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Published: March 23rd 2008
After missing my flight and months of putting off the trip I was releived to finally get here. Have a look at the ticket and see if you could have made the same mistake, I thought the flight duration was the departure time. A simple mistake anyone could have made? I really did feel like a right Burke, it cost me 50 to get the flight changed to the next day, I got off lightly considering the flight was 500, it was like a 10% idiot tax.
The flight was fine and I didnt take sleeping tablets as planned, I watched the film about Ian Curtis "Control", definately worth watching. I was surprised that all the staff in Maimi airport were speaking in spanish, the security was really tight, I was asked to stand to one side for "special clearance", at first I thought "ooh special clearance, to make sure I dont miss the connection, isnt that nice" then I realised that it meant having to stand in a glass cubicle for half an hour while all of my belongings were scanned including my shoes, swabs were taken of every single item in my bag then my eyes scanned and
fingers were also scanned, while I was standing there watching them I started to think about the guy jailed for four years for the microscopic speck of weed found on the sole of his shoe. If I come to South America again, im going via Madrid.
The next flight was from Maimi to Quito and it was five hours long, I spent most of it speaking to the Ecuadorian man next to me and getting loads of phrases for when I arrive at the family home, I was starting to realise that I really should have studied more when I had the chance as when I was walking around Miami airport I couldnt understand a word and had trouble buying a coffee. I tried to cram in as many useful phrases as possible after a few hours I went to ask him another phrase but he was asleep. I was on my own now.
The husband of the co-ordinator (Freddy) picked me up from the airport and we chatted the hole journey back to the house in Spanish. I was surprised at how much I could say. When I got to the house I met Veronica the mother
from the host family, I warmed to her straight away, she is really patient talkative and hospitable, we sat up for an hour and I repeated the survival spanish I had said to Freddy in the car. I then had my first experience of Dogo, the guard dog. To get to my room I had to go out the back and up stairs outside into a annexed apartment and passed Dogo, who is huge, smelly and barks constantly. The family seem unable to control Dogo, so I wasnt going to find it easy . I was glad to get into my room I unpacked and rearraged things slightly to make it as comfy as possible as I would be there for two weeks. The water was freezing.
The project co-ordinator (Maria) turned up the next morning to collect money off me and to tell me what I would be doing. My spanish lessons were to start the next morning. I got some directions from her on how to get around, the phone number for the house and decided to head out and see what was about. I had just left the house turned right and heard meowing, I saw
a box on the side of the road with kittens inside. At first I thought I better just walk away, as I was walking away I couldnt help thinking that although I dont beleive in hell, I deserve to go if I leave those kittens there in that box. I knocked on all the houses nearby, but they all denied owning the kittens. I then went to a shop and asked an old lady what to do with them, she told me to leave them in the box by the road, I did my best with a dictionary to ask for an animal shelter, but she hadnt heard of one, she could tell me where there was a pet shop and I took them there.
When I got back to Armenia (the town where I am staying) I went to the local shop where four local teenagers who were getting tipsy outside the shop, they heard my trying to buy scratchings in the shop and started chatting to me, I chatted to them until their bottle of 20/20 or equivalent was finished, they cant get many tourists here because they seem so surprised to see one and were puzzled
why I would come here. I was trying to speak to them in Spanish and they were trying to say everything back in English, in survival spanish and broken english we managed to chat for well over an hour, im not sure if the alcohol helped. I went home and distracted Dogo with the pork scratchings. So I could get in without being mauled.
The cockerel went off at 3am this started Dogo barking, and I couldnt get back to sleep. Deborah (the Spanish Teacher) turned up at 7am for the Spanish lesson. She complained about being wasted from the night before, i asked her what she was up to and she said she goes out every night and is into metal and punk, we have music blasting during every lesson, it shouldnt work but it does, Deborah shouldnt make it to the lesson every morning but she does, she said she would bring me on a night out soon.
If anyone is thinking of coming here, dont rely on a phrase book, use either the Michel Thomas cds, Pimsler cds (both can be downloaded using bit torrent) or get Spanish lessons and pay attention, dont chat away
in English throughout most of the lesson about your boyfriend, favourite films, cats etc. On the second day I went into Quito on my own armed with a little spanish and a sense of adventure, I got lost, then the rain came down in sheets, I was coughing from the fumes and I just wanted to get back after a few hours because it was impossible to walk around in rain this heavy. I went back in the direction I came but couldnt find the bus stop, I tried to get a taxi but none of them would go to Armenia. My ears felt really blocked and I couldnt hear properly, (this happens a lot and I think its due to the altitude) I really didnt know what to do there are no bus numbers and not one of the many hundreds of buses in the terminal said "Armenia". I then found out there are 2 Armenias and I was losing the will, the rain wasnt easing up and I wasnt surviving on my survival Spanish. I hate to say this but a very nice policeman took me all the way to the right bus stop I was in the
wrong place entirely and wouldn´t have got home till very late when rush hour was over and the taxis start to go out of town again. I got home defeated deflated and soaked, I forgot to get pork scratchings so I also had to fight past Dogo in the rain. Water was freezing so I went to bed smelling of wet Dogo.
It was saturday morning and my 3am alarm call went off as usual and the Dog started his morning howling. I felt ill and went to the bathroom, my face was really sore, I had a nasty rash on my face and my eyes were red. Quito is covered in a blanket of thick black smoke, I wasnt sure if it was caused by the kittens or the pollution, I felt rotten so I spent the day trying to learn a bit more Spanish. Sunday I also spent recouperating from my strange tropical disease. I just went out locally to phone home and use the internet and get pork scratchings for Dogo. On the way out of the house I saw a huge cage full of adorable ginea pigs, at first I thought it was strange that
they made the effort to go to so much trouble for their ginea pigs when there other pets are half starved, I later found out that they were not pets.
Verónica told me the next morning that I was going to get a new roommate this evening around midnight, a weekend feeling ill and being along I really wanted someone to talk to and go into town with. I had my lesson with Deborah who told me that she though my face rash was a birth mark - nice one. I decided to try Quito again on my own and do a bit of a reccy and try out my spanish on innocent passers by. I went to the main plaza where there was a demonstration about low wages and conditions for Ecuadorian women. The minimum wage for Ecuadorians is $120 a month for an 8 hour day. Even though we will work into our 70´s and be lucky to have a pension, we really have it good.
Schooling is free but one of the first things I noticed in Quito is that young kids were working on the buses collecting money for the driver and selling sweets
and crisps on the street. I noticed by the barrios going into Quito that I was definately staying in a nice part of town, where children attend school and houses have inside toilets. One of these kids had a puppy and it was adorable, the kid handed me the puppy and said something to me, I didnt understand the word so I held the puppy in one hand and my dictionary in the other to look up the word, I looked around and the kid was running off, the word was ´regalo´ which means present. I spent the next hour trying to offload this present but couldnt and ending up taking it with me towards home. I got off the bus a stop earlier and asked for a petshop, the women in the petshop was very sympathetic and assured me she would find my puppy a good home. I named her lollipop as the kid was selling lollipops and said an emotional farewell. I promised myself that I would not pick up anymore strays. Ecuador isn´t the best place to be if you are soppily inclined towards animals, stray cats and dogs are seen as pests and often run over.
My new roommate arrived - Charmaine from Toronto, I was expecting her to arrive the night before but she didnt show. Charmaine was supposed to be collected from the airport last night by the project co-ordinator Maria or her husband Freddy. They didnt show at all and told Charmaine that she gave them the wrong dates, which was a lie because they had already told me that she was arriving the night before. Charmaine also emailed them the flight details. She was great to have as a room mate but has an allergy to dogs, she wasnt please to meet Dogo. I like dogs, but I wouldnt lose sleep if Dogo suddenly disappeared.
Charmaine would be working at an orphange a few miles away, I went along with her to have a look around. We spoke to one of the teachers who told us that the orphange is financed from donations, volunteering projects and selling of tomatoes that the kids help with but that they dont receive any funding from the government. We chatted to some of the kids and walked around the whole place which was huge, most of the land is used for tomato and wheat
crop. Most of the children were not orphans but have parents with drink and drug problems. The kids seemed in great form and get visits from family members. There was also a creche, the babies and toddlers all have foster parents they go home with in the afternoon. The place needed resources and it was very basic, the children have to hand wash all their own clothes and help with the running of the orphanage.
The next day Deborah made plans with me and Charmaine to meet in town and go to a club, in the afternoon we headed into town and met up with Deborah and her friends in the student area of Quito. If anyone has seen the film ´City of God´ Deborah and her friends look like the groovies, they are all students and a few spoke English. We went to a bar and then to a punk club called La Bunga. The music was a strange mix one minute they´d play punk or ska then the next minute house or salsa and the dancing would change accordingly from pogoing alone to salsa dancing with a partner.
One thing I really loved about Quito was
the grafitti, it was interesting politically and some amusing. I will put lots of examples on here, i will get around to translating them all in time. I spent half a day just going around Quito getting interesting pictures of grafiti, I know this isnt exactly everyone´s idea of a fun day out, but I enjoyed myself.
The next day I decided to be a proper tourist and went to the popular tourist spot of Mitad Del Mundo, (the Equator). I headed straight for the tacky souveneir shops and bought a team Ecuador 2010 world cup top, under the false pretence that they had qualified and that I dont currently have a team to support. I later found out that they dont have much of a chance of qualifying. After being fleeced I went to the huge equator monument and the a line of where they once thought the equator was, it was later discovered that this was wrong place and the real equator was about 250 meters away, this was proved not only by military GPS but also by the fact that I could balance an egg on a nail (I have a certificate to prove it). There
was also a mini museum that had jars of Ecuadors most dangerous species, one of which swims up your uretha imbeds itself inside you with spikes and stays there until you either have it surgically removed or die of pain. We were also shown shrunken heads and a figure of an ancient Ecuadorian chap who seemed very pleased to see us. On the bus back we met some aussies who were going to the market town of Otovalo the next day on their way to Columbia, we arranged to meet up with them the next day.
That night me and Charmaine ware invited to a party near to where we were staying by one of Deborahs friends, when we got to the house it was like a drug dealers mansion, it was someones 28th or 6th birthday as they were born on 29th February. It was okish at about one we both wanted to head back because we had to leave at 9am the next morning for Otovalo. We asked if they could call a taxi for us but they insisted on giving us a lift, by 3am we were still waiting for the lift and really wanted to
get back, we saw the casualty who was supposed to be driving us home and tried to be as polite as possible in explaining that there was no bloody way we were getting in a car with her. While she telling us to get in, she reversed the car into a tree, we said to the others that she really shouldnt be driving, but others explained it was perfectly safe as when they get stopped they just pay the police and drive on. Finally we got a cab and got home at dawn.
We met the Aussie guys Adam and Xavier in town and took the bus to Otovalo, which was about an hour and a half away. Otovalo was just market stalls as far as you could see and seemed to sell just about everything, I bought some weird and wonderful presents and managed to lose the others for half the day, we met up again later for food. Adam took action shots of us shopping and we met a friendly couple on a roof top reasturant where we had dinner. They were called Richard (oz) and Debbie (uk) and both talked incessantly at the same time and
they had been travelling all over South America together, Columbia sounds good. I found out after comparing what I´d bought that I was a rubbish haggler, I´d paid almost double what I should have for most of the stuff. I thought I´d done really well until then. We left soon after and had a two hour bus ride back to Quito, then a taxi back home. We got back home to no Dogo, he had been moved to the side garden as their other dog Salubri was on heat, but not because he terrorised us every time we needed to go in or out.
On Monday war broke out with Columbia over Farc rebels being killed by the Columbian forces in Ecuador. As you can see from the grafitti the Columbian President Uribe is unpopular here, he is considered to be a poodle of Bush and a fascist. There was a tense atmosphere, every house and shop had the radio and tv tuned into the news all day, everywhere I walked I called hear news reports. I spoke to the local shop keeper about it, he told me it was just talk and nothing would happen. Veronica was not
so sure, her husband Carlos is a major in the military, they constantly watched the news over the next few days.
The next day I had a visit to an animal reserve an hour away from where I was staying in a town called Tambillo. The place isnt open to the public and I had to call first to ask if I could visit. The place was amazing and all started by a couple who ran a dairy farm there. One day a man turned up with 16 bears in cages, all in bad condition. they bought them off them because they didnt want to leave them with the dodgy man. They tried to then contact the authorities to find homes for them and found out that there was no provision for wild animals in captivity, wild animals are traffiked for the circus or as pets.
All the animals in the reserve are there from cases of cruelty or were kept illegally and confiscated by the police. The staff in the reserve aim to re-release all the animals they can back into the wild where possible. The park has to pay the police for every animal they deliver
to them, but receive no state funding. The project co-ordinator was called Darma from Bulgaria, I talked to her for over two hours and she was a walking encyclodepia or exotic animals, she plans to do her PHd in big cats. We met her favourite, Pumara who was a very tame Puma and was kept as a pet and is too friendly to ever be released, also the previous owners had her claws ripped out. Pumara seemed to like me very much and must have known that I was a cat person becauase she let me stroke her and purred loads, it was amazing getting this close to such a big cat. The reserve is funded from the dairy farm, from donations and also from payment from volunteers, there were 14 there when I visited mostly from England, one from Scotland and one South African.
On Friday, Charmaine left for a trip that she was going to later report on as part of her job. I spent a few hours going around the old town taking pictures and tried to take in a bit of culture by visiting a museum, I went to the best one according to my
guide book, after ten minutes I was bored stiff nothing but maps and life size models of people making tortillas, I got out quick, really dont bother.
Later on I met some Ecuadorians in town who told me that all the museums were this dull and I was right to get out. Sylvia and her boyfriend and their friends invited me over to their table while I was waiting for the rain to die down while I standing in out of the rain, I chatted to them all for hours and missed the last bus home and had to get a cab. They were great company and they were all talking to me about the politics of Ecuador.
Ecuador has had seven different presidents between 1996-2006, all of which implemented free market polcies after being elected on left wing policies. Three of those presidents were ousted by street protest. The group I was talking to said that they felt they had power and that when they dont feel that their government is working for them they get a new one just like that, rather than wait five years for the next election. One of them said that they
felt they had more control than the British or US people who dispite the protests and opposition still had forces occupying Iraq. They lack resources in Ecuador, the roads, hospital and schools need resources and Ecuadors wealth has been plundered over the years with the cheap sell of of the country´s oil. Correa is a new hope for Ecuadorians and I havent heard a bad word against him yet. One cab driver said that Correa was the new Simon Bolivar.
The next day I left for Las Tolas in the afternoon, I said my goodbyes to my host family for the past two week. I really didnt know what to expect, I knew it would be really remote but I didnt have a clue what it would be like.
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simone
non-member comment
Hola
Hola Natasha Es muy emocinante en tu vacaciones. Tengo ganas escuchar mas. Tu estas una mujer muy valiente, y estoy muy celosa de tu viaje. Bueno suerte Simone