I'm in Otavalo right now, (this is the third time now, and the first time I´ll be spending more than a day here) about 2 hours north of Quito.
So I´m now at Day 48, I think overall I'm doing well.
So, going back to last Wednesday, that evening there was a football game on TV, Brazil vs. Ecuador. The importance that Ecuadorians place on football games, especially one with their national teams playing the world's top team, approaches the kind of energy involved in the Carnaval in Rio. We went to a bar in the Mariscal with a large screen TV. Very quickly, the place was absolutely packed. Then the game began. The energy in that little bar, whenever the ball went close to either end of the field, was incredible. When the score got to 3-0 Brazil, some people got up and left. At 4-0 there was an upset roar. At 5-0, the people got the bartender to shut the TV off. It was quiet appalling actually, as the Brazilians pulled off some insanely lucky goals, and the Ecuadorians missed some really easy ones. In summary, football is a religious-scale spectator sport, that is very cool to both watch and participate in.
Saturday, with my classes finished the day before, I packed up everything and went to the bus station for a bus to Mindo, but found out that the next one didn't leave until 3:45 that afternoon. I ended up, instead, going to a BBQ at my friend Ivan's house, and elected to go to Mindo the next day. Ivan, as it developed, lives a long way from the Metro part of Quito, and it took over an hour going around snaking bypasses and freeways to get there. After the whole group of us arrived, we went out on our trip to get things for the BBQ. The meat market was truly disgusting, with all the bits of dead animals hanging everywhere, and the smell is nauseating. The BBQ, in summary, was fabulous, with this rather old coal barbeque, cooking chicken and hot dogs. After the food, out come the guitars, and we listen to the Ecuadorian guys play various classic songs while Ivan's dad built a fire in the middle of the backyard out of bits of construction materials. Almost everyone left at 10, the rest of us went to the local karaoke bar, which basically entailed Ivan and the Ecuadorians, boozed up, singing along to all the songs (in perfect tune and rhythm), and a bartender who obviously thought that white people (there were 3 of us at this point), equated to profit potential, and kept hassling Isaak to buy more beer. The boys were singing at the top of their lungs all the way home too. In all it was a great party to finish my time in Quito, and will leave me with good memories of the otherwise, overcrowded, overpolluted city.
Sunday, got up early, Ivan's mom gave me a cup of hot blueberry juice. Took a bus back to the Metro, stopped for a breakfast of fruit at this really cool restaurant, the Fruteria Montserrate, and sat in the bus station for 3.5 hours waiting for the bus to Mindo. The road to Mindo is really, very beautiful, with the road, rolling through lush, coastal cloud forest. However, I was feeling shitty from a lack of sleep, food and the bus going top speed around crazy, winding corners. I got to Mindo, which is 2.5 hours NW of Quito. It was really beautiful there, very quiet. My time there was to be a relaxation period to start off this new leg in my trip. There were a group of clowns/entertainers in the central parka doing juggling and other tricks for a crowd of little school kids. I found the hostal, recommended by Luis, La Casa de Cecilia. Cecilia, is a very friendly, middle-aged woman, and judging from the setup (outdoor kitchen with tile flooring), has done really well for herself here. Went out to find dinner, when I came back there were 2 girls from Colorado that had moved into the dorm. Sarah, 22, and Betsy, 32, who apparently came here because they didn´t know what they wanted to do with themselves. Woke up the next morning, it was very nice to wake up to the sounds of birds and running water rather than the morning rush hour traffic. Mindo is technically in the coastal region of Ecuador, so the humidity is high here, and there are a decent number of mosquitoes (thank god for antimalarials). The girls and I went out on a hike after breakfast, going out past small farms and hostels. We spotted a large black snake (somewhere around 5 to 6 feet long) in the grass off the road, so there are large serpents around here. We found this fabulous little restaurant for dinner, Caskesu, which opened in May, housing a B&B in small Suessian-like buildings. Good chili. Tuesday, we went back for breakfast, and talked a lot with Susan, the American woman who owns the place with her Ecuadorian husband. She apparently was a Peace Corp. volunteer working in Ecuador, and is a trained nurse, that felt the need to get out of that line of work before she got too old, and so came back to Ecuador and opened the place with her husband, and got the father of her godchildren to build it. As well, with the town with a bank, and her credit card machines, she is the de facto Bank of Mindo. She served the best coffee I´ve had since I arrived in Ecuador. We bought tickets from her to ride a cable tram for a hike to a group of 7 waterfalls near Mindo. So we hiked up to the tram, called a tarabita, and rode it across the valley, and hiked north to the largest of the falls, Cascada Reina. There was a group of students from an environmental club arriving the tram when we got back. We hiked south down to the other 6 waterfalls, but it started to rain, so we decided to head back early. Met a pair of girls from Maine, and a couple from Vancouver, all of whose names escape me, on the way back up. The students were going across the tram first, but with all 7 of us foreigners, and about 2 dozen of the students left, the tram operator decided the cables were getting too hot, and told us we´d have to hike back across the valley, in the rain, to the other side. So off we trudged, one of the boys in the student group, who spoke near-perfect, and rather formal, English, talked with us the way back. Apparently, he learned his english from music, loves Christina Aguilera, and wanted to grow up to be an environmental lawyer. I also had a wasp sting me on the neck, which left me with swelling and an ache for the rest of the day. Because of the tram failure, we got a free truck ride back to Mindo. All in all, this was a great start to this new leg of trip, feeling very relaxed now after 6 weeks in Quito.
Yesterday, the Colorado girls left at the crack of dawn to catch the early bus back to Quito. I spent the morning doing sewing and other maintenance on my things. It was around this time that the sickness began to set in, with a headache and upset stomach, but I didn't think it was bad at the time. I tried to do my email in Mindo, but the connection there was painfully slow and I couldn't send anything, so I aimed to get the 2 pm bus out of Mindo. I proceeded to run around packing and washing my clothes. I didn't know you had to hook up the gas to the dryer, all my clothes were slightly damp as I put them in my pack. I made the bus with 5 minutes to spare. On the bus ride back up, it became evident that was I actually quite sick. Because of my time in Mindo, I'd come down with acclimatization sickness that you get from your body adapting to the equatorial coastal climate. Got to Quito, the girls from Maine elected to spend the night in Quito, and the Vancouver couple had a wedding to go to on the Galapagos. I flagged a cab to the bus station, and took the bus here, to Otavalo, as I wasn't entertained with spending a night in Quito. The movie they showed on the bus was The Green Mile, and the old man sitting next to me talked to about how the imprisonment style and treatment of criminals in the movie used to be common in Ecuador until fairly recently. He also told me how buses like the one we were on, at that time of day (around 6:30 pm), when things got quiet, were the most likely times for hold ups and robberies. About an hour from Otavalo, the sickness got to me, and I threw up, mostly over the side of the bus as we hurtled along the highway, as I´d had enough presence of mind to open the window in time. The old man gave me a plastic bag and a few napkins to clean up the mess. Feeling light-headed and exhausted, I got off at Otavalo. I had no idea where in Otavalo I was, so I got a cab to take me to a good, cheap hostel. Went this one, Casa de Corea, not surprisingly run by Koreans. They charged me $5, but I had to unpack half my bag to get the money, and when I gave her a 10, she said she needed my passport and we had to go down the street to another place to get change. I found out that my shampoo ahd leaked in my bag, all over one pair of pants and my alarm clock, which still seems to be ticking, and smells like orange now. It was all getting too much by this point. Managed to get up to my room, which was clean, but run-down, with chips out of the walls and bathroom fixtures. it smelled heavily of cigarettes, and had a very modern Daewoo TV. The bed was the hardest I've ever slept on, but felt good in the state I was in. Tried my best to clean the vomit off everything and hang my other clothes, still damp, to dry. The coffee I had in my bag leaked all over my white T-shirt. Somehow, in the end, I managed to get everything together, and slept like the dead. I guess the lesson from this is trying to find getting from Mindo to Otavalo, with laundry, in one day.
This morning, I took a damage report. aside from wet clothes, and a shampooed clock, everything was more or less fine. Leaving the horrible hostel, I found a place for breakfast, Casa de Frutas. The place gives the air of being a hippie commune, with dozens of potted plants taking up most of the space in the building and courtyard, cages full of small colourful birds, the Beatles and Bob Marley playing in the background, tie dye cloth hangings over all the door frames, collections of masks, and various other bits of artwork, hammocks and dream catchers. Anyway, I had this great breakfast of eggs and fruit, and the owner, a woman called Sheree, asked if I wanted a place to stay, as the one room she has to rent was vacated earlier this morning The room was nice, with bamboo mats and posters of Che Guevara, so I took it. This is fabulous as far as I'm concerned, and makes a lovely change from last night.
Signing off,
Andrew
25.10.07
18.10.07
Stories from the Mosaic City
Hey Everyone
So I´m at Day 40. Six more days, and it will be the longest I´ve ever been away from home.
This Saturday, I´m also done my time in Quito. 6 weeks has gone by fairly quickly. I feel like I´ve been here for longer though. Not sure yet where I´m going to go yet, but I will be writing my next update from a different city.
Wednesday, I went out looking for the post office, as I have a number of gifts, and things that I won´t need on this trip, to send back. I couldn´t find it anywhere! I then got caught in the afternoon downpour, went down to Luis´ office (yes, it is a regular hangout for many of us) and discovered another branch of the post office is only 2 blocks up the street. Dumb!
Baked more bread on Thursday (I´ve gotten rather good at it, especially in absence of any kind of measuring utensils). Incidentally, my teacher that week, Blanca, was extremely pregnant, and was supposed to have a cesarian yesterday, but the baby decided to come out on Monday. I haven´t seen her, but apparently both mom and child are fine. I played scrabble with her on Thursday.
Friday was a holiday, so everything last weekend ground to a total halt. Many of my friends went down a big, popular beach on the coast. Emma and Carly (the Brits) left for a week long trip to the Amazon, haven´t heard anything from them since. Saturday, I went with Leo and Susan up on my second trip to Otavalo. Leo and Susan, after spending few of weeks with them, are just really cool. The two of them have been to all kinds of places around the world, they were in Afghanistan when the Soviets were invading in the ´70s. Anyway, that day, I bought myself a travel hat, yes, it is a panama. That day too, we were walking through the main plaza when a wedding was pouring out of one of the churches, very pretty it was.
On Monday, first day of my last week of classes (new teacher, Lucia, big on pronunciation). I went for a walk in the Parque Metropolitiano, which is the huge forested area in the middle of the city, and it´s a block behind my house. It´s beautiful, and surprisingly quiet, and all the trees are eucalyptus, the seeds of which, we´re smuggled in from Australia by one of Ecuador´s early presidents, about 120 years ago. I´d planned to go visit the Guayasamin Museum, a contemporary art musuem that Susan had recommended. I wandered through a field with cows and was chased by 3 large, and very loud, dogs. I found a small decrepit building at the top of a hill, which was love notes scratched onto almost all of the space on it´s walls. Coming down the hill, I came to a beautiful house, in bright yellow, in the middle of the woods, with no steel gates or bars on it´s windows like homes in the rest of the city, with a neat little garden growing down the hill from it. I came out of the Parque, in Bellavista, the city´s high-class neighbourhood. The homes there are expensive, even by Canadian standards. There was a little girl on the sidewalk further down leading a tiny white terrier with a piece of chicken tied to the end of a string. I found the Museum, but found out it closes at 5. It was 5:30.
Yesterday, I took a walk to El Guapulo, Quito´s "bohemian" barrio. I got lost, inevitably, raced a huge rain storm down through the streets, lost the race, and hunkered down, soaked to the bone, on the doorstep of a closed cafe, El Guapulo Arte. The man who ran the cafe, called Amaru, let me in when he found me out there, and gave me this hot fruit cider drink that was mixed with some kind of liqueur. So here I sat on the balcony patio, with a hot drink, watching the storm rage. The thunder was actually so loud my ears were ringing a little. After the storm, and thanking Amaru for allowing me to dry and warm, I got home in time to make dinner for everyone in my apartment.
Still surviving...
So I´m at Day 40. Six more days, and it will be the longest I´ve ever been away from home.
This Saturday, I´m also done my time in Quito. 6 weeks has gone by fairly quickly. I feel like I´ve been here for longer though. Not sure yet where I´m going to go yet, but I will be writing my next update from a different city.
Wednesday, I went out looking for the post office, as I have a number of gifts, and things that I won´t need on this trip, to send back. I couldn´t find it anywhere! I then got caught in the afternoon downpour, went down to Luis´ office (yes, it is a regular hangout for many of us) and discovered another branch of the post office is only 2 blocks up the street. Dumb!
Baked more bread on Thursday (I´ve gotten rather good at it, especially in absence of any kind of measuring utensils). Incidentally, my teacher that week, Blanca, was extremely pregnant, and was supposed to have a cesarian yesterday, but the baby decided to come out on Monday. I haven´t seen her, but apparently both mom and child are fine. I played scrabble with her on Thursday.
Friday was a holiday, so everything last weekend ground to a total halt. Many of my friends went down a big, popular beach on the coast. Emma and Carly (the Brits) left for a week long trip to the Amazon, haven´t heard anything from them since. Saturday, I went with Leo and Susan up on my second trip to Otavalo. Leo and Susan, after spending few of weeks with them, are just really cool. The two of them have been to all kinds of places around the world, they were in Afghanistan when the Soviets were invading in the ´70s. Anyway, that day, I bought myself a travel hat, yes, it is a panama. That day too, we were walking through the main plaza when a wedding was pouring out of one of the churches, very pretty it was.
On Monday, first day of my last week of classes (new teacher, Lucia, big on pronunciation). I went for a walk in the Parque Metropolitiano, which is the huge forested area in the middle of the city, and it´s a block behind my house. It´s beautiful, and surprisingly quiet, and all the trees are eucalyptus, the seeds of which, we´re smuggled in from Australia by one of Ecuador´s early presidents, about 120 years ago. I´d planned to go visit the Guayasamin Museum, a contemporary art musuem that Susan had recommended. I wandered through a field with cows and was chased by 3 large, and very loud, dogs. I found a small decrepit building at the top of a hill, which was love notes scratched onto almost all of the space on it´s walls. Coming down the hill, I came to a beautiful house, in bright yellow, in the middle of the woods, with no steel gates or bars on it´s windows like homes in the rest of the city, with a neat little garden growing down the hill from it. I came out of the Parque, in Bellavista, the city´s high-class neighbourhood. The homes there are expensive, even by Canadian standards. There was a little girl on the sidewalk further down leading a tiny white terrier with a piece of chicken tied to the end of a string. I found the Museum, but found out it closes at 5. It was 5:30.
Yesterday, I took a walk to El Guapulo, Quito´s "bohemian" barrio. I got lost, inevitably, raced a huge rain storm down through the streets, lost the race, and hunkered down, soaked to the bone, on the doorstep of a closed cafe, El Guapulo Arte. The man who ran the cafe, called Amaru, let me in when he found me out there, and gave me this hot fruit cider drink that was mixed with some kind of liqueur. So here I sat on the balcony patio, with a hot drink, watching the storm rage. The thunder was actually so loud my ears were ringing a little. After the storm, and thanking Amaru for allowing me to dry and warm, I got home in time to make dinner for everyone in my apartment.
Still surviving...
9.10.07
Went off to a remote village, had the bus break down, it doesn´t stop raining
Day 32
It´s been raining for 13 straight hours now, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Today is the memorial day for the death of Che Guevara, who rivals Jesus here as a respected figure in society, there are celebrations across the country, including one here in Quito, held on the city´s university campus. The big one apparently though is in Guayaquil.
So going back to Tuesday, I felt better after a good sleep, and my sickness cleared up by Wednesday. I´ve graduated now to reading the newspaper, my periodico of choice is El Comercio, the country´s more left-leaning paper. As of Wednesday, the rainy season has officially begun. This constitutes fairly heavy rain every afternoon here, with the exception of these last 2 days. Also on Wednesday, I managed to lock myself out of my room in the apartment (in typical Andrew-esque fashion), and had Leo spend a good half hour trying to break in, however, because the lock on my door is the only one that was properly assembled, he was unable to do so, and I ended up needing to get the master keys from Cesar. Thursday evening, a group of us went up to my apartment for a tiramisu night. The tiramisu itself was actually really good, after it had been in the freezer for long enough, the process of making it was loads of fun and extraordinarily messy. Good fun though.
Friday, I decided I needed a break from Quito, debated whether to get a ticket, but it started to rain, so I abandoned this idea. So, on Saturday, I got up early went down to the bus terminal, went to Latacunga, about 2 hours south of Quito. A few observations: first, it takes a long time to leave the "suburbs" of Quito, and all there are people living all along the Panamericana, the main highway that runs the length of the continent. About Latacunga, it´s a fairly large, farming town, and due to a HUGE food market selling masses of all kinds of plants and dead animals, it´s pretty smelly too. The land around, however, looks like the Okanagan, very dry and dusty, but with more people and higher mountains. I decided this wasn´t really a good escape and got on a bus for Zumbahua, a small town 2 hours west of Latacunga. A little way up the hills out, the bus picked up a flat and rolled to a mechanic and spent about half an hour replacing the tire. The road up out of the valley is lined with aloe vera the size of Volkswagen´s and small collections of crosses on the switchbacks, where drivers failed to navigate the corners. Soon, we rose out onto the ´paramo´, the high altitude plains. The land is stark grey, very dusty, with patchwork farms all over the hills, which were clouded over as we went along. The conditions that people live under here is also very stark, places that I reckon I would die of hypothermia in if I had to live in them. Some still live in mud and straw huts. The inequality of living conditions here in comparison to the cities is almost surreal, it´s almost hard to believe that people live under these conditions. After about an hour, the llamas began to appear, as did more indigenous people. However, even up there, people had spray painted the rocks along the road with campaign slogans of the recently past election.
When I reached Zumbahua, I didn´t know we had arrived until the driver told me to get off, the whole area was clouded over, and the town is downhill from the main road. Almost immediately after getting off the bus, a boy called Jason, came bouncing out one of the roadside stores and asked if I needed a ride to Laguna Quilotoa, the volcanic crater an hour to the north where most of the tourists head
to. After understanding that I was only here for a night, he took meback to the store and gave me food, then drove me down to a hotel on the town square, called the Condor Matzi. After Jason viciously beat the front door, the owner came out, took one look at me, broke into a huge smile and took me up to a room. The room had no exterior windows, but had a nice warm bed. I sat out on the hotel balcony watching the locals play volleyball in the square, and the local dogs beat each other up. The night there was very cold, due to it´s elevation of about 4000m above sea level.
I slept well that night, despite waking up several times. On Sunday morning, I walked out of the hotel to find that a bunch of woman had set up stalls all along the street, selling breakfast. I sat on the sidewalk and ate my eggs and potato chips, watching the dogs slink around the stalls trying to catch the scraps from the stoves. It was evident that foreigners are very much a rarity here, with almost
everyone looking at me as they walked by. After breakfast, the owner of the hotel told me about the "minga" happening here to put in a new water main along the main road. Minga is a Quechua word, and it´s the word to describe when many people in an area, sometimes as far as 3 days travel away, come together to achieve a communal project. I decided to climb the hill above the town, with a white cross on top, so I asked a man about how to get to the top, and he got his little daughter to be my guide. Her name was Marisa, and she took me up what must have been a llama trail, almost straight up the side of the hill, lined with these sharp cactus plants, that I avoid after catching my pants on one. I am really unacclimatized to 4000m and
had to stop often to catch my breath. We got to thetop after about an hour and half, the view from the top was fabulous. We ate apples and went back down (an easier route).
After packing up, and lunch at Jason´s store, got on the bus back to Latacunga, and then to Quito. Halfway back to Quito though, the bus broke down, some problem with the rear axle. After a long drawn-out fiasco regarding the bus, which involved some people getting on and off the bus 3 or 4 times, we rolled to a gas station where most of the passengers got onto another bus. There were a few of us left, so we had to stand out on the road, in the pouring rain, many of them freezing, as a result, until a pair of police trucks picked us up. We rode in the still pouring rain in the back of the pickups until the next bus terminal, and got on a bus home. Got home, albeit very wet, but generally happy. Yesterday, After classes, tried to do this
email, but the electricity went out, which was extraordinarily frustrating, as I was almost finished.
This brings us to today. With lots of rain, the conditional tense in classes, and playing billiards all afternoon.
It´s been raining for 13 straight hours now, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Today is the memorial day for the death of Che Guevara, who rivals Jesus here as a respected figure in society, there are celebrations across the country, including one here in Quito, held on the city´s university campus. The big one apparently though is in Guayaquil.
So going back to Tuesday, I felt better after a good sleep, and my sickness cleared up by Wednesday. I´ve graduated now to reading the newspaper, my periodico of choice is El Comercio, the country´s more left-leaning paper. As of Wednesday, the rainy season has officially begun. This constitutes fairly heavy rain every afternoon here, with the exception of these last 2 days. Also on Wednesday, I managed to lock myself out of my room in the apartment (in typical Andrew-esque fashion), and had Leo spend a good half hour trying to break in, however, because the lock on my door is the only one that was properly assembled, he was unable to do so, and I ended up needing to get the master keys from Cesar. Thursday evening, a group of us went up to my apartment for a tiramisu night. The tiramisu itself was actually really good, after it had been in the freezer for long enough, the process of making it was loads of fun and extraordinarily messy. Good fun though.
Friday, I decided I needed a break from Quito, debated whether to get a ticket, but it started to rain, so I abandoned this idea. So, on Saturday, I got up early went down to the bus terminal, went to Latacunga, about 2 hours south of Quito. A few observations: first, it takes a long time to leave the "suburbs" of Quito, and all there are people living all along the Panamericana, the main highway that runs the length of the continent. About Latacunga, it´s a fairly large, farming town, and due to a HUGE food market selling masses of all kinds of plants and dead animals, it´s pretty smelly too. The land around, however, looks like the Okanagan, very dry and dusty, but with more people and higher mountains. I decided this wasn´t really a good escape and got on a bus for Zumbahua, a small town 2 hours west of Latacunga. A little way up the hills out, the bus picked up a flat and rolled to a mechanic and spent about half an hour replacing the tire. The road up out of the valley is lined with aloe vera the size of Volkswagen´s and small collections of crosses on the switchbacks, where drivers failed to navigate the corners. Soon, we rose out onto the ´paramo´, the high altitude plains. The land is stark grey, very dusty, with patchwork farms all over the hills, which were clouded over as we went along. The conditions that people live under here is also very stark, places that I reckon I would die of hypothermia in if I had to live in them. Some still live in mud and straw huts. The inequality of living conditions here in comparison to the cities is almost surreal, it´s almost hard to believe that people live under these conditions. After about an hour, the llamas began to appear, as did more indigenous people. However, even up there, people had spray painted the rocks along the road with campaign slogans of the recently past election.
When I reached Zumbahua, I didn´t know we had arrived until the driver told me to get off, the whole area was clouded over, and the town is downhill from the main road. Almost immediately after getting off the bus, a boy called Jason, came bouncing out one of the roadside stores and asked if I needed a ride to Laguna Quilotoa, the volcanic crater an hour to the north where most of the tourists head
to. After understanding that I was only here for a night, he took meback to the store and gave me food, then drove me down to a hotel on the town square, called the Condor Matzi. After Jason viciously beat the front door, the owner came out, took one look at me, broke into a huge smile and took me up to a room. The room had no exterior windows, but had a nice warm bed. I sat out on the hotel balcony watching the locals play volleyball in the square, and the local dogs beat each other up. The night there was very cold, due to it´s elevation of about 4000m above sea level.
I slept well that night, despite waking up several times. On Sunday morning, I walked out of the hotel to find that a bunch of woman had set up stalls all along the street, selling breakfast. I sat on the sidewalk and ate my eggs and potato chips, watching the dogs slink around the stalls trying to catch the scraps from the stoves. It was evident that foreigners are very much a rarity here, with almost
everyone looking at me as they walked by. After breakfast, the owner of the hotel told me about the "minga" happening here to put in a new water main along the main road. Minga is a Quechua word, and it´s the word to describe when many people in an area, sometimes as far as 3 days travel away, come together to achieve a communal project. I decided to climb the hill above the town, with a white cross on top, so I asked a man about how to get to the top, and he got his little daughter to be my guide. Her name was Marisa, and she took me up what must have been a llama trail, almost straight up the side of the hill, lined with these sharp cactus plants, that I avoid after catching my pants on one. I am really unacclimatized to 4000m and
had to stop often to catch my breath. We got to thetop after about an hour and half, the view from the top was fabulous. We ate apples and went back down (an easier route).
After packing up, and lunch at Jason´s store, got on the bus back to Latacunga, and then to Quito. Halfway back to Quito though, the bus broke down, some problem with the rear axle. After a long drawn-out fiasco regarding the bus, which involved some people getting on and off the bus 3 or 4 times, we rolled to a gas station where most of the passengers got onto another bus. There were a few of us left, so we had to stand out on the road, in the pouring rain, many of them freezing, as a result, until a pair of police trucks picked us up. We rode in the still pouring rain in the back of the pickups until the next bus terminal, and got on a bus home. Got home, albeit very wet, but generally happy. Yesterday, After classes, tried to do this
email, but the electricity went out, which was extraordinarily frustrating, as I was almost finished.
This brings us to today. With lots of rain, the conditional tense in classes, and playing billiards all afternoon.
1.10.07
Sick, finally clicking in to Spanish, getting tired of Quito
Day 24
I´m sick.
With evident concentration on my stomach, it was almost certainly something I ate, however, I can´t figure out what it would have been. It isn´t antibiotics-kind of bad yet, but it sure doesn´t feel great.
So, as of this past wednesday, I´m back to doing morning Spanish classes, which made everythng considerably easier to understand. That afternoon, on a whim, I went with Hannah and Anna-Maria (one of the teachers), to La Mitad del Mundo, basically the tourist attraction of the Equatorial line. Ít isn´t worth my time to write about it. There is a big monument there, that actually isn´t on the Equator (420 m off), and that´s about it. My Zenit, which for those of you who unfamiliar with it, is my Soviet-built film SLR camera, was not winding properly, so all I have is a few digital pictures. Went up the museum that is actually on the Equator, but it was deemed too expensive, they´ve jacked up the price since our guidebooks were written. Nice bus ride to and from though. That evening, there was a major soccer game at the Estadio Olympico, the city´s football stadium, which basically meant that with everyone rushing there, and parking wherever they damn well please, I beat the bus home. Barcelona (from Guayaquil) vs. The Dept. of Quito. Apparently, despite assumptions, Quito whooped Barcelona, 4-0, despite Barcelona claiming to be the best team in the country.
With the election to the Constitutional Assembly this week, political campaigning was at it´s height, entire tour buses roam the streets, usually with full brass bands and at least 2 dozen flag wavers each, followed by about 8 more cars covered in campaign posters. For those not watching the Ecuadorian news, and really, with no major outlets in North America tracking it, why would you? The President´s political party, La Partido Patria, won with a whopping 65% of the vote, meaning that there will probably be big changes happening soon.
For thursday, with the ban on alcohol for the weekend, there was a big party, and we all (there were 10 of us) went out dancing. There are some really cool clubs here in Quito, with a mixture of Latin and Western music. Friday, after classes, I decided to do a bit of volunteering and worked on correcting the grammar of my school´s website, which is actually really time-consuming, as not only is it grammatically terrible, and frequently redundant, but also idiomatically awful. Saturday, the plan had been for 3 of us, Dan, Will and I, to go to Cotopaxi, but I found out after searching around, that Dan had left for Baños, and the Will had stayed out too late the night before and couldn´t even get out of bed. So, with nothing planned, I went back to the school and went at the website some more, and spent the afternoon wandering around the city market with Lucy, a girl from Essex, who was down here for a week so she has enough Spanish for when she leaves for the Galapagos. Sunday, I lay about and found time to do some writing, which I´ve found difficult since arriving here.
This brings me today, where I am sick.
I´m sick.
With evident concentration on my stomach, it was almost certainly something I ate, however, I can´t figure out what it would have been. It isn´t antibiotics-kind of bad yet, but it sure doesn´t feel great.
So, as of this past wednesday, I´m back to doing morning Spanish classes, which made everythng considerably easier to understand. That afternoon, on a whim, I went with Hannah and Anna-Maria (one of the teachers), to La Mitad del Mundo, basically the tourist attraction of the Equatorial line. Ít isn´t worth my time to write about it. There is a big monument there, that actually isn´t on the Equator (420 m off), and that´s about it. My Zenit, which for those of you who unfamiliar with it, is my Soviet-built film SLR camera, was not winding properly, so all I have is a few digital pictures. Went up the museum that is actually on the Equator, but it was deemed too expensive, they´ve jacked up the price since our guidebooks were written. Nice bus ride to and from though. That evening, there was a major soccer game at the Estadio Olympico, the city´s football stadium, which basically meant that with everyone rushing there, and parking wherever they damn well please, I beat the bus home. Barcelona (from Guayaquil) vs. The Dept. of Quito. Apparently, despite assumptions, Quito whooped Barcelona, 4-0, despite Barcelona claiming to be the best team in the country.
With the election to the Constitutional Assembly this week, political campaigning was at it´s height, entire tour buses roam the streets, usually with full brass bands and at least 2 dozen flag wavers each, followed by about 8 more cars covered in campaign posters. For those not watching the Ecuadorian news, and really, with no major outlets in North America tracking it, why would you? The President´s political party, La Partido Patria, won with a whopping 65% of the vote, meaning that there will probably be big changes happening soon.
For thursday, with the ban on alcohol for the weekend, there was a big party, and we all (there were 10 of us) went out dancing. There are some really cool clubs here in Quito, with a mixture of Latin and Western music. Friday, after classes, I decided to do a bit of volunteering and worked on correcting the grammar of my school´s website, which is actually really time-consuming, as not only is it grammatically terrible, and frequently redundant, but also idiomatically awful. Saturday, the plan had been for 3 of us, Dan, Will and I, to go to Cotopaxi, but I found out after searching around, that Dan had left for Baños, and the Will had stayed out too late the night before and couldn´t even get out of bed. So, with nothing planned, I went back to the school and went at the website some more, and spent the afternoon wandering around the city market with Lucy, a girl from Essex, who was down here for a week so she has enough Spanish for when she leaves for the Galapagos. Sunday, I lay about and found time to do some writing, which I´ve found difficult since arriving here.
This brings me today, where I am sick.
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