February 15 - February 28, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 2
	January 4 - January 17, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 1
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This page is a continuation of the pictures from our trip this time to Ecuador. If you wish to return to the previous page for this trip, please click the link below.

An Expat Community

Before we even arrived in Ecuador this time, Greg had been looking for expat groups we might hook up with in Cumbaya, and he had found one that met once every couple of weeks at a restaurant complex near Scala Mall. As it turned out, the first meeting that would occur while we we were here would be on our first afternoon in Cumbaya. So we got a cab to take us to the restaurant (actually called Feria Gastronómica El Patio, a large eating area surrounded by small food stalls, kind of like a food court in a large mall). The group was already beginning their lunch at a long table in the middle of the patio.

We had some lunch and talked with a number of the expats, but quickly discovered that we had little in common. I, for example, talked with Roger, who maintained an online website/radio station focused on various conspiracy theories. Fred and Greg chatted with other attendees, most of whom were very right-wing, and hardly people we would want to spend much time with. So we chalked up the visit to experience, and vowed that we'd try to do a better job next time of vetting these folks. Here are some additional pictures I took during our lunch:

Our First Trip to Quito

To be able to come and go as we please and to conduct much business in Ecuador, we need a national identity document- called a "cedula". It's used for lots of things. So we've already begun the process of obtaining one. Today, we need to go up to Quito to visit a Notary (who is an official that is much more than a notary would be in the United States). Notaries in Ecuador are like paralegals; they might not be actual lawyers, but the state grants them powers to create official documents and notarize the signatures on them.

To get into Quito, we just hailed a taxi right outside the gate of our community, which is right behind Paseo San Francisco.

At left is a little map of the route up into Quito. The major street that runs right in front of Paseo San Francisco continues up the hillsides of the Tumbaco Valley to a tunnel that goes through the mountainside into the city itself.

Any of you who have ever driven into Pittsburgh from the south have dealt with something similar; the highway is rural or suburban right up to the entrance to the tunnel, but when you come out you are right in the middle of the major metropolis.

The drive was kind of neat and even though I was sitting in the back seat, I was able to take some movies looking out the front window. These movies are below:

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) This movie shows us on the main road climbing up to the entrance to the tunnel.

These two movies were taken as we went through the tunnel. Note the taximeter going up in pennies; taxis are pretty cheap around here, as are Ubers:

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From where the tunnel landed us in Quito the taxi only had to go a relatively short distance north to Av El Salvador where the building the notary is in was located. Since we got there ahead of our appointment time, we walked along Av. Portugal over to Parque Carolina (Quito's Central Park) just to see what we could see.

As I said, the tunnel exit was a bit south of where the notary is; it actually comes out at a large interesection with a small park called Plaza Argentina. We had to go around the traffic circle to head north. Along the way, I took some pictures out the car windows, and they will give you a good idea of what most of the downtown area in the "new" part of Quito is like:

Then we drove through an area of lower highrises, and this street scene was typical. MedCity is a chain of pharmacies in Ecuador; kind of like Walgreens. The other big chain is Fybeco, and there is a big one quite near the house. In Ecuador, pharmicists can actually prescribe many medications, although for serious conditions one would see a doctor and get a traditional prescription. But if you want some asthma inhalers, simple antibiotics, and very common medications, you can just describe your symptoms to the pharmacist.

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The taxi dropped us off at the intersection of Av. El Salvador and Av. Portugal; the notary was less than a block south of us on Av. El Salvador. Since we had some time, we decided to walk around for a while, and we headed west on Av. Portugal towards Parque Carolina, just taking in the sights and sounds. They were doing some roadwork on Av. Portugal, which accounts for all the construction equipment you'll see and hear in the movie I took of our walk over to the park. You can come along on our walk by playing the movie at left.

I didn't take any still pictures on the way over to the park, but I did take some when we got there and on the way back. For example, in the movie, at time index 2:04 we passed this flower vendor; Ecuador is known for growing more cut flowers than just about anyplace in the world. And at time index 2:47, I stopped to film a particularly interesting residential tower, right at the corner of Av. Portugal and the park. It was a very interesting building, giving the impression of having been attacked by some huge monster who swiped at the building, ripping out large sections, as some apartments were cantilevered out over others. I am pretty sure there would be some apartments in the building that I wouldn't care to live in, but they all had great views.

On the way back from the corner by the park, I took more still shots, many of which you may recognize from the video. Here are some of them:

At the corner by the park

Greg and Fred at the corner by the park

Parque Carolina

Looking east along Av. Portugal

An odd "Welcome" sign

A side street north off Av. Portugal

We got back to Av. El Salvador and started to head down the street to the building the notary was in; it is the beige building half a block down. I also took another picture at the Portugal/El Salvador intersection, and it is below:

Incidentally, I have no idea why there is a running track over on the southeast corner; you can see it in the aerial views. If it is for the local residents to use for exercise, it's a good idea.

Our meeting to sign paperwork took only about an hour, so pretty quickly we were ready to head back to Cumbaya. This time, we tried our hand at getting an Uber, and it worked even better here than in the States. On the way back to the tunnel by Plaza Argentina, we passed an indication of Ecuadorian affluence. Back at Plaza Argentina, we went around the traffic circle to come to the entrance of the tunnel again.

Plaza Argentina

A hillside near the tunnel entrance is reinforced; good for the apartment buildings up on top!

The trip up to Quito was easy and fun, and I expect we will do it again. Actually, we will have to do it again when we go to the government office to actually pick up our cedulas.

The Paseo San Francisco

One of the nice features of where we live is that just outside the gate to our community is a large shopping mall- the Paseo San Francisco- one of two large malls in Cumbaya.

Not only did we spend a fair amount of time in the mall but to get just about anywhere you at least have to walk around or through it. Just outside our gate is the main exit from the underground garage, and with the traffic on Alfonso Lamina and Maria Angelica Idrovo, the mall has to have someone stop traffic to allow cars the exit the garage, and no matter what time of day it is, we have to watch out for cars coming up the ramp.

Inside the mall are a number of stores at which we purchased things for the house, such as the homegoods store Pycca. There are also numerous places to eat, including a food court, chinese restaurant, coffee shops, bakeries, and even a TGI Fridays. The mall is also where the Cinemark movie theatre is, and we saw a number of features while we were here, as the prices are very cheap- even for IMAX features.

Just inside the nearest mall entrance to us there is a courtyard open to the sky, and it was often nice just to come over and sit and watch the people- while eating ice cream purchased at the Baskin Robbins store in the mall (one of three in Cumbaya).

The mall has car dealerships (really just small showrooms where most Ecuadorians order vehicles; we never saw a huge American-style car dealership), and also our bank, Prudubanco, has an office there, and we spent a good deal of time with the banker who usually mans the office- Jose. Greg, of course, liked to try his Spanish on him (as he often did elsewhere as well), but even Fred and I could usually make ourselves understood.

Because we spent so much time here, we took a number of pictures in and around the mall, and I want to put the best of them in this section. We can begin with a few external views.

As you can see on the aerial view above, on the north side of the mall there is a pedestrian bridge that crosses from the mall over Maria Angelica Idrovo and another street just north. On the north side of that walkway, there are a couple of entrances to the University de San Francisco (for students only) and you can also go all the way down to that street to the north, which is the one we usually take when we are heading down to the Parque Cumbaya. From that walkway, this view looks south at the north side of the mall.

If you can imagine standing at the northeast corner of the mall, at ground level, you will be standing at the entrance/exit to the parking garage underneath the mall.

In this view, I am standing at the northwest corner of the event space east of the mall, right beside the street. Near to me, cars are exiting the garage. (There is another exit at the west side of the mall, near the gate to our community.) A bit in the background, you can see cars lined up to enter the garage.

Now I have turned to look south, directly at this entrance/exit, and you can see cars going in and coming out. The mall never seems to be packed with people, although an awful lot of cars go in and out. It may be that the garage is used by people other than those going to the mall.

Also on this side of the mall is a waiting area for taxis. Usually, if we want a taxi, we find one waiting just outside our community gate.

Here you can see the elevated walkway that carries foot traffic from the University area right to the ground level of the mall. This end of the mall is one level below the main level we usually use, and there is another level below this one.

This end of the mall actually contains some facilities of the University de San Francisco. The school library is here, and there ae numerous classrooms and other facilities as well. One of these is the school's medical clinic- a facility that actually anyone can use. We have gotten Covid tests here, but the clinic deals with all kind of medical issues. In this picture, you can see some of these facilities.

Also at this end of the mall is the Cinemark Theatre complex.

Most of the theatres in the complex are on the same level as the clinic, and this is the main concession and ticketing area. The IMAX theatre is up one level, via these escalators.

Here we are up one level- actually on the main level of the mall. Here is another concession stand and ticketing station, and the large IMAX screen behind them. You can also see some of the stores on this level, including Pycca in the background.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

We took so many candid shots inside the mall on all the days we visited it that the only reasonable way to let you have an easy look at them (if you wish) is to put them in a slideshow.

To view the slideshow, just click on the picture of Paseo San Francisco at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

Before we leave Paseo San Francisco, there are a couple more images I would like you to see. First, below, is a panoramic view of the open air atrium at the shopping mall that I stitched together from three separate images taken from the second floor:

The Main Atrium at Paseo San Francisco

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The other item involving the shopping mall is a movie that I made that begins in the mall's atrium.

Just inside the automatic doors into the atrium area, there is a section of the floor that is made of glass. Walking across it, you can see into the first below-grade level (there are three in this mall), and it is a bit disconcerting to be standing or walking on that glass. So the movie begins with me walking across these glass panels and eventually out the main entrance of the mall.

Once outside, I walked east along the front of the mall, eventually reaching the pedestrian overpass that leads over to the University of San Francisco. This overpass is heavily-traveled, particularly at lunchtime, when many students come to the mall's food court for lunch. The movie ends when I walk up onto the overpass where there are beautiful views east across the Tumbaco valley and to the mountains beyond.

I hope you will watch it, which you can do by clicking on the image at left.

Our Shopping Street: Av. Oswaldo Guayasamin

Avenue Oswaldo Guayasamin, named for a famous Ecuadorian sculptor and painter, is actually a very long street. It runs from the tunnel into Quito all the way down into the Tumbaco Valley and through Cumbaya. Locally, it is the street that most of the stores we shop at- and restaurants we eat at- are located. When it reaches the traffic circle at Paseo San Francisco, it makes a right exit out of the traffic circle, passes our community, and then continues on down the hill and past Scala Mall as well.

Here is a high-level aerial view of the portion of Avenue Oswaldo Guayasamin where we do our shopping and eating. I have also marked where our lawyers are located, and also some other local landmarks:

We (well, I) have taken a great many pictures from the overpass at the top of the hill to the overpass that leads from Paseo San Francisco over to the University. Let's begin at the top of this section of the street where there is an overpass over the avenue near Baguette Bakery (an excellent place for lunch). These first two pictures look northwest from the overpass, and the avenue climbs from here to reach the tunnel into Quito:

Now, I've turned to look down the avenue. I took four pictures here, and I have stitched them together into the panorama below. I know it looks weird, with the overpass to the left and right of me, but I am actually standing on a straight overpass across the avenue:

There are stores and shops on both sides of Avenue Oswaldo Guayasamin that we patronize. The north side of the avenue is to my left, and on that side there are Baguette, the Kywi hardware store, Hornero restaurant, and a few others. On the south side of the avenue are the Fybeca (drugstore), KFC, and, down towards Paseo San Francisco, another, smaller shopping mall called Villa Cumbaya. The Hornero Restaurant has a second floor (where we usually go), and from there I could look across the avenue at all of Villa Cumbaya:

We go to Villa Cumbaya frequently, as it is where the SuperMaxi grocery store is located; we are always running over there for one thing or another. It is a single-story mall, and many of the shops have entry from both the outside and inside of the mall. Villa Cumbaya has parking lot attendants who help people find spaces and (mostly) back into them. They also do other things; this one is, apparently, putting air in someone's tire. This particular picture was taken at the east end of the mall, the closest end to us. Also, at the west end of Villa Cumbaya, there is a recycling station, the most complex I have ever seen. Looking at the picture you can see about ten different categories. In return for separating out your recyclables, you can put them on a little scale and I saw an attendant paying the customer- either with cash or something else, I wasn't sure.

On the other side of the avenue is Hornero- a chain restaurant where we ate occasionally. From the second=floor patio of the restaurant, I looked southeast towards Paseo San Francisco and Villa Cumbaya:

In that picture above, you can see the large, complex traffic circle that is right at the northwest corner of Paseo San Francisco. In addition to the two roads that go right through the middle of it (I said it was complex) there are some interesting sculptures of indigenous Ecuadorian women (the woman carrying the shopping bag is not one of the sculptures). The sculptures are the work of the man for whom the avenue that goes through the circle is named- Oswaldo Guayasamin.

Past the traffic circle we come, of course, to Paseo San Francisco, the shopping, entertainment, and education complex just outside the gates of our community. When you pass the circle, where Avenue Oswaldo Guayasamin turns to the southwest, the street that continues past the front of Paseo San Francisco is Alba Calderon. Down that street you can see the pedestrian overpass that connects the mall to the university, and that's where we'll go next. You can walk up onto the pedestrian overpass, and from the middle of it there are great views.

The View West from the Pedestrian Overpass (towards Quito)

The View East from the Pedestrian Overpass (towards old Cumbaya and the Tumbaco Valley)

Fred took a picture of me on the overpass with Paseo San Francisco and the Tumbaco Valley in the background. And here are a couple of additional views from the overpass:

Fred is looking east from the overpass.

From the overpass, here are Paseo San Francisco and the traffic circle.

To continue looking at the photos from our trip this time to Ecuador, please click the link below.

	February 15 - February 28, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 2
	January 4 - January 17, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 1
	Return to the Index for 2023