Otavalo

Well, week 2 is now over. I´m not sure there´s a whole lot of interest to say about the week itself, more of the same stuff with Chels and I in school most of the day. We did get out of the house a bit more in the evenings this week now that we´ve got our bearings. The most interesting night was Wednesday when we went out to a soccer match between the national teams of Ecuador and Bolivia. Not the most exciting game ever but definitely worth the $5 we payed and the $1.50 750ml beers. Later that night we made it out to Bungaloo, a sort of Wednesday night hot spot here in Quito.

I´m not sure why I haven´t heard of other places doing this, it´s quite ingenious really, but at Bungaloo on Wednesday nights the bar is open only to women from 8 to 10 and during that time all the drinks are free. Yes, free as in beer. Then at 10 the doors open for general admission and of course starting well before 10 the men start lining up around the building to get in. I´m not sure exactly what the costs are like during the couple hours of free drinks, but it must be worth it for them since it seems to be quite a draw here in Quito. Anyways, suffice to say that Chels and some of our other fellow students hit up Bungaloo before 10 for the free drinks and the rest of us joined after 10 for dancing and fun.

This weekend was our first weekend travelling away from Quito. We started out first thing Saturday morning by heading up to Otavalo, about a 2 hour bus ride to the north. Otavalo is known for it´s large artisanal market where you can buy all kinds of nice little nik naks, bags, clothes, etc. It wasn´t nearly as big as some of the markets we saw in Thailand, but still quite fun and colorful. The town is very small and charming, but in total it doesn´t take more than a half day or so to wander the town and the market a bit, so after a late lunch we left Otavalo for Ibarra.

We got to Ibarra, which is a moderate sized city a bit farther north than Otavalo and after about an hour of walking around we thought to ourselves, “hmmm, this isn´t all that nice. why did we come here?” Well, sadly, as it turns out we didn´t have all the right info about Ibarra and didn´t realize that the city of Ibarra is lame and the small town of San Antonio de Ibarra which is near by is supposed to be the real attraction. We´ll go ahead and call this latin america travel lesson number 1, make sure you have adequate info about your destinations before arriving. If there is one thing that we noticed everywhere we went througout the weekend it´s that the signage and travel help is generally quite lacking here in latin america and so it´s very easy to say, arrive at a bus terminal 6 or 7 blocks away from where you want to be and not know where to go. (yes, that happened everywhere we went this weekend)

Anyways, lesson learned, but sadly we ended up missing San Antonio de Ibarra. whoops. So after our hour in the city of Ibarra we decided to split and head to Cotacachi which is another small town near Otavalo which is known for its leather products. At the time we arrived it was pretty ugly outside and had gotten a bit cold and rainy so after finding a place to stay and grabbing some dinner we basically just layed low for the night. In the morning we picked our way through Cotacachi which is actually even smaller than Otavalo but has that nice small town charm and has some very nice mountain scenary as a backdrop. After we were done in Cotacachi it was time to make the journey back to Quito.

The rest of the weekend is well, lame, because Chels and I both got some kind of virus or something and had a pretty crappy night last night. Tough to say where we picked up the bug, but many hours on crowded buses probably didn´t help. Luckily we seem to be recovering fairly quickly so we are hopeful this will turn out to be a 24hr bug. (fingers still crossed)

Tenative Route

Here is an idea of where we will be for the next few months. This is just a rough plan, so nothing is set, but wanted to give you all an idea in case you´re thinking of visiting or just want to know where we´ll be… For the most part, we´re moving north to south in every country except for Chile and Columbia as we´ll be moving north back towards the States…

Quito, Ecuador (4 weeks, Aug 13 – Sept 7)
Ecuador travel (1 week, mid Sept)
Peru & Bolivia (5 weeks, mid Sept – mid Oct)
Brazil (3 weeks, mid Oct – early Nov)
Uruguay (1 week, mid Nov)
Argentina (3.5 weeks, mid Nov – early Dec)
Chile (2.5 weeks, Dec)
Colombia (1 week, late Dec – early Jan)
1 more mystery week (Jan)…

Not much else is new right now. We´re just working on our Spanish and hanging out in Quito. We went to our first Ecuadorian futbol game this week and learned how to merengue and salsa dance. good fun. This weekend we go to Otavalo, the largest indigenous market in Ecuador, so more to come soon…

The Food

So of course, besides checking out the city, people, and daily culture, we couldn´t go long without trying the local food. Everyone here tells us not to eat the food or drink the juices on the street or in many cheap restaurants. Basically, like everything else, you are supposed to be really careful because the food can be dangerous. It´s a little strange to us because we´re thinking it can´t be any worse than the street food in Asia or Mexico or anywhere else in the world, but the people insist it´s not safe.

Despite the warnings, we couldn´t resist. While wandering through the park this weekend we had to try the ceviche de chochos. The stand was packed with people so we knew there was something good coming from that little cart. We were right! And the vendor gave us a sly smile…

I´m still not exactly sure what it was, but for only $1 we got a huge plate full of what I think was a mixture of lima beans, something like popcorn kernals but bigger and a little softer, and thinly fried plaintains, covered in a salsa of red onions, tomatoes and herbs that was delightful. The crispy beans and chips slightly melted in the tomato salsas and it was surprisingly tasty.

Overall, the food here is pretty good. They have a ton of fresh fruits and juices. We pretty much get a different one everyday at breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is a real treat. The cooks in our house prepare a good variety of dishes for us everyday that are simple, but good to us because they are different. Breakfast is usually pretty small with just some toast or an egg and fruit juice. Sometimes they throw in the occasional crepe with stawberries and bananas, which is really good. Lunch is the biggest meal. We always start with a bowl of soup that is usually simple, but really flavorful and then have a plate of meat, rice, and vegetables. Dinner is usually similar without the soup.

The good thing is the cooks are really creative so we haven´t repeated any dishes yet and we get a good variety of chicken, fish, meat and usually always a fresh vegatable salad. They use a lot of yuca and make all kinds of fried mixtures using bananas, cheese, corn, etc. that are my favorite. I need to find out what´s in them so I can recreate.

Don´t want to bore you with too much food talk, but there are a few funny things they do here that are worth a try, my favorite of which is putting popcorn in their broccoli soup! Sounds strange, but its actually good! You can also try another good one – putting crispy potato slices in your tomato soup. That is the favorite dish of our Ecuadorian sisters, in addition to french fries and hamburgers – just like all little kids.

¡Buen Provecho!

wandering gringos photo set started

k … got some photos online now. this one is of a street in the “ciudad vieja” and you can follow the rest of the photos on flickr … http://www.flickr.com/photos/geezer87/sets/72157601577473523/

el mitad del mundo y la ciudad vieja

whoot! we made it to the weekend. finally a chance to sleep in and get properly oriented.

i knew it was going to be a very intense experience living with an Ecuadorian family, taking 6 (or more) hours of spanish class a day, and just being here in South America, but´s really amazing how quickly you can adapt to new environments. Thursday and Friday were much easier days, despite still being very long, and the spanish is starting to flow a little more readily now. We actually went to a natural history museum on Thursday for our afternoon class and had to listen to over 2 hours of the natural history of Ecuador from a museum guide, in spanish of course. Tan loco! 2 hours in a museum is hard in any language, but with the added pressure of just trying to understand what´s being said it´s a real energy drainer. Oddly enough though, I loved it, and I understood much more than I expected I would.

Friday we had a long afternoon class where we went about 30-40 minutes outside the city to the location of the equator (mitad del mundo) and listened to some more talks and some examples of how physics functions differently when you are standing directly on the equator. The coolest example was how you could more easily balance an egg on a nail in a matter of a second or two.

Today has just been about wandering around in Quito a bit and exploring the city, most notably the old city (ciudad vieja) which has a very midevil european look to it with the narrow and winding streets, ornate european style architecture, and some great plazas and churches. Really beatiful. And yes, we are going to add pics, i just forgot the usb cable so we´ll have to add them in another day or so. It constantly amazes me how somewhere halfway around the world can be so similar to home, and yet so different at the same time. At a glance you really wouldn´t see much of a difference between Quito and many other cities, but as usual the real differences are embedded in the details of the cultural differences. One thing I´ve actually been dwelling on quite a bit the past couple days has been the security here in Quito.

Any travel book you read will mention over and over again how careful you have to be in South America with security, but in the back of my mind I think I didn´t really believe it. Well, nothing teaches like experience and today, on our very first day just casually walking around the city, someone tried to steal something out of Chels´pocket. Of course pick pocketing is nothing new, but what really strikes me as odd is that here in South America it seems to be a way of life. For example, it´s a given that you don´t walk around outside at night, anywhere. We live a mere 4 blocks away from a small plaza with a variety of bars and resaurants here in Quito and even being that close, the rule is the same, “en la noche, toma un taxi”. At night, take a taxi. And the icing on the cake is that it´s not just a problem for gringos or tourists, this applies to the locals as well. For some reason I find it hard to imagine living somewhere that you couldn´t feel safe walking around outside at night.

well, that´s enough for now. we´ll get some pics up soon so this blog is a bit more colorful. hasta luego.

¿Que? No se.

My new favorite words – what? and I don´t know. No more English slang or familiar idioms, I simply repeat these few simple words all day long. And of course, when I´m really confused, I just laugh.

I suppose I thought beforehand that learning Spanish would be difficult, but I never truly realized how difficult it would be to jump from no Spanish for 8 years to Spanish for 10 hours a day!! Breakfast, lunch, and dinnner in Spanish, 6 hours of class in Spanish, activities in Spanish, homework in Spanish, and then finally bed and I get to dream in English! It sounds exhausting, but its getting better and feeling a little more routine. Now that we´re settled and rested, we´re absorbing a bit more and picking up new words all day. Sometimes it seems impossible to learn an entire new language, but we´re comrehending difficult topics pretty well on our third day, so hopefully in 3 weeks, we´ll be able to describe them a bit better.

Quito is a fantastic city. It is nestled right in the valley of the Andes at 9.5K and has beautiful architecture. There is an old part of the city with churches and lots of old buildings with unique architecture and also a new part of the city with lots of cafes and bars. There are a lot of students and travellers here. I think it must be a big South American hub for volunteers and students. We haven´t met many people yet, except a few from our school, but we´re going to hang out in the city a bit this weekend to orient ourselves and explore a bit more. So far the people have been great as well. They love to drink and eat and party and they are all very friendly, patient, and interested in the gringos!

As Allen said, our family is fantastic!! I think we got really lucky because our house is only 30 seconds from the school and the family is very friendly and accomodating. They love having students, so they talk to us all the time and include us in everything. The house is fairly large for Ecuador, I think, and they have two employees that help with the cooking, cleaning, and kids. Pretty nice. There are two little girls – Gisella (4) and Samantha (6) – who are really cute. The food is good so far, but I think the rice will definitely get tiring after a little while (so the other students tell us).

Not much has happened so far so stay tuned for my exciting adventures, but for those of you who like to try new recipes, heres one we learned in cooking class yesterday:

In a large saucepan or pot, combine one beer (anything you like with good flavor) a few cloves of garlic (whole), one green onion (the stem cut in half), some salt, and cubed chicken breast (probably 3 for one beer). Stir until the beer evaporates and then add 3 tablespoons or so of corn oil and saute the chicken until lightly browned. Yum!! It was really good and so simple. Must have been the beer…

Quito (Day 1)

Well, we´ve arrived in Quito safely and the trip has officially begun!

The flight over was actually quite easy despite taking all day and we arrived in pretty good shape late monday night. After the full travel day it was a quick ride to our host family and pretty straight to bed since it was about 11 pm by then.

Today has actually been pretty intense introduction to Latin America though. Originally we thought we were set to attend school only in the afternoons for the first week, but that turned out to be wrong, so we had to be up first thing in the morning to start class at 8:30. ick. Luckily the class is much more engaging than what you typically think of when attending school. Chels and I have a personal instructor, so it´s basically just the 3 of us hanging out in a room and speaking spanish as much as possible with the instructor correcting us along the way. The school is pretty sweet and has free internet access as well as bread, coffee, and tea free all day. So after 4 hours (yes, it´s a little bit grueling, but it´s managable) we get to bail and head back home for lunch. yum.

Lunch is a nice chance to eat and relax a bit. of course, since we are living with a family and eating at their house we are still required to be in spanish mode. and of course, it was about 20 minutes into the morning class that my head was starting to hurt trying to remember all the new spanish vocabulary and rules. lovely. and as if that wasn´t enough spanish for one day (the first day none the less!) we headed out after lunch for our afternoon session, 2 more hours. The good thing though is that the afternoon session is different and we have the opportunity to have a different instructor and we get to go around the city to different places and we just talk to the instructor and point out different things along the way absorbing as much as possible. it´s very much the “sponge” technique for learning. but so far so good.

finally after almost 8 hours of spanish we got a chance to head home and just crash for a bit and relax. we almost went for the Salsa classes today at 5 (yep, more classes) but decided it would be a bit much for our first day. Besides, we are already about to head to our first party! Our host family is having a birthday party today and so we get to try and mingle with 30ish spanish-only speaking family members. yes! hopefully i am better at mingling in spanish than in english :/

well, internet time is over. ciao folks. more in a few days.

travel blog finally setup

we thought this would be setup a while ago (aka a couple weeks ago), but that didn’t happen and now it’s just a couple days before we take off. oh well. probably better this way though, since who really wants to listen to us babel about pre-trip crap like “how many pairs of underwear should i take?” and “omg my bag is already full and we haven’t even left yet!”

i should probably do some kind of introduction now, but i don’t have time so i’ll assume that if you’re here you know what to expect. more to come.