No, kidding. Ecuador's name comes from the Spanish word for the equator. The country, which straddles the equator, even has a monument built to celebrate its location in the middle of the world, found about 15 miles from the capital of Quito in San Antonio de Pichincha. We didn't see it ... maybe next time.
Funny story, we were originally going to spend some time in Peru, but the unrest caused by the ousting of President Pedro Castillo after he tried to disband congress and the resulting escalation of Peru's status by the US agency in charge of telling you what you can read in the news to a "it's worse than COVID" rating scratched that particular destination off the list (and, according to every travel brochure ever made, "Galapagos and Machu Picchu" go together like "Mickey and Minnie").
So it was a little ironic that a month after we left the same thing happened in Ecuador.
All of which leads us to something almost but not completely unrelated to Ecuador.
A big part of the trip was looking at pre-Columbian art.
There’s a Jake Johannsen comedy skit that goes something like this; “We were in Boston with our young daughter, and we decided to go whale watching, because, you know, coming from Iowa, we don’t have a lot of whales. In Iowa, it’s more cow watching. But you know, I have to say, when you go cow watching … you see some damn cows.”
Except it’s much funnier when he does it, and I recommend you go watch all of his skits, including that one, because I think he’s the funniest guy on the planet.
But taking that metaphor well beyond an reasonable point, I’ll say this. If you're in Ecuador, and you go pre-Columbian art watching, you see some damn pre-Columbian art.
Lest you think I jest (and I swear I am not making this up), one of the displays had a description (in Spanish … thank God for Sergey Brin and Google Translate) of the pieces and a bit of how they were uncovered. Which turned out to be a high school soccer match that was apparently rather boring and someone was kicking at the dirt instead of paying attention, and guess what he stubbed his toe on? A proverbial sh*t ton of pre-Columbian art.
But I’ll also say this (at the risk of getting too philosophical in what’s supposed to be a travel blog); the art we saw was diverse. It ranged from kindergarten art to really sophisticated pieces. It was at times practical, funny, elegant, obscene, boring, fascinating, transcendent, and any other adjective you would use to describe contemporary art today. The Boston MFA has a big sign that says "At one point all art was contemporary." I like to add, "but not all of it was good," and that was true here as well, but a lot of it was magnificent.
I was thinking about this huge range of pieces and styles, and how Alison and I collect some big memento on each of our trips, usually an original painting but sometimes a sculpture, or in one case a marionette (which has its own story). Those things mean something to us, even if they are not great art, masterpieces, or appreciated by others in the same way. And I thought about these civilizations, wiped out by the conquistadors (or the Incas before them, and the Incas, by the way, were technologically and artistically behind many of the cultures they destroyed). But they were people, and I bet each and every one of those objects, be they simple or sophisticated or funny or serious, were a treasure to someone.
Humanity does have common ground, across race, creed, religion, and time.
Makes the Ukraine war seem even more stupid.
Oh, and for those interested, yes, indeed, we did catch covid in Ecuador, but being up on the latest vaccines, Alison was feeling a bit off for two days and I had a scratchy throat for a few hours, and that was about it.
Tangent complete. Let's start in the middle. I say that because we spent a day in Quito on the way to the Galapagos, and three days on the tail end of the vacation, and it seems better to do Quito in one pass. Or you can jump around as you see fit, or take a look at the huge variety of street art we saw in all three cities.
 Guayaquil |
 The terrifying drive |
 Cuenza |
 Quito |