The last day and night in Quito

My title was actually a bit incorrect as we spent the night in Quito the night before the city tour as we flew home from Quito on a Red Eye at the end of the last day which was the city tour and a visit to the Equator.  

So the hotel above was our last night in Ecuador but the city tour was the day after .  

I liked our guide in Quito a great deal.  He gave us a city tour on the last day that started up a hill so that we were walking down from the top.  Of course, all of South America is catholic so much of the tour was the gorgeous cathedrals.  I believe the above cathedral was the beginning of the tour and we did not go in.

The cathedrals were breathtaking.  Etiel (pronounced ATL like the Atlanta airport...our guide).  I gasped when we went in the first door.  Etiel explained that at least one of the more beautiful cathedrals had been built on top of an Inca place of worship.  Because the Incas worshipped the earth mother, they found the Virgin Mary to be important in the Catholic religion they were trying to "sell" to the natives.  And they kept some of the Incan symbols and decorative borders as well.  But the most interesting fact which explained the amazingly gorgeous insides of the catherdrals covered with gorgeous gold was that the Spaniards worked the Incans as slaves in their gold mines "to death"....so the Incans with a bit of get up and go would learn to be artists and craftsmen in working with the gold to escape the mining duty.  Thus the workmanship was breathtaking!