Quito: The Highest Capital, the Wrong Equator, and Dario

Quito sits at 2,850 metres above sea level in a valley of the Andes, making it the second highest capital city in the world, after La Paz in Bolivia, and the highest officially designated capital, since La Paz shares the role with Sucre in an arrangement that reflects Bolivia’s complicated constitutional history rather than simple geography. The altitude is noticeable from the first hour: the air is thin enough that climbing stairs with luggage produces a shortness of breath that is not proportionate to the exertion and that persists for a day or two until the body adjusts. The altitude also means the temperature drops sharply at night despite the city’s location almost exactly on the equator, producing a climate that is spring-like throughout the year, warm in the sun and cool in the shade and genuinely cold after dark.

Quito was the northern capital of the Inca Empire before the Spanish arrived in 1534, founded in its Inca form by Huayna Capac in the late fifteenth century on the site of earlier settlements going back centuries. When the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar arrived, he found that Rumiñahui, the Inca general defending the city, had ordered it burned to prevent it falling intact into Spanish hands. The colonial city that grew up on the ruins of the Inca one became one of the most significant centres of Spanish power in South America and eventually one of the focal points of the independence movement that, under Simón Bolívar and his collaborators, swept Spanish authority from most of the continent in the 1810s and 1820s. Quito’s historic centre, built on the grid of the colonial town laid over the Inca one laid over what came before, was one of the first UNESCO World Heritage sites designated, in 1978, recognised for the completeness of its colonial-era architecture and the scale of its baroque churches. It is one of the best-preserved colonial cities in South America, which is to say it is extraordinarily beautiful in a way that rests on a history of considerable violence.

The altitude is noticeable from the first hour: the air is thin enough that climbing stairs with luggage produces a shortness of breath that is...

We stayed with Dario, whose family runs a guesthouse in the old district. Dario had spent twelve years in France working in a hospital before coming home to help his parents, and had the specific quality of someone who has lived in two places long enough to see each from the perspective of the other, which is both a skill and a permanent mild dislocation. His father is an artist, and the guesthouse was hung with his work in a way that made the rooms feel inhabited by someone specific rather than prepared for anonymous guests. His parents spoke only Spanish. Dario translated, supplemented by the pointing and approximate pronunciation that constitutes communication between people with no language in common.

The equator is not where the tourist infrastructure says it is. The Mitad del Mundo monument, built in the nineteenth century on the basis of French geodesic measurements from the 1740s that established the equatorial line to within about 240 metres of the actual position, is the famous one: the painted line across the cobbles, the equatorial monument, the museum, the restaurants, the gift shops selling things made of equatorial significance. The actual equator, confirmed by GPS, runs through a place called Intiñan, accessible through a separate museum about 200 metres from the official monument, where a series of demonstrations play out the physical properties of the hemispheric boundary: the water draining in opposite spirals on either side, the difficulty of walking in a straight line along the line itself, and the genuinely surprising balance test with an egg on a nail head which Noy performed successfully after several attempts while I failed to do it at all.

The collapsed volcanic crater near the city is not in most guidebooks. Dario took us there on the morning tour, navigating the city’s traffic with the specific focus of someone who has made peace with chaos by becoming part of it, and the approach up the crater rim revealed a landscape that the guidebooks tend to compress into “Andes views” without quite capturing what Andes views actually are: the specific quality of light at altitude, the particular green of the farming terraces on the crater walls, the silence that comes at elevation above the city noise. Farmers were working plots in the crater interior, growing vegetables in volcanic soil that has been cultivated in some form for centuries, possibly much longer. An elderly man acknowledged us from some distance and continued hoeing. The view from the crater rim extended south to other volcanic peaks. Cotopaxi, which is one of the highest active volcanoes on earth, was visible on a clear patch of cloud somewhere to the south. It erupted the following year.

The collapsed volcanic crater near the city is not in most guidebooks.

dave@launchcx.com

A British ginger seeing the world one questionable decision at a time. Based wherever the wifi works.

Quito: The Highest Capital, the Wrong Equator, and Dario

“It is one of the best-preserved colonial cities in South America, which is to say it is extraordinarily beautiful in a way that rests on a history of considerable violence.”

Cotopaxi, which is one of the highest active volcanoes on earth, was
visible on a clear patch of cloud somewhere to the south.

Quito, Ecuador

Quito: The Highest Capital, the Wrong Equator, and Dario

“It is one of the best-preserved colonial cities in South America, which is to say it is extraordinarily beautiful in a way that rests on a history of considerable violence.”

Cotopaxi, which is one of the highest active volcanoes on earth, was visible on a clear patch of cloud somewhere to the south.

Quito, Ecuador

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Cotopaxi, which is one of the highest active volcanoes on earth, was
visible on a clear patch of cloud somewhere to the south.