Latin America 5 - Quito

South America » Ecuador » North
November 26th 2009

Published: November 26th 2009

The first leg of my world adventure, Latin America, is nearing its conclusion. As I begin writing, I am flying over the Caribbean, from Quito to Havana, after a layover in Lima. I’ve been excited going into each part of this trip; this time, I’m not only nervous, but also anxious. First, there is the illegality; second, Cuba is a very different type of place. I’ve heard a lot about it over the past three or four weeks from fellow travelers, and also from a guide, and, frankly, their insights are quite different from what I had heard in the past. I’ve known three Americans who have gone into Cuba, all as illegal tourists (and to be clear, this is a U.S. law; the Cuban government has no problem accepting Americans and their money, and Ecuador and Peru have no issue with letting me on the plane. In fact, the most common departure point for Americans to Cuba is our ally Canada.). None of those three were close friends of mine, so they gave me only very brief summaries, which were consistent, and were pretty much this: “The people are overwhelmingly welcoming and fun-loving. There is music everywhere and parties late into the night. And almost nothing has changed since the ‘50s.” More in-depth conversations over the last few weeks have echoed the latter sentiment, but there is this tourist/local division in the country that makes the “overwhelmingly welcoming” part seem a bit unrealistic. For starters, with the exception of people actually working in the tourist trade, it is illegal for a Cuban to talk to a tourist.

But more on Cuba next time. I left Quito this morning, and it deserves an entry in its own right. Unfortunately, I did not have the time tour Ecuador extensively. City walking is always fun. I went to the top of a cathedral for some beautiful views. It was not for those with vertigo. Ample opportunities to fall to your death over the side, to go along with long metal ladders to get to the top. There are definitely less lawyers in Ecuador than in the U.S. While I didn’t get to see much, Ecuador certainly sounds as if it is a beautiful country. Geographically, it is essentially a mini-Peru. From left to right, there are beaches, a very volcanic section of the Andes, and then Amazon jungle. It has pretty extensive ruins as well, although nowhere near the amount as Peru, and certainly nothing comparable to Maccu Picu or Choquequirao. I also went on a great mountain biking ride down the side of a volcano.

Their national museum, Museo de Banco Central de Ecuador (their Fed runs the museum? Huh?), however, was far more impressive than anything I saw in Peru. The first room of pre-colonization art and ceramics is massive. The preserved condition of many of the pieces is stunning. Some of the stone figures still have original metal earrings and noserings in them. The second room is the Gold Room, and while the room was being renovated, the pieces that were displayed were spectacular. I skipped their massive collection of colonial art (Jesus, Virgen de Asuncian, Jesus, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgen de Caridad) but really enjoyed the modern art galleries, which stretch from the late 1800s to the present. Unfortunately, no photography allowed although I got a couple of shots in at the modern art galleries where my flash didn’t attract that much attention.

One interesting thing about Ecuador is that their official currency is U.S. dollar. They do make their own coins, and generally your change will be a combination of U.S. and Ecuadorian mint. $1 currency is always the Sacagawea coin, and $1 goes a lot further in Ecuador than in the U.S., which just goes to show that using a coin for $1 is common sense. When you do get paper currency, it is exactly U.S. mint. They converted less than 10 years ago, and I would have to think that it has a big stabilizing effect on their economy (ask an Argentine who woke up one morning in 2001 with 1/3 as much money as he had the day before about that), but it was such a hit to their national pride that the Congress recalled (impeached, essentially) the President who made the proposal on the charge of “abandoning the country”.

His successor, hand-chosen by the opposition, went ahead and made the change. You have to love Latin American politics. Here it is, though, less than a decade later, and the current Ecuadorian President, like the Presidents of Bolivia and Honduras, is of the populist Hugo Chavez model. Not quite as far out as Chavez (no one without massive oil reserves could be), but more in line with Argentina’s current leadership. It’s the trend in Latin America, as is the elimination of term limits. Chavez is an ass who only embraced democracy when he believed he could win; the people I talked to in both Peru and Ecuador didn’t support him. On the other hand, the oil industry, led by Chevron-Texaco, has already extracted the majority of Ecuador’s oil and natural gas, and 99%!o(MISSING)f Ecuadorians are not one bit better off for it, and a hell of a lot of them have cancer and skin conditions to show for it. You can understand their cynicism with the West. Ecuador will be an interesting case; they haven’t made any big socialistic changes yet. One dumb change they did make was to start provoking their northern neighbor, Columbia, which is very much aligned with the U.S. Presumably, this was a populist move, but Columbia provides electricity to Ecuador—scratch that, provided. Columbia pulled the plug on the power and, at the same time, a sever drought that meant Ecuador’s hydroelectric dams that provide the bulk of electricity were working well under capacity. The result is rolling blackouts across Quito - four to six hours at a time. They announce these blackouts somewhere, but not to the guests of their hostels, who suddenly find themselves in dark rooms, and unable to get money from ATMs for dinner, and without Wifi to tell people they’ve posted a new blog so then they have to wake up at 4 in the morning so they can use the Internet before they catch their 7AM plane. Sometimes politicians just can’t see how their decisions cause real problems for real people. My tongue is firmly in cheek.

So, as I posted two entries ago, I took an entertaining all night bus to Quito from Peru and left for Galapagos less than 24 hours later (last minute = $2,000 savings; I know you only get two weeks vacation each year, but do not book Galapagos from the States under any circumstances!). In that short time, though, I received three or four warnings about the crime problem. It was ten in the morning when I arrived at my hostel, , so I couldn’t check into my room yet. I immediately saw the signs (note: plural) that warned do not take any more than you need out on the streets. As it happened, the travel agency I was dealing with was just about three blocks away. I put my bags in the community closet, but took my laptop because the closet didn’t lock and besides I thought I may end up using it at a coffee shop or something. I walked to the agency and the guy’s eyes turned into saucers when I walked in. “My friend, my friend. Is that a laptop? Oh, my friend, do not carry a laptop around the streets of Quito.” “In the middle of the day?” “My friend, even your camera”, he gestured toward the point and shoot strapped to my belt that was literally free but was actually worth about $25. “They will take it right off you. That camera could bring them one week’s food.” The best warning, however, came the night I returned from Galapagos and went to a bar. Two Danish guys from the Galapagos cruise and I were their watching Sunday night football with the American proprietor. His menu contained no less than 20 burgers, including one with 2 kilos (i.e. 3.4 pounds) of meat and a pound of fries. The highlight of the menu, however, was the Vegetarian Burger, which was listed at a price of $0.00, and whose description was simply “Go fuck yourself!” The point here is that this man is not soft. It was after 11 when the game ended and we asked him whether it was safe to walk back. “How far are you?” “About two and a half blocks.” “Which direction?” We gestured to the East. “You should take a cab.”

This massive crime issue became a real drag. It’s not fun to walk the streets when suspect that every man you see will be pulling out a knife on you. It was that much more of a shame because I was staying in a really fun neighborhood, and while Quito will not be confused with Orlando any time soon, it is much more Western than anywhere I went in Peru. So anyway, on my last day, I had to prepare for two weeks in Cuba, where the American dollar is accepted only with a significant surcharge, and where my credit and ATM cards would be useless. Plus (and I’ll get into this more in the next entry), Cuba’s dual-currency monetary system results in it being perhaps the most expensive country for tourists in Latin America. In other words, I had to go to the bank, get over $1,000 in cash with cash advances and ATM cards, then I had to take it to a different store to convert it into Euros, then I had to go hide it all in my hostel. I survived, but it was nerve wracking.

Again, pictures are being posted. Feel free to share the Ecuador pictures, but this blog entry is for your eyes only. If I am assessed a $7,500 fine when I return (the standard punishment these days, although 15 years in prison looms out there as a possibility), I will be seeking compensation from the fool who got me caught.

As always, much love,

Greg

Latin America 5 - Quito

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