The week of sketchadorian products

(sketchadorian = sketchy Ecuadorian)

Out of necessity this week, I tried some new Ecuadorian name brand items. Usually with food, this is ok but I always cringe just a little bit when buying personal health products. The FDA does not exist here. I’m sure they’re fine it’s just that they’re not the American brands I’m use to. So anyways, for my wounded toes I needed some bandages more to keep the dirt out than anything else. The pharmacy by my house doesn’t sell boxes of band-aids, which was fine for me. I only wanted five. So I bought five at five cents each. I decided to ask for something for bug bites also. The lady (the pharmacist I guess) gave me a little can of salve called Mentol Chino or Chinese menthol. I’m not sure why it’s called Chinese; it says on the outside made in Guayaquil (which is in Ecuador). It’s green and smells kind of minty and metholy. For thirty-five cents, it helps a bit, probably more the placebo effect than anything else. On Wednesday I went to Fybeca which is a large chain store pharmacy. The mission: vitamins with iron and toothpaste. A lady working there recommended a certain brand of vitamins to me. She said they were the best. I wasn’t going to argue. At .0527 cents each they should be ok. I took one tonight. It was mottled brown and tasted horrible (I swallowed, not chewed it but could still taste it.) I figure it can’t hurt. I decided to stick with Colgate toothpaste but they market different products here. I picked out the Frescura Confiable (Confident Freshness) Xtreme Red Gel. It’s quite interesting. It’s in a red translucent tube a bit smaller than your normal US toothpaste tube. I tried it tonight. I’m not quite sure what flavor Xtreme Red is but it tasted sort of cinnamony although there was definitely nothing extreme about it. I highly recommend living in a foreign country. You just never quite know what you’re buying!

Andinismo in Baños

Finally, I will tell you about my weekend in Banos, now that it’s been almost a week since. Sorry, it was a pretty busy week but now I have time.

We left from the North Trole station. Worried about being late, I got there 20 minutes early. Oops! But the others started arriving soon after. From there we headed south to Terminal Terrestre, the bus station to all parts of the country and also probably my least favorite place in Quito (it’s super sketchy and a little scary). Our group of 16 got and a bus and we were off! The ride down there was incredible. There were almost no clouds so we could see all the huge mountains and volcanoes on the way. I got some awesome pictures of Cotapaxi out the bus window. I had never seen it so clearly, usually the top is covered by clouds.

We got to Banos around lunchtime and were given an hour to explore and eat. The other Madison people and I found a restaurant offering $1.50 lunches complete with soup, rice, salad, meat (or egg for those who don’t eat meat) and juice. I taught Lindsay, the other vegetarian in the group, how to order a meatless meal. And wow was I glad to have done that. The guys got chicken soup complete with a foot! Yuck! But it made for an interesting picture. After lunch, we walked next door to “Ecuador’s best ice cream” and gave it a try. I got coconut ice cream with shredded coconut. Good but far from the best.

After the group met at the designated spot, we walked up a (no kidding) 45degree angle hill to our hostel. We got our rooms and changed in to clothes for biking and rappelling in a waterfall. We cruised down out of Banos and then walked our bikes uphill to the waterfall. (There’s no way anyone could have biked up that hill) We then hiked up to the water. After seeing exactly how powerful the water was coming down, one guy decided that the commercials with people washing their hair in waterfalls are completely false. The instructors set up the ropes and people started rappelling down the falls. It didn’t seem that bad until I tried it. You have to understand that probably my biggest fear is falling. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have no control when falling. Anyways I made down the first part of the falls without too much problem. That left the huge 15 feet or so drop. I tried to go down but when I slipped and couldn’t find a foothold, that was enough for me. I spent the rest of the time taking pictures of the falls and flowers.

The original plan was to bike back to Banos, an idea none of us liked. It was getting dark quickly and we were all soaked from the waterfall. A very cold combination. Normally it probably wouldn’t be a good thing but one of the girls had a flat tire on her bike. She walked her bike down the huge hill while the rest of us rode. At the bottom, we flagged down two taxi trucks: one for the bikes and one for us. It was pretty amazing how they stacked all 16 of the bikes in the back of a truck. It was pretty amazing how we shoved 13 of us in the back of a truck too. Back at the hostel, we changed into dry clothes and made supper plans. Instead of eating out, we bought food in town and ate at the hostel, the cheap option. Later some of the others went out to the clubs in town. I don’t know how they had the energy for that. Two other girls and I stayed back, watched a movie on TV, and got a lot more sleep.

The next morning after breakfast and packing up our stuff, we piled into the back of a truck that took us part way up Tungarahua which is Ecuador’s 10th largest mountain/volcano. As of 1999, it’s been active. On a clear day, you can see the huge plume of smoke coming out of the top of it. We didn’t but we could hear it. It made sort of a rumbling, waterfall noise. The ride up the mountain filled with great views of the nearby mountains. The road was super curving and steep. There were a few times I was afraid the truck wouldn’t make it all the way up. We got to the end of the road and hopped out. We were told to the plan: hike with a few planned breaks up to the refuge. And off we went. At first, we were on what probably used to be a road. We past a sign that said we were at 2850m above sea level, the same as Quito. The former road turned into a path which got smaller and narrower the further we went. Sometime it was pure mud. In a few places we were in almost tunnels: the path had huge walls on each side with trees and other plants making a canopy over the top. To be honest, it was a very hard climb and I struggled a lot. In four hours we walked about 5 km going up in elevation 1 km. It was just constantly climbing with very few flat areas. There’s a significant philosophy difference between what the Andinismo instructors like to do and what I like to do. Their goal is to get to the top as fast as possible. I prefer to go more slowly and look at the flowers and bugs and take pictures. I had to go with their philosophy and took very few pictures. One place we stopped for a break, we would have had a great view of the valley below but instead we level with the clouds. It was pretty crazy. When we finally got up to the refuge, there wasn’t much to see. It was completely surrounded by clouds. It was also drizzling and freezing cold. I was worn out that even with my fleece jacket, hat and gloves, I couldn’t get warm until we started back down the trail. The refuge itself was anything but impressive. It obviously hasn’t been used for years and was pretty much in ruins. There was an attached bathroom that the doors had fallen off of. It was with out a doubt the most disgusting bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life. After resting up for a while and eating a bit, we headed back down the mountain. That’s the thing that really stinks about climbing mountains. You spend all this time and energy getting up to the top and you’re dead tired but you still need to get back down. Going down was a lot easier and quicker than going up although some parts of the trail were a bit harder to walk down because they were so steep. I should say it was easier energy wise not always walking. When I finally got down to the bottom, I was exhausted. I don’t think I’ve ever been that tired but it also felt really good to have finished.

We all squeezed back into the truck and rode back to the hostel. I probably would have fallen asleep but it was pretty uncomfortable. (on the way there everyone stood, taking up less room, on the way back we sat taking up a lot more room) I think the biggest relief was taking off my boots after which I discovered huge blisters on my big toes. I was so glad to have my sandals with me. We walked (grrr) to the bus station. We couldn’t all get on the first bus because there were too many of us so we had to wait an hour or so which was fine with most of us because it meant that we had time to eat. And trust me, we were starving. We found some semi-sketchy looking cheap place close to the bus station. Amazingly they served about 10 of us in less than 10 minutes. (The food was already cooked, they just needed to put in on plates) We eat and then got on the bus to Quito. We had a crazy bus driver who decided that we were going to make it to Quito in record in time and we did. Normally it’s about 3.5 hours, it took us about 3. We got off the bus a bit earlier (and avoided Terminal Terrestre) to get on the Trole at the south station which we rode all the way to the north station. From there I got on another bus that took me right to my house. Most of my host family was already in bed (they go to bed really early). I made a cup of tea and then fell into bed exhausted.

Excitement at the end of a long week

Wow so, last night my family’s car was stolen from right in front of the house while we were eating supper. I feel so bad for them. They’ll never get it back. It’s probably in pieces by now. Not to mention how ineffective and useless the police are here. I’m not even sure if they came last night. Myriam, of course, blames it on Columbians. According to her, anything bad that happens around here is because of the Columbians. Although, she did have a semi-valid point when she said that they are more experienced and therefore better at crimes like this. I guess the rise in violent crime here coincided with the mass immigration of Columbians. One of the neighbors saw it happen but did nothing saying that she thought it was someone from my family. But that might have been a good thing since the thieves were probably armed. So now the family is without a car meaning that everyone has to take the bus always. They might borrow one from a brother but obviously feel uneasy about it, especially since it looks a bit like the one that was stolen. Myriam also blames the theft on the fact that the vehicle (it was an old SUV) would be useful for thieves i.e. it can hold a lot and is durable. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes them to buy another car. I know cars (new or used) are expensive here especially when they have two daughters in college and one moving to the United States in a month. Plus, they couldn’t have insurance because it was older.

On the lighter side, this morning I went to register my visa. I got there about 8:20 and the office opens at 8:30. There was a huge line out the door already! A bunch of my friends were there so at least I had people to talk to. So when I finally got to the front of the line, I handed over my papers and passport and got a slip of paper to take to a bank to pay for registering. Then we walked about 25 minutes to the bank, paid our $7 and walked to a nearby store to make a copy of the receipt. For the sake of time, we forked over another quarter to take the bus back. One guy actually had to use two quarters because the first one was counterfeit. Don’t ask me why someone would make fake quarters. Evidently, there’s a bunch of them and 50 cent pieces (Ecuadorian not American coins, we use a mix of both down here) floating around. When we got back to the office, we had to wait in line again to hand over our receipt and the copy. I need to go back next Friday to pick up my passport and then I go to a different place and get my censo, which is my Ecuadorian ID card.

When we finally finished with that process (it was a bit less than 3 hours overall), we walked down to the Mariscal to rent a harness and carabineer for this weekend’s Andinismo trip. Then I hopped on the Ecovia to meet Myriam at Super Maxi (a grocery store) to buy some food for this weekend. I bought some mora (a berry similar to blackberries) tea. I opened up the box to make some tea in my Nalgene and now my room smells like mora tea. Yum!

It was gorgeous and sunny today in Quito. Not a cloud in the sky for most of the morning. But it was windy. Sometimes I think that that is the worst kind of weather here. It’s so gross and dirty here. My poor contacts, even with sunglasses on, I constantly had something in my eye. Ouch! Even so, I got some sun. Bit by bit, I’ll get my nice dark tan back.

Happy news!

Yeah! I finally finished my Galapagos paper, all sixteen pages of it (1.5 spacing and A4 paper which is bigger than regular paper). AND my 7am class on Tuesdays is now at 7:30. Every minute of extra sleep counts...

Sunday Adventures in Otavalo

Again, I was the first one to wake up of my group. I took advantage of the empty bathroom to shower which felt really good after all the dirt and grime of the day before. The rest of the group slowly awoke. I guess on of Belgiums came in and loudly announced in the room that it was pity to be still sleeping on such a nice day. Not such a subtle remark. While we were waiting for our breakfast, I talked to the hostel owner about going up to the Lagunas de Mojanda. My friends and I decided that for the sake of time, it would be better to pay an extra couple bucks per person and get a taxi ride there and back. We got all our stuff ready to leave and paid our bill. The taxi pulled up to take us up the mountain. It was a very nice taxi. It was more of an SUV/minivan/station wagon than a car so we could all fit in there comfortable. The taxi driver had specially picked out some American music for us. It was basically the greatest (or not so great) dance hits of the 80s. Oh well, he was more of a tour guide and talked to us most of the way up telling us the names of mountains we pasted, what the names of lakes we in Spanish and Quechua and a bit of Ecuadorian politics. He was a good of a driver as the taxi driver we had the night before was bad. It was a beautiful ride up to the lakes although the road wasn’t nearly as nice. They were in the process of fixing it more or less which means that they left huge piles of stones to fill in the missing ones allover. So when the driver wasn’t trying to avoid falling in a pothole or running over a big loose stone, he was trying to curve around piles of stone and brush. When we got up there, we were amazed to see people doing their daily jobs like herding cows up so high. I think the altitude was something like 3600m. And we definitely could feel it when we started walking. I finally figured out what makes the mountains so green here. It’s all these huge almost bushlike tuffs of grass. Of course, there’s more plants but that what’s covers most of the area. It was really neat to see how all the plants were made to live in such a harsh, windy environment: they were all really flexible (the grass) or lived very close to the ground (lots of the flowers). We walked on a dirt road to the second lake taking pictures of the incredible scenery along the way. The glasslike lake with the huge jagged mountains in the background was just amazing and the clouds were just perfect for taking pictures. Unfortunately, we only had time to see two of the three lakes. Even so, it was well worth the trip up there. On the way down, we were admiring the scenery when the taxi driver slowed down and pointed to a doglike animal. It was actually a wolf. It was so cool to see it. He said it’s very rare that anyone sees one. At first, the wolf was coming down the mountain but turned around when he saw us, then he saw something better like a rat and chased it down the mountain and pounced on it. I got one or two really good pictures of him. He looked kind of like a German Shepard colorwise, but was smaller and had a huge, long and bushy tail.

We arrived back at the hostel, got our backpacks and left down the path we had taken the night before to Otavalo. It was much nicer to do in the daylight. It was interesting to see what we had walked through in the dark. Unfortunately, it was very windy which is not a good combination with a dirt path. We had to stop a couple times to blink the dust out of our eyes and wait for the cloud to settle. When we got into Otavalo, we stopped at a viveria (basically a convenience store just no gasoline) to buy some food for lunch. Mmm, bread and yogurt for me. I just love the bread here plus it’s so cheap! Instead of walking to the bus terminal, which was on the other side of town, we just flagged a bus down on the side of the Pan-American Highway. The first one was full but the second one had exactly six seats open. It was a huge bus! There were two levels of seating. I had never seen a bus like that before. I found out why about half an hour later. The bus was from Columbia. We got stopped by military police who checked passports and cedulas (Ecuadorian national ID card). Everyone around me had Columbian passports. The police even searched a few bags and boxes on the bus. It was quite interesting. The rest of the ride to Quito was uneventful. I got home just before dark.

Otavalo Part Saturday

Amazingly, I was the first one up on Saturday morning. I tried waking up the others because they said they had wanted to go to the animal market which is very early in the morning. They decided sleep was more important. I went out to try to find some breakfast but evidently nothing opens until 8. So I came back to the hostel and waited and read my Lonely Planet book and people watched. There wasn’t much else to do. Finally everyone else got up and we were off, not quite to the market, but for breakfast. Usually, I like to get to the market right away. That’s when you get the best deals and as it gets later, it also get more crowded. Oh well, traveling with different people means adapting to their styles too. We started shopping around 10:30 definitely the latest I’ve ever been at the market but it actually wasn’t that crowded. We shopped around for a couple hours of course wanting to buy everything and having money only for a little. I bought a white llama wool hat, alpaca gloves and an alpaca scarf for my andinismo class. I had been warned it can be very cold high in the mountains. We left the market sooner than we would have preferred because we had to check out of the hostel.

We decided to go to a hostel called La Luna, which was outside the city and do some hiking there. We asked the hostel owner at the first place if it was possible to walk there. He pointed out that it was pretty far up into the mountains and recommended taking a cab. First, we looked for some bread and cheese to make sandwiches for lunch. Then we flagged down a truck to take us up to the hostel. About five minutes into the journey, we realized we would have been crazy to walk it. It was entirely uphill. It was lots of fun riding in the back of a truck going through all that awesome scenery. We arrived and were greeted by four giant but friendly dogs. The hostel owner showed us to the dormitory (go $4/night beds!) and gave us a map to some of the near by trails. After we ate our lunch, we set out to find a waterfall.

The trail was fairly easy to walk even with the altitude (probably about 3000m above sea level). It was very scenic. In the distance was a huge green mountain covered in fields giving it a patched appearance. We walked by some fields, pastures and small houses too. We found lots of interesting and pretty flowers and plants. After about 30 minutes of walking, we could hear lots of water. Soon there was the giant waterfall in front of us. It was so cool! I think the name of it is Taxopamba. I’m sure it’s a Quechua word and I have no idea what it means. We stayed there for a while and just watched and listened. Then we got creative and decided to try to use our cameras to take self-portraits of the group. Sometimes it worked, sometime it didn’t. The hike back seemed quicker but was more exhausting as we had to go uphill more.

We got back to the hostel and started to plan our next adventure. We were interrupted by three Belgium guys who were also staying in the dorm with us. They said that they had heard there was supposed to be a beauty pageant and a fiesta in Otavalo tonight. We decided that sounded like a once in a lifetime experience. This time we walked to Otavalo on a path recommended by the hostel. The map said it was about 4km and would take an hour. Crazy, we thought. That’s like walking less then 2 miles per hour. We could do it faster. At first, it was fine, watching the sun go down behind the mountains and greeting the people coming up the mountain. Then the streetlights starting coming on and we noticed that it was getting a bit dark. The path took a turn and we were no longer on a stone road but a dirt road without streetlights. Then it took another turn and it was no more than a narrow dirt path. By this point in time, it was pretty dark. Finally, we saw a road at the end of the path with cars on it. This took about an hour. What the map didn’t mention was that it was an hour to the edge of Otavalo, not the center where all the restaurants and tourist stuff is. So we kept walking. I suggested finding something at the Pie Shop, a place where I had eaten many times before. Lonely Planet said it was open till 9. We got there at about 7:15 and it was closed. Oops! But there was a different restaurant next door that had some good gringo food. One of the guys was surprised to find sirloin steak for only $4. After a good meal of almost American food, we asked about the beauty pageant. The waiter gave us directions but didn’t know much more than that. When we got there, there was like a mini fair going on in front of the building. We asked about getting into the theater but it cost $5 which we decided was too much for something that started two hours ago. So we walked around the fair for a while. It was kind of like Ecuador meets State Fair. There were booths selling copied CDs and DVDs, some selling “name brand” clothes and others with infomercial like people selling pans and incense. After looking around for a while, we left to catch a cab back to the hostel. (No way were we going to walk that path UP in the dark) The first cab refused to take six people but we didn’t want to have to split up. We figured after as close as we had been smooshed together at the parade, four people in the backseat and two in front would be no problem. The second cab agreed to take us. Little did we know what a maniac driver he was. At first he was just talking on his cell phone. Then he started driving pretty fast. Then he cut off a cop who didn’t really seem to care. As we got further up the mountain, he pretty much stopped slowing down for speed bumps and curves. It was definitely the scary cab ride I have ever been on. When we got to the hostel, we jumped out and breathed a sigh of relief that we were alive, then we realized how crazy the whole night had been and started laughing about it. We spent the rest of the night star gazing, watching for shooting stars and the storm moving in behind the mountains. We went to bed when we were too tired and cold to stay out any longer.

Proving the name

Here is an example of why I call this blog Every day's an adventure

I had quite the adventure trying to get home last night. First when I got the bus, it started moving before I sat down and I almost fell into some lady's lap. Oops. At least she seemed to think it was somewhat amusing. Then when I got home, I open the door and Nico the dog dart out and ran down the street. I started chasing after him but then realized I should shut the door. When I turned back around, he was gone. I walked quickly down the street looking for him. I didn't know which way he turned but saw two ladies talking half a block in one direction. I asked them if they had seem a grey dog run by which turned into a 5 minute discussion about a pretty brown dog they see a lot. Eventually I figured out they had not seen Nico. So I started walking back towards the house because lots of times he goes by the school across the street and there he was. I chased him back to the house. He was running and got way ahead of me. He spied two bags of garbage someone had out on the corner and decided it was his. So here is this crazy dog running down the street with a bag of garbage and me following after him. Luckily he decided just to wait by the front door with his garbage. In one quick move, I let in him and pulled the bag out of his mouth and left it outside of the door. Later I asked Myriam if she saw the gift Nico left outside the door. She said she was confused as to why there was a bag of garbage outside. I told her the whole story and she thought it was hilarious.

More to come on Otavalo soon...

Otavaleno Adventure Part Friday

So, the plan was to meet at the corner of Colon and 10 de agosto at 3:00. I was there right on time (amazing, huh?) and no one else was. I waited. Finally after about 10 minutes a small group showed up. Then a few minutes later, more people. Eventually there were about 10 of us and we were still waiting for more. A group of six of us (4 Madisonites: Lindsay, Yuko, Steve and Tim, 1 Oklahoman: Kara and me) decided just to go on ahead and we would meet up in Otavalo. That was the last we saw of the other group. Oops!

We got a bus right away at Terminal Terrestre going straight to Otavalo. Discussions on the Trole on the way determined that we should probably try to find a hostel before we get there as it is the big once a year festival in Otavalo. After calling about five different hostels (thank goodness for the Lonely Planet guide book), we found one with six open beds. We arrived in Otavalo about 3 hours later thanks to Quito traffic and many stops to pick up people. We went right to the hostel and confirmed that we were the people who wanted the six beds. The owner said they were on the terrace. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that and asked to see them. Four flights of stairs later, we had three rooms and five beds, two of which were doubles and a shared bathroom that we only had to share amongst ourselves. The terrace ending up meaning that not only were we on the top but that it was kind of like a balcony and we had an awesome view of the city.

After throwing our backpacks in a room, we went down to pay for our hostel and find somewhere to eat. It was about 7:30 (this is important). On the way we just happened to run into a parade for the festival. What luck! we thought, and right at the beginning too. It was really interesting. Lots of marching bands, people dancing in traditional costumes, beauty queens throwing roses, a fire blower. Steve had the luck of being invited to dance with one of ladies in the parade and also had several flowers thrown at him. More and more people kept coming. It was unbelievable how crowded it got. We were first shoved off the curb and then completely smooshed together so that there was barely space to move our arms. At this point in time, we realized that it was already 9 o’clock. But the parade couldn’t last much longer, could it? We decided we would leave about 9:30 if it hadn’t already ended. About 9:30 we wanted to leave but realized that it would be almost impossible given the number of people around us. So we wait. How much longer could the parade possibly last? Finally we shoved our way out the front onto the parade route which we had seen lots of other people do until we found an area where we could walk on the sidewalk. During the many perdons and permisos, we past a bread shop still open. That bread tasted so good as it was already 10:30. We watched a bit more of the parade as we ate and then we tried to continue. We got to the next corner but couldn’t get past because people had chairs set up in front. After some time, someone just pushed their way through the crowd and we escaped.

Starving and exhausted from standing 3.5 hours, we sat down in the first restaurant we found. After about five minutes, the waitress told us that they were only serving soda and water and had run out of food. So we left and walk a little further down the block and found a Chinese restaurant. We were seated and each found something that sounded good on the menu. While we were waiting for the waitress to take our order, we saw her bringing out huge plates of rice for other people. We decided to just share three plates among the three of us. Unfortunately, that message was never effectively communicated to the waitress. She only brought enough silverware for three people. We ended up sharing forks and some people tried using knives and spoons. It made for a very interesting meal especially since it was already 11:30. After we finished and paid, we went back to the hostel and spent some time watching the traffic leave. It seemed that the parade had finally ended.

One week done!

One more class to go and I've survived my first week of classes. So far they all seem like good classes. I'm really excited about my andinismo class (aka climbing mountains). I can't wait to go on our first adventure! My Ecology of Populations and Communites and Sustaiable Development classes are really interesting too. The psychology class I was going to take was just dropped. It just didn't seem all that great the first day. I went to a Cultural Anthropology class today and registared for it. I won't say it's great but hopefully will be better than Psychology. Phonetics seems like it could get to be boring but at least I know it will be useful especially taking it here as opposed to in the States. Amazingly, my super long Tuesdays and Thursdays (7am - 4pm with a 1.5 hour break) have been managable. I was more tired when I came home from classes on Wednesday than I was on Tuesday although it might have just hit me later.

Oops! Gotta go! I have my last class in a few minutes.