Vamos a la Playaaaa

The other gringos and I decided it was time to get out of Quito and explore the country a bit, so we headed out to a beach town called Atacames this weekend, in the province of Esmeraldas. On Thursday afternoon, we wandered into a bus station and bought $8 tickets for a seven hour trip to the coast, leaving that night.

We arrived in the dark at around 5:30 AM, hopped on some janky motorbike taxis, and found a pretty reasonable $5 per person per night hotel a block or so from the beach (in the showers we found both cold water AND cockroaches). After a nap, we hit the beach. The weather was a bit cloudy, but still far warmer than Quito, and not raining. The water was warm and the waves were great for body surfing. We paid $2/seat for a cabana and relaxed all day. Vendors came by all day offering fruit, drinks, ice cream, hair braiding, temporary tattos, and massages (I think I ate three or four cups full of mango slices. SO good.). My favorite vendor was an Afro-Ecuadorian man who tried to sell some sort of coconut oil to make my white friends look tanner. His first two lines, “We’ll look like family members” and “You’ll look like Barack Obama” were met with tepid response. He then tried, “You’ll look like Michael Jackson,” which is what I think lost him the sale.

Ultimately, the Ecuadorian coast has a very different feel from Quito and the Sierra. There’s definitely a larger presence of Afro-Ecuadorians in the coast, and the area is a lot poorer. The run-down buildings and poorly paved streets of Atacames helped me to develop a new perspective on the country. Even though Quito may seem poor and backwards in some places, it still contains one of the largest concentrations of wealth in the country.

A few pics of Atacames:

Casually Three Miles Above Sea Level

So the past week consisted of getting familiar with my classes and starting to make new Ecuadorian friends. I’m super stoked that I’m taking a class on 19th-century Ecuadorian history and the others seem interesting as well. I’m able to understand what my professors are talking about most of the time, which I’m pleasantly surprised by. I’ve also started to meet more Ecuadorians through classes, and just by hanging around campus. I get to practice my Spanish, they get to practice their English, I ask them if they want to hang out, and they say yes, as long as I bring gringas. It works out nicely.

This weekend was our first real free weekend, and we decided to stay in the city rather than go for an excursion to the beach or elsewhere. On Saturday, we went with the local university’s hiking group to climb Rucu Pichincha, the summit of the mountain directly west of the city of Quito. First, we rode the Teleferiqo, which is one of the world’s largest gondolas, from about 10,000 feet to around 13,000 feet. From there, we had about a 3 hour hike to the summit, eventually clambering over some very steep rocks to get to the summit (el cumbre). The summit was covered in snow, and the clouds prevented us from seeing very far, but it was a great feeling to be up there. Also, on the way back, I met my first llama. Her name was Linda.

Also visited La Mitad del Mundo on Sunday, the tacky tourist attraction marking the equator. There’s a big tower marking the spot, surrounded by all sorts of small museums, displays, and chachki shops. It’s one of those things you have to do in Quito and then blog about.

Also, I remembered to bring my digital camera this weekend.

It’s All About the Cushqui, Guagua

I spent the past week attending both orientations and meetings at both IES and at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador (PUCE), the Ecuadorian university where I’ll be taking several classes. While obviously I have a lot of new and exciting challenges ahead of me, the classic back-to-school dilemmas were still there: “Why are all the good classes scheduled at the same time?” “Why do notebooks cost $7.00?” “Do I really want school to start?” I ultimately decided to challenge myself and take three classes at PUCE: Language and Aesthetics of Cinema, Urban Anthropology, and History of Ecuador in the 19th Century. IES gave us a few basic Spanish lessons, though this was much less than I would have expected. My favorite part was learning words in Quichua that have become part of Ecuadorian Spanish. For example, “guagua” (pronounced “wa-wa”) refers to a baby, “cushqui” means money, and my personal favorite, “chuchaqui,” is what we in the States call a hangover (which is what happens after a night of “chupando,” and being “chumado”).

The week ended nicely with a program-planned trip to the province of Imbabura, a few miles north of Quito (Quito is located in the Pichincha province). We got to visit the Otavalo market, home to a wide variety of indigenous arts, crafts, and clothing, as well as the usual junk found at a flea market. Despite all of the salesmanship and haggling going on in the large outdoor market, Otavalo seemed to have a very relaxed feel, which made it a great environment to shop in. After doing some haggling of my own, ended up buying a shirt, a small messenger bag, and an Andean-style pan flute. The other highlight was a short boat ride around Lake Cuicocha, near the town of Cotacachi. It’s a very neat looking lake that has filled up the crater of a volcano. As a result, it is surrounded by steep rock edges instead of beaches. It was just the type of stunning natural beauty that I came to Ecuador to see. Below, a picture of the beautiful terrain that I was forced to stare at on the bus all day, as well as the boat full of gringos at Lake Cuicocha. If you’ll notice, I’m the fool in the back left snapping photos with my film camera, which is why I don’t have a lot of pictures to put up here. These photos are courtesy of my good friend Doug Wulsin, who’s doing his own awesome blog at dougwulsin.wordpress.com.

Blame It On the A-A-A-A-A-A-Altidude, Baby

So it’s been an enjoyable first few days in Quito. After my first night here, I woke up in the morning with the absolute worst headache I have ever had in my life. I was not sure why, but I assumed it was some combination of lack of sleep and lack of caffeine. However, even after having some coffee in the morning, it was still terrible. “Tengo dolor de cabeza,” I told my host mother. “Es por la altura,” she responded. I had totally forgotten that I was about 9,000 ft above sea level and that altitude sickness affects just about everyone when they first arrive. Though my headache got better with some Advil, I’m still acclimating to the altitude. I experienced shortness of breath a few times, during short walks, and especially during the walking tour of Old Town Quito that we took yesterday.

That being said, it was great to get out and explore the city a little, even if I was huffing and puffing a bit. After being cooped up in our study abroad center listening to presentations for a day and a half, all of us wanted to go out and explore the city a bit. A friend and I walked through El Parque Carolina, a large park, playground, and botanical garden very close to IES’s building. The park is huge and full of activity. Among small ponds, fountains, and sport courts were a small skate park, an abandoned airplane which has been converted into a play place for children, and plenty of spaces for Ecuadorian lovers to nuzzle under the trees.

We also got a chance to take a tour of the city’s historic center, full of colonial-era buildings and spectacular churches. We were allowed to climb onto the roof and belltower of La Iglesia La Merced and got into a little bit of trouble when some of the members of our group kept ringing the main bell of the church (full disclosure: I did ring the bell, but before our guide told us to stop). There was some confusion because the ringing of the bell generally means that a Mass is starting. We also saw the much-touted Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesus, with a grand interior covered almost completely in gold. While I was certainly impressed that such an edifice could be created, I found the interior to be somewhat tacky. The goal of the Spanish seemed to be to stuff as much gold as they could into the space without focusing on aesthetic taste: probably an accurate representation of the excesses of that long-forgotten empire.

This morning, I went to church at the Basilica del Voto Nacional, in the Old Town. It’s actually one of Quito’s newer large churches, as it is only one hundred or so years old. It’s built in a Gothic style, but instead of gargoyles, it has turtles, lizards, jaguars and other animals native to Ecuador. After some confusion about when Mass started, my friend Sahil and I caught the second half of a Mass and then climbed the belltower of the church, giving us a great view of the city.

¡Estoy aquí!

So, after weeks of denial and distraction, it finally hit me last night that I was going to be living in Ecuador for the next four and a half months. As I got in my dad’s car to drive to LAX, I started to freak out in my head and my palms were dripping with sweat. Thoughts like “Your Spanish stinks,” “You know nothing about Quito,” and “Get ready for dysentery” floated through my head. Strangely, though, after I dealt with some visa-related confusion and went through security, the nervousness passed and I got super pumped. My unfamiliarity with Quito and nervousness about speaking Spanish turned from fears to spectacular opportunities. But I’m still a little concerned about dysentery.

I left at 12:30 AM from LAX to San Jose, Costa Rica, with a short stopover in Guatemala City. I slept a little on the plane and watched some horrible Selena Gomez film dubbed into Español, which made it way more tolerable. (Side note: whoever does the Spanish voiceovers for Cory Monteith sounds just like him.) I also made my first Latin American friend, a Costa Rican lawyer and international relations professor named Carlos. We talked about politics, history, and U.S.- Latin American relations. He told me that he had studied American Presidents, and he told me that Lincoln was his favorite, which made me very happy (#duh #ganando). I didn’t quite know how to say everything that I wanted to say in Spanish, but I felt we understood each other pretty well.

Finally, I arrived in Quito around 2 PM local time. A representative from IES (my study abroad provider) and my homestay mother, Vicky, were there to pick me up. Vicky took me to my home for the next few months, and I was very impressed. It’s a modern, two-bedroom apartment complete with hardwood floors. Vicky’s two children have moved out of the house, and Vicky has been hosting foreign students for almost ten years now. I’m very glad to have someone so friendly and so accustomed to having foreign students around, as it seems to be making my transition much easier.

After almuerzo (lunch, considered the most important meal of the day in Ecuador), Vicky took me with her on some errands around town. I got myself a cheap, pay-as-you-go cell phone and Vicky paid her water bill (I guess you have to go to an office and pay in person if you send it in for two months.) The streets of Quito are fascinating, not only because they’re crooked, crowded, and packed with vendors, but because Ecuadorians, like other people in the developing world, drive like maniacs. Left turns are performed through a combination of waiting and negotiating with oncoming traffic. I saw one car pull onto the left side of the road and drive for about 50 feet before making a left turn onto a side street. So, naturally, I laughed when Vicky made a similar maneuver a few minutes later.

Right now, I’m sitting in a nice, new apartment with a decent view of the city, answering emails, looking up things to do in Quito, and listening to the new Common album. I couldn’t ask for more.

Pics: View from the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica; my new room, view from the apartment during the day, at night.