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31/01/13 Returning to Quito, Ecuador, a city reborn - The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/returning-to-quito-ecuador-a-city-reborn/2013/01/10/75733ee2-3a4b-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html 1/4
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Returning to Quito, Ecuador, a city reborn
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By Julian Smith |, Published: January 1 0
“I love how the sun paints the city,” says Julio Rivas Garcia as he gazes over Quito’s
historic heart from the roof of the Church of La Merced.
Where we’re standing, at 9,200 feet and only 15 miles from the equator, the late-afternoon
sun still has the power to make 400-year-old stonework glow as though it’s lit from within.
Cloud shadows swoop across tiled roofs, church steeples and narrow cobblestone streets
filled with cars, buses and crowds walking home from work.
In his purple silk cravat and Panama hat,
Garcia cuts a dapper figure against the
church’s green domes and white bell tower.
He specializes in guided walking tours of
Quito’s Old Town, as the historic district is
called, and his work as a historian and
volunteer restorer opens doors — such as the
hip-high one we’d squeezed through a
minute before, at the top of a steep wooden
staircase in a dusty side room on the second
floor of the church.
Details, Quito
Garcia had insisted that I go through first.
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31/01/13 Returning to Quito, Ecuador, a city reborn - The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/returning-to-quito-ecuador-a-city-reborn/2013/01/10/75733ee2-3a4b-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html 2/4
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1/13/2013 7:05 PM GMT-0500
JSGNWDC w r ote:
The article doesn't say it's the highest capital, buddy.
“It’s different if you open the door yourself,”
he said.
He was right. Even if you have permission,
stepping onto the roof of a church built in
1737 is a thrill slightly tinged with sacrilege.
Stone stairs worn low in the middle from
centuries of feet lead up and over the curves
of the vaulted ceilings beneath us.
We find ourselves at the crenellated roof
edge as the sun inches toward the 15,696-
foot peak of Pichincha, the active volcano
that looms over Ecuador’s capital. Garcia
points out a dozen of the 50-odd churches,
chapels, convents and monasteries that fill
one of the largest and best-preserved
Colonial districts in Latin America.
I lived in Ecuador’s capital in the 1990s
while writing a guidebook to the country. I
developed a serious soft spot for the city,
warts and all: its vital intensity and insane
cabdrivers, its spectacular mountain setting
and climate of constant springtime.
Since my last visit seven years ago, the city
has transformed — especially Old Town,
which underwent a $200 million, seven-
year facelift to celebrate its selection as the
2011 American Capital of Culture and its
30th anniversary of becoming one of the
first cities to be designated a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
The petty thieves who haunted the area are
gone, the streets have been scrubbed and are
better lit, and some of the vehicle traffic has been slowed and redirected. Now Old Town is
clean, safe and full of new hotels, upscale restaurants and lots of new things to see and do.
It has been wonderful to see the changes, but also a little bittersweet, like bumping into a
once-bitter ex who’s thriving and happy without you.
Garcia, whose family roots reach back almost to the founding of the city, seems to read my
mind. “Quito is very personal to me,” he says. “The city has a special energy, almost like a
personality.”
Getting to know you (again)
I had started my reacquaintance tour a week earlier, at the Plaza Grande, flanked by City
Hall, the Metropolitan Cathedral and the stiff-backed guards in Colonial uniforms outside
the Government Palace. Old Town’s real activity center is a classic Latin American plaza,
full of vendors selling snacks, musicians playing for tips and old men on benches feeding
pigeons.
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31/01/13 Returning to Quito, Ecuador, a city reborn - The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/returning-to-quito-ecuador-a-city-reborn/2013/01/10/75733ee2-3a4b-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html 3/4
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n icoja ke w r ote:
Very gushy and superficial. Quito is NOT the world's highest capitol city. That distinction belongs to La Paz,
Bolivia, which is @ 2500 feet higher.
rm ozosa r espon ds:
Yes, La Paz, Bolivia is the highest capital in the world. Quito is the second.
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31/01/13 Returning to Quito, Ecuador, a city reborn - The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/returning-to-quito-ecuador-a-city-reborn/2013/01/10/75733ee2-3a4b-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html 4/4
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