Easter weekend

It’s the last day of the holy week and my last day of relaxing, before my internship kicks off on Monday. Yesterday was Sabado Santo, which is celebrated in Quito with a lot of music and theatre in a street called la Ronda. When I was having dinner at a small kiosk down the road from my hostel (where I sat at their table watching telenovelas with her sister, father and husband) the shopkeeper told me about this event and luckily I found someone at the hostel that was willing to go with me.  It’s the kind of festival I absolutely love with loads of people on the streets in all age varieties but all with a smile on their face.

We listened to all the different types of music coming from the restaurants and bars and were just deciding where we would go in for a drink and a listen when a lady gave us a flyer that said “Ballet Andino”, which obviously made us wonder what that might look like. It turned out that the dance was going to start in ten minutes so we decided to go in and check it out.

We walked through a small door that led us through a bar and then into a passageway that led to a central patio that had been turned into a theatre. That alone was amazing. I love secret hideouts in cities and this one was really lovely. It made me appreciate Quito even more and made me realize this is definitely a place I could feel very much at home in. The dancegroup was called Humanizarte and performed different dances to represent the different regions in the country (but really had very little to do with ballet). It was really nice and I’m so glad we went in.

Today I went to the teleférico with another guy from the hostel, which is a cable car that goes up to a mountain outside Quito and allows you to appreciate some panorama views that take your breath away in the most literal sense of the expression. A lady we ran into half way up to the Pichincha-summit, told me it would be an easy hike all the way up for young, fit looking kids like ourselves…… It wasn’t easy and I didn’t walk all the way up (I think we had another couple of hundred meters to go) but it was definitely a stunning place.

I think I’m pretty much over my jetlag now and ready for the new week. The connection is a bit strange today so I’ll post pictures in a later post.

Happy Easter everyone!