Quito, Spanish lessons, and the view from the Secret Garden

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What can I say about Quito? About three things. 1) The historic centre is very beautiful. 2) It´s a dangerous city - hold on to your possessions, or better yet, don´t take them with you; better still, don´t go out. 3) The Secret Garden hostel´s garden is so secret it´s invisible. It does have a terrace with a marvellous view of the historic centre, the hill with the Panecillo, some other hills, and the church that you can go up but I didn´t. Yep, that´s about it. I met someone who had been mugged three times (the last time they just got a lip balm and 50 cents), and several people who had their passports stolen. I managed to not do 95% of the touristy things in Quito on account of the fact that I was studying too hard (read long) and partying too hard. It´s not my fault - you see, the Secret Garden has this incredibly sociable terrace with the wonderful view and serves 3 courses of delicious food every night. And has a bar. You can´t escape it.

My pal from Puerto Mádryn/Lima/Montañita, Sofie, arrived on Sunday and, along with a teacher from Houston called Mike, we went up to the Panecillo to check out the giant Virgin with wings and the view from inside her skirt, or something. I was reminded of Anya´s description of Quito being sausage roll-shaped. She didn´t mention the moutains of green mashed potato surrouning the pork´n´pastry delicacy on either side though. It was a clear, sunny day and so we were lucky enough to see the volcano Cotopaxi in the distance. Mike gave me a New Yorker that day which I read and then later traded for a Paul Auster book. BARGAIN. Good reading material is kind of like gold dust in these parts.

The reason I went to Quito was to study Spanish for two weeks, learn salsa and make some friends. By Monday, the first day of school, I already had a bunch of friends in my hostel and mostly didn´t bother to make friends with the mainly German and Korean students in my school. School was OK, haven´t got much to say about it, except that I was constantly concerned that I didn´t have enough time to work on my translation (part 2) and recover from hangovers (youth part 2). I did go to one salsa class but it was so slow-going that I couldn´t be bothered to go again. We literally spent 10 minutes stepping from one foot to the other to practise moving in time to the beat. Sad to say, there was one German guy who actually needed this practice.

Michael, my Huaraz/Montañita pal, arrived at the Secret Garden on Monday and he and Sofie planned their passage to Colombia for the following morning. In keeping with the spirit of the place, Michael made us finish the rum he´d brought on our Santa Cruz trek. This was not conducive to easy rising the next morning and kind of set a standard for my time in Quito. After the first week of Spanish school, I changed my classes to the afternoon session, and after two days, I quit altogether. Well, I was in Quit-o. Sorry, that was terrible, wasn´t it. The teacher I had in the second week wasn´t as creative as the one I had originally and even put her make up on in the middle of my class.

I learnt a lot of things in Quito, but Spanish wasn´t really one of them. I learnt the imperatives and the subjuntives but I haven´t retained it, unfortunately. Things I did learn: how to play Yanif, a new enhanced version of the mafia game, how to drink banderas (hot sauce, salt, tequila, lemon/lime).

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Comments

[Jess]

this seems to be a very alcohol-influenced entry!!!