Today was an action packed day! We began the day with breakfast at 7:30 am in Hotel Otavalo and then began our drive from Otavalo to Quito. After over an hour of driving through the beautiful and mountainous landscape of this area, we arrived at La Mitad Del Mundo (the middle of the world/the equator). This is the Quitsato sun dial. It was beyond exciting to be at the middle of the north and south hemispheres and to stand on the line that we learned over and over about in elementary school. It was also interesting to see the mirror in which the sun reflects over when it is directly overhead at noon on the two equinoxes near March and September 21.
After leaving the equator, we headed closer to Quito when we stopped at La Capilla del Hombre (The Chapel of Man) which is a museum of Oswaldo Guayasamín’s artwork, a documentation of man's cruelty to man, and also a documentation of the potential for greatness within humanity. Guayasamín was an Ecuadorian master painter and sculptor of Quechua and Criollo heritage. He was born in 1919 and died in 1999. The museum displayed more than 30 pieces of his artwork. It was a great learning experience to go to each artwork individually, observe it, and learn a bit about it. One of my favorite works that left the largest impact in my mind was “Condenados de la Tierra.” The painting contains many different images of Africans who represent the Africans that were brought over to America into slavery. Each person has a distant animalistic feature to represent how they were treated like animals. For example, one image shows a man with a nose like a bull and another image shows a man with curled fingers almost like a gorilla. The painting is basically colorless with only black, white, and gray forming the images. The color scheme definitely creates a dark and depressing mood, and the animalistic features leave a lasting feeling of disgust for what our country did to African slaves. Another piece that also had a large impact on me was “Mother of India.” This painting was inspired by his travels to India in 1986 when he saw extreme poverty. The painting depicts a very frail and weak mother hold her baby. Her breasts are dried up, and she cannot feed her baby. This painting also has a lot of black to represent pain and sadness. I found the painting to not only relate to the poverty Guayasamín saw in India, but mothers all over the world who do not have the resources to provide for their children. It was a very powerful image that realistically depicts the seriousness of poverty and not being able to provide the basic necessities to live. Every piece of art in this museum left some sort of lasting effect because they all dealt with either a social injustice or poverty for example.
To change to a brighter note, we then went to our city tour of Quito. We met up with Milton our tour guide. Our tour started at the Basilica which I found very interesting because on the exterior of it instead of typical gargoyles, it had statues of various creatures from the Galapagos Islands like alligators and tortoises. It was definitely something I had not expected to see on the Basilica! We then continued to walk up and down the huge hills of the city to see many more churches. I knew the majority of Ecuadorians are Catholic, but I did not expect to see so many churches in such a small area. We eventually made or way to an altitude of 10,000 feet on top of Panecillo hill. This hill marks the division between the Center area and the South area of the city of Quito. A statue of the virgin stands on top of the hill, and she is displayed in movement like she is practically dancing. I was completely blown away by the view of the city form this hill. It was an excellent observation point for Quito because it has a clear view to the basilica, and you can truly see the span and huge population of Quito. This marked the end of our city tour which we then went to our home, Hotel Quito, for the night. The majority of the class then went out for dinner at Hunter’s across the street which mainly had American food.
