Quito Day 2 - La Basilica

December 12^th, 2021 

Unfortunately, the weather on my second day in the capital was worse than the first one.  The main activity I’d hoped to do was go up the Teleférico and ideally paraglide but just going up the cable car would have been nice ,but the mountain was shrouded in clouds.  Instead, I decided to return to the Basilica and go inside and up to the top.

It seemed impossible to get the whole building in a photo.

The main doors:

In Quito it is simply known as La Basilica but its full name is Basílica del Voto Nacional (Basilica of the National Vow).  It was a mere $3 entrance fee for foreigners and it was well worth it.  I took the stairs up to the first main level, which was on a platform at the end of back end of the church.  Being a Sunday morning, there was a service in progress.

There was some gorgeous stained glass windows:

Shhh...

Loved the bird gargoyles:

The two main towers stand almost 100 feet high, and you can climb up many stairs to and above the big clocks on each face.  Great views of the city from there.

The back of one of the eight clocks:

There’s also a smaller spire at the far end of the church and to get there you crossed a wooden walkway that was over the concrete ceiling above all of the churchgoers…pretty cool.  The stairs up to the viewpoint were super steep and I was impressed by a few of the older Ecuadorian tourists making their way up there.

Walking the length of the church, above the ceiling but below the roof.

Heading up to the small spire:

The walkway back to the front of the church:

It started to rain near the end of my tour of the basilica, so I ended up heading back to the hostel to hole up for the afternoon and watched a game of American Football.  Sometimes you just have to adjust when it’s rainy season.