The Basilica, with nearby, completely unrelated architecture

Nearly empty, the Basilica of the National Vow is disquieting from a mix of open space and dark stone, dimly lit only by sunlight permeating its elaborate stained glass windows.  Climbing the tallest tower in the structure is another popular diversion around here, so I made the not-entirely-safe walk from La Mariscal to Old Town with that as my primary goal.  It’s neither the oldest nor the most important church in town, but it is the largest, clearly visible against the repetitive city background from above when flying in.  My temporary German friend Arlem’s daytime mugging took place mere minutes after making the climb himself, so I’m naturally on guard at all times.  But the serene structure, equally impressive both inside and out, has caused me to lower my defenses a bit.

Much of old Quito is filled with beautiful parks like this, making it easy to forget about the apparent danger.

The slightly disquieting Mary doll

For such an expansive site, there’s a lack of both intuitive starting points for heading upwards and accessible church figures to pester about said meaningless sight-seeing act.  An old woman prays in front of a smiling doll encased in glass that I take to represent a young Mary (few things in here are clearly labeled, even in Spanish).  Far be it for me to make jibes about anyone’s religion, but in a building such as this with a slew of alcoves, each more ornate than the other, such devotion on an object more reminiscent of Chucky from Child’s Play does catch me a bit off-guard.  The woman’s eyes, much like those of the figure she’s praying so intently to, are glazed over and I opt against breaking the rapturous flow of her pleas just to get directions on how to go about finding a sweet vantage point of Old Town.

An unstable spiral staircase leads upwards behind a sign that seems to solemnly state that the Basilica is purposefully unfinished, as the end of the world will arrive should it ever be completed.  I can see why they’re not in a rush to finish the place, but if any blocks or crosses are missing, I don’t see it.  The staircase looks more official and utilitarian than I’d expect compared to the flair of the rest of the building.  More importantly, the access gate is completely chained up and locked, which is far less promising than its plain appearance.  A man in black approaches while I’m standing about, lost in idle thought.

One of the many elaborate stained glass displays

“I see you admiring our church.  It is quite a spectacle, is it not?”

“Yes.  Yes, it’s a spectacle.  It’s spectacular.”

He smiles warmly, humbly looking downwards, full of soulful grace.  “Yes.  I am Father Jose.  You are from United States, yes?  I live in Colorado.  Many years.”

“Ahhh. I know the Poudre River well…”

“Yes.  Look up over there.”  He points at a large heart-shaped hole cut into the far wall above the east exit.  “Do you see her?  Is the Panecillo.  Is Mary on the hill, looking down on us.  From here, you see her through the heart.  It represents love.”

“Oh.  I need to look from where you’re standing?“  I move over a bit and can barely make out a silhouette far in the distance through the bright heart-shaped light flooding into one of the few openings along the side of the austerely dim church.  “Sure.  Hearts.  Hearts mean love.  Right.  Nice..”

“Yes.  You should take a picture.  You are a photographer, no?”

He’s no great sleuth.  My Canon XT Digital SLR is touristfully wrapped around my neck.

The Panecillo, as seen from outside

“Yes.  I work for a major local newspaper.”

The heart of Jesus

“I thought so.  Yes.  Yes.  LOOK! — Is the heart of Jesus!”  He points emphatically at a red stone heart on the wall and I can’t tell if he’s even speaking metaphorically.

The padre guides me around the massive complex, explaining the symbolism and stories captured in stained glass, the reason they have a 60’s era doll reverently encased in glass (”Is Mary!  Mary the blessed mother!” followed by a pious gaze downwards), and the history of the figures, crosses, relics and the building in which they’re all encased.

“Come.  Let me show you Church of San Francisco next door.  Is oldest church in Quito.  I do most of my work there.”

“Well, honestly, I only have another hour and really wanted to climb the Basilica.”

“Yes, climb is nice.  Come come.”

My SLR would be a shame to lose, though I only have $2.47 on me (other than an emergency ten in my hidden pocket inside my pants which the holy man needn’t know about) so I opt to take the plunge and go, out of general intrigue and boredom if nothing else.  After exchanging his black jacket for a rainslick, the father and I make our way across the street but keep going.  There doesn’t seem to be a quick end-point on our walk, as we proceed to head down several more city blocks past my limited frame of reference.

“Up ahead… Is good, is good.”  Reassuring start.

A random parade goes by. For some reason, the band is playing the theme song to "Popeye the Sailor"

Quito’s a tricky place for tourists; In the States, when you’re on “the wrong side of the tracks,” there are rarely freshly painted colonial era buildings and immaculately trimed gardens on every block.  And generally daytime can be counted on to add an extra layer of protection — a layer definitely not present here.  Yet from all the sob stories I’ve heard, the most noteworthy muggings have taken place in broad daylight in some of the nicest parts of town [read: tourist destinations].  The whole situation can be a bit confounding as I find myself at once taken in by pristinely kept Spanish architecture and schoolchildren in uniforms laughing carelessly down the street, yet simultaneously paranoid with a feeling of constant danger.

“Look there — Don Quixote!”  He points at a bizarre metal sculpture outside the second floor of a building on the opposite end of the street.

“Is Cervantes big in Quito?”

“No, no!  Don Quixote!  There!  Take picture.”

I was instructed to take this picture.

I do.  I take pictures of Quixote.  I take pictures of old homes with floors made of cow bones.  I take pictures of statues, and street signs and people.  When long, hilly streets sharply ascend or descend into artificial valleys of pastel colonial buildings, I take pictures, nodding in agreement with his assessment of their photogenic qualities.  Eventually, I start to ignore some of his suggested Kodak Moments, only to get a sad-eyed glance nearly as practiced as his pious one.

As the tour goes on, his knowledge of the subject matter evaporates simply into “You must take picture, yes?” or “Is beautiful, no?” with every statement becoming a yes/no question of some sort rather than erudite explanation.  I run through my entire collection of superlative adjectives to keep up the banter, first out of respect, then later simply to entertain myself.

Jose explains that this is a plaque.

“Sure.  That’s beautiful.” (Si, yes!)

“Oh, Exceptional!” (Is old famous conquistador.  You tell by his hat.)

“Breathtaking!” (Is from Guatamala, right? [Ed: wtf?])

“Phantasmagorical!” (I think so, yes)

“Mind-boggling!!” (Take picture, please!)

“Mind-bottling!!!” (Um.  Yes.  Come come!)

The holy father’s pretext has long been shattered, but the tour’s at least hitting some interesting spots.  As we get deeper and deeper into Old Town, amusement starts to be dwarfed by a low, rumbling sense of dread as though I’m being herded to a particular location likely devoid of anything pleasantly compelling to tourists.  Heading through the central plaza, I see the presidential palace and a series of political and religious structures framed around a well-kept square centered with a fountain.  It’s un-ironically breathtaking, and the presence of Equator’s equivalent of Secret Service agents outside add to my comfort levels, but the idyllic quality of the scene is abruptly broken by a woman’s tight grip on my arm.

“You.  You speak English?” she says, in a hushed tone with eyes filled with warning.  It’d be amusingly Hitchcockian were I not the central protagonist.

The white between the tiles is cow bone -- used to be all the rage back in the day, apparently.

“Yes?”

“You should not be here.  Do you know this man?”

“Sure, I know him from church.  He says he’s a priest!”

She makes a rumbling, doubting noise like some kind of Latin Marge Simpson even less impressed with a bad situation than she’d initially been, while he stands there looking more and more comically pious.  “You should put your camera away at least.  It is not safe for you to be here.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to see that.  Thanks.”

As we walk downhill past the plaza, the sense of foreboding is growing to noteworthily uncomfortable levels and I tell him it’s time for me to head back.  In addition to the rapidly greying clouds, my Spanish class is at two, and it’s 1:30 now, so my intense need to flee the scene is hardly even much of a cop-out on my part.

“Yes.  One more thing.  The market.  Fine hammocks you must see.”  Now fully in creepy Yoda mode, I start to get hard on myself for even considering giving him church cred in the first place.

“Spanish class, Jose, Spanish class.  I gotta head back, man…”

“But you must see.  You MUST!  Is quick!”

The patron saint of taxi hailing?

“Later, man.  Sorry.“  As he gets more imperative about the tour, a visibly out-of-place older white couple, the first I’ve seen in some time, walks obliviously down the street towards us.  His eyes dart nervously towards them and then back to me.  All smiles again.

“And so, my friend, I have to go, too.  But now… how much would you say such a good tour should cost?”

“Uh, cost?  Well, hopefully less than two forty-seven?“  I’d counted exactly what was in my pocket earlier, just in case.

Absolute shock.  Possibly not even feigned.  “My friend, is almost two hours walking.  So many pictures!  Much more than two dollars!”

The one good thing about being perceived as a stupid tourist is that you don’t even have to do much acting to conveniently play dumb.  “Yeah, man, you just said you wanted to show me a church or something.  Nothing about cash.  This is all I have (opening up pocket to illustrate my impoverished plight).  I can’t even afford a cab now if I pay you this!”

He wordlessly extracts the cash from my hand with a grumble and skips off to catch up with his new targets.  I’m fairly lost on one of the most gorgeously menacing side streets I’ve ever walked down, but on the positive side, I did just get an unrequested and unnecessary personalized tour through old Quito for barely more than a dollar an hour.

The rain’s coming in a bit early, though.  I opted against an umbrella as it was one of the more beautiful mornings I’d seen out of Ecuador thus far, radiantly sunny in the mid-70s — a good deal warmer than the norm.  The steady greying of the skies did little to alleviate the tension of my awkward expedition with Jose, and as he leaves the drizzle has turned into a fairly strong rain with added thunder echoing uncomfortably close to my unknown location.  The Basilica’s big enough to use as a landmark thankfully, but the rain pounding down is surpassing anything it’s done since I’ve arrived as the sky literally opens up on me.

Taken from the cab window as we forded our way through the flood. No oxen were lost on the journey.

As an almost after-insult to the hot, sunny morning from just three hours prior, ice begins to pelt me from the sky and I finally stop running to hang out under an already-crowded canopy providing scant protection from the massive hail storm.  I dart forward from my precarious protection towards oncoming taxis, only to get splashed from below as well as above as the filled vehicles pass by.  Eventually money talks as I bargain with a much more well-dressed man, offering to pay five dollars — more than I’ve paid for any other cab in the city — for the relatively short, but wet ride.

I’m dry, but traffic’s slowed to a halt as shallow, newly formed rivers pour down the steeply inclined city streets.  Cab fare causes me to break into my hidden pocket stash, but I’m only five minutes late in learning Spanish lessons that go beyond “add ‘-O’ to the end of whatever word you’re trying to translate,” and I’ve once again been pleasantly un-mugged against all odds.  So that’s nice.

A Quito puppy vendor. Not quite as popular as hamburger stands, but I've seen this a few times now. I didn't catch the price...