Guts, Virgins, and Fruits...

...In that order. Yes, I am afraid of heights. So after climbing the Basilica I made Jennifer accompany me to La Colmena, an old restaurant that specializes in guatita, a soup with potatoes and tripe in a seasoned peanut sauce. Surprisingly, it tasted pretty good - the tripe was rather chewy but tasteless (thank God; I can imagine other flavors for tripe that are less than ideal) - but we'll see what happens tonight - Atahualpa may yet have his revenge.

Atop a huge hill just south of El Centro Historico looms La Virgen de Quito. She overlooks the city much like the big Jesus statue overlooks Rio de Janeiro. So I decided I want to meet her in person. Little did we know that the hike up El Panecillo (the little bread loaf, as the hill is called) would get us closer to meeting the actual Virgin Mary than we had expected, as we almost killed ourselves hiking up at least 30 different flights of stairs to the top. Yet we know now why La Virgen de Quito doesn't want to come down off the hill - she has AWESOME views of the city! And it was there that we came to appreciate fully how much of a sprawling, congested, tangled mess of a city Quito is!

After the grueling hike, we treated ourselves to a tropical fruit salad and chocolate ice cream (muy deliciosos!) before venturing back to La Casa to ice down our poor legs.