27 Nov Thanksgiving

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone. I hope everyone ate lots of really good food. I was in Quito for the day hanging out with Michael and Natura. Because Natura´s tourist visa was going to expire, I went to the immagration office with her to see if there was anything she could do.

Because of a new Ecuadorean constitution back in September, they did some restructuring of the visa policies. Now you can only be in the country 90 days within 360 days on a tourist visa, they gave her a couple different options.

1. Becuase she only wanted to extend her visa by eight days, she could leave the country for eight days and come back.
2. She could apply for a visa extension and pay $280
3. She could overstay here visa and pay $200

Sounds a little peculiar to me, but I don´t write the constitutions here.

While I waited for Natura to come out, I sat at a café next door and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee. When she came back to share the news, I paid for my double americano and a bottle of water. This means nothing to you, but the price was $2.60 for the coffee and $.95 for the water. I knew I was in the new town when I have to pay that much for either of those things. When I buy a coffee in "Gringo Landia," at the same cafe (Este Café), a double americano only costs $1.35. A bottle of water would cost $.50.

Because we were in the New City, we decided to go to the Shopping Mall, which is right across the street, which is just like any shopping mall in the States. They have vendors like Baskin Robbins, Radio Shack, Sunglass Hut, just to name a few. I was a little surprised when I went into a sporting good store to see that a pair of Adidas shorts were $33. I didn´t buy them.

The point of this is that there is a huge difference in social class between the New City and the Old City. The New City has a very large population of Spanish disent. The Spanish are typically viewed as having higher income jobs, and play more important roles. You can see it, it´s like any other big city. If an Ecuadorean has the money to pay prices equal to the States, they will just because they can.

We went to Michael´s work after that. Not a whole lot happened there, but on our way back to the hostel, it started to hail. It wasn´t big hail, but it was the biggest hail I had ever seen. Some of it was probably the size of pencil erasers. We made it back to the hostal nice and wet. While waiting for Maichael to finish work for the day, Natura slept and I studied my Spanish.

One of Michael´s classmates was having a Thankgiving dinner at her place in the same condo complex where he lives. The three of us went over there to meet the rest of his class. We drank wine and chatted and ate tons of food that everyone had made. It was a nice way to show some Ecuadoreans what Thanksgiving is.

Michael made empanadas. Paulina, who grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, who now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, made a big pot of borsch, which was great. Alice brought some candied yams, and others brought other things. Martha, the program director brought pan de yuca, which is bread made with yuca root.

The best part was when we all got quite and went around the room and told of what we were thankful for. I had never done that before at Thanksgiving, so it was really fun. I was interesting hearing about what others were thankful for as well.

Once the party came to a close, we headed back to "Hostal Fausto" were we were staying and went to bed. It was a nice, alternative way to spend Thanksgiving.

25 Nov

We did our typical 6:30 rise. We ate little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with some of the bread that we had bought the day before. When you want to find anything in a place like Apuela, the pickin´s are slim.

We set off for García Moreno about 7:00. We were trying to get to this place because we had heard that to get to Junín, you had to go through García Moreno. Our ultimate goal was actually Junín. We just started walking down the road toward García Moreno as we would get a ride from a bus as it drove by. We walked for several minutes and there were no buses going in our direction. They wereall headed to Apuela. Soon after a few trucks passed, we finally found someone going toward García Moreno. We hitched a ride with them for about five miles, until the had to turn off the road. There was a sign at the turnoff that read, "García Moreno 20km." We started walking again. We figured that it couldn´t be that bad to walk for 20 km, but we were hoping for a bus. After a couple miles we heard something coming. It turned out to be a dump truck. They slowed to a stop, and asked where we were going, "García Moreno", we replied.

We hopped in the back of this dump truck full of gravel. Let me tell you, there is nothing like hitching a ride in the back of a dump truck. The view was amazing. It´s a good thing they drove us all the way to our destination too. There was a huge construction operation going on for miles. Much of it would have been walkin through mud, sometimes nearly knee deep.

I have noticed some interesting demograhics about the few places I have been in Ecuador. In Quito there is a large Mestizo and Spanish heritage. When we got to Otavalo, just north of Quito, there was a large indigenous population. Somewhere between Apeula and García Moreno, it turned to Afro-Ecuadorean. It seemed like the farther we traveled from "civilization", the more Afro-Ecuadorean the population became.

We reached the turn off for García Moreno and we started going up, way up. We had already been going up for quite sometime, but now the incline became steeper, the road narrowed, and it became more winding. Before long, we were driving through the clouds. and a chill hit our faces. After possibly 5 miles of winding up this mountain, we found ourselves in the middle of García Moreno.

We got out of the dump truck, we music flooded our ears which was coming from one chaep speaker blasting from the church. There were a lot of people who were sitting in what seemed to be a line for perhaps a healthcare clinic or something. We walked up to a building that said, " Elvis´s Hotel and Restaurant." We throught we would check it out since we weren´t sure what was going to happen with the whole Junín trip anymore.

This place looked super sketch master style so we thought about what to do. We were planning on hiking to Junín from there. Because the clouds were so thick, we were just going to hang out in García Moreno. After walking around for a bit and realizing that there was probably not a quarter of what Apuela had to offer we headed to the bus terminal to see when a bus was coming. Looking around the village a littel more, I realized that there were quite a few interesting looking people. As in, it looked like García Moreno was the State Hospital for Ecuador. Whether true or not, we were surrounded be creeps and weridos.

We talked to what seemed to be one of the only sane people in the place, the lady at the bus terminal. We walked in this one tiny, little room attached to another building and asked when the next bus would leave. She said that there was one at 10:00. I looked at my watch and it was 09:45.

"Two tickets to Otavalo please!!!" I replied frankly.

We stopped in one of the two "stores" to get some junk food for the four hour bus ride back to Otavalo. The first one filled our noses with a damp, musty, quite indestingushable smell. The second, was right across the street from the public baños (restrooms) which appeared to be unisex and had a more foul smell than any public restroom I have stepped foot in anywhere in the US or Canada.

The bus arrived and we said good bye to García Moreno.

Back in Otavalo, it felt great to be back in civilization. Although gringos, I felt we were a little more anynomous amoung the crowd as the places we were, weren´t setup for tourism in the slightest ways.

Natura and I ate lunch and relaxed a bit. Then we dicided to check out this waterfall in the village next to Otavalo called Peguche. We took the bus up to the village and started walking to "La Casada de Peguche". Knowing that Peguche was a village where many textiles were made, the longer we walked, the more looms we heard. One after another, after another, chug, chug, chug. It seemed as though every garage looking building had a loom or two chunking away.

We decided to stop in one place and check it out. There was a man and a woman sewing edges of ponchos to be sold at the Saturday market. We heard the loom chugging away was asked if we could see. Now, to see, first hand how textiles across the world are made was quite intriguing. They had two looms making big scarf looking things. The man told us a bit about the looms and said both had been in his family ever since they bought them for $2000. The second loom, he said, was about 120 years old. It was a little bigger, and a little louder, but still very impressive.

After our encounter of first hand textile fabrication, we continued on our walk to "La Casada de Peguche." We found ourselves on a stone walkway in the middle of a eucalyptus forest. With a fresh, scent lingering about, we heard the falling water getting closer. It wasn´t a huge fall, but none the less beautiful. We walked up and around it, back down and along another trail out of the park. We walked back to Otavalo as it is only about 1-2 miles.

One thing I will never foget about Ecuador is the sound of the ice cream trucks. Well, not really. We have been raised to know that the ice cream truck drives through neighborhoods and plays dorky music. Not in Ecuador. In Ecuador, when you hear the dorky ice cream truck music playing, you don´t run out and expect a truck full of treats. It´s the garbage man!!! Yes, the garbage truck plays the dorky ice cream truck music and when you hear it in your neighborhood, you run outside with you garbage!!! Hummm, how pieculiar.

It wasn´t long after we got back to the hostel. We just relaxed and ate dinner. Today we are on our way back to Quito to meet up with Michael.

24 Nov

With our tickets in hand, we got on the bus headed for Apuela at 8:00am. I would have never guessed what we were about to see. We turned off the main road just outside Otavalo. We went up and up and up, then down, down, down, then up, up, up. You know how you watch the Discovery channel and you seethe Andes and they are huge and cloud covered, and there is one whindy road going the side of a mountain? The Discovery channel can show you that, but you just can´t grasp the actual felling of riding in a bus halfway up the side of a mountain with a steep cliff on one side of you and no guard rail. There would be small washed out areas, there would be other area where small land slides were. Mile after mile of wet, muddy, dirt road, the landscape would change around every bend. We would go around corners where the bus driver would have to stop and just creep to make it. We drove through coulds and we would come out atop. We drove into thick jungle like area, and drove by farm land that would be considered unfarmable by American standards. We drove through grass 25 ft. on both sides. We passed hundreds or banana and papaya trees. This is an area so rich with fruit, avocado and orange trees grow along the road.

Finally, we came to the start of a stone road which led into Apuela. After talking to a a guy who seemed to own or at least run a restuarant he offered to drive us to a hostel about four miles down the road for $4.00. After checking with a few, we settled on Cabañas Valle Hermoso which ran us $5.00 each. We told him to wait as we went back into town. We had almorso (lunch) and went to this coffee processing place. A nice lady by the name of Joan gave us a little tour of the plant. Now, I can elaborate later, but you would never beleive where your coffee comes from, it´s amazing!!!

We started walking down that road, back to the hotel and we hitched a ride with a couple guys headed in that direction. They didn´t take us all the way, as they were headed down a different road. We got close enough to only have to walk about 10 minutes.

That night, we ate bread and cheese for dinner and played some card games. We started with a game called cuarenta (40) which I can´t wait to teach some people when I get home.

23 Nov

On the 23rd, Natura and I got up about 6:30 and always. We started walking through the village of La Calera and 7:00. It was a quite, little village just outside Cotacachi. This was a very interesting little village, as I hadn´t really seen how Ecuadoreans lived until then. They seem to live in small, brick houses. There is no insulation, as they don´t really need it, there are many houses with no windows and they are a little shady.

We were going to try to catch a bus to a little place called Apuela, from Otavalo, but all the buses were full for the rest of the day. We just sat around and relaxed for the day. We didn´t do a whole lot.

22 Nov

What a day. Natura and I woke up and walked around a bit. We started by walking over to the animal market. This could potentially be a vegetarians worst nightmare. They were selling every animal, cows, sheeps, pigs, llamas, chickens, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, ducks, etc. I don´t want to forget that they were serving food there as well.

As we walked back into town, everybody was setting up for the Saturday market. Now, I had heard that it was big, big I would have never suspected the reality of it. This market was on every inch of street for about six blocks by six blocks. It was big! It gets kind of redundent though. Everybody is selling pretty much the same 10 things, paintings, pots, textiles, blankets, rugs, hammocks, jewerly, etc... It really reminded me of being in Afghanistan.

We met up with Michael and his school group for a bit and walked around and bought things for a while. They took off and it was about time to eat dinner.

While we were all up in Otavalo, Michael was staying with an Indigenous family. They were having a baptism in the family that night. Michael said he would call if we were invited to the party. He called.

While Natura and I were waiting for the call, we were actually eating and drinking at this place in town. This older lady came by and asked,"what do you guys want to eat?" in English. We were a little surprised when she spoke English. We asked where she was from and told us a story.

"Yeah, I´m from Fresno, CA. I got here back in ´75. I had some good drug dealer friends down in Colombia that I came to meet. After that, I thought I was going to New Zealand and ended up in Ecuador somehow. I just decided to stay."

With a story like that, your mind can only think of what she has done since and where she has been.

We had eaten dinner, about $5.00 between the two of us. Then we started drinking these drinks with lime, sugar and some kind of cane alcohol. We had seven between the two of us for a $1.00 each. About half way through them, a couple over heard us talking about Alaska. Come to find out, they are from Headley Alaska. We sat and talked for a bit and then we got our call. I asked the lady how much we owed her. She replied, "just give me $7.00." Not too bad for seven drinks and two free meals, eh?

Natura and I got on the bus headed for Cotocachi where the baptism was going on. We got to the church and found Michael and Aaron, as they weren´t hard to spot being the two tallest in the crowd. We sat through the baptism and hopped in the back of some family members trucks.

They took us about three or four miles to a village called La Calera. Things started out a little slow. It was a very interesting party. Frist, they serve the mother and the god mother. Then everyone else is served. Everyone was served This flour soup, with a chunk of chicken and potatoes in it. The main party was served cuy (guinea pig) with their soup. The second course was pork from a pig roast, they had roasted two pigs, potatoes and mote which is pretty much hominy. It was all quite delicious.

Some interesting things about the party were that there were probably twenty people there, maybe more and it was very quite. Also, everything had to be served to everyone on a platter. You couldn´t just hand something to someone.

About the time were finished with dinner, a truck backed up and unloaded two big subwoofers. Let the party begin! The music started and people started dancing. People don´t just drink there. Everyone walks around with a shot glass and a bottle of something. Some would have beer, some would have wine, others with champagne, and other yet with this hot liquor. Everyone gets throughly happy because it is rude to deny a shot. Someone said, if you don´t want to drink anymore, leave. So, was drank. Aaron thought it would be a great idea for he, Michael, Natura and I to get our own boxes of wine to give a little pay back, so, we did. We each got a different flavored box of wine, which is about like wine cooler and walked around. I had peach; Natura, strawberry; Michael, apple; and Aaron, some hot liquor.

Everybody became really happy, everyone was dancing, everyone was having a good time.
About 12:00, everyone took off. They invited us to just stay since it would have been crazy to go back to Otavalo that night.

Natura, Micahel and I attempted to sleep and three of us in a full bed together. I had the cold, brick wall, with a huge gap between the bed and the wall. I didn´t sleep so well. Not to mention, there was a rooster on the roof that started yelling about 1:30am. Dogs were getting in fights during the night as well. It didn´t make for a very good sleep.

21Nov

This morning Natura and I woke up about 06:00. We headed out about 07:00 and walked around the town somemore. We checked out the food market. Boy, these food markets will make you think twice about what food satitation is. Everybody is selling fruit, veggies, grains, everything. That´s not to include the butchers. Num, num seeing huge chunks of meat hanging all day. Seeing chicken piled high with no refrigeration. So many interesting things are excited to be seen at the market.

After we walked around the market, we went to a bakery and got a few patries for a hike we were planning on doing. We took what they call a camíoneta to this area. A camíoneta is prety much a taxi. You tell them where you want to go, negotiate a price and hop in the back of their truck. We settled on $10.00 for him to take us about 17km up the side of this mountains where we did our hike.

The ride up this mountain was so amazing. You are sitting in the back of this truck seeing where you have been. Riding up this stone road that seemed rather endless, you couldn´t help but to be struck by the beauty of the Andes. It also seemed strange that the road would even be there. I mean, it was stone the whole way up this mountain.

Our camíoneta came to a stop in the middle of nowhere next to this lake high in the mountains. We started hiking on this, now dirt road around these lakes and mountains. We thought we were going to do a 3.9km hike, but instead it turned out being a 14.4km hike. It was still great. We walked and walked and came to a turn that went a long way up this mountain. When we got to the top, there was a sign that read, 3.981m (13,061ft).

When we arrived back to our start, there was another camíoneta waiting for a few other hikers. We got a ride down the mountain, back to the city for $5.00.

When we got back to town, we looked for a nice little hole in the wall place to have almuerso. Yup, another great $1.50 meal that filled us up. Once we finished that, we went back to the hostal, and I took a nap.

20 Nov

Yesterday I came to Otavalo. It´s a little town of approx. 50,000 people about a hour and a half north of Quito. A large portion of that is actually indigenous people. They are supposed to have one of the largest, if not the largest, indigenous markets in the world. Many of their prducts include hats, mittens, textiles and other hand crafted things.

I got a ride up with Michael´s class because they were coming up here for some study thing. This is he first trip I have actually taken outside the city. It is quite interesting, I must say. Not to mention, I get to hang out with Michael´s girlfriend, Natura, who is also here just hanging out.

Yesterday I didn´t do a whole lot other than check in to a little hostal, Hostal María, which is running me about $5.50 a night. It is situated about two blocks from downtown. I also walked around the town a bit to get a feel for it.

Natura showed up about 17:00 amd we caught up a bit it as it has been nearly two years since when last saw each other. Once she got here, we walked around somemore and looked for somewhere to eat. The great thing about Ecuador is that they have this lunch deal called "almuerzo", and dinner which is called "merienda". Both are set meals and typically include soup, a meat, rice, some veggies and a glass of juice. This nice little meal will run you about $1.50.

17 Nov

Monday we went to this park on top of a big hill called Parque Itchambia. It was beautiful and had bike trails and little playgrounds. We played with these little kids on the zip line for a while. From there, we walked quite a way and ended up at a little market. It was nice seeing some of the native things. I didn´t buy anything yet though. After that, we went to Michael´s host father´s art studio. We sat and drank coffee and I listen while Fernando and he conversed for a while.

We had lunch after that, and stuffed ourselves for less than $2.00. After that, we had coffee and then went to his house. Michael had to go to class so I got on the bus and and went back to the hostal for a bit.

After school, I was to meet him at a bus stop where he and I would meet with some more of his classmates at Alladins. We ate, and hung out a bit. Everyone split up and I went back to the hostal for the night.

16 Nov

Because it was the weekend, Michael decided to stay at the hostal a couple nights. Sunday morning, we met an Australian guy and two Australian girls and anouther girl named Titia, and went to this mountain with a gondola. We convinced this cab driver to take all six of us and the same time to the gondola in a car not much bigger than my Neon. I layed across four people in the back seat. For a dollar a piece, he drove up to the gondola. The gondola was called the telefarico and for $4 it took us to the top of Pichincha. At the top, you can look over Quito. It´s so beautiful. We hiked just a little way up this trail and came to a sign that said, 13,451 ft. above sea level. After that, we came over a small hill and there was a man and his wife letting people wear ponchos and sobreros and letting people take pictures with his llamas, named Inti and Pacha and his alpaca.

We went back down and went to the "Basilica", a Gothic stlye cathedral that we paid $2 to climb up the towers. Now felt so criminal because if you would have fallen, you would have died. First you walk up lots of steps, then you walk over the top of the arches on this Indiana Jones bridge and start taking smalled stairs and latters. You can climb all the way up, past the clock, past the bells, and come out through a little hole in the roof and hang your feet over the edge. Too cool.

After that, we went to a little square where people gather and we had some lunch. Lunch in Ecuador is the big meal of the day. We started with soup, and juice and then had some veggies, rice and some part of a chichen for $1.50. We spent more on a cup of coffee than the meal.
For all you living in Alaska, I have great news, Alaska doesn´t have the worst service in restaurants in the world. I think Quito beats it 10 fold. If you don´t ask for your bill, they won´t give it to you.

After that, we took our $0.25 bus ride across town to the airport where we were led on a wild goose chase to retrieve my bag which had supposedly come in on the 14:00 plane. We went from office to office to office and finally found someone who could help us. Victory!!! My bag was there and it was all good.

Back to the city we went and had some dinner. We ate at this Middle Eastern place called "Alladins" and we sat around a while and caught up on live for the past nearly two years.

15 Nov Arriving

Dad dropped me off at the Detroit airport about 8:30pm on the 14th of November. From there I flew to DC where I slept at the airport. The morning of the 15th, I flew to Panama City. Not staying at the airport but about an hour, my plane was off to Quito. I arrived in Quito all right, too bad my bag didn´t. No worries though.

My friend Michael was waiting for me at the airport. We took the bus to an area of town the locals like to call "Gringo Landia", for a good reason. Many gringos like to hang out there. As we were walking to a cafe for a cup of coffee, we met a Dutch woman who seemed a little confused. We invited her to have coffee with us and we just sat around and chatted a bit.

From there, we took another bus to my hostal, The Secret Garden, to check in. It seems like a great place, but it´s a little on the pricey side, $8 a night. The crowd seems great, and the view from the top is overlooking the Old City.

After check in, Michael and I went over to his host family´s place for dinner. We had chicken and potatoes, rice, empanadas and coconut juice for dinner. It was great having a home cooked meal my first night in Quito. I haven´t been able to converse with them yet, because they don´t speak English. Soon enough and I will be well on my way to speaking Spanish.

From Michael´s place, we met some of his classmates down at a little bar called "Baritillo". Baritillo is a bar where you pay a flat rate ($5.50) and you have a tap at your table and you drink as much as you want. It was nice meeting with some of his friends and getting to see a little of the town.

Getting Ready for my Trip to South America.

Hello to everyone visiting my blog. This is the first time I have ever used a blog, so we'll see what happens. I'm not sure how long I will be able to sit around and blog while I'm away, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

In the last week or so I have been trying to get ready for my trip. I haven't started freaking out yet, but I'm sure the time will come. You know, crunch time, that day of, or the day before you are supposed to do whatever it is you're doing. Whatever it is, you know what I'm talking about, that exam, that paper, that meeting with a friend, or getting everything ironed out before a big trip.

Lately I have been working on getting some little things worked out. The biggest thing is the yellow fever shot I need to travel around much of South America. I called several places trying to get this vaccination and either everyone was booked until after my date of departure of they weren't answering. Thankfully the place called me, letting me know that they had a cancellation the day before my trip.