Travels in Ecuador - Quito

We were welcomed very warmly by Lucy's family. Lots of them were at the airport because other family members - Lucy's cousin Nidia (Fernie) Villalba, her son and her husband Ashraf - were on the same plane as us.

Family is really important to Lucy's mother's side in a way that I recognise and applaud, but don't practise to the same extent. For example, if Margaret's cousin was flying in for a wedding, we'd be pleased to see them, but we wouldn't greet them en masse at the airport at 11pm. Everyone is put up in family houses, no-one goes to a hotel, and most seemed to be staying with Lucy's Aunt Margui.

We'd expected to stay in a hotel, but Nidia, Lucy's mum, had offered us her house and we were very pleased to accept. It was a kind gesture and meant we could stay with Tom and Lucy. Carlos, Lucy's dad, was there to pick us up and run us to the house (he had even got a driving licence especially), so we were cosseted from the moment we landed in Ecuador.

Margaret and I inside the gated community where Lucy's mum lives.

My body clock adjusted to Ecuador time (six hours behind) very quickly and I woke up at dawn (about 5.30am) to the sound of barking street dogs and crowing cockerels. Tom was also up quite early and he and I had a quick walk around the block. Nidia lives in a gated community in the north of Quito, the capital city, not far from the US embassy. It's adjacent to a couple of similar developments in what is now a middle-class area bordering poorer enclaves. All the gated communities (and there are a lot of them) follow similar lines. The houses look inwards to a communal garden/play areas, there are high walls around, secure underground parking and security guards at two or three access gates.

The area is quite hilly and because it was very clear, Tom was keen for me to see some of the surrounding volcanoes. We couldn't get enough height to see them as it happened, but I did get a good view of the closest one - Pichincha, which is right next to town; expanding Quito covers its eastern flanks.

Pichincha is an active volcano (which doesn't seem to worry anyone among the 2.6 million inhabitants) and last erupted in 1999 when the city was covered in several inches of ash. It rises to 4784m (15,696ft in 'old money') and you can take a cable car up the eastern flank for a great view of Quito.

The city is the highest capital city in the world at 2800m. I know La Paz in Bolivia is higher, but although that's the de facto capital, it has none of the government or administration functions that a capital really should have. The Ecuadorian government sits in Quito and the presidential palace is there.

Walking around at 9,000ft didn't cause me any problems, but run upstairs a couple of times and it was cause for a good puff, but that's probably also true at home.

Tom and Lucy were to be married in a couple of days time, so they had lots of things still to do, but were keen to show us a bit of Quito. We started off by driving down to the centre. Traffic is channelled along one main road as Quito is built along a long valley. this means congestion can be a real problem and there are rules in place which prevent you travelling before a certain time on certain days. Cars with different registration numbers can come in only on certain days in peak time.

The city is a story of 20th century expansion; from the old Spanish centre (now a world heritage site) the city has grown and then exploded north and south. It's not well planned like Georges-Eugène Haussmann's Paris; it didn't have a Wren or a Hawksmoor, it seems to be totally without a theme or grand scheme. It could be my European eyes that can’t discern order among chaos, but at some stage in the next hundred years, if there's enough money, I think Quito will be systematically cleared and redeveloped and it deserves to be one of the world's most beautiful cities - it's certainly in a fantastic location.

Itchimba Park and a view of the old colonial centre of Quito.

We drove up to Itchimbia Park, which overlooks Quito and also gave us a view of the surrounding volcanoes, including snow-capped Cotopaxi. We then drove down into the old colonial centre for a look around. Parking was accomplished in a multi-storey not far away, but without Lucy and Tom's knowledge of the city, we'd never have found it. The old quarter wasn't designed for cars and it's a maze of narrow, one-way cobbled streets.

Gilded within an inch of its life - Jesuit church in Quito

We had an hour or so to stroll around and visited La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús (a fabulously decorated Jesuit church, which was gilded to within an inch of its life - a real statement of the power of the Catholic rulers. My favourite bits were two paintings. One, as you walk through the door, was a classic last judgment scene with the good passing serenely to a better place, but hundreds more being tossed into the fiery pits. The Catholics know how to ram a message home and there's nothing like hitting you with the consequences of sin as soon as you walk into church.

The other painting that caught my eye was a depiction of every sin you could think of. I wasn't sure if it was a warning or a challenge, a bucket list of things to do before you die. Of course, in its day, it would be a warning, a dire warning. There was Lucifer at the top watching over things, while weak-willed humans indulged themselves and then suffered the consequences - fire, serpents and flesh-eating beasts. Lucy said her grandmother told me that when she saw the painting as a young girl, it used to terrify her.

We had lunch in the tourist quarter, then Tom and I had a few drinks and watched some football (Brazil v Switzerland) while Lucy, Margaret and my sister went to have their nails done. We then had to pick up Tom's wedding suit.

There's no welfare state in Ecuador, so everyone needs to work. One of the jobs you don't see in England is the parking attendant. There will be a person who looks after parking in a street and it's their job (as soon as you pull in) to collect your money and give you a ticket. In England, I pay for my parking through an app' on my iPhone. Another job (which we used to have in England, but not now) is the traffic light salesperson. In England it used to be bunches of roses being sold; in Ecuador it is often fruit, but also food and drink. Often, the vendors are fairly young children.

In the evening, we were all invited to tea at Aunt Margui's house. It would be an opportunity to meet more of Lucy's family. Margui lives in a house just to the north of Lucy's mum. It's a large house, surrounded by a large wall and with electrically operated gates and parking inside for three or four cars. It's hard for me to remember all the names, but I'm getting there slowly but surely. Everyone is really friendly and welcoming and everyone makes an effort to speak to us in English. Among the people at the gathering were Lucy's grandmother, Luisa Cadena Gallo, who is 98 and also the baby daughter of her cousin, Ariana Villalba Paredes, who is a few months old. In Ecuador, names follow the Spanish tradition, so a married woman doesn't take the name of her husband and her children will take both the father's name and the mother's. So Margaret would have stayed Margaret Burrows and our children would be called Thomas Rayner Burrows. Lucy is called Lucia Rojas Rodrigues, Rojas being her father and Rodrigues her maternal grandfather; if she has children, then they would be called (for example) Wayne Rayner Rojas.