Day 10: Back to the Start

Maybe it is a Chinese thing, or maybe it is a human thing, we tend to run in circle. After 9 fantastic days in the Ecuador mountains area, now I am back to Quito. My 10 days in Ecuador did not even scrape the surface of what this country has to offer. Technically, there are 4 diverse regions in Ecaudor: the coast, the mountains, the amazon basins, and Galápagos islands. I have only focused on the mountains in this trip. My next Ecaudor chapter may be visiting the coast and Galápagos. I have been also thinking about doing a trip to travel to the countries along the Pan-American Highway, it would be even more grand if I can start from Alaska to Argentina! I won't be able to drive obviously, but maybe I can do some combination of train and buses, and just stopped here and there.

Last day in town, I specifically did not plan anything special, partly because I was so tired from the hike yesterday to the Cotopaxi volcano. And I was also going to meet a local today and let him be my guide. Freddy, a young kid who works in a pet shop and studies at night, has been my guide today. He first took me to the central shopping area I guess, where we had lunch, and my first record shop in Ecuador. Too bad, they literally only have 4 records in the store: Radiohead's OK Computer, AC/DC's Black in Black, and another two hard rock kind of stuff. I wouldn't mind to get some latino progressive rock or some classics from the 60s or 70s. I don't think they existed in this country.

After the central shopping area, we took an uber to La Floresta, an artsy-fartsy neighborhood with some arthouse theaters, and lot of cafes and street murals. But there were just too many hills in Quito to really walk around, unless you had the endless energy like this 24 years old. We sat in the Ocho y Medio Theatre Cafe for a while, I had an iced espresso con leche, which just gave me enough energy for one more stop at the Basílica del Voto Nacional, which is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas. There are actually a lot of "largest", "highest" things in Ecaudor, I just realized. The basilica was beautiful and worth a visit. It was raining though, and I had no energy to climb the tower, which I normally would.

After another uber ride home, I bid goodbye to Freddy. I just retrieved back to the airbnb, started packing, had some light dinner. Darwin, the driver will come pick me up at 5:20am for my international flight at 8:20am. So, I will need to wake up at 4:30am or so. I will probably go to bed at 9pm. Tomorrow will be a whole day of traveling. Tuesday will be back to work. Don't even want to think about that just yet. I would not mind to keep waking up to seeing this view actually.

I know I will be back to South America soon enough. I just love her too much to not come back again, but hopefully I will be good and go back to learn some real Spanish before the next trip. In this trip, I really find that I need it if I want to go to the less developed part of South America.

See all Day 10 photos here.

Day 2: Walking across the Hemispheres

I walked across the arctic line in Finland back in 1998, and today, I have physically crossed the equator line. What's the next challenge? I am wondering. I am already thinking about my next destinations, that is not unusual actually. It has to be somewhere unique and exotic, it is all about the experience. Life is short.

Back to stories of the day. My first stop was to Mitad del Mundo, the Middle of the Earth. I decided to take all local buses instead of a taxi to go there. After all, it was a 20 miles distance. The first bus was no problema. Early in the morning, 8am, there were not too many people yet, the driver collected my 25 cents, he dropped and pointed me to where I needed to be, I found the second bus station quickly, I needed to go the terminal de la Ofelia. Just to be absolutely sure, as I paid, I was asking this security guard, "Octopus (autobús)... a... Oficina (office)?" He was like "Ofelia?" I was like "Si, Si, OFELIA!". You never know what come out from my mouth in this country and what they meant. All good, I got on my second bus onto the Ofelia terminal. The terminal was a mess. There were so many buses, and so many have Mitad del Mundo written on the windows, but all looked different and they have 6-8 different lines I could choose, I had no idea. Asked one of the station staff, he put me in one of the lines. So I trusted that it meant that was the one. Got on the bus, along as the shit load of people rushing in and we started moving at the same time. As the guy came collecting money, I asked "Mitad del Mundo?" He said "No, No". I was like "Oh." But then he said "Silka", I said "Silka" is "nearby", he said "Si, Si" and grabbed my 25 cents and moved on. I googled on the map, where the fuck is Silka, nowhere to be found, but I have the location indicator that we were heading to that same general direction, so with caution, I just kept monitoring my location on map and planned to jump off the bus any second if I had to. Turned out bus was going to the town nearby about half a mile away. At a stop where many people got off, one of the guys pointed at the monument far ahead, signaling that I should get off here, so I did. People are generally very nice here. And later on, I also found that the guy were actually saying "Cerca" (near in Spanish). Da!

Walked up the hill for that half a mile, it took my last breathe at this high altitude city, the sun and blue sky also came out. I got to Mitad del Mundo, it was pretty quite at that time. It was great! I took a lot of pictures. The yellow line was supposed to be on the equator at 0 degree latitude. However, when they built the monument, the scientist made a mistake, the line was actually off. Ok, that was a major whooops moment. That's why in about 400 yards from the Mitad del Mundo, there was this Museo Intiñan (a private museum) which had a second equator line, the real line based on GPS. And there were many experiences you could do there, the egg standing balanced on a nail, the water going down a hole without spiraling. That was actually very cool to see.

Taking my bus back to Ofelia was a bit crazy, it was close to noon, the bus were really crowded, I was standing the whole 45 plus mins ride. I kept my daypack in the front, but then I still needed to watch my pockets with two phones and a wallet. Even it was that crowded, one thing did not change: the seller, performer still came up on the bus to sell, perform, beg, do their business, it is not unlike the subway in NYC. They sold weird shit, aside from gum, candy, popsicle, juice, nuts and stuffs. In the earlier bus, I saw a woman selling milk in plastic bags that looks like Mozzarella balls. And then there were dad and a kid, they were playing music, the dad had a harmonica Bob Dylan style and sung, the son (could not be more 5 or 6) had a shaker. It was in one of these more crowdier bus, I happened to be able to find a seat midway. After the dad and son performed, the kid slowly getting closer and closer, and he was practically sitting on me since the bus was so very crowded. He was actually very cute, I did not mind. When nobody was watching, he was singing something to himself too. Another weird one was a man, I guess he was begging for money by telling his lifestory. The whole time, the only word I recognized was Amigo, Amigo, Amigo, Amigo...long story, after a while, the image I had was Karen from Will & Grace shaking her head "No Entiendo... Yeah, not a word." All kidding aside, I actually liked the whole bus experience today, I have taken 5 bus, 3 of them standing, long standing in a crowded bus. Tired but interesting, something different. I wished I was invisible and was able to take my camera out and take some more pictures on the bus. The real life of Quito!

Back to Ofelia, finding my next bus to old town was a bit of challenge. Google Map and Google Translate have proved to be the most helpful apps for this trip for me. I got to old town about 2pm, first thing I needed was some lunch. Found a restaurant where I had a combo set. The chicken soup had a chicken feet and neck in it. And then the main had a quarter chicken, with fries, salad and rice. Starch on starch, woo..ooh, right up my alley. I shared a table with an old Ecuadorian woman. I was very polite, I said Bueno Dias when I sat down, and when I left, with my little bow too. I think she appreciated. The old town was really crowded, especially the main square, so I could not wait to get away from there after a few pictures. La Compañía de Jesús was beautiful, I walked closer to the Virgin Mary statue up on a small hill, waiting for the blue sky to spread over to that direction, it looked like it would, so I was just sitting in the park facing the Mary statue, kids were shateboarding on the benches near me. I was kind of exhausted from all the bus trips, so it was all good to have a break. The kids did not bother me. Anyhow, the blue sky never got to Mary, I turned to the right, the thunderclouds (big ones) were coming. So, I decided to start heading back to the cafe I just walked pass earlier to have a coffee before heading back to the apartment. Before long, the rain started pouring, treacherously. I waited for at least 30 mins, finally I braved out with my raincoat and umbrella to find a taxi, my jeans were wet but not too bad. As the taxi drove me home, the rain stopped, you bitch!

Had a real dinner in a restaurant today, my driver tomorrow called me on the phone while I was in the restaurant, I hesitated to pick it up but he called 9 times on a row. So I did pick up, probably violated all the social rules in a restaurant here. He spoke Spanish the whole time. Ah, I said, No entiendo, No hablar español, Lo Siento. He passed the phone to his wife, and then she spoke Spanish to me as well, although I hear Mañana and Seis. That two words I know. I could only repeat I don't understand, I don't speak Spanish, I am sorry. They hanged up. Light bulb came up suddenly. I google translated "I am going to meet you at 6am at 6 de Diciembre and La Niña, ok?" into Spanish and texted him in a message. I also translated and texted him "If you type what you want to say, I can translate." So we did. We had our Spanish conversation via texting. First thing for everything is real and alive!

So, I am all set, going to bed soon, will meet Darwin at 6am, he will take me to the airport, I will take the 8:27am flight to fly to Cuenca. Another supposed beautiful city, and interestingly, a lot of American is retiring there, so I heard. We will find out.

See all Day 2 Photos here.

Day 1: Louis y Hamburguesa

It has been a long day travelling. Leaving Boston at 9am, it took almost 6 hours before we landed in Panema City, stopped for an hour, continued from Panema City to Quito for another 1.5 or 2 hours. I kind of lost track by that time. With a 1 hour time difference from Boston, I arrived in Quito at 5:40pm or so. The flights were smooth for the most part. After landing in Panema, the first thing I saw as I got out of the plane, an 80 plus years ago Inka granny in her full bright color traditional dress with a beautiful hat, she might as well be a peacock, sitting on the wheelchair waiting to be wheeled back to the gate. At that time, I know immediately that I was back to South America, although it was all kind of a mismatch, her traditional dress set against the big steel bird where I just came out from. I was thinking inside, geez, where do YOU come from?! She probably was thinking the exact same thing.

Landing in Quito was no drama, cut through the clouds and made a turn, we were there already, it was a gloomy and foggy day, it was not raining. Quito is the 2nd highest capital cities of the world, just below La Paz. Maybe because I have been taking the high altitude medication for the past few days, I did not feel much. I passed through the custom pretty quickly, the line was rather short. Because I only had my carry on backpack, so I just walked out. My airbnb host was supposed to pick me up at 6:30pm, I was kind of early. It gave me time to find the mobile phone store in the shopping mall across from the terminal, I needed a local sim card to put in my phone. Talking to that stuff was a trip in itself. He was really really helpful and did not mind me check the same question over and over. I was like those demanding piece of character, I wanted 2GB data, gave me now, now! English was out of the question, so we pretty much communicated through the google translate apps, now they even translated and spoke back to you in the other language. That was kind of amazing. I needed to wait for half an hour before I could enter some code to activate the plan. I would have to do that back in the city. Got back to terminal to wait for my host to arrive. Again, there were a family of Inka family (indigenous family anyway) standing not far from me, women were in traditional clothes, men were not, one of the men looked more like a motorcyclist with tight torn jeans but with makeup on. They had their phone camera all ready, I thought they were picking up a relative or something... the door swayed opened, an airport staff pushed a cart of 10-15 suitcases or so all stacked up out, they were like chasing after that cart, taking picture, all excited. Not a clue what have just happened in front of my eyes. Things you see in Quito airport stayed in Quito airport.

Giesla, my host, finally arrived, but she did not drive. Instead she hired a taxi, probably a friend of hers. Anyway, she told me that because the traffic in Quito is getting so bad, there was a restriction in place, for some cars with a license of certain numbers (maybe even number car cannot be driven) during rush hours or something like. I heard of that before in another country. Giesla was extremely friendly and helpful, she explained everything to me in Inglés, where to take bus to Middle Earth, the Equator, where to bus to old town. The driver was great too, his name is Darwin, he agreed to pick me up at the bloody 6am on Sunday back to airport when I need to fly to another town called Cuenca. Giesla's apartment looked amazing, and had a killer view. I am hoping that the fog will lift up in the morning, so I can take some picture of this view.

I was already pretty exhausted and hungry, so I just walked down the street and see what I could find nearby, there was this tiny tiny hamburger joint, tiny. There were maybe 7 people waiting inside. I poked my head half way through the door, everyone was looking at me, so I asked carefully to the young cook, hamburger y fritas? Si, Si, come on in, clearly I didn't speak Spanish, this customer, maybe he was the friend of the cook, he was talking to me, asking me to if I wanted cheese, bacon, egg, ... I wanted to say Yes Yes Yes, not because I wanted all of those, but because he was really handsome and friendly. You know how it was like your eyes were fixed on the prey, and everything else..whatever. He asked me where I come from, and about my trip, had me sit me and asked me what I want to drink, we laughed about my Spanish, he said in 10 days, it will be better. His girlfriend was sitting right in front of me, she kind of have that half smile on her face. He introduced himself, Louis, so I told him my name and we shook hand. He was like, if you need any help, we are right here. Oh my god, he is so nice, cute and friendly. Can I have a piece of him to go with my burger, please?

So far, people are nice, weather not so much, end of May usually is their start of the summer dry season, right at the border supposedly, I guess there was a delay of the rainy season. This week I am looking into having some rainy days. I will try to get up early to sightseeing, hopefully there will be some more clearer sky in the morning hours. Tomorrow my plan is to go to Middle of the World, and then visit the Old Town. All by local buses, will see. :) Let's the adventure begin.