To Quito with love, and very few dollars in my wallet.

“I do not know why more tourists from the US don't come to Ecuador” commented Mario.  “They think that Ecuador is like Africa, and they want to go only to Galapagos, as if Galapagos is a country of its own” he complained.

I nodded my head as we walked up the steep rise on the way to the Itchimbia Cultural Center from where, Mario assured me, I would be able to have a fantastic view of Quito, with the statue of Virgin Mary off on a hill in one direction, and the basilica in another direction. 

Mario was really getting into this tourism topic.  “The challenge is to figure out how to get the tourists who go to Europe and Thailand, because they are the big spenders.  The tourists we get now are not the tourists who spend money in France and Italy.”

I didn’t know whether I was supposed to feel complimented or insulted at that point.  It was true, however, that as a tourist in Ecuador I was spending very little money.  I was staying in a budget hotel and counting my dollars every night before I went to sleep.  

The tourists I encountered did not seem to be big spenders either.  Quite a few were students—undergraduate and graduate.   Two undergraduate students I met at a pizza place were from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, doing research on how much Ecuador has met the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.  A larger contingent at another table seemed to be graduate students and, boy, did they carefully count the dollar bills and coins when they had to pay up!

The tourists I met on the tour to Cotopaxi –the Romanian, German, and the very bubbly Polish guy who was working and living in Austria—also seemed like budget travelers like me.  In fact, the Polish guy said that even Ecuador seemed to be more expensive than Argentina, where he said food and lodging cost even less.  I was then reminded of a Wall Street Journal report from a year ago that Argentina was the place to visit for the very reasons of the best return on the US dollar.

As we continued walking and panting, I thought about the typical question I was asked: “why Ecuador?” 

When people talk about their plans to travel to Ireland or Japan or even the Galapagos Islands, the listener has only appreciative things to say or ask.  But, with Ecuador itself, it is a question that almost seems like it is meant to question the mental capacity of the person wanting to travel to that country.

I had always wanted to go back to South America after my only visit there over the years—back in the summer of 1988, I went to Venezuela with a few fellow graduate school students.  We were to work on an economic development strategy for the region surrounding the city of Maracaibo.  The first two days we spent in Caracas, after landing there on a PanAm flight.  It is new world now where PanAm has been condemned to history!

The three weeks in Venezuela were wonderful.  I ate a lot of arepas with cheese and ketchup—I had yet to shed my vegetarian upbringing.  I was pleasantly surprised when charming Venezuelan girls tried to strike up conversations with me, much to the amusement of the gringo grad students I was with.  One day, John seriously asked me, “hey Sriram, what is your secret?”  My guess was that it was all because I looked like a local, and was less a threat compared to their very alien looks and John’s aggressive behavior.

Ecuador was not on the top of my list, however.  It was Argentina that I wanted to get to because of my interest in that country going back to my younger days in Neyveli when, as a news junkie, I was intrigued by the Peronistas who were screwing up the country.  Later, when the Falklands War broke out between Argentina and the UK, I was cheering Argentina only because I wanted the colonizer Britain kicked out from yet another place.  And was so disappointed when Britain and Margaret Thatcher prevailed.

Watching Evita much later in life confirmed all the more that I wanted to check out the Casa Rosada. 

Ecuador was, thus, my second choice.  Nonetheless, it was a preferred choice.  So, when I was asked “why Ecuador” my immediate thought was “why not?”

I didn’t tell Mario all these, but agreed with his bottom line that not many tourists from the States seemed to want to visit Ecuador.  I made sure I said “States” and didn’t repeat the earlier mistake of saying “America.”

We reached the top of the hill and the Cultural Center itself was a gorgeous sight.  Mario said it was also referred to as the Crystal Palace, and it certainly looked like one.