The Pope consecrated Quito's Basilica in 1988.
They started building in 1887, one hundred and one years before - with a budget of 12,000 pesos. It probably explains why it took so long to finish.
Today, that will buy you a sandwich and a fizzy drink but don't bother waiting for any change.
For a long time it was the plain old Sacred Heart of Our Lady. If the French hadn't slept through the alarm in 1532 it would have been Notre Dame but the Spanish got here first and the rest is history - which is probably for the best, as the French were never very good at building empires and got turfed out of everywhere they tried it.
Now it is called The National Vow which sounds disturbingly like a bad Nicholas Cage movie. It does, however, have all the ingredients of a good film plot.
After eventually sneaking past the scary lady on the door who had made it her mission to turn away anyone with a ticket, I climbed to the top of the bell towers. At 115m it gives the best view of Quito - better than the cable car on the west side of town because the clouds are programmed to roll into the valley just as you get high enough to get a decent look-see.
The early stages of the ascent were easy enough. A lift to the fifth floor and a brief pause to admire the rose window and the view of the interior of the basilica from the elevated gallery.
Then things became a little hairy.
The steps wound up another two levels to a bizarre gift shop appearing to sell only pictures drawn by distinctly untalented children and non-specific tat, wrapped in plastic banana leaves.
And sun awnings.
Past the gift shop lay the point at which the music began to take on a more threatening tone. Nick, toupe carefully re-adjusted between takes, parted the curtain of cobwebs. Armed only with a pithy one-liner and a flaming torch, he entered the rickety-roof clambering scene that will form the basis of a lacklustre theme park ride in years to come.
Notre Dame's USP is the death defying climb to the top of the rear bell tower.
First you must traverse the rope-bridge that swings violently beneath your feet, 70m above the basilica's floor. Every second plank is dusty and rotten with decay. More than once they gave way, leaving me dangling in a Cage-esque cliff-hanger, hairpeice turning end over end below me.
As if crossing the century old bridge wasn't difficult enough, I had to contend with people coming in the opposite direction. And particularly those who didn't have the sense to realise that an additional 280lbs of fat from Madison, Wisconsin was unlikely to persuade the tired old ropes to hold out for another century.
Not mentioning any names, but Hetty Cakegobbler - I concede, it might not actually have been her real name but that's what I remember - marched toward me from the far side as I was reaching the middle, otherwise known to scientists as the point of greatest undulation.
Her great mass unleashed a wave in the flimsy rope bridge that surged along its fibres, directly toward me. Thankfully I saw it coming, lashed myself to the handrail and prayed to the Building-Owner that the bridge would hold. It bucked beneath me like a rodeo-bull but I clung on like a limpet - if you can excuse the mixed metaphors.
The wave passed and the bridge remained intact only for me to be faced with the next and even more daunting challenge - getting past her on the less than one man wide walkway when she was, by anyone's measurements, at least three men wide.
There was no option and I immediately backed-up, realising that celebrating the moral high-ground from 70m below it, would be considerably harder with my face buried 18 inches into the roof of the crypt.
She waddled past and offered those jolly pleasantries that people do when they are either blithely unaware of, or more likely entirely unconcerned by their effect on the rest of the world.
I skipped across the bridge realising, too late, that Nick would have made short work of her by jabbing her in the face with his flaming torch before pushing her ruthlessly to her death on the flagstones below.
Ho, hum.
Instead I climbed a vertical ladder 10m to the apex of the basilica roof and stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine, momentarily before my legs gave way and I remembered that leaning out over stomach churning heights is low on my list of things to do of an evening.
It was very high indeed and the small rail around the narrow parapit was more of a trip hazard than a safety feature. I pressed my back to the wall of the tower and, keeping a firm grip on anything that was reliably attached to the building, edged my way to the next ladder.
There are few things that can distract you when you are nose-to-nose with pure terror but counting steps, backwards in German, to the theme-tune of The Monkees, might be regarded as one of them. It helped, and before long I was stepping over the top of the uppermost gantry that lead to the highest point on the basilica.
Sadly, as I did so, the five youth in the bell tower in front of me had just finished their spray paint additions to the structure and were setting about hosing down the roof tiles 20m below.
Nick would have said something dryly derisive before cuffing the youth-leader roughly about the head with his torch and sending them on their way.
I channelled the spirit of the Cage through the medium of coughing quietly and looking down at my feet like someone who hopes he will get away without a beating.
And I do, of course, have form for getting beaten up by gangs of teenagers....but that is a story for another day.
They clearly felt the authority of the Hair-Piece, zipped up and sauntered, one by one, down the death-trap ladders, fooling around as they went, with nothing between one false move and a 300 foot drop.
After I had changed my shorts and dried my trousers in the stiff breeze, I sat down to eat my packed lunch - which was rather disturbed when my ears started bleeding.
It was The Bells.
The Bells.
They started building in 1887, one hundred and one years before - with a budget of 12,000 pesos. It probably explains why it took so long to finish.
Today, that will buy you a sandwich and a fizzy drink but don't bother waiting for any change.
For a long time it was the plain old Sacred Heart of Our Lady. If the French hadn't slept through the alarm in 1532 it would have been Notre Dame but the Spanish got here first and the rest is history - which is probably for the best, as the French were never very good at building empires and got turfed out of everywhere they tried it.
Now it is called The National Vow which sounds disturbingly like a bad Nicholas Cage movie. It does, however, have all the ingredients of a good film plot.
After eventually sneaking past the scary lady on the door who had made it her mission to turn away anyone with a ticket, I climbed to the top of the bell towers. At 115m it gives the best view of Quito - better than the cable car on the west side of town because the clouds are programmed to roll into the valley just as you get high enough to get a decent look-see.
The early stages of the ascent were easy enough. A lift to the fifth floor and a brief pause to admire the rose window and the view of the interior of the basilica from the elevated gallery.
Then things became a little hairy.
The steps wound up another two levels to a bizarre gift shop appearing to sell only pictures drawn by distinctly untalented children and non-specific tat, wrapped in plastic banana leaves.
And sun awnings.
Past the gift shop lay the point at which the music began to take on a more threatening tone. Nick, toupe carefully re-adjusted between takes, parted the curtain of cobwebs. Armed only with a pithy one-liner and a flaming torch, he entered the rickety-roof clambering scene that will form the basis of a lacklustre theme park ride in years to come.
Notre Dame's USP is the death defying climb to the top of the rear bell tower.
First you must traverse the rope-bridge that swings violently beneath your feet, 70m above the basilica's floor. Every second plank is dusty and rotten with decay. More than once they gave way, leaving me dangling in a Cage-esque cliff-hanger, hairpeice turning end over end below me.
As if crossing the century old bridge wasn't difficult enough, I had to contend with people coming in the opposite direction. And particularly those who didn't have the sense to realise that an additional 280lbs of fat from Madison, Wisconsin was unlikely to persuade the tired old ropes to hold out for another century.
Not mentioning any names, but Hetty Cakegobbler - I concede, it might not actually have been her real name but that's what I remember - marched toward me from the far side as I was reaching the middle, otherwise known to scientists as the point of greatest undulation.
Her great mass unleashed a wave in the flimsy rope bridge that surged along its fibres, directly toward me. Thankfully I saw it coming, lashed myself to the handrail and prayed to the Building-Owner that the bridge would hold. It bucked beneath me like a rodeo-bull but I clung on like a limpet - if you can excuse the mixed metaphors.
The wave passed and the bridge remained intact only for me to be faced with the next and even more daunting challenge - getting past her on the less than one man wide walkway when she was, by anyone's measurements, at least three men wide.
There was no option and I immediately backed-up, realising that celebrating the moral high-ground from 70m below it, would be considerably harder with my face buried 18 inches into the roof of the crypt.
She waddled past and offered those jolly pleasantries that people do when they are either blithely unaware of, or more likely entirely unconcerned by their effect on the rest of the world.
I skipped across the bridge realising, too late, that Nick would have made short work of her by jabbing her in the face with his flaming torch before pushing her ruthlessly to her death on the flagstones below.
Ho, hum.
Instead I climbed a vertical ladder 10m to the apex of the basilica roof and stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine, momentarily before my legs gave way and I remembered that leaning out over stomach churning heights is low on my list of things to do of an evening.
It was very high indeed and the small rail around the narrow parapit was more of a trip hazard than a safety feature. I pressed my back to the wall of the tower and, keeping a firm grip on anything that was reliably attached to the building, edged my way to the next ladder.
There are few things that can distract you when you are nose-to-nose with pure terror but counting steps, backwards in German, to the theme-tune of The Monkees, might be regarded as one of them. It helped, and before long I was stepping over the top of the uppermost gantry that lead to the highest point on the basilica.
Sadly, as I did so, the five youth in the bell tower in front of me had just finished their spray paint additions to the structure and were setting about hosing down the roof tiles 20m below.
Nick would have said something dryly derisive before cuffing the youth-leader roughly about the head with his torch and sending them on their way.
I channelled the spirit of the Cage through the medium of coughing quietly and looking down at my feet like someone who hopes he will get away without a beating.
And I do, of course, have form for getting beaten up by gangs of teenagers....but that is a story for another day.
They clearly felt the authority of the Hair-Piece, zipped up and sauntered, one by one, down the death-trap ladders, fooling around as they went, with nothing between one false move and a 300 foot drop.
After I had changed my shorts and dried my trousers in the stiff breeze, I sat down to eat my packed lunch - which was rather disturbed when my ears started bleeding.
It was The Bells.
The Bells.
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