La Ronda is a small street in Quito between two bridges. Down by the end, by the Puente Nuevo and across the poem etched on the wall, there is the café where Pépe plays the panpipes every Saturday night and locals and tourists drop coins in his guitar case. The tourists never change because they were never from La Ronda, but the locals aren’t pimps and dealers anymore. Now they are restaurant owners and artists, like in the old days, chulla quitenos like Hugo Aleman, who wrote the poem on the wall. “La Ronda street / You are the traffic / Of human disorientation”.

On Sunday the café was cold. The heat was off last night so people could warm the room up dancing. Pépe drank a canelaso, a hot cinnamon and fruit drink with liquor, from Julio’s stand outside.

“That’s where Juan Montalvo was when President Moreno died.” Pépe pointed to a yellow and blue house where a mannequin in a 19th century Quiteño dress stood on the balcony.

“They were enemies and when Moreno was assassinated Montalvo ran down the street shouting ‘It was my pen that killed him!’”

Julio wiped his machete on his apron and took a pineapple from the basket next to his cutting board. Pépe walked back inside and sat down at the 100-year-old pianola in the corner and started to play “Esta Vieja Guitarra”, the quarter’s song.

“For awhile it was bad,” said Julio. “Then we woke up.” Old houses with hidden courtyards were restored. The old Hospital de la Misercodordia is now the City Museum of Quito. Bars and restaurants serving canelasos and empanadas de viento, giant cheese and air filled turnovers, are everywhere. La Ronda, whose name comes from the night guards who once patrolled the street, is like a poem itself, says Julio. The past is lost, but the feeling is not.

During the day painters work in open-door studios and passers-by stop in to watch. Partygoers from last night go to Picanteria La Ronda for hangover tonics. Come nightfall people will gather in the cafés to talk and dance and when they walk home there will be the top-hat clown making balloon hearts for lovers under the spell while the blind accordion player under the yellow light of the Puente de la Paz plays “Esta Vieja Guitarra” with his eyes closed because he says he feels the difference.

Pépe got up for another canelaso.

“If you were the president’s enemy you could get your book published”, he said.

“I am,” Julio said, picking up his machete. “He just doesn’t know it”. And off went the pineapple’s crown.