Weekend in Otavalo

Left: Lake Cuicocha. Right: Horseback riding through the country.

This weekend we had a group trip to Otavalo, the largest outdoor market in Ecuador and one of the oldest and most famous in South America. Most of our weekends here are free, but we have some scheduled trips to see things that we shouldn’t miss. And I am so glad we didn’t miss out on this area.

Friday afternoon we got out of class early and made the trip north, with a few stops along the way. The drive through the country was beautiful and the bathroom we stopped at even had stalls built for viewing the scenery. First we went to Lake Cuicocha, a volcano crater lake at 10,000’ elevation. There we had a motorboat tour and the guys went swimming. It wasn’t super cold (for the gringos at least) and it was really refreshing. Afterward we explored Cotacachi, the nearby town that specializes in leather goods. We walked through the stores on the main road and saw a crazy amount of leather merchandise (no underwear though, I asked). They even had cow’s feet that were hollowed out and molded into water bottles. After leather town we went to the wood town in nearby Ibarra. Later that evening we made it to the hostel, and the guys’ room turned out to be the love nest: all pinked out with bright pink walls and bedding.

With the suggestion of the hostel manager, a few of us woke up at 5:30 on Saturday and hit the animal market on the other side of town. We were bracing ourselves for a lot of killing and slaughtering, but there wasn’t any to be seen. Instead we saw lots of animals being paraded around a large field for all the locals to see. Most were under control with the exception of the occasional pig chased around by its frustrated owners. After this market, we wandered through the food market and clothing market, and eventually made it to the main market, which dates back to Spanish colonization in the 1600s. Here the indigenous were taught to make textiles for export to Europe, and the tradition has continued ever since.

This is where we learned to bargain, which I found to be really fun. As another hostel resident put it, bargaining is a competition between the local trying to rip you off and you trying to get a good deal. My first purchase was a $25 leather hat (Indiana Jones style) that I whittled down to $11. I also bought a lot of gifts and a couple of paintings for $13 and $19 (originally $17 and $25). The local artwork was amazing and I loved scoring on the deals. One thing we realized was that anytime we commented about something in Spanish, the vendors targeted us. We switched to English and everything became so much easier. We also realized that it was bad to ask for a price if we weren’t interested in something because that gave the vendors the right to pester us about it. I frequently had to try on sweaters just to prove to the vendors that they didn’t fit me.

Afterward we had breakfast at the hostel and decided to go horseback riding. The night before we saw a sign that advertised cheap tours through the area: $25 for a 3-4 hour tour and $35 for the full day. The hostel manager told us that they needed two hours to prepare the horses so we decided to hit the streets again and shop some more. For lunch we went to a famous pie shop and had deli sandwiches that were literally the size of our heads for less than three bucks. Ironically two of the people ordered a hot dog because they weren’t too hungry, but they ended up getting several wieners sandwiched between enormous pieces of bread. The pie afterward was incredible and I had a huge piece of papaya pie for just over a dollar.


Left: My horse, Negro. Middle: Josué and Thad. Right: Our guide.

The horseback tour was an awesome experience, and it was good to get out of the city. We went up through the mountains where we visited a small park on a hill and a waterfall. My horse, Negro, was good to me for the most part and never complained. But at one point we were going down a steep hill and he ran up to another horse and testosterone started to flare. Luckily I didn’t get thrown off, but I got pulled through a nice sticker bush. I had never ridden a horse before and after a rough four-hour introduction to saddle life, I was sore for the next few days.

Sunday morning was mostly spent traveling, but we went to an indigenous church before we left the area. That was an interesting experience, because the service was mainly in Quechua, a common indigenous language of Ecuador and Peru. The other half was in Spanish, but it was still the most lost I’ve ever been in a church service. It was really cool to see their style of worship and speaking though, and it really reminded me of Native American culture back in the states. Afterward the ladies invited us next door and gave us all homemade sweaters.

Well that’s the gist of the weekend, but I’ll add another blog post in the next few days to fill up some holes. I also started a new Facebook album too. Hasta luego!

Hiking in the Andes

Left: On the rim of Pasochoa's crater. Right: The descent.

We’ve been in the city a lot and Thad (another NILI) and I have yearned to see more of the outdoors. This was our first free weekend so yesterday we decided to start by hiking Volcán Pasochoa (13,778 ft). We didn’t realize how long it would actually take to get to get there, and we left later in the morning after his roommate, Victor decided to come. Even though the mountain is only 20 miles south of Quito, it still took us three buses and a 4x4, about three hours each way. This is because we live in the north part of the oblong city. The park entrance fee was $2 for locals and $10 for foreigners, and this seemed ridiculous! Thad and I pulled out our censos (Ecuadorian ID Cards) and told the lady that we were living in Quito, and luckily she only charged us the local price. Score!

Summit Post (the mountaineering website) lists Pasochoa as a five-hour hike with 2,700’ elevation gain, but the bus dropped us off near the lower park entrance and we ended up on the eight-hour trail that was 4,800’ to the top. We didn’t have time to summit before dark, but we still had an awesome five-hour hike and made it to 12,400’ (about 3,500' up), and we hiked along the crater rim and final stretch of the mountain. The Andes are really beautiful and there is a lot of vegetation on the volcanoes. We want to do a lot more hiking here, but now know that we have to leave a lot earlier in the day. It would be a lot easier to have a car, but we both agreed that it would be too scary to drive here. The trip home was interesting though. We had hired a pickup truck to drive us four miles down a dirt/stone road to the park entrance but there were no vehicles waiting for us when we got back. We hiked about two miles (partly uphill) before we saw a passing truck and hitchhiked. We were so glad to get a ride because it got dark as soon as we made it back to the main road.

The first bus from Amaguaña to La Marín (South Quito terminal) was very strange. I was joined by a drunk guy who repeatedly introduced himself (five or six times) and asked me my name and a lot of other questions. Whenever there was a break in the conversation he held out his hand asking if we were friends and I would say yes just to humor him. In a drunken moment he thought Thad was my girlfriend and tried to climb across me (awkwardly grabbing my leg) to kiss him on the cheek, a traditional Ecuadorian greeting. After being rejected, he asked if Thad was Chinese and introduced himself again. A woman with a baby got on the bus and he got up to give her his seat, but that wasn’t much better. With the baby partly on my lap she began to breastfeed and I had no choice but to stare ahead at my drunk friend who was dancing to the salsa music.

When she left, he reclaimed his seat and began the whole process again. I decided to become more of a clueless gringo and “couldn’t” understand a lot of what he said. He got frustrated a few times and rattled on about how he wished he could speak to me in English. The only word he could say was “goodbye,” which was sweet to hear after we arrived in his neighborhood. Afterward a few kids sat next to me and started asking each other how to say things to me in English, and they quizzed each other on what the US was like. When I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer I told them they could just ask me, and I was flooded with questions. We finally arrived at the transfer station and boarded a trolley bus that was a lot more normal. The third bus, however, included a pissed off old man who started yelling at the driver after he stalled the bus on a hill. Soon he was yelling again and the driver stopped the bus to storm back and get in his face. Other passengers were yelling at the old guy but I couldn’t understand what they were all saying. Reluctantly, he sat down and we continued on as if nothing happened. Finally, a fourth bus home was our lucky number seven for the day. It was so good to finally get back to the campus!

Here are a couple other things that happened this week:

On Wednesday we had a field trip to the Ballet Jacchigua, a cultural interpretive dance. Before entering we had to have a Latino buy all of our tickets so we wouldn’t be charged a lot as foreigners. (They can really make money off us…) It was a big production, with live Andean folk music, 90 dancers, and over 6,000 lbs of costumes and props, but it was a small atmosphere of less than a hundred people. Beforehand I thought it would be boring, but it was really an interesting expression of their society. It’s funny because a lot of them were foreigners and after spending a month with only Latinos, I get culture shock from seeing other white people. When I told my teacher this she mentioned that I haven't visited Gringolandia, the local name for La Mariscal, Quito's tourist-filled district.

On Tuesday we began our weekly service project, working with children at the local dump. Many families lived there before the government deemed it unsafe, and now there is a daycare for children of employees that is run by volunteers. The kids (aged 4-10) were definitely a challenge, and you can tell they have harder lives at home. The boys didn’t talk at all, even when we asked them questions like their names. For the most part I played Lincoln Logs with a group of them, and a kid fully dressed as Spiderman kept jacking my house segments and adding them onto his. Another kid whacked me on the head with a giant log and I did my best to scold him, but that was difficult in Spanish. We played with them for a couple hours and learned that it will be an interesting work experience. It will definitely be good to put on my teaching resume though.

Well, that's all for this week. Hasta Luego!

Santo Domingo

This weekend we got back from an awesome weeklong missions trip to Santo Domingo and I’ll try to cover some of the highlights. Santo Domingo is a small city about 50 miles from Quito (as the crow flies), but travel time is deceiving. The highway we took wound us through the Andes and then dropped 8000’ elevation, which was scary with construction, no passing lanes, and Ecuadorian drivers. But the high-altitude landscape is incredible, with small villages, waterfalls, and vibrant green vegetation that is straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. Even going through a 10,400’ pass all we could see was green.

The main focus of the trip was service work, which I found really humbling. The first worksite was in Cóngoma, a remote village of Tsáchila Indians (characterized by red hair paint). We had to take a dirt road through the jungle and cross a river, which we later collected water from. Here we painted the inside of a church and also had a fun program for school kids. The other two sites were in dirt-poor neighborhoods in Santo Domingo, where we painted two more churches and built a concrete cistern. These areas were really powerful to see.

We also interacted with the kids a lot, which was awesome. These are the kids you see on those commercials that need sponsors, but it is so impacting to actually get to know them and see their way of life. I was really attached to a boy named Yandry, who would always find me when I was in the neighborhood. He is ten years old and lives in a small concrete house with his grandma and five brothers. On the day I left he told me he had a gift for me and I was surprised with a jar of gel balls. I was really confused but eventually found out they’re plant fresheners that the kids like to play with. I think it might have been one of the only possessions he had, so that gift strangely meant a lot.

Here are a few other trip details:

-The place we stayed was really nice for the area, and it was a huge relief to have indoor rooms and clean toilets that actually flushed. The other bathrooms were toilet bowls in shacks that you flushed with a bucket of well water.

-Overall the weather was extreme with heat, humidity, and torrential downpours. I tried to wash my clothes but couldn’t dry them with the humidity. It was a little hot for me so I’m glad to be back in the cooler highlands.

-The mosquitoes and bugs were vicious and I learned that they feast on anyone wearing shorts. On the third day I counted over 100 bites below my knees. Since bugs love me so much, an anti malarial was the best idea ever. There was a good selection of critters in our room too.

-We had good food, which included mall, restaurant, street vendor, and homemade. The first night we ate at a meat restaurant that served every part of cow, chicken, and pig that you could imagine, and I was able to try heart, lung, udder, and intestine (in order from delicious to disgusting). I think the weirdest thing we ate though was a Peruvian prune gelatin that was a chunky purple liquid and reminded me more of a laxative. We had to finish a huge bowl of it to be polite so some people had a chugging contest.

My favorite part was our jungle tour on the last day. We drove a good distance to our teacher’s hacienda on a fruit plantation and rode in the back of a farm truck through the jungle, constantly ducking to dodge the banana leaves. We hiked down to a waterfall in the river, the perfect swimming hole with a boulder to climb and jump off. The water temperature was perfect too, and there were even vines to swing on. We also went to a small concrete bridge over a 30-foot waterfall, and were randomly able to ride a horse and try many fruits along the way.

On the return day we drove through Mindo and visited a butterfly sanctuary and a chocolate factory. It’s absolutely mind blowing to see where chocolate comes from, because we really take it for granted. We saw a lot of bananas, pineapples and other exotic fruits, but chocolate just blew me away. Originally, cacao is a tropical fruit that tastes sour and there are lots of pods that get dried and fermented. Afterward the pods taste like bitter chocolate rum until they get processed and sugared over. We saw the whole progression at the factory and then tasted some of the best chocolate we’ve ever had. Similarly coffee grows as seeds in tree berries, but they taste really bitter before roasting.

I’ll end this post on one of the more interesting experiences, the tobogón (waterslide). Waterslide parks are popular in humid areas, and this slide had a unique design: straight down for over 100 feet into a 540 corkscrew ending. We got in line, but had to wait a while because the Latinos were just taking their sweet time. They would go slow and almost stop before the spiral, so I decided to show them what was up and go for speed. Horrible idea. By the time I hit the spiral I got thrashed around and don’t remember much, but it felt like it took forever to get out of the water. Several people flagged me to the side of the pool and I realized my nose was bleeding pretty hard. This is when I realized parks aren’t regulated the same as they are in the US. There was no lifeguard and no rules, which resulted in people getting thrown in the pool and crawling back up the slide. Afterward we played Marco Polo, but I drew a lot of attention again when I couldn’t tag anyone and I accidentally grabbed a Latina who wasn’t even playing. After opening my eyes I realized everyone was watching and laughing.

I was also able to post some pictures on Facebook. Anyway, hasta luego.

Colonial Quito & Last Weekend

Things have gotten a lot busier here. We have a midterm exam and presentation tomorrow, and Friday morning we leave for a weeklong missions trip to Santo Domingo, about a three-hour trip west. I’m really excited for this because we get to do a lot of volunteer work (as opposed to class and homework) and activities with the kids. I doubt we’ll have internet there so I’ll make this post a little longer and add some more details about the weekend.

Today we had another weekly academic outing, which is awesome because we get to learn outside of the classroom. It was our introduction to colonial Quito, which is an awesome and beautiful part of the city. After arriving at the plaza and grabbing a delicious pastry, we had a tour of The Society of Jesus Church, a popular cathedral that took 160 years to build and is almost completely covered in gold leaf. Next we went to the City Museum where we learned a lot about Quito’s colonial history. Finally we went to lunch and I had shawarma wrap and some guanábana ice cream. Later we had some salchipapas at a small street corner restaurant that was about as hot as a sauna from all the frying grease. I absolutely how cheap food here can be. (Large Size = $1.40!)

Here are a couple pictures I took today, including a panorama of South Quito.

On Sunday I decided to hang out with Gustavo and I went with him up to the mountains to the church he works at. We had to take a bus up there, which I’ve found is one of the scariest systems of public transport. The bus drivers aren’t any better than the others and they hardly stop to let you on and off. It is really important to hold on too because they drive all over the place. Even though I’m used to riding on a ferry, I realized my balance isn’t as good as I thought. They will cram a ton of people on, like the subways in Tokyo. The only difference is South Americans value personal space a lot differently, and if you sit down you might end up with someone’s armpit in your face. At the top, the roads were dirt and cobblestone, littered with garbage, and there were close concrete buildings and stray dogs everywhere. I love places where I can be the only foreigner!

The church service was small, but really good, and afterward we walked over to the pastor’s house to eat lunch. On the way, we stopped at a small street corner grocery and bought some chorizo (sausage). Those tiny stores have everything, including chicken feet and other cuts of meat I don’t recognize. While Gustavo and the pastor cooked the sausage and rice, they showed me how to make juice from tomatillos, which taste like the combination of a tomato and a peach. Juice is really popular here and they make it with blended fruit, water, and (lots of) sugar. There are a lot of good drinks here, with tropical fruits and sweet teas.

Oh yeah, the concert on Saturday turned out to be awesome! There were probably about 10,000 people there and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the only gringos. I love learning about new music and there were four different bands playing (I really liked Pescao Vivo, a Columbian alternative band). The concert was supposed to start at 5, but instead the first band didn’t open until 6. This is because of La Hora Ecuatoriana, Ecuadorian Time where everything begins casually late, anywhere from ten minutes to over an hour. From what I’ve heard this is pretty common in South America. Our first week welcoming party started about thirty minutes late (us Americans were all standing around waiting), and I’ve gone to play basketball but had to wait a while for someone to bring a ball. During orientation we were told that whenever we see a time, just to add an “ish” on the end of it. Coming from a punctual society I’m not used to it. Well I’m used to procrastination… I still have to study a lot for my exam tomorrow. Hasta Luego!

Left: Jenna, Josué, and the girl with the flashlight. Right: Pescao Vivo