city?! As the gateway to the Galapagos, this would be the main reason I’d visit Quito, but I’ve also heard other great things about the city and I’m interested to visit. Thanks for a great intro to a unique city

    • Thank you! I hadn’t thought about the additional elevation at the top of the cable car! It was incredibly foggy that day but we managed a small glimpse of the view amidst the clouds. We visited Quito as a gateway to the Galapagos but really enjoyed our time exploring the city.

  14. To be in one the highest parts of the world and a mere kilometer shy from the equator must have been an exhilirating trip! I would love to visit Quito and be absorb in its dizzying city, colonial history, culture, landscape and altitude with a bag of coca leaf to chew in tow (perhaps the chocolates will also do!) Thanks for sharing this lovely post guys and for always taking us to travel vistually with you.

    Jan – https://flyingbaguette.com/

    • Thanks so much, Jan! We really loved Quito – it’s a great place to explore and the excursions to get out into Ecuador’s amazing countryside were hugely enjoyable. It was enormous fun to stand aside the equator – whichever one was the actual line! And the chocolate was sublime.

  15. I didn’t know Quiot is the world’s second-highest capital. But I had a roommate who visited the islands and he loved them. It’s hard to imagine how climbing dome stairs can take your breath away but I take your word for it. What caught my eye was Quilotoa Crater Lake. It looks superb and I would enjoy exploring this place. Seems like there is a lot to do close to Quito. I have heard that part of the world can at times, be dangerous so I am wondering if you ever felt a sense of danger?

    • Being at altitude really is strange and you do need to adapt. It’s such a weird feeling knowing that you can easily climb a set of normal stairs but find yourself puffing and panting at the top! The crater lake was really lovely. When we visited Quito we never felt unsafe. However, I’m sure you’ve seen the recent news about increased violence in the region. We would recommend visiting your country’s travel advice page to check what they recommend to ensure safety.

  16. If there was nothing else interesting in Quito to visit, the chocolates would certainly be worth 🙂 The beauty of the colonial architecture is unavoidable, as well as the natural beauty of the lakes originated by the caldera. But what always fascinates me most about these places is the people and having the opportunity to spend time with them.

    • Yes, the chocolate was soooo good, but we were pleasantly surprised at how much Quito had to offer the visitor. The caldera was beautiful. And yes, getting to spend time with local people is always incredibly rewarding.

  17. I would be wary of the altitude sickness and not too keen on going to a doctor there. What do you guys recommend? Do you have any experiences with altitude sickness? Would hotel staff be helpful and assist in case you have to go to a local doctor? It’s something I would have to consider as I travel solo. Would also be interested to know how long you guys accustomed to the altitude in Quito. Other than that I hear a lot of positives about the town and that it is rich in activities. The artistic culture would engage me and also the several hikes and viewing points.

    Carolin | Solo Travel Story

    • We would definitely recommend talking to your doctor in your home country before travelling. It’s very difficult to know whether you are susceptible to altitude sickness until you arrive. It is recommended to ascend slowly but that’s not usually possible if you are flying into the country. We have both been lucky in that we’ve never had problems. (We camped at 4200m in the Himalayas and had slight headaches but that was the worst we’ve had, apart from slight breathlessness, and we’ve been fine ever since.) It’s important to take it easy for the first few days at altitude to acclimatise. Some of the better hotels will have oxygen available on site and should be able to help with obtaining medical advice, so it would be beneficial to check with the hotel before travelling, to see what support they can give. Quito is undoubtedly a fantastic place to visit, we’d very much recommend it.

  18. I would love to go back and explore more of Quito (and the Galapagos, too!). I didn’t realize there were so many craters and crater lakes around the city. That photo Cotopaxi volcano at sunset is stunning. I’d love to visit the equator(s) and take the cable car up to the mountaintop for those views.

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