Guild complex in Quito

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Ecuador, Quito, 07-10-1990,

I'm leaning against the entrance of the Gran Casino Hotel panting and not bothering to unleash my bulky old travel partner from my aching back, its strings painfully biting into my shoulder blades. Hating taxi drivers the world over I decided to walk the six kilometers leading me through the old historic centre of Quito, through the hustle and full of life cobblestone streets, feeling a strange ambience of the past invading my mind, weary after nearly twenty hours of near non-stop flying...

Not yet a full hour on Ecuadorian soil and already my gray brain mass is adjusting to my Gringo excistence, a misguided guild complex brought about by the atrocities of the former Spanish Crown and the Roman Church, conquistadores with fancy names like Pizarro bound on fabulous riches and with little regard for the indigenous population, invading my emotional brain chemicals screaming at me about the unrightiousness done to the Indio race.

Misguided martyrs in the name of Christ who symbolised their sacred faith with shaven heads, brown cloaks and countless crucifixes, eager to prove their zeal to their equally devout masters in Holy Rome, they travelled with the soldiers and fortune seekers hoping to save the souls of heathen and primitives, maybe even non-humans though the Church gave them the benefit of the doubt...any one way, a couple of dozen of conversions might well earn them that cherished place at the side of Jesus Christ their Lord...

Still, walking through the old centre of Quito, my heavy backpack wearing me down while the thin air at nearly three thousand meters altitude is making breathing difficult, watching the crowd I see mostly indios whose small and stocky frames I remember so well from last winter during my trip with James in Central-America....no latinos here but full blooded indios...

Getting my act together and my lungs full with thin air I walk into the Gran Casino Hotel - aka the Gran Gringo Hotel - for a free room...

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Photos

In Quito
reading a local paper

Market scêne
in Quito