i arrived in Ecuador last Wednesday. Burlington Vermont is 200ft from sea level, Quito, where i finally landed is a shade higher at 9350 ft above sea level. i am the highest i have ever been...
It had been a hellish day full of transit, i woke in Madrid, early, or so i thought, i had a 12:15pm flight. i left the hostel three hours before my flight but i didn't know what awaited me. Iberia airlines needs to get there act together let me tell you. the line to drop my bag off took over an hour with the lady telling me as i put my pack on the scales "your just going to make it", i wanted to respond with "no thanks to you" but the timing didn't seem prudent. So i jumped aboard the plane, and there i stayed while mechanics tried to fix some lights on one of the emergency doors. we waited an hour, then we taxied out, only to head right back in because they didn't actually fix it. so after two and a half hours on the tarmac we were ready to make the 11 hour flight. the flight was uneventful except for the fact that an hour before we were to touch down we were told that we were heading to a different city, Guayaquil. i held in every mean word i wanted to yell, every curse word i had ever muttered throughout my life and some i had just made up, floated through my mind tempting my lips to spit them out. i didn´t. Before we landed we were assured that there would be another plane waiting to take us to Quito. What they didn't say was that the plane wouldn't be coming for another three hours, i could feel my blood boil and as i waited in line to get my new boarding pass, a young man working for Iberia decided that the ten people behind me could go to the freshly opened kiosk. i clenched my fist and the guy looked at me, i must have had fire in my eyes because he rushed behind his desk and gave me a ticket for a free burger. I took it without a word, got my boarding pass and even though i wasn´t hungry, it being 3 am my time, i ate the whole burger out of spite. i sure showed him didn´t I?! By the time i entered the hostel it was 7:45 am, my time, i had been in transit for almost 24 hours and due to the 13 year old next to me with fidgety feet i had slept nearly none of it, i was beat and beaten. the only good thing about it all was i had almost no jet lag because it was time to sleep when i arrived, 11:30 pm Ecuadorian time. So i woke as i normally did, and it felt like just another day. My hostel was called Vibes and i had chosen it like all the others, by chance. At 6 dollars a day including breakfast (toast, coffee and bananas) it was a great steal. Santiago, the owner, was, is, the man. i had booked 7 nights there, i knew i would need sometime to get used to being so high, altitude sickness is real here and for the first few days i was out of breath walking to the mini mart and back. 8 days in one spot is a long time when you have no idea what it will be like but i rolled the dice and they came up sixes, is that even a saying? anyway it was great, pool table, Foosball, wide screen with all kinds of movies, bar open 24 hours and two for one cocktails all day, everyday, i indulged. My top bunk was the biggest single bed i have had on my trip. Built for a giant, just a hair under a double bed. it rocked like the ocean when i moved but it was home, so i made the most of it. The first night was an eye opener. i hadn't felt so unsafe since i left the Philippines. it was wild out there. the wild west, the frontier where anything goes and law is but a word. i wish i could say the 200 cops and security officers everywhere with various sizes of guns made me feel better but they seemed to have an odd way of policing, aka, doing nothing. clumping together in groups of tens telling jokes and texting on there cell phones. i guess they hadn't noticed the prostitutes and Nigerian drug gang not a block from them. in fact they didn't see them all 7 nights i was there. i spent my days in the English book store shooting the breeze with an Englishman who owned the place. I read, walked the streets during the day and hung out at the vibes club house at night where all the other backpackers seem to gravitate too. I met a girl, Sarah, the first night at the book store and for the next three days we dinned and walked the city together. She was waiting on the arrival of her ex boyfriend and she was nervous, they had only broken up due to distance and she had a lot of talking to do before they saw each other. She was excited, i could see, i hope she is doing well. I was happy to listen, i was too busy watching my back to talk anyway. Vibes was a good place to meet people, there are nine Israelis that wont soon forget the name Jacob and two English girls i might be meeting up with in Banos in a few days time. I attended a local soccer match and got my first taste of south American soccer hooliganism, one of the kids we were with had his camera stolen at the game. hooligans! i ate one meal a day a local joint, with no sign, or anything else you would expect in a restaurants, like menus. but the food, oh the food, a huge plate of rice and beans and fried bananas was covered in a large steak for... guess how much, $2.75, i love the third world. i watched as gringos flocked to the gringo restaurants, and ate gringo meals, i eyed the menus but at about five times the price with half the food, and some Ecuadorian guys version of what an "American burger" should be, all i could do was chuckle and say "suckers!" I escaped Quito with all my possessions and all my limbs and I am now in Tena. Which is a Mecca for whitewater rafting. Getting here on the bus i had visions of floating down a river bravely facing class five rapids, saving a young damsel in distress and being the hero of the boat. However the truth was that no company was taking people on anything more exciting than a class three, and for 70 bucks, i passed. Instead i hired a local guide for five bucks for a 2 and half hour hair raising, goosebumps stimulating, nail biting, tubing adventure. Yeah that's right, tubing. what of it? i got in the water and my 19 year old guide, i use the term guide in the roughest of senses, hands me a piece of paper written on it, in English was "the first set of rapids is dangerous" he spoke no English. I watch him get in the water and i could tell i had done a lot more tubing in my day then this young buck. Smiling we set off down a tributary of the amazon river, the biggest in fact. OK, it wasn´t the exhilarating hero promoting day that i had thought it was going to be but the first set of rapids, however not dangerous unless you had a hard time standing up in waist deep water were still great. The whole day was fantastic however, Edwardo and i, two dudes on tubes, floating the amazon. The scenery couldn't have been better. the Jungle looming large on the banks and the mountains foreboding in the background covered with ire clouds made for a day worth more than five bucks. And so we floated and tried to speak to each other, i in English, he in Spanish. Like a little kid, he paddles over with a wide grin and asked, "what is `fuck you` mean"? hahaha, i couldn´t believe it, the kid couldn't say Jake and was now asking about English curse phrases. it took awhile with hand gestures but i think he got the grasp. We floated by lots of birds, at one bend there must have been over one hundred huge black, condors or something or rather. not sure, and if Edwardo knew he wasn't telling. they were amazing, so many in one place and more were dropping in all the time as if there was a condor meeting and anyone who was anyone in the condor world had to be there. i saw a huge python float by me and i managed to grab its tail for just a second but as i got a glimpse of my first crocodile in person i let go to stare. i made up those last parts, there was nothing in the water and i was hard pressed to see even one fish! but the water was a perfect temperature and the small rapids made up for an otherwise disappointing day, having not gone on the whitewater trip i had come the 5 hour bus trip for didn't bother me at all. Tonight i stay in a hole, but the good news is, the hole, being underground, is nice and cool while those with windows on the upper floors fry. and i saved 5 bucks, take that Ecuadorian gentry.
all is well, tomorrow i head to Banos where i will bath in hot springs as my arms are soar from paddling to go faster on the river today. take care all, miss you guys and i hope you all are enjoying your summer.
It had been a hellish day full of transit, i woke in Madrid, early, or so i thought, i had a 12:15pm flight. i left the hostel three hours before my flight but i didn't know what awaited me. Iberia airlines needs to get there act together let me tell you. the line to drop my bag off took over an hour with the lady telling me as i put my pack on the scales "your just going to make it", i wanted to respond with "no thanks to you" but the timing didn't seem prudent. So i jumped aboard the plane, and there i stayed while mechanics tried to fix some lights on one of the emergency doors. we waited an hour, then we taxied out, only to head right back in because they didn't actually fix it. so after two and a half hours on the tarmac we were ready to make the 11 hour flight. the flight was uneventful except for the fact that an hour before we were to touch down we were told that we were heading to a different city, Guayaquil. i held in every mean word i wanted to yell, every curse word i had ever muttered throughout my life and some i had just made up, floated through my mind tempting my lips to spit them out. i didn´t. Before we landed we were assured that there would be another plane waiting to take us to Quito. What they didn't say was that the plane wouldn't be coming for another three hours, i could feel my blood boil and as i waited in line to get my new boarding pass, a young man working for Iberia decided that the ten people behind me could go to the freshly opened kiosk. i clenched my fist and the guy looked at me, i must have had fire in my eyes because he rushed behind his desk and gave me a ticket for a free burger. I took it without a word, got my boarding pass and even though i wasn´t hungry, it being 3 am my time, i ate the whole burger out of spite. i sure showed him didn´t I?! By the time i entered the hostel it was 7:45 am, my time, i had been in transit for almost 24 hours and due to the 13 year old next to me with fidgety feet i had slept nearly none of it, i was beat and beaten. the only good thing about it all was i had almost no jet lag because it was time to sleep when i arrived, 11:30 pm Ecuadorian time. So i woke as i normally did, and it felt like just another day. My hostel was called Vibes and i had chosen it like all the others, by chance. At 6 dollars a day including breakfast (toast, coffee and bananas) it was a great steal. Santiago, the owner, was, is, the man. i had booked 7 nights there, i knew i would need sometime to get used to being so high, altitude sickness is real here and for the first few days i was out of breath walking to the mini mart and back. 8 days in one spot is a long time when you have no idea what it will be like but i rolled the dice and they came up sixes, is that even a saying? anyway it was great, pool table, Foosball, wide screen with all kinds of movies, bar open 24 hours and two for one cocktails all day, everyday, i indulged. My top bunk was the biggest single bed i have had on my trip. Built for a giant, just a hair under a double bed. it rocked like the ocean when i moved but it was home, so i made the most of it. The first night was an eye opener. i hadn't felt so unsafe since i left the Philippines. it was wild out there. the wild west, the frontier where anything goes and law is but a word. i wish i could say the 200 cops and security officers everywhere with various sizes of guns made me feel better but they seemed to have an odd way of policing, aka, doing nothing. clumping together in groups of tens telling jokes and texting on there cell phones. i guess they hadn't noticed the prostitutes and Nigerian drug gang not a block from them. in fact they didn't see them all 7 nights i was there. i spent my days in the English book store shooting the breeze with an Englishman who owned the place. I read, walked the streets during the day and hung out at the vibes club house at night where all the other backpackers seem to gravitate too. I met a girl, Sarah, the first night at the book store and for the next three days we dinned and walked the city together. She was waiting on the arrival of her ex boyfriend and she was nervous, they had only broken up due to distance and she had a lot of talking to do before they saw each other. She was excited, i could see, i hope she is doing well. I was happy to listen, i was too busy watching my back to talk anyway. Vibes was a good place to meet people, there are nine Israelis that wont soon forget the name Jacob and two English girls i might be meeting up with in Banos in a few days time. I attended a local soccer match and got my first taste of south American soccer hooliganism, one of the kids we were with had his camera stolen at the game. hooligans! i ate one meal a day a local joint, with no sign, or anything else you would expect in a restaurants, like menus. but the food, oh the food, a huge plate of rice and beans and fried bananas was covered in a large steak for... guess how much, $2.75, i love the third world. i watched as gringos flocked to the gringo restaurants, and ate gringo meals, i eyed the menus but at about five times the price with half the food, and some Ecuadorian guys version of what an "American burger" should be, all i could do was chuckle and say "suckers!" I escaped Quito with all my possessions and all my limbs and I am now in Tena. Which is a Mecca for whitewater rafting. Getting here on the bus i had visions of floating down a river bravely facing class five rapids, saving a young damsel in distress and being the hero of the boat. However the truth was that no company was taking people on anything more exciting than a class three, and for 70 bucks, i passed. Instead i hired a local guide for five bucks for a 2 and half hour hair raising, goosebumps stimulating, nail biting, tubing adventure. Yeah that's right, tubing. what of it? i got in the water and my 19 year old guide, i use the term guide in the roughest of senses, hands me a piece of paper written on it, in English was "the first set of rapids is dangerous" he spoke no English. I watch him get in the water and i could tell i had done a lot more tubing in my day then this young buck. Smiling we set off down a tributary of the amazon river, the biggest in fact. OK, it wasn´t the exhilarating hero promoting day that i had thought it was going to be but the first set of rapids, however not dangerous unless you had a hard time standing up in waist deep water were still great. The whole day was fantastic however, Edwardo and i, two dudes on tubes, floating the amazon. The scenery couldn't have been better. the Jungle looming large on the banks and the mountains foreboding in the background covered with ire clouds made for a day worth more than five bucks. And so we floated and tried to speak to each other, i in English, he in Spanish. Like a little kid, he paddles over with a wide grin and asked, "what is `fuck you` mean"? hahaha, i couldn´t believe it, the kid couldn't say Jake and was now asking about English curse phrases. it took awhile with hand gestures but i think he got the grasp. We floated by lots of birds, at one bend there must have been over one hundred huge black, condors or something or rather. not sure, and if Edwardo knew he wasn't telling. they were amazing, so many in one place and more were dropping in all the time as if there was a condor meeting and anyone who was anyone in the condor world had to be there. i saw a huge python float by me and i managed to grab its tail for just a second but as i got a glimpse of my first crocodile in person i let go to stare. i made up those last parts, there was nothing in the water and i was hard pressed to see even one fish! but the water was a perfect temperature and the small rapids made up for an otherwise disappointing day, having not gone on the whitewater trip i had come the 5 hour bus trip for didn't bother me at all. Tonight i stay in a hole, but the good news is, the hole, being underground, is nice and cool while those with windows on the upper floors fry. and i saved 5 bucks, take that Ecuadorian gentry.
all is well, tomorrow i head to Banos where i will bath in hot springs as my arms are soar from paddling to go faster on the river today. take care all, miss you guys and i hope you all are enjoying your summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment