Um, Quito. It is the capitol of Ecuador, a country that makes most of its trade money on the coast, exploits most of its natural resources in the Amazon but seems to spend most of its money in the Andes mountains.

A sandwich in the mall of Quito's new town costs more than the same sandwich in Manhattan. The new town is an aesthetically unexciting city surpassed by any suburb in the US for beauty. The new town is fairly safe. You can buy some Gyros there sold by Iranian men posing as Arabs.

Old town has superb old architecture. The squares and boulevards are bursting with neglected style and crumbling Spanish colonial charm. You can see the mountains everywhere when you look up in old town. There is a big splendid angel atop a hill visible from every westward-looking vantage point, there is a huge cathedral with magnificent spires visible from every eastward-looking vantage point.

Unesco declaired the old town a world heritage site some ten years ago. That put construction, remodeling and usage restrictions and red tape on all the buildings of old town. This made all the shops move out to new town. Old town should be filled with the sheik people and music in the plazas in the evenings. Instead it is so full of thugs and bandits that the robbers are robbing each other. The only police you see there are privately employed by a private building or bank. When you want to buy a bottle of water after dark it must be passed to you through a steel door slot or revolving change drawer.

I spent weeks on Quito's old town soaking up the atmosphere during the day. At night I stayed in or went to new town for night life. At one point my good man Michael from Chicago came and visited me. We went out in new town and the prostitutes thronging the street there tried to grab his crotch as he walked by.

Just 1 hour by bus out of Quito in any direction and you can reach fantastic snow peaks and volcanos for day hikes or longer. The mountains taunted me. I never saw the mighty Chimborazo uncovered till the day I left. On that day as I crossed the tarmac at 6 AM it showed it self in all its purple and white glory on the horizon. An unbeivable backdrop of promise and power.