Thanks for your message. To answer your question, yes, hiring a car is a viable solution to transport. I don’t think the roads here are insanely dangerous, though you should take care on mountain passes as bus drivers tend to pass on blind curves and fly along the roads. But I think this only is really a problem at night. You will most likely be driving in the day and it is fine. The beauty of driving is that you dont have to get to the bus stations, which tend to be located on the outskirts of the city and are a bit of a mission. You will also find that it knocks off about an hour or so from any journey.
and when you are in your destination there are many cool side trips you can do.

For navigating out of quito, just avoid the high traffic hours in the morning and evening and you will be fine. Get directions from your rental agency or hotel and you will be fine.

As for where to go: definitely check out mindo. Awesome ziplining, bird watching, river tubing. A very chill place to hang out for a couple nights. Best to avoid on the weekend though as all the quitenos tend to make it their weekend getaway. In the weekday it is delightfully dead.

just be sure that you have your international drivers license and your original us license and you’ll have no problem.

if you need any more tips or suggestions, just let me know.

cheers
b-

We are definitley going to go to Papallacta on our trip to Ecuador in early October. You seem quite knowledgeable about things to do outside of Quito.

Presently we are planning to loacate our base in Quito for six days, with at least two trips outside. One will be the market in Otavalo and the other Papallacta. I have a few questions.

Do you recommend Mindo cloud forest?
Does it make sense to rent a car to go to Otavalo and/or Papallacta. Are the roads reasonable and is it possible to navigate getting in and out of old town Quito where we will be staying.

We will also be spending three days in Cuenca and three in Guayaquil.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Best Tom