Santiago and Tababela in Ecuador

Time for some local transportation to move us from Vina del Mar to Santiago.  So many buses to choose from.  We ended up on a Pullman bus because the guy at the window spoke some English.  I guess that tells you how good my Spanish is.  

A nice comfy ride to Santiago.

A view of the Santiago skyline from the 25th floor of our hotel, GEN.  The city is surrounded by mountains.

The central market was the highlight of all our walking in Santiago.   The fish market also housed several restaurants.  Surprisingly the restaurant didn't smell fishy like the area where they were selling fish.  David and I shared a king crab appetizer at the restaurant, Donde Augusto.  Yum!

Beef being delivered to the meat market.

Almost made me leave the fish market, yuk!  You couldn't pay me to take one.  That is about $2.50 per kilo.

Look at the size of that ear of corn.  I assume this is sweet corn since this is a "food court".

Of course, there were magnificiant old churches.  Love that blue sky.

Santiago was great, but we need to be moving on.  We fly Tame air to Quito the evening of Feb 20th.

We left Santiago about 6:50pm and arrived in Quito around 11:30pm.  We were met by our St. Mary's B&B hosts.  What a wonderful place!  It is in the little community of Tababela close to the airport.

St, Mary's B&B - lovely inside and out.  Two Italian business men joined us and our hosts for breakfast and then the host took us and the Italians to the airport.  The Italians head home to Milan and we head to Coca and our Amazon jungle adventure at Sacha Lodge.