Although beaten by Guayaquil on the population stakes and in economic clout, Quito is the political and cultural hub of Ecuador. In this highly centralized country, there's no mistaking that this is where the power is wielded - by an elite class of politicians, bankers and company directors, often from old, moneyed families.
It's not these sharp-suited business executives that grab your attention though, but the very visible presence of indígenas that form a large part of the city's population. While most other Latin American capitals have been stamped with the faceless imprint of imported US culture, Quito is still a place where Quichua-speaking women queue for buses in their traditional clothes, with metres of beads strung tightly around their necks, and where it's not uncommon to see children carried on their mothers' backs in securely wrapped blankets, as they are in the rural sierra. All this makes for a slightly exotic introduction to the country, though the proliferation of ragged shoe-shine boys and desperate hawkers trying to sell miracle products is a sobering reminder of the levels of poverty in the city, and of the social inequalities that exist here.
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