Flew into Quito initially. The guy from the Spanish school (Agustin) I was to attend in Quito was not at the airport to pick me up like he was supposed to be and his cellphone was disconnected. This gave me a bit of a pause, but luckily the backup plan to meet him at a hotel in town worked out. Evidently, his car broke down and he had lost his cellphone days earlier. Agustin turned out to be a very good guy and had a blast with him out on that Friday night....
Well, once Agustin and I linked up he took me to my host family, which consisted of a 50ish year old woman and her 25 year old son. They turned out to be really nice and helped me immensely with my Spanish. They put me in a little sidehouse outside the main house. It wasn´t too bad of a place, but then it wasn´t real great either. No hot water to speak of and could barely squeeze myself thru the bed and dresser to get to the bathroom. At least I had privacy out there, but then privacy wasn´t really was I was looking for given that I´m here to speak to people.
My first day began with me heading downtown to check out the 16th century churches and other sights. Headed over to the bus stop and waited while 2 fully packed buses stopped and continued, hoping to find one where I´d have some breathing room. The third bus showed up fully packed; after a moment´s deliberation I decided to hop on...I was a bit late though and the doors closed on my foot. These aren´t your typical bus doors by the way, they´re more like what you´d see on a subway, although they do close by swinging not sliding.... Anyway, thankfully I was able to slip out of my shoe before my foot was mangled. I then said something in Spanish to the effect of ¨my foot hurts¨ to the crowd of onlookers at the back of the bus who´d watched the scene. They exchanged bemused glances about the big dumb gringo and I retrieved my shoe at the next stop.
Headed downtown and saw a bunch of 16th century churches. Hard to believe they were built so long ago. The churches had all sorts of Incan symbolism in them, like of carvings of the sun and so forth - an interesting mix of Catholicism and Incan beliefs. My tour of the churches ended with an argument with the old man who gave me the tour over how much his help was worth. He got a fair price - a third of what he asked.
Next day took a bus trip to the equator. There are several museums and a monument to mark the spot, although apparently the monument is off by 200 meters. One of the museums was pretty cool though...in addition to a shrunken head smaller than a fist and a blowgun shooting range they also had all sorts of equator-related tricks: pools of water that go down in different directions (or straight down) depending on which side of the equator they are on; a trick where you walk on the equator with your hands out and your arms get pulled like crazy by the opposing sides of the globe and you can´t walk straight; standing an egg on a nailhead, a scale where I lost 5 lbs on the equator, etc. Not sure how they did it but their games really seemed to prove we were on the equator and the equator causes some strange things, or maybe the equator really causes all those things and I´m just a skeptic, I don´t know.
The next day I took a cable car to near the top of the mountains surrounding Quito. The car gets you up to about 4000 meters. Had an incomprehensible conversation with a cute local girl on the way up. I hiked up to 4200 meters before calling it quits. I hadn´t really planned on hiking much so I really didn´t have much in the way of warm clothing, and I was getting up into the clouds at that point. Even a small incline can be tough at that altitude. I felt decrepit taking such pathetically small steps. Heck, my first couple nights in the city (elevation: 2800 meters) I woke up in the middle of the night breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating, but by the end of a week I´d gotten fairly used to it. Never did really get used to the cold though, as the temperature is usually between 50 and 70, which isn´t bad, except the buildings don´t have any sort of climate control so it´s always a little chilly for me inside.
Hit a club on Friday night. I was the tallest person in the place excepting the black doorman (the Ecuadorians seem shorter even than the SE Asians, but not quite as slight). The ladies had their own separate bar and dance floor until midnight with free drinks. You couldn´t pay cash for anything; you had to use a piece of paper they give your group when you come in, and heaven help anyone that tries to leave without his paper. They mark the card as you buy stuff. Cash won´t cut it, I tried. Not sure of the motivation behind such a system, perhaps to reduce bartender skimming?...and tipping is not customary here anyway.
As for the main objective of this trip, the Spanish, it´s going ok. The lessons in Quito are really cheap, $6 per hour for private lessons. The teachers speak almost no English so that´s good. I picked up quite a bit those first few days. The progress seems to have slowed of late, probably because I´m in this touristy town and speaking too much English, but I´m sure I´m learning more than I think I am. The homestay in Quito helped a lot because the family and I talked a lot. She had some great stories about prior students ranging from 15 to 70 years old. She also tended to serve popcorn and chocalate with almost every meal. Why not?
After Quito, I headed to a small, aforementioned touristy town on the coast called Montañita. This involved a shorft flight to Manta, where sits a US airbase used to spy on the Colombian cocaine makers. Had to take a bus from there to Montañita. The bus ride kind of reminded me of Chevy Chase and Dan Akyroyd taking that bus in Afghanistan or wherever it was in ¨Spies Like Us¨. The bus was covered in mud and packed to the gills with people, animals in cages, and smoke. The busdriver insisted on driving the bus like a sports car over roads that had potholes the size of small cars. I´m still debating with myself whether I felt more fear riding in that bus or riding around the towns in Iraq. The bus was a local bus, meaning it stopped about 60 times while I was on it. And after each stop the bus driver floored it just as soon as the last passenger set foot on the aisleway, which oftentimes sent the new passengers catapulting toward the back of the bus. Thankfully, the bus was standing room only, so you really couldn´t be thrown too far. I had the pleasure of sharing a seat with all sorts of people, including a wizened old lady with no teeth who I couldn´t understand a word she said to a girl that looked barely out of puberty toting around a baby girl. At any rate, I made it to Montañita after four hours on the bus no worse for wear.
Montañita´s quite the little Bohemiam enclave, with all the surfers and college-age kids running about. I´ve seen a number of people urinate on the main drag and the smell of marijuana wafting down from the balconies is commonplace. Haven´t seen a cop yet actually. A part of me wishes I´d brought a USMC t-shirt with me to wear down the main drag just to see what looks I´d get. As for the surfing, it´s going along. Not surprisingly, the two hour lesson I took was a big help. I was instructed to pop off the board to my feet ¨como un gato¨ (like a cat) and that mindset has worked well for me. I can get to my feet and stay there pretty easily now after about 8 hours in the water. Just need to work on wave selection and timing. The motrin helps.
Just finished eating dinner at the ¨Happy Donkey House¨...thankfully, no donkeys on the premises, but the food was excellent ($4 for a swordfish dinner, yes, they use dollars down here. If you were wondering where all those golden Sacajawea dollars went I can answer you...here. ), and I was treated to free dogfights right out in front of the shop.
The highlight of the Ecuador trip had to be the bike down Chimborazo volcano. There´s company that drives you with your bike 4800 meters up Chimborazo, which is a 6300 meter volcano (inactive). The top of Chimborazo is regarded as the highest point on Earth from the Earth´s center...the effect of the Earth´s somewhat oblong shape. We hiked up another 200 meters just to say we´d been to 5000 and then mountain biked down the trails back to near the town of Riobamba. Between all the stops to see wildlife (alpacas, llamas, etc.) and other things of note (old Incan worship spots) it turned out to last all day. Well worth the $35.
