Advertisement
Lost in the Garden of Eden!
This sign should read...beware all those who enter, ye shall never leave again! So after the Cotopaxi climb and winning quiz two, we decided to hang around in quito for a day or two to rest. As I have already mentioned, the Secret Garden in Quito is a really cool hostel. Its run on a day to day basis by two managers, Colin and Kate, who are American and English respectively. To assist in the smooth running of the place, they take on about 5 volunteers at a time, which are basically just other backpackers with a bit of time on their hands. The incentive for them is they get free board, meals and Spanish lessons.
Now the problem with this hostel is that the people are so friendly and the vibe is so cool that it is very easy to get trapped here almost against your will for days on end, which is weird considering that Quito is probably the most crime ridden city we have been in during our time in South America, with about 1 in 3 people getting robbed by knifepoint in the street!
Funnily enough, Jo one of my friends from Brighton, had emailed me to say that her friend Claire was coming to Ecuador and as
Team SG in all their glory....
the people I hold responsible for destroying my liver! she was travelling over here alone could I give her tips etc. Being the noble Englishman I am, I befriended her on Facebook and told her we could meet up at some point in Quito for a beer and I could give her some advice on Ecuador and Peru etc. Imagine my surprise when I was talking to a random english girl one night at the dinner table in the hostel and it turned out to be her! She worked out it was me the minute I said I was from Crawley! Small world indeed eh!
I cant really write too much about our time in the Secret Garden for two reasons...A) the days all seemed to blend into one, with us doing very little in the way of anything productive and B) I spent most of my time there seriously intoxicated on Daz Gas´s (named after Daz one of the volunteers) Which brings me nicely onto the subject of the Dazzy G´s. By now im sure you are all wondering just what this fabled beverage is all about, well you probably couldnt give a monkeys actually but im going to tell you anyway. Take one glass, add ice,
Paul and Creme de menth!
Imagine an after 8 mint thats alcoholic and hey presto! fill over half of it (im not exagerrating) with rum, the juice of 1 lime and top it up with Fanta and you have a Daz Gas. It is as potent as hell and you can barely taste the rum in it. Its a fantastic drink that I will be promoting heavily on my return to the UK beginning with the V festival. (Be Warned!) To give you an idea, Paul the Irish bartender at the Secret Garden would get 6 Dazzy G´s out of a standard size bottle of rum......no wonder my memory is a little blurry. I actually think that the reason people get trapped here is because of the paralysing effects of Daz Gas!!
During our stay at the SG, Chris and I came somewhat of a running joke with the staff. We never booked a room for more than one day at a time, as we would be convinced every morning that we were leaving. By about lunchtime we would have changed our minds and decided it was easier to stay...'shall we just leave tomorrow?'...'yeah I cant be arsed now, lets leave tomorrow'. This obviously meant that we ended up moving room pretty much every
Chris and Claire.....
chance encounters rule! day and on two occasions having to spend the night in a double bed, much to the staffs amusement. Now you might think this is a bit sad sticking around for so long, but at the end of the day isnt the very essence of backpacking to wake up in a new place every day? Thats exactly what we did, onedayit was room C3 another day A1 and so on! We actually slept in pretty much every room in that hostel!
The hostel has a top chef that knocks up a 3 course meal every night that is truly gourmet, which we tucked into most nights, however our diets took a turn for the worse when we discovered the Burger King Texan Whopper. The first time we had it we were seriuosly hungover, I have no idea what inspired us to eat it for the next 4 days running, but thats exactly what we did. During that same 5 day period, we also ordered Pizza Hut twice and had another curry. Its fair to say that my time in Quito wasnt the healthiest.
Apparantly there are some cool churches and stuff in Quito...so I was told by other
Air Drums......
I snapped the strings on my air guitar, so in the meantime...... people who actually ventured further than the cinema and Burger King.
Completely irrelevant to anything, but did you know that in Ecuador the board game Monopoly is called Monopolio....sounds like some kind of bizzarre illness eh?!
As you can see Chris had his hair cut in Quito, much to everybody's amusement, his step that the barber did (it was supposed to be a gradual fade) actually reduced Tom, one of the other Irish volunteers, to tears and he was sat right down the other end of the room from Chris...it was that visible!
Being the culture vultures we are, we watched the Champions League final in an Irish pub (im still really really gutted for John Terry...its a shame sarcasm is hard to write) and again, I had far too much to drink. Upon waking up the following morning and deciding that was it...'im never drinking again! (...well at least not today anyway) enough was enough...we had to leave. So we booked our bus ticket to Columbia to depart at 1.30am Friday morning. Leaving us just enough time to attempt a historic third title defence of our pub quiz. In fairness one of the rounds was questions
about the hostel......the other teams didnt stand a chance! A first ever three-peat in Secret Garden history was rewarded with the much coveted bottle of Ron del Rio rum, so much for not drinking! Two last Daz Gas´s for the road and that was it, we managed to escape the clutches of the Secret Garden!
PS dont let this blog put you off, I promise the next one will be a bit more interesting and informative about South America! (even if I have to lie!!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.252s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 59; dbt: 0.074s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Darragh
non-member comment
ha...
Nice entry there Darren...pretty much accurately describes your stay at the Secret Garden.