Baños

Tungarahua
I´ve been in a tiny town named Baños since Thursday, at the base of a giant Volcano called Tungarahua. It is Ecuador´s 10th highest at just over 5,000 meters. In Quichua the name means ¨Little Hell.¨ For some reason I didn´t realize that when I heard Ecuador had ¨active volcanoes,¨or that Quito was surrounded by three itself, that they were actually erupting from time to time. I guess I thought it happened every hundred years or something. Well, there are at least 18 volcanoes in this country. Tungarahua seriously erupted most recently in July 2006. I rode a horse up the side of the volcano on Friday morning to about 3,000 feet. Tungarahua started belching smoke again late Friday night, and the country is starting to watch it more closely...

After last weekend I found myself a bit under the weather, and spent some time just sleeping and not eating much in Quito. It felt like when you´ve been hanging upside-down for a while and then stand up, the blood rushing to your head and just that constant, awful pressure. Wednesday morning I had my Spanish examination at Catholic University (obviously I failed and I´ll be starting in level 1), and I had hoped to leave town immediately thereafter to use the long weekend before classes began. But I barely made it home to crash - could be anything really - water, food, swimming in a waterfall, etc. So Wednesday evening I´m pretty sure my fever broke (not sure I actually had one though), and by Thursday morning I decided to suck it up, stop acting like a panzy, and take off for Baños.

I did meet a couple nice kids at the University. Luis (25) is Ecuadorian and his girlfriend Chistina (22) is from Slovakia. She´ll be taking Spanish as well but will probably start at a higher level. Anyhow, these kids met at Six Flags - Chicago, on some kind of international work abroad program. How bizarre, eh? Luis was instrumental in helping me through the university registration and payment process. Christina loved the fact that I not only knew where Slovakia was but I also knew that it had separated from the Czech Republic about 15 years ago. I do wish I had made it to Bratislava on my previous trip through Eastern Europe. I hear it is a georgeous, one-horse town.

I got ripped off for the first time (that I´m aware of) as I left Quito on Thursday. Purchasing a bus ticket at the busy terminal is a little intimidating. Each company has a couple of windows with people yelling at you to buy a ticket as fast as possible. It´s like they are possessed or something, very entertaining if you don´t need a ticket. So this woman assured me I was on the next bus to Baños and I paid the $3.50 for the 4 hr trip, only to be handed a receipt with a scheduled departure time of 2 hours later. They´re very good at communicationg until you want your money back. And so I bought an additional ticket at the next window for a bus departing 20 min later.

Busride Observations

I thought it might be interesting to record some Quito to Baños observations, although unfortunately much of what I saw was poverty:

• About half the passengers on my bus, mostly wealthy or tourists, actually bought a ticket and got on at the station. The rest hopped on just outside as we were leaving in the middle of traffic, or on the side of the road along the way;
  
• As soon as you leave Quito you start to see some real poverty - completely gutted, open to the elements 5 story buildings with stores open and operating on the first floor;
  
• Men washing themselves from a spout on the side of a building/factory;
  
• Communities with unpaved roads, clotheslines everywhere hanging from abandoned homes and buildings;
  
• What appears to be a minimum securty prison on the outskirts of Quito, and later a paratrooper training facility;
  
• The bus television newscast highlights 4 main stories: 1) 15 min of runway models and Playboy Latin America girls shaking their booties at the beach during Carnival; 2) 1 min announcing the 112 deaths during Carnival; 3) 4-5 min discussing politics and protest in Guayacil, the southern port city and economic powerhouse of the country; and 4) 6-7 min of footage of a cat playing the piano;
  
• A Mercedes Benz dealership outside my window in a suburb has a completely empty lot - it appears to be currently functioning as a bus terminal;
  
• We´re back to incredible micro-habitats and biodiversity - I count over 10 shades of greens and browns, not to mention locals selling all kinds of goodies. They literally hop on the bus and sell everything from q-tips to batteries to yoghurt to baked goods;
  
• Many, many cows on the sharply dropping hillsides;
  
• Farming on every inch available - different altitudes yield different products, and terrace farming appears to be a specialty;
  
• The kid across the aisle bears a gigantic picture of Jesus Christ on his t-shirt;
  
• A rival bus company passes us called Marco Polo, with their New England Patriots insignia;
  
• Petrol costs about $1.50 per liter outside the city - is it nearly 4 liters to the gallon?
  
• And finally, the 65+ yr old man next to me, who had unbuttoned and unzipped his pants for maximum comfort as soon as he sat down, is starting to drool on my left shoulder. No personal space! Nunca!

One thing I noticed right away in Baños was the presence of Israelis. Now, they are not as prevalent here as in, say, Vang Vieng, Laos, where every menu has a duplicate copy in hebrew. Let´s just say they could be easily spotted with their obnoxious noisemaking at all hours (I´m pretty sure I heard this one dude puking through the wall at 4am), and it wasn´t hard to spot local bookshops carrying their literature as well.

Riding Straight Up
I can´t thank my horse Loco enough for doing all the work for our 4-hour jaunt up and down la ruta de la volcan, navigating the dried lava and ash on one side and the tree-tomoato and maize farms on the other. Despite his persistant and outrageous gas problem, I was extremely lucky I didn´t get the other horse.

The devastation is incredible. You can see remnants of homes and farm outposts, but everything is gone. It´s like a biblical ¨Final Days¨ or something out of a horror film. Mas arido! Everything is just black, and smoke still rises from pockets of ash. The great thing is that nobody died last year - the volcano is closely monitored by local and international groups, and everyone was evacuated.

We were only 3 for the day: our young guide Wilson who is an exceptional soccer player, myself, and an older German fellow named Haagen who pretended to know zero Spanish but then started asking where all the chicas were as soon as we hopped in the jeep to leave. He´s the one who got on the wrong horse. What happened was a 15 yr old kid (cousin of Wilson) tied Haagen´s saddle on incorrectly. About 15 min into riding straight up the volcano, the entire thing came undone and Haagen went tumbling down. It was funny except for the massive gash in his hand. He tied a piece of his t-shirt around it to stop the bleeding and we pushed forward, our guide Wilson privately cursing his young cousin. It wasn´t an easy trek either. Wilson showed me how to grip the horse´s mane for added stability as we rode at sharp angles upwards, and at other times it was so dangerous we had to dismount and let the horses climb alone ahead, following on foot behind them. Loco was a bit sick too I guess. He farted the whole way up and down the volcano for 4 hours. At first it was comical, after a while it was just downright impressive. He also smelled my persistant fear of riding and refused to cooperate half the time. The other two would be 100 meters ahead, and despite my kicking and whipping with a tree branch (like a jockey!) he would not move. Wilson would then come and save me, and then it would promptly happen again. Other times Loco would just take off running and Wilson would have to come find me in some person´s tree tomato farm desperately pleading with the horse to turn around. But I think Loco and I came to an understanding by the end. He stopped farting as I whispered sweet nothings into his mane, telling him that I was fed up and I was going to have him killed. At the end of our ride we went to Wilson´s cousin´s house so he could scold the boy (who screwed up the saddle) while Wilson disinfected the German´s wound and I just sat quietly observing soccer trophies on shelves and their modest mountain home.

I think I need to buy some tighty whiteys asap. Either that or I need a serious lesson in horseback riding and other activities unforgiving to the crotch. I thought it would be the easy activity to choose, but I still hurt. And yes it was fun all those times when Loco took off running; I guess I just don´t have the right technique for protecting my boys.

61K to Puyo!?

For the next morning I was contemplating the 61K, 8 hr bike ride from Baños to Puyo, la ruta de la cascadas, a supposedly spectacular descent into the amazon that takes you through small towns and multiple waterfalls. But I didn´t want to ruin all chances of having children in one weekend, and my ankle was really bothering me. I think it is the same problem that leaves me unable to run more than 2.65 miles at the gym back home. Only now it is worse; I wake up unable to put pressure on the right ankle until I walk on it enough through the pain to loosen it up. The problem is it hurts again after I sit down for lunch or anything else. I´ll return to Baños for the bike ride later.

And so I opted instead to spend the day at the famous thermal baths, La Piscina de la Virgen, as well as stop in for a full body 1hr massage at ¨Stay in Touch.¨ I know, back to being a panzy, but it was raining anyway! The bath was hilarious. I was the only white-skinned person in a terribly crowded sea of humanity. And people love the coffee-colored, murky, sulphuric water with all its medicinal promise, taking laps and splashing everyone around them. Sitting in the equivalent of a large hot tub (shout out to Katie), I admired a small waterfall at my back and rolling mountains and blue sky just beyond the town church in front. That church is crazy too. The walls of the cathedral are covered in paintings depicting miraculous stories of men being saved by Santa Agua from the fires of the volcano, the rising river in the valley, or even more modern events such as traffic accidents. Each painting will say something like, ¨On Feb 23, 1773, while the volcano was erupting, Senor Gustavo was thrown from his horse while trying to cross Puente San Francisco , but was miraculously saved by Santa Agua before tumbling to his death on the rocks below.¨ People are very religious, and don´t take these stories lightly either. I stopped for a full glass of jugo de cane de sucre on the way back (Chino remember we always used to see people grinding those huge bamboo stalks to make juice?). It was way too sweet and made me feel sick, but gave a good sugar high and ample energy to get home.

Interesting Conversations as of Late

It never ceases to amaze me how different your experiences are on the road when meeting other travelers, rather than staying in a place like Quito for cultural immersion. No matter where you go, you´ll likely learn more about the other travelers than the country you are all visiting.

The first people I met at the hostal were Julie and Jon, two Saskatchewan natives from the 2 largest cities there I had never heard of. We sat on the roof-top deck for $1 large pilsneur bottled beers and discussed our homelands. Julie is a nutritionist and had a really frustrating/funny story about a 500 lb, ¨million dollar¨patient who refuses to leave the hospital even as his wife continues to bring him Wendy´s fast food every day. The hospital can´t stop it and he likes to alert the local news media to his frequent maltreatment. Apparently he loves the place like a hotel and is milking the system for everything he can get. Of course the conversation immediately turned into a comparison of private v. national healthcare systems. They say they have some problems in Canada but people generally love their system. Saskatchewan has been socialist in many ways for decades, for all intents and purposes, Jon explained. Jon dropped out of school early to open an extreme sports equipment shop. He buys most of his equipment from California and resells it. Interesting I guess, he´s been open for 3 years.

But the most fascinating topic by far was the economic boom currently taking place in nearby Calgary, Alberta. Proud Saskachewan citizens are losing precious inhabitants to their western neighbour due to the dramatic changes brought about by oil-sands technology and drilling. I was trying to imagine a similar economic exodus phenomenon in America, perhaps the tech boom in silicon valley? But this Calgary boom is different: it is not about human and intellectual capital and the internet; it is about pumping chemicals into the earth to liquify oil deposits and then extract them. The environmental effects are obviously not so positive - river levels are already said to be dropping, eco-systems changing, and serious pollution problems appear imminent. Still, the big companies involved (I´ll admit I´ve had Suncor on my stock watchlist for months now) are making ridiculous profits. 18 yr olds without even a college education are being thrown onto rigs and paid $60,000 to work, or university students recruited across the country for upwards of $100,000. Jon´s friend took his bulldozer to the area and was paid $250 an hour to help dig. The situation has also created a housing bubble, as there are not enough houses in the area yet and companies put workers up at hotels or fly them in every morning. A $150,000 house now easily commands a $400,000 sale price in a matter of 2-3 years. I couldn´t help but fantasize with my Saskatchewan friends (who seemed bitter) about the eventual collapse of this boom in Calgary and how it might devastate the area once the oil is gone. I also wondered about all those $2-3 million homes back where I live...

You can always tell when you are surrounded by Americans. How embarrassing! At breakfast one morning I started cracking up, watching these two girls struggle with the menu. Don´t get me wrong, I can´t read it yet either, but I don´t do the typical spoiled American thing where you try to be picky with what you´re ordering and roll your eyes at eachother in front of the waitress about the quality of the water, etc. That´s just bad form. But obviously I still talked to them. Low and behold, they were G-town medical students on vacation from their 1 month stint at a Quito hospital. Apparently the facilities in Quito are fine, but they do lack some of the more important technology we´ve come to rely on at home like having there own CT scan. I forgot to ask them about my ankle.

My final night in Baños was the most exciting. I met some Dutch kids over beers and we headed out to a steakhouse and the bars for the night. They promised me the best lomo in the country for $6.50, but of course the restaurant ran out of it. It´s ok, the chicken genovesa stuffed with pesto wasn´t bad at all. These two guys have been traveling around Ecuador for 3 months after 8 weeks with a family in Quito studying spanish, etc. They were very smart I think not to try to do all of S America like these other idiots. We got drunk talking about American and Dutch politics. They have a crazy system, with first rooms and second rooms and strange voting systems and man I got lost. The impressive thing was that these kids, Tom and Stoni, are only 19. Many Dutch travel before heading to University. Tom works at an upscale organic butcher and Stoni at a restaurant. Stoni´s father restores antique furniture, one of maybe 6 woodcarving experts in Holland, and his son is interested in film and photography. Tom will be a biologist. These kids each speak like 4 languages. I gotta tell you, at 19 I would have done little else besides get drunk on a trip like theirs. Instead I felt ike I was sitting with extremely educated and mature men --> after dinner we went bar hopping and got hammered, discussing music and movies for hours (Tom is a heavy metal drummer who loves Wolfmother! and Stoni a guitarist). Some drunk English girls currenty living in Puyo attacked us at our table at the ¨rock¨bar, and we ended the late night with some quality street-side hamburguesas.

So that´s about it. I grabbed some local milcocha (taffy) to bring back for the Quito ladies and boarded the bus as Tungarahua continued to build up pressure behind me. I can post some impressions of spanish class next time, as today was day 2.

Hasta luego.

New Friends, Rabies, Hitching Near the Columbian Border, Drunk Drivers, Car Accidents and Augustine

Quito, Ecuador

New Friends
I met Luis on a bench in Plaza Grande, the main central plaza with the Presidential Palace, a famous church and the government ministry where Piedad works. It was the second day in a row we met. This man is one of hundreds who gather here in their pressed dress shirts, light sweaters, ironed slacks and gleaming shoes to pass the time by schmoozing, arguing and playing chess or dominoes. They are retired and simply watching the days go by. Luis speaks no English and is easily frustrated by my lack of spanish comprehension. Still, he loves chatting and won´t stop. Perhaps he´s just old and lonely. Luis is about 70. After exhausting the usual questions regarding family, city landmarks, Quito weather and cuisine, I took a field trip of sorts with this man to see his humble barrio. Luis is quite poor, and so it was a very unique experience.

Off to Barrio Chaguarquing
High above the Old City with incredible panoramic views, Luis lives in a dilapidated row-house complex, apartment #42. I was impressed with the old man moving spryly with his cane, traversing the uneven pavement, unfinished basketball court and gravelly sloping steps with unsafe cracks and railings. It´s a great deal of walking for a man his age! Above his living room couch rests a plaque from his church flanked by single photographs of he and his wife. The plaque, presented in 2001, celebrates 50 years of marriage. Pictures of his kids and a cousin born in America line the shelves, with a sprinkling of foreign coins from Mexico and Columbia. Luis´wife died 2 years ago, and he now lives with at least one other old man, a maid and her children. He is a tenant in his own home. The neighborhood is clearly not so safe; from the roof you can see neighbor´s kids and skinny stray dogs, young men out of work just hanging out, joking around and smoking in groups, drifting colorful clotheslines, a colegio of course with uniformed students fumbling about at the gate, and just down the hillside the Quito dairy factory, where leche is born. It´s a scene out of a Steinbeck novel, perhaps Cannery Row on a hill. I think the unemployment rate in Quito is actually about 12%. Lack of security is further evidenced by padlocked drawers and cabinets in Luis´ own room (it´s a very small place and we had to walk through to get to the rooftop spiral staircase). Luis was a mechanic by trade, and now he appears to enjoy fiddling with electronics. I counted 7 stereo systems around the house lying in pieces. After more failed conversation off the roof and back in the livingroom - failing to explain to Luis how it could be that I was not Catholic or Protestant or even Muslim, but Jewish (he had no clue what that is), I finished my banana like a respectful guest and we returned to the Old City. I´d like to think I made Luis happy just by spending time with him. He has invited me to his family´s puebla two ours in the direction of Mitar del Mundo where his sons live - I´m not sure I need to put in that much time...!

First Time to Otavalo
The other day I woke up early and headed North to Otavalo to see the famous Saturday markets. They have an animal market, vegetables, and then probably 2-3,000 stands of indiginous wares, textiles, and assorted other offerings. I´ve learned how to avoid the bus terminal completely. I just scale the side of the mountain above my house until I reach the highway and jump on to busses headed in the right direction with the rest of the locals. You also save about a dollar this way! The problem of course is that the buses are frequent but busy. Both ways to Otavalo I didn´t get a seat and ended up on a big cushion near the front with the bus attendee guy and other stragglers along the way. Bus attendees literally just hang out the doorway the whole ride and scream the names of destinations; people jump on and money is collected later. The 2.5 hour trip was $2 each way.

On the bus I met some friendly British travelers, Simon and Sarah, and we hung out all day in Otavalo after an overpriced lunch near the market - I had trouche (trout) with pan and creamcheese (getting closer to finding a bagel and lox!), fruit salad, and jugo de mora (blackberry) for $3.50. These kids, an Egyptian archeologist and a biologist PhD candidate, started in Lima and have been gone two weeks out of their audacious 7 month trip around the world. They look the part too, in matching khaki shirts and pants. I joked that Simon should purchase the cowboy hat he stood examining as we entered the market, and strap a lasso to his waist like Indiana Jones. I also cautioned them that they might want to think about spending all 7 months in South America - from experience I know their goal of seeing even more countires than Scott and I did is near impossible. They´ve had a rough start, spending their entire 3 days in Quito dealing with slashed bags on the trolle and resulting loss of wallets and cameras. Simon spent the better part of an hour haggling for a large piece of amber choc full of insects. He spent $25 on this fist-size item, I hope he can make a dinosaur or something more than a paper-weight when he goes home.

Otavalo is probably the most touristy thing you can do around here, besides Mitad el Mundo of course (the equator line). It is the highest concentration of gringos I have seen so far. But if you dig deep and try talking with some of the indiginous vendors you can soak up a little culture. Most people just want your money of course, but it is fascinating to see their clothing, art, music, etc. Tourists come mostly for the artisans´finely weaved rugs, hammocks, sweaters, etc. while the locals trade more in practical clothing items, and staples like arrozo y carne. If you´ve ever been abroad, or even to the touristy spots in New York City or downtown DC, you´ve seen the musicians of Otavalo with their blue ponchos, long ponytails, multi-tubed bamboo flutes, electrified classical guitars and black felt hats, making more money than the next guy with those ethereal tunes pulsating out of mini amplifiers. The women have long braided hair and don long black skirts and frilly-sleaved, colorfully embroidered white blouses. These people are famous for their wealth and ability to succeed where so many other indigenas have struggled commercially.

The ride home was exciting because we met an additional Englishman and a girl, Celeste, he was visiting who was American. She might have rabies...
...The story is that she is staying in a small village outside of Otavalo, and on a hike 4 days before in the area she was bitten by a small dog. 4 area doctors told her to just not worry about it. 4 days later, after a breezy day at the market, they are finally heading to Quito to see a German doctor who wants to give her the jabs. More than likely the dog was just protecting some farmer´s territory and is not rabid - 4 days is enough time to get really sick or die.

I arrived home late from Otavalo, proud of myself for navigating the longer ditance bus sytem so easily. It´s amazing how much you can accomplish with body language and one beautiful magical phrase like a barrio name: Mira Flores.

Siempre Norte
Titi and I set off for Siete Cascadas at 6am the next morning. Wow, what a trip. There´s nothing like travelling with a local, and actually seeing places outside the scope of your map and lonely planet research. We took a bus right past Otavalo for Ibarra, and then transferred to head further toward the northern lowlands, San Lorenzo, and the northernmost beaches close to the ruta del sol. (Italy folks, you´re not gonna beleive this but it was perfect - we never made it to mythical San Lorenzo. The road to that town is less than ten years old and therefore there was insuffient accomodation during the Carnival weekend :( maybe I can return))

Travelling with Titi was absolutely fantastic. Latin music blaring and gradually warmer air rushing into the bus windows as the altitude fell, she pointed out each wild or domesticated fruit, tree or plant type, described the hillside farming techniques or mysterious micro-climates around each bend, pointed out volcanos like Cotapaxi in the distance or Cayambe 20 kilometers ahead, and told stories about her family history in Ibarra (her grandfather owned quite a bit of land once upon a time - so much that the property extended over mountain passes farther than one can see. He also donated many of the trees that now line a main street leading into Ibarra. Titi is an avid fan of adventure sports, for example preferring to skip a futball game for a rockclimbing session. In this regard she is quite the outdoors-woman, so much so that she frequently writes freelance articles for the tourism ministry or her younger sister´s magazine about Ecuadorian ecology, adventure sports, topography, and eco-friendly enterprises. Ears popping, I sat snacking on whatever local treats she brought along for us (banana chips are healthy and very tasty) while she chided a bus attendee for chucking plastic bottles out the windows.

Siete Cascades is a very new business, sort of the equivalent to Butts Tubes (where we go tubing every summer) before the price inflation and crowds, except it is dazzlingly more beautiful as it is located in a tropical rainforest. Titi immediately struck up conversation with the owner and noticed that he had a copy of her family´s magazine at the front desk! In the drizzling rain we hiked in knee-high rubber boots for three hours with our young guide Jonotan to seven different waterfalls, all the while learning about orchids, ants, beetles, caterpillars, tadpoles, hummingbirds, mosquitos, boa-constrictors (they had one in a cage near the beginning), and whatever else I couldn´t understand! I swam in 5 of seven waterfalls, and Titi helped teach me how to walk on one rail of a railroad track to avoid the deep mud through a dark tunnel. It was a good time, and the place served lunch afterwards for like 3 bucks at long tables under thatched roofs. I had carne asada con arroz and some really good jugo. We then hitched a ride back to Ibarra with a young family who had also hiked the waterfalls.

Here´s where things got interesting. There was a big festival in Valle de Chota, the area famous for the roughly 5% of the population that is Afro-Ecuadorian (the descendants of slaves brought over during Spanish rule for the sugar cane plantations). Heading back into Ibarra in a Ford Escape, conversation was great with the family (at least for Titi!, I just smiled and chimed in with a word or two when questioned. Titi seems to talk to everyone and become instant friends). It turns out the father of the family, Diego, is actually the owner of Flota Imbabura, one of the largest long-distance bus companies in the country. For miles we were stuck behind a clearly innebriated driver in a huge mac truck. Nobody dared pass him, especially not us with three young boys in the car. He would swerve back and forth and hit orange cones erected on the highway around mountain passes. We contemplated calling the police, but the penalty is one month in jail here and nobody decided to do it. Anyway we hit major traffic after dealing cautiously with that idiot, who eventually turned off, which meant virtually bumper-to-bumber heading back into Ibarra. In an instant we stopped short, and bam!, we were rear-ended. No injuries. It´s like America, it´s always the fault of the guy behind you, plus he was the one with damage. He didn´t want to deal with it. And so we carried on.

The family were really lovely people and dropped us off at Titi´s favorite helado place in Ibarra. The ice cream there (50 cents for a double scoop) is nationally famous and hand made. They mix it in a silver bowl resting on a bed of straw that insulates the icewater beneath the bowl. I had some kind of guayava or something with blackberry, which complemented eachother well. Scrumptious. Around the corner we dropped into a coffee shop for te y humitas, and then strolled the main squares for a while. It´s a nice city. By bizarre chance we walked right by Ecuador´s most famous futbal player for the national team, Augustine. He was exiting an ice cream store himself just up the block. Cell phone cameras and little kids swirled round, and we cut right through of course to get a picture with him. He is one of a majority of players who hail from Chota - I´ve now been calling it the valley of the kick-ass soccer players. That´s like if 7 of the DC United players were from Kensington. Unbelievable. He´s also a very good person; he set up a foundation for children and is apparently quite modest despite his fame.

Carnival Mood
Just to provide a slice of what Carnival is like for city folk here:
I just got off the bus after a long day touring primarily the Mariscal (Gringolandia) on foot. It´s where all the overpriced restaurants and internet cafes are located - where the hostels are centered and everyone is foreign. On the bus ride back the bus attendee was amusing himself and his driver by keeping a large jug of water full and using a smaller bottle to spray people on the sides of the roads, mostly students. So anyone waving for the bus to pick them up on the side of the street was fine, come on in. But for the 3 uniformed girls waiting at the parada? --> water in the face. Nobody minds, little old ladies break out in hysterical laughter. In fact it really called attention for me to the generally laid back nature of people here. Everyone acts as a neighbor, not a stranger. The attendee runs to fill up at a park fountain as we pause at a red light in the city center, quickly returning to empty his arsenal on a family of 4; two blocks further he jumps out into a construction site and grabs the hose from the workers preparing cement for a small building project. Everyone is properly amused. No problemo.

I thought I´d mention a typical meal. Ecuadorians don´t really eat dinner - they have a huge lunch. A typical almuerzos combinada for lunch, like I had yesterday, is 1) supa, usually a consume base with potatoes and vegetables; 2) mains, I had chorasco sciotto which was steak with rice and sauteed onions and peppers - with an egg cracked on top; and finally 3) desert, I had strawberry ice cream. You also get a drink, typically coca cola classic or jugo mixto or something.

Tomorrow morning after the the end of the Carnival holiday, after maybe 1 milliom people have returned to Quito, I register and take an exam at the Universidad Ctaolica for spanish lessons. Like I need an entry exam to see what level I start at...!

One last thing - I´m officially a MoviStar (although this could change). Thank you Anusha for the chocolate, and thank you Dr. Cellular on Avenida Amazonas por apprir la banda. If any of you readers are getting consuming urge to know if Pedro Zorro is surviving through spanish class or his latest cafe con humita (i.e., mommy), my mobile is:
092970785 and I belive from the states you dial 0039392970785

ciao

Breathless First Impressions

Quito, Ecuador

Even as I sit writing, I am a bit light-headed. I landed last night at 3,000 meters above sea level - that´s almost 9,000 feet, something I´m not used to and kind of embarrassing in a strange way. I stopped 3 times on the way home from the supermaxi tonight to rest my lungs. How do the kids here smoke?! The sights, smells and sounds so far have been equally breathtaking.

¨Passengers, I´m sorry to interrupt the film, but please take a moment, if you wish, to peek out the right side of the cabin windows. You will see below a nice line forming of about 6 big ships waiting to enter the Panama canal.¨

And so I removed my headphones (The Prestige was not very good), leaned over my chicken penne from the aisle seat to steal a glimpse, and then raised my glass of cabernet to cheers with my first new friend, Hellene from Toulouse, France. It was an incredible sight, and one that brought home the realization that I was indeed gone again. In broken French and English we chatted throughout the flight about how difficult it was going to be to get by without Spanish! Nice girl, a physiotherapist. Why do I always end up with French speakers no matter where I go?? But she´ll be touring with a local friend who knows her way; I was to be all by my lonesome...

Customs was a pain in the ass. I had more people-watching in spanish Miami International. I stood in Quito´s customs section for about 45 minutos while every other line moved, and then I started switching lines to be clever and make up time. Well, we all know how a brilliant idea like that works out! Like the opening scene of Office Space, I ended up further screwed, stuck behind two short nuns and in front of a family of 4 undisciplined children running through my legs, not to mention now among the next flight´s passengers as everyone on my plane had álready made it through. What´s worse, I could literally see my bag through the customs line sitting on the conveyer belt for 1/2 hour - until some airport dude moved it...
No worries, I got in and got my bag. (Sorry, no good dramatic ending to that one)

Lucie and her sister Fatima (Titi) greeted me with smiles and we rushed out into the pouring rain. Apparently there was a drought until I arrived - but it´s better than the DC snow I suppose. And so I was whisked away through Quito in the fog, through busy streets, alongside large parks, and finally up a hillside to a quaint street and a beautiful old home that I now call my own.

I live in Piedad´s home, their mother, and she speaks very little english which will be a good thing. She is an economist currently working for a ministry tied to the presidential office. The daughters live across town in a nice apartment. I have my own room here and a full bathroom, a radio, television, my ipod, a yet-to-be-activated supercool cell phone, my camera. But none of it really matters without these people. This trip has run smoothly and will continue to be amazing precisely because of the family that has welcomed me so warmly. BIG shout out to Betty Adler for making all of this possible, and for a delicious send-off with authentic Ecuadorian cuisine. Today I awoke to an impressive view of the city from the living room window. It sprawls perpendicularly ¨like a sausage¨, with fog-covered mountains and tres volcanoes rising in three directions just beyond the city limits. A maze of streets sprawl down the hillside as I gaze downward, and I can pick out several university buildings, a cathedral, and a planetarium in their midst. The weather was muy caliente today, and I sweated through my t-shirt in the passenger seat as I began working on the glorious tan that will help me blend in.

The streets are outrageously alive here, both because it was Valentine´s Day and because we are heading into Carnival (I´ve been invited to head north with the sisters to a place called Siete Cascades and then San Lorenzo (yes Chip, the mythical dream of San Lorenzo!). Hey Chino, remember Songkron in Thailand!? Well, here the kids spend the week leading to Carnival in a simialr fashion, soaking passersby with water balloons, powder, etc., and their favorite targets are gringos. On my own on the street as dusk fell, I expected to find faces that stared right through my gringo eyes as I walked towards the supermarket. I clutched my pockets close and felt comforted that my passport and credit cards were strapped to my right calf. But for a brief moment I felt my pocket vibrate - a moment of panic not about pickpocketers but brought about by the realization that I actually had no cell phone, no keys, no communication. This was my favorite moment of the day; where I experienced the American traveler´s paranoia and shook it off. I felt immediately relieved and then a sense of familiarity- disconnected and back in the saddle again?

Of course I found only friendly street venders selling hot dogs, hamberguesas, and red balloons and flowers for the holidays; equally impressive were the hordes of students lounging on benches and in alleyways, putting on obnoxious displays of PDA with their teen lovers. Get a room?!

Escuela, Collegio, y Universidad
This city, as I have seen it so far, is made up of universities. Whether you walk or drive, you pass a school. everyone appears to be working toward some kind of degree, whether it is Lucie´s Masters in planning and economics or Titi´s PhD in environmental science, the uniformed kids heading to the Gilvani primary school or the sophisticated folk entering the Faculdad buildings of the Polytechnical Intitute. 92% literacy sounds low to me from where I´m standing.

Lucie drove me around all day, and I believe she found me my spanish course! At the Catholic University a short bus ride from my home here I can study 3 horas per dia, M-F, por seis semanas. (I know I´m butchering, I just thought it´d be fun to look back on later). Lucie passed out flyers for a music festival coming up at a beach five hours away her other sister Nene is promoting. We came back for a family lunch, where I enjoyed supa con verduras and a rice and shrimp dish, followed by helato. But the best part of the food so far is the juice. They have all kinds of juices, and fruits like tomate that I thought was a tomato but actually makes a delectable nectar that tastes more like naranja. Sorry, I like fruit. I´m being old that the coast is more fish and inland is all meat, yet the ladies surrounding me don´t eat much carne. I´ll eat anything, so I guess it is nice to have some healthy infuences.

Prices here are strange to me. Ecuador is officially on the American dollar since 2001. Any bus you hop on is 25 cents. A 9 hour bus ride might cost $10. On the other hand, while your onion costs 7 cents at the grocery store you might pay $3 for an avocado or $7.50 for Florida orange juice. Why buy groceries when you go across the street for a 3 course meal for 2-3 dollares? At least a box of Chips a´Hoy or a 3 liter of coca cola classic are only about 80 cents.

So these are some first impressions. I have released myself into the wild again, if in a bit more structured environment, and it feels fantastic. I´m literally up early, hungrier, more active, and wide-eyed with enthusiasm. Down here I find myself talking about mangroves and volcanic eruptions, exotic fruits and unpaved roads towards amazonian destinations. The world is so damn big.