Advertisement
Published: November 28th 2006
Me on the terrace
My new poncho never leaves my side.. do I blend in with the locals?!?Hey my lovely people!
I´m in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador!
Waiting at Lima airport was probably the worst experience of my life, by the time I started to feel sleepy during my wait, my flight was only a few hours away so I didn´t want to risk it sleeping.. and now I can see how sleep deprivation is a torture method! Felt like crying and throwing up, FINALLY got on the plane and passed out the second I hit the chair... after only two hours I was in Quito!
The place that I´m staying at is called The Secret Garden and its amazing, its like a tree-house that goes up and up, really narrow and windy with tons of stairs and brightly coloured walls, and at the very top it opens up into a terrace where everyone has breakfast/dinner/party together, and the view is AMAZING!! It looks over the entire Old Town of Quito. Its really social and friendly and I´ve already met a million people from so many different countries, there is always someone to do something with! The day I arrived, there was a benefit at a nightclub to raise money for street kids,
Quito, the Old Town
Near where I´m staying so I pushed past the tiredness to go out - it was US$5 for entry, but drinks were SO cheap.... $1.50 beers (everyone here drinks Pinselur - Ecuadorian beer in massive pint bottles), $1 tequila shots, etc etc. The music was salsa with all the popular songs thrown in like you´d hear back home, and then randomly some Bob Marley - the people here can dance hey!!! Then another day, it was one of the staff´s birthdays so we had a big lunch on the terrace and danced to a Mariachi band, it was so fun!
Quito is amazing, its 2800m above sea level so a lot of people get headaches from the altitude or even faint when they first arrive. I felt fine except a bit woosy occassionally. Quito is split into two sections, the Old Town and the New Town. I´m staying in the Old Town which has a lot of old colonial buildings, beautiful churches and parks. The New Town is nicknamed Gringolandia as that´s where the vast majority of tourists stay.. its really modern there with shopping plazas etc. If I walk around in the New Town, barely anyone will look at me. But if
I walk around Old Town.... I get stared at like crazy, people yell out, cat calls etc.. and the driving here is absolutely INSANE!! Its a wonder that more people aren´t hit by buses! The drivers are crazy and sit on the horn the entire time!
Walking around the Old Town during on Friday I checked out some beauuutiifuull old churches, one called La Basilica and the other called La Compañia, which is covered roof to floor in a fine layer of real gold, it is STUNNING. Later that day, I caught a bus to Otavalo with two Americans... Otavalo has a massive Saturday morning market, so we went there Sunday night so that we could get up really early. It was ABSOLUTELY freezing and me being a Darwin girl was only wearing a singlet, nearly froze to death! We stayed at a little place called La Luna which was 4km out of town, so we had to catch a taxi there... scariest drive of my life! It was so foggy that we could literally only see 1m in front of us, in the middle of the night, with this driver tearing around curves on this old cobbled road
The view from Secret Garden
This is when I first arrived at my hostel, completely exhausted and freezing! Grabbed the nearest poncho and still managed a smile hehe... for miles and miles... its was so Wolf Creek and we were all in the backseat looking at each other like "God save us!!!" But I lived to tell the tale.... the next morning we went to the markets, first we checked out the livestock market where apparently you could buy llamas for $15! Didn´t see any llamas but plenty of massive pigs, cows and sheep squeling and splashing in mud and walking on my feet! Next we went to the artisen´s market, and I was in heaven.... fantastic native jewellery, clothes, textiles.. I bought up big time ahhh!!
You would not believe how cheap it is here. Buses are 25c, a taxi ride that would cost $30 in Australia is $3, massive meals about $2, enough breakfast for myself for two days was 90c, bottle of bacardi in the supermarket $5!!
Today some people from the hostel and I went to the actual equator... there was a museum there where you could do experiements like balancing an egg on a nail - easy to do because there is less gravity, and flushing water down a drain on either side of the equator - the water really does
The Secret Garden
One of the walls inside the hostel - they are all the funkiest patterns! spin in opposite ways! I can now officially say that I´ve been in the northern hemisphere!!
Its been a big weekend in Ecuador as there were the presidential elections - its a very big deal and the police were out IN FORCE. Voting weekend means that its a dry weekend - no drinking allowed, even for foreigners - if you are caught drinking, you spend the weekend in jail! Last year about 500 foreigners were arrested, and while I thought that would make a pretty cool story....... I didn´t want to risk it haha so just stayed at the hostel for one or more drinks...
The politcal situation over here is absolutely insane, its like another world. The last 12 presidents of Ecuador have been overthrown by the public after only serving about 2 years of their time, which basically means the public storms the presidential home and chase out the current president and destroy the home. If the military doesn´t support the president, then basically he is screwed and has to flee the country. The two recent candidates were Noboa and Correa, Noboa is one of the richest men in the world and is also a total
fruitloop, he would claim that God was telling him he´d already won the presidency, and would try to buy votes by visiting the poor villages and giving the families $10 and throwing t-shirts and wheelchairs from his car, apparently running down several people in the meantime. Correa is a very left-wing socialist and he won the election, but chances are he´ll be overthrown in a year or two anyway. We drove past the building that they were counting the votes in, and it was protected by about 50 armed guards.. in Columbia next door, villagers are being masacred in the thousands by drug lords to gain more land to grow drugs.. and its allowed to continue, no one here can stop it. It is such a crazy eye-opener.
There is a lot of crime in Quito and although I haven´t seen any, there are reminders of it all over the city. The Old Town where I´m staying is much safer than the New Town, as a lot of theives target the tourist areas. All over the city, the tops of walls are embedded with shards of broken glass to stop people from climbing over, and car alarms go off
every five minutes. Most stories that I´ve heard involving people being mugged or having things stolen involve some stupidity or carelessness on the person´s part - not locking your bag on buses, having things taken out of your pocket etc. Outside the hostel a few weeks back, a girl was walking alone at midnight and a man ran out of the shadows and tried to mug her - really, how stupid can you be to walk alone at that time of night? I have to admit that I was quite apprehensive walking around by myself the first time, but its really fine, I keep my shoulder bag in front of me and don´t go out alone at night, so all you need is common sense.
Practically NO ONE speaks English here, so it´s really tricky to communicate, even with the amount of study I did.. I can ask for directions and buy things, but there is no way I could have a converstation with someone and often I have no clue what they are telling me. If you came here with absolutely no knowledge of Spanish, you would find it sooooooo difficult. I think I´m going to do a
Virgin Mary
This was taken from the terrace, around the statue of the Virgin Mary there is also a nativity scene that lights up at night. few Spanish lessons this week so I can actually talk to people! Although my bartering skills were pretty good in Otavalo, got some bargains.. you can even barter in some of the shops but I didn´t know that, my very first thing I bought was a poncho and the shopowner said $10, and I was like "great $10!" And she laughed and felt sorry for me and said "ok $8." So after that I was bartering my butt off.
This week in Quito there is a week-long festival celebrating the Refoundation of Quito, so a few of us are going to see a bullfight (big Quito cultural experience and all but I think I´ll probably end up in tears), eat some guinea pig for lunch and see some flamenco dancing in the evening. Then I´m going to head off to Baños, which is about 4 hours south and people have told me is adventure/nature haven, horse riding, rafting etc!!
Talk to you soon everyone, muchas love!
Lauren xoxoxoxoxoxo
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0503s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Jules
non-member comment
Sounds like you are having an awesome time!!! Love how you are trying to blend in with the local with the poncho... im sure they have no idea... heheh... keep updating us!!! love lots oxoxoxoxo