The new airport in Quito, UIO, officially opened February 20 and flights stopped at the previous one the same day.

By most accounts, the new opening was smooth and without major hiccups. The main issue at this point is how long it takes to get to the city on roads that are not up to the increased traffic.

“To facilitate access to the new airport, Quito is building the $48 million La Ruta Viva freeway, which will open in phases by 2014 and aim to reduce the drive time from downtown to the airport to approximately 40 minutes.”

In other words, the airport opened long before the road to the airport was finished. It’s only 24kms from the city, but you’ll have a much shorter trip if you arrive at night–as little as 45 minutes in an official taxi (set fee $26). During the day, it could be three times that long. If you don’t feel like taking a cab, there’s also an $8 shuttle bus to near the previous airport or you can have your hotel or tour company arrange transportation.

This new airport was a necessary step, despite the loss of convenience. The other one was 52 years old, with buildings surrounding it. Some large long-haul jets couldn’t land there, while the new runway is one of the longest on the continent. This should enable more direct flights from Europe.

You’re going to be paying for it though: the departure tax went up $15. That increase should already be in your ticket price if you bought it recently.

If you’re a member of the Priority Pass business lounge membership program, or get it because of your high-end credit card, there’s good news: you’ve got entry to both the domestic and international lounge here. Sign up at Priority Pass if you don’t look forward to regular boarding lounges. Priority Pass – 10% Off

Andean Travel Company has a nice rundown on the new airport with facts and figures. Get it here: Quito Airport fact sheet.

Check out luxury hotels in Quito here.

Ecuador is not an ideal country for building rail lines. You’ve got high mountains to cross, active volcanoes, and locations where tracks can get washed out or buried in mudslides.

So while the cities of Ecuador were once connected by train, over the years the lines have gotten broken up into short runs that are for tourists. They will be connected again soon—more on that later—but the video above is from one famous ride that’s definitely worth doing: the Devil’s Nose. This goes from Aluasi station down into a canyon. This was no easy feat to pull off from an engineering standpoint and as you’ll see from the video, this is some very steep terrain. The really unique part about the trip is that at one point the train stops and reverses direction down switched tracks. The back becomes the front.

We just posted a featuring on touring mainland Ecuador with Metropolitan Touring and part of it is on two train trips I was on. One left Quito and went near the Cotopaxi National Park, the other down the Devil’s Nose.

Sometime this summer though, the whole train line between Guayaquil and Quito will be working again, thanks to a major investment by the government that I saw in action while I was there. Once that happens, Tren Ecuador will be running a luxury coach tour between the two cities, with a few overnight stops along the way, and it should be a fantastic experience.

Meanwhile, check out our latest Ecuador tour story, which goes from Mashpi Cloudforest to the Devil’s Nose.

We’ve posted our full review of Casa Gangotena hotel in the UNESCO World Heritage historic center of Quito, Ecuador. But if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video tour should be worth several thousand, right?

Enjoy the tour of the inside and outside, or just follow that link for a description of what the experience is like, including in the restaurant.

As I posted a while back, there are some unique attributes to Quito’s most recent luxury hotel addition. The view of Plaza San Francisco is spectacular and it changes throughout your stay as the sun moves across the sky and then sets. While I was there I took some time to venture out with one of the chefs on a walking gastronomy tour of Quito. That was enlightening and it shed a whole new light on the great lunch we had afterwards. Even if you don’t stay here, try to come by for lunch or dinner as this is a restaurant that gives you traditional Ecuadoran food, but stepped up to a higher (and prettier) level.

The hotel is situated in a historic mansion, one of the city’s most important, though of course it’s been through a lot of changes to turn it into a hotel with modern wiring and plumbing. Even where the walls were gutted and everything replaced, however, the vibe from the 1920s (when a rebuilding took place after a fire) was the cue for room designs and it all feels rich in an bygone days manner—albeit with nice flat-screen TVs and Wi-Fi.

You can walk out the door and stroll the old city from here or hop in a cab and be at the best modern restaurants in ten minutes. See more here: Gangotena Quito.

What do you picture when you hear the phrase “jungle lodge?” What you conjure up in your head probably looks nothing like Mashpi Reserve Lodge in Ecuador. And the jungle you imagine around it probably looks nothing like what surrounds this lodge.

Mashpi, in a huge private reserve of the same name, is literally in the clouds. In a cloudforest to be precise, with dripping vegetation clinging to trees full of birds. In this fountain of life sits a chic, modern design hotel that looks like it could have been plucked out of a major capital city. But then you look through the glass walls to a scene that feels a million miles from Quito. (In reality, it’s only about two and a half hours away.)

“Mealtimes at Mashpi are far better than you would expect in such an isolated location at the end of a long dirt road. The dramatic dining room, with a ceiling several floors above, has picture windows facing out to the forest and the passing misty clouds. What’s on the plate continually changes as well, a mix of Ecuadorian standards like empanadas and potato soup as well as an array of salads and international items. The homemade breads at all meals are excellent and the lunchtime ice cream bar has flavors made on site from local ingredients, some of them fruits you’ve probably never seen or tasted before.”

Yes the food is excellent, the nature guides experienced, and the rooms very plush for a nature reserve hotel. Again, you could get one of these rooms in a major world capital and be quite happy. Everything at Mashpi has been done with high quality in mind and there’s no place anything like it in the rest of the Americas.

See a Mashpi Reserve video tour and a slideshow from earlier blog posts and check out our full review of Mashpi in Ecuador.

When it comes to foodie capitals, Quito may not be up there with Lima and Mexico City, but it is coming on strong. Chefs from Ecuador are finding ways to update the traditional recipes of the Andes and are making good use of their abundant riches sprouting up from the ground and on trees. On my last trip to Quito, I wanted to dig a little deeper, so I went on a gastronomy walking tour with one of the chefs from Casa Gangotena, the luxury hotel facing Plaza San Francisco.

Casa Gangotena offers their guests a walking gastronomy tour to get a feel for what goes into typical local dishes and then see how they end up on the plate. A morning walk with one of the hotel restaurant’s chefs goes the opposite direction of the tourist district and visits local shops and markets where the locals go to do their shopping. Those interested in the whole process can go back afterwards and help cook lunch. Or you can do what I did and just show up for meal time later.

If you browse tours of Ecuador, you see a lot of food-focused hacienda tours and tours that are all about the food, often with a chocolate, cheese, or coffee angle. Ecuador is a real cornucopia of food. With rich volcanic soil, few desert areas, and an altitude that goes from sea level to snowy summits, it’s a good spot for growing most anything. (Except wine grapes, apparently. I’ve yet to find a decent wine from anywhere north of Peru.)

The bounty is on display when you walk to the markets of Old Quito. We passed one shop selling nothing but bananas, though chef Andres confirmed what I’d heard from another chef: bananas are considered peasant food in Ecuador, so the chefs won’t touch them for their desserts. The other berries and fruits we saw stacked elsewhere are a different story, from apples to blackberries to tropical fruits. This being the region where potatoes originated, you see a dozen kinds in the market stalls.

We also stopped by an herb shop where some sold are used for cooking, others for fixing whatever ails you. People visit these shops like they would a pharmacist, asking what to throw in an infusion to deal with stomach pains, a headache, or a lack of virility. Down the block from the market is a sort of in-town mill, Molinos de San Martín. The machine in the back room grinds grains into flour and sells it in bulk, from whole wheat flour to blue corn meal to quinoa flour. They also sell the traditional blocks of gooey raw sugar used in many households.

At the end, we sampled sweets from two sugar shops. Colaciones de la Cruz Verde, pictured above, makes one single kind of traditional candy, cooked in a swinging giant bowl over a charcoal embers. The other was a show selling all kinds of candy-coated treats, from nuts to popcorn to fava beans. They were so good I ended up returning there a few days later for more.

In the afternoon we sat down to a multi-course lunch, starting with an array of traditional local finger foods, salsas, and cheese dressed up by Gangotena’s chefs. Then we graduated to soup and a delicious giant prawn main course. “We fly in the seafood, Andres explained earlier, and the meat we contract directly through farms we trust. What we buy locally is mostly produce and spices.”)

Each bite of the meal made a little more sense after the morning’s tour and the background information from the chef. If you have some time in Quito to learn more about what you’re eating, this low-key walking tour is a great way to get below the surface of historic Quito—and what’s on your plate.

There’s a charge for this tour, but it’s minimal. To make a reservation, contact Casa Gangotena in Quito.