Current Foreign Adventure: Ecuador
Harrowing accounts of my trials and travels in form of a palatable blog.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t update the blog so often, but since it looks like I might be stuck inside for a while, I might as well. Things decided to get exciting in Ecuador today, the only advantage to that being that it gives me something to write about. This morning started off the same as always; I walked to work and sat down to begin the arduous task of style-editing guidebooks, mainly thinking about where I would go for lunch. Then someone in the office said that police and military were rioting over a lack of benefits, that they had seized the airport in Quito, and that several highways leading out of the city had been blocked. Then we were told that several banks and malls had been looted not far from where our street was. So, understandably, we all stopped working and began trawling online news sources and checking up on friends in the city, until it was decided that the best thing to do was go home before things got any worse.
I live a good few miles from the office, so the taxi ride seemed to take forever. Things seemed eerily calm in a city usually packed with lines of traffic blaring their horns, people dashing for buses, jugglers and cigarette vendors marching the sidewalks. My neighborhood was full of students and people released early from school and work, drinking beer and chattering to each other nervously. I felt an odd sense of relief after I locked the gate behind me, and immediately went to check up on my housemates, who had also left work early. All of them are South American, assured me that nothing like this had happened in Ecuador before, and advised me NOT to leave the house.
Since arriving home I have been glued to my laptop, searching for updates on my friends’ facebook pages and other news sites. Apparently the Ecuadorian president reacted to groups of angry protesters by calling them “ungrateful bandits” and telling them defiantly “If you want to kill your president, kill me!” Affected by tear-gas, he was borne off to a hospital where people tried to climb the walls to get at him. Last I heard he declared a military siege and state of emergency.
Pretty heavy stuff, right? We have all heard of South American military coups, but to actually be stuck in one … I’m not sure how to feel about it. It’s a beautiful, sunny afternoon (usually there are thunderstorms around this time of day) and I hear a couple kids shouting and laughing below my window. But I know that a few blocks away in the more central part of town, people are rioting , throwing flaming tires and shooting off guns and tea gas, and thieves are assaulting whoever they can. To get some perspective, imagine what would happen if Washington DC had no police presence (and if the police attacked Obama, although I’d hope he wouldn’t be stupid enough to antagonize them.)
I’m pretty anxious to find out what will happen next. It could be that the whole thing will end as quickly as it began - that the government here will realize yes, we should give the people with guns their damn money. Or it could keep escalating. I am as safe as I can be now, in a secure house with local roommates in a residential neighborhood. I guess I will just distract myself somehow while waiting for news, although it seems a little inappropriate to watch youtube videos or read during a military coup. At least I have an excuse not to go to work in the morning.
I took a whole mess of these panoramic mountain pics. Be glad I only posted two.
Since I have spent a large part of this Sunday alternately gazing out my bedroom window at the fruit and ice-cream vendors prowling the street below and re-arranging the trinkets I spent a month’s rent on at the market yesterday, I thought I might force myself into some sort of productivity and update the blog. Because I have not written in a while and have nothing better to do at the moment, I must warn you: this might be a big one. Best to read it when you are in a similar state of pleasurable idleness.
For the past couple of weekends I have finally broken out of Quito a bit and done a few essential Ecuadorian tourist things (well, essential for the cheap Ecuadorian tourist - you will find no stories of Galapagos cruises here.) A couple girls from the office and I rode the teleferico - sort of like a ski-lift - up to the nearby barren, craggy Mount Pichincha one Saturday. Nervous about both the reliability of South American cable cars and the reports of some pretty nasty crimes that had taken place on the remote peak in recent years, I was a little less than enthusiastic about the trip, but it ended up being a lot of fun. At around 15000 feet, we were at least half as high as Mount Everest, and could even see airplanes flying below us over the expansive chaos of Quito. I like to think that the elevation didn’t have a whole lot of negative effect on me, except maybe to make me a little more philosophical regarding the insignificance of human lives in general.
Other little expeditions included a trip to the Middle of the World (a half-hour cab ride from Quito), which is rather grey and barren, although I did get to play on the equator line. The temperatures in the Southern and Northern hemispheres felt much the same and my egg wouldn’t balance on the nail, but the gravity there does tug at you strangely. I found the South to be a little more forceful than the North - read into that what you will :)
Thing have been pretty busy at the office for the last couple of weeks. Partly due to a lack of interns and partly because we are rushing to finish up books on Argentina and the Galapagos, I have been given a lot to do. Sometimes the jobs are interesting, sometimes incredibly tedious; for example, last week I alternated between writing spotlight articles on the history and culture for the Galapagos books and trying to knock out forty reviews of hotels and cruise ships. The other writers and editors have been feeling overloaded too, so most of us headed to the famous artisan market in the town of Otavalo for some intense retail therapy on Saturday.
A long-time fan of markets, I may have enjoyed myself a little too much here. A sprawling complication of colors, smells and voices, the endless maze of stalls hung with tapestries, clothing, jewelry, spices and vegetables winds through the town’s plaza and spills out into the surrounding streets. Most of the artisans are indigenous, with the men wearing their hair in long braids under black fedoras, and the women clad in long, dark skirts, lacy white blouses, with layers of plastic golden beads wound around their necks. Every single vendor calls out to you as you walk by (“Mija! Presents for your sister! Your boyfriend! Discount!”), so it can be a little overwhelming at first. I was told I was supposed to bargain, not something that is in my nature; even so, I sort of got into it and by the end of the day I had gone from timidly requesting that they knock off a few cents to bossily demanding half the price (“Outrageous! They cost less in Quito!”).
On the way back to the city from Otavalo we stopped over at a couple more small towns, each one known for a particular craft, such as leatherwork and wood carving. I felt more relaxed wandering through these towns than I had in the whole month and a half I’d been living in the capital; the low, pastel-colored buildings, tranquil, cobbled streets and intricate church towers made a nice change from the grey, modern monstrosity of Quito. Weary and weighed down with handicrafts, our last stop was in the town of Cayambe to spend our last few dollars on coffee and biscotos. These can be best compared with shortbread; they are crisp, flaky, obscenely buttery cookies which are meant to be dipped in a thick, creamy caramel sauce. The bakery where we got them served them hot out of an enormous brick oven. At about this time a typical afternoon storm decided to let rip, but digging into greasy paper sacks of biscotos and while huddling up to the heat of the oven was the perfect way to wait it out.
Since breakfast and lunch today has chiefly consisted of leftover biscotos, I really should make a trip to the bank to replenish my wallet and go grocery shopping. I have not been cooking much, mainly because I find myself constantly tempted by street food and comedores (small restaurants with one or two set dishes), which usually is quite enough to take care of my appetite. For $2 or less, you can get a hearty three course meal - typically a bowl of soup, a plate of meat, salad, and rice, a fruit juice and a little cookie or pastry - either to take away or to eat there. It is always a bit of a gamble, since you will occasionally find odd things like chicken feet floating in your soup, but for 2$ I will eat pretty much anything. There are plenty of little restaurants like this around my house and the office, usually full of working-class men tiredly sawing at their meat, watching The Simpsons, and shooting vaguely curious looks at the curly-headed gringa in their midst who is counting out her change and jiggling her foot in anticipation as she waits for dinner.
I have plenty of other things I could write about, but I know I really can’t expect anyone to read more than I have already written today in one sitting. Off for groceries - typically a fairly epic errand, since I like to hit up a combination of supermarkets and roadside stands to get the best bang for my buck. Next blog entry will be less rambling (although that is not a promise.)
Quito may have its flaws, but it can fry up one hell of an empanada.
I will sum up the time I have spent in Quito so far in the form of an exercise I once had to do in an English class (at the end of a long day you just don´t feel like bothering with fluid, cohesive paragraphs). Number of days spent in Quito: 28. Number of Quito robbery stories heard since arrival: 11. Number of times I´ve argued with a taxi driver: 9. Number of times he has fully understood me: 1. Number of mysterious fruits purchased: 7. Number of mysterious fruits that didn´t make me vomit: 6. Number of Pilsener Cervezas consumed: 16 (not quite all at once). Number of empanadas and Guayaba fruit candies eaten cumulatively: I don´t want to think about it. Number of times I have almost been hit by a bus: 15. Number of stores in Quito that carry tampons: 0. Number of times I have listened to ¨Wagon Wheel¨ since arriving: 43 1/2. Number of new songs learned on the banjo: 3. Number of songs I would have learned if my bohemian landlords had a TV: 0. Number of guidebook reviews written for places I´ve never been: a lot. Number of hours in a typical workday: 8. Number of workday hours spent staring out the window thinking about horses and coffee: varies. Number of times I hear the word ¨chevere¨ daily: 8-10. Largest number of people I have ever had to kiss on the cheek in a row: 17. Number of KFCs I pass on the walk to work: 4. Number of women in Quito who own high-heeled boots and tubs of blue eyeshadow: every damn one. Number of unsavory comments directed at me by strange men on the street in an average day: 6. Number of strange men who are handsome enough that I don´t mind what they say: generally not a one. Number of mornings I have been awoken before my alarm by roosters and/or random incomprehensible hollering: 28. Number of times I´ve caught sight of the sun patterning the mountains in a particular way and decided I sort of like it here: 3.
1. Carry out a conversation with your taxi driver and/or resident fruit stand lady without them looking at all confused.
2. Listen to some sort of angsty southern folk in the evenings. Ryan Adams is usually a good bet.
3. Stay hydrated.
4. Smile at a baby.
5.Scrape your spare change together and buy something from a food vendor, ideally hot and fried.
6. Flirt with the first attractive person you come across, even if it is just by giving him a look or pretending to trip.7. Buy something handmade and beautiful.
8. Get something pierced.
9. Wash your hair.
10. Make a list.
On a good day I can usually manage 1-6.
