Ignorance is bliss

On Friday last week, my mum offered to take me to Otavalo, this nearby town with a lot of indigenous people and markets and other cool stuff, so I took her up on that offer and we headed off on Sat morning. It was a little bit complicated managing to get on a bus that would take us there, but we eventually hopped on to one with enough room, and thankfully I got a seat (not a legitimate one, but it was a cushion on the floor at the front of the bus - better than nothing, seriously - especially when it´s for 2hrs). We arrived in Otavalo at about 1pm, so kind of late, but still just enough time. My mum bargained out a price with a taxi driver to drive us around for the day and take us to the sights, so after the negotiations we first headed off to Cuicocha.

Now I have no idea of any places in this area - I didn´t even look in my guide book, but I just let myself go with the flow and followed on with what my mum said was good. So we arrived at Cuicocha, and I find out that it´s this ginormous volcanic lake that was really really beautiful. Here´s a pic:

It´s like Quilatoa, but this time we were immediately at the same level as the lake, so we caught on a boat that took us around the lake, which was totally amazing. Here´s the boat and a view from the trip around crater.


The crater, which this lake fills in, is actually still active! And when the boat pulled up to the side of one of the inner islands of the crater, we could see bubbles coming up through the still water due to the gas (sulfur maybe? - the guide explained it all but obviously all in spanish, so i tried to get the general gist) coming from the volcano underneath us. It was pretty cool.

Back at the shore, we were given a coupon for a free canelazo to warm us up after the brisk lake breezes, but I didn´t feel like drinking alcohol so early in the day, so while I was waiting, I was kept entertained by this pan pipe guy serenading us all with Christina Aguilera´s "Genie in a bottle" - soooo hilarious. You don´t really know that song until you´ve heard it live on pan pipes ;)

So after Cuicocha, the taxi driver suggested that we go to the Cascades de Pegucha and I was like, sure why not - I´ve got no idea what it is, but sounds good. So we ended up at this huge park/forest thing, and I felt like I was right back in australia again. It was sooo similar - all the gum trees, as you can see from the pics below - the only difference really was the people present. I don´t think i´ve ever seen many Indians having picnics in Australia, so seeing that brought me back to reality of where I actually was =)

So here are the cascades - or rather cascade. I think there might have been another one, but it was a smaller one, which we didn´t have the time to visit. But this one was cool enough - really beautiful.

On the way out, my mum bought a bag of what I thought looked like little paper lanterns, but turns out they´re called ubilla and they´re fruit! You break the thin paper-like skin and inside the little lantern-y bulb is this tiny cherry/tomato-esque fruit that´s really really sweet. Totally tasty..


I thought this was pretty cool - there was this huge mountain overlooking the whole area, and it was an almost completely cloudless sky, but for some reason, perched right over the peak of this mountain, was this huge cloud - kind of made me think of modor or something from lord of the rings - like, what was that cloud really hiding? =)

By this time it was about 4pm, and we still hadn´t had any lunch, so we finally made it into the city of Otavalo, grabbed a quick fritada (whole combo plate of pork, mote, avocado and potato) and then finally hit the famed Otavalo markets. Unfortunately because it was the end of the day, most stalls were packing up and as some would know I have a thing about being in places that are in the process of closing - kind of freaks me out and makes me nervous, but I had to force myself to keep on looking and shopping because it was the only time I´d ever be there, so had to make the most of the time I did have. Here´s some pics I managed to take:

There were a lot of pan pipe stores and a lot of demos:

I haven´t seen any armadillos yet in Ecuador, and maybe this is why:

These are typical Otavalo women - they all wear the same thing: the black and white skirt, with a white flowy shirt, a black shawl wrapped around, hair tied up like a switch and wearing a lot of gold necklaces. Oh, and there was actually a baby in that sheet on that lady´s back - I saw it moving around. Don´t know how it actually breathes, but I´m assuming it´s all good.

So that was Saturday in Otavalo. On Sunday, the parents and I woke up at about 5am and headed off bright and early to Papallacta - this place about an hr from Quito, which has natural volcanic hot springs. It was a really beautiful drive there - here´s some scenery pics from the trip:

We managed to get to Papallacta at about 7.30ish - here´s a pic of me outside, just before entering. As you can tell, it was just a little bit on the cold side, so the idea of stripping down to get into a pool seemed a little crazy, but I soon found out that it was quite the opposite


There was this river flowing through the area and people would (as I did too) dip into the freezing freezing river, splash around a little bit while you could still feel, and then get back into the hot springs. I didn´t do that first though becuase it was cold enough just going from the change room to the pool, but I did venture in to try it later. Anyway with the actual hot springs/pools, seriously I´ve never been in water that hot before!! Getting into that pool for the first time was one of the best feelings ever!!!! oh man...everything just defrosted and tingled and I never wanted to get out. M&D you would have never wanted to leave - this would be like heaven for you guys. Hotter than any spa I´ve ever been into, and this wasn´t just one spa, but big pools all over the place - and all naturally heated.

That little mini waterfall thing in the pic on the right, was sooooo hot - i couldn´t even touch it directly, but just feel the water around it. Sooooo nice...ahhhh....

We didn´t have much time there because had to rush back to Quito so I could catch a futbol game, but we did have time to stop off for some choclos con queso (white corn with cheese - yes those white thick squares in the pic below are cheese) and we then raced back to Quito.

It was complicated and difficult to meet up because huge masses of people, but managed to in the end meet up with Danilo at the biggest stadium in Quito to watch the Barcelona v Liga match. They are really really bitter rivals and that manifested even before the game had started. First of all, the fans had to be separated into different stands, which were divided by huge wire fences and riot police with big shields and batons wielded at the ready. And even before the players had come onto the field, Danilo and I had to quickly run for cover because rocks had started to be thrown between the stands and not just pebbles, but huge rocks! So crazy. The stadium stands were double levels, and at the top were the Barcelona fans and the Liga fans were down the bottom, and at the start I wondered why a lot of teh liga fans had umbrellas. I thought it was just for the sun, but turns out they were more useful in protecting against the rocks and many other assorted items that the barcelona fans would pelt downwards into the liga stand. At some point during the game, I felt something hit my leg and looked down and there was this balled up nappy (or diaper for you american readers ;) ) - *shudder* soooo disgusting. I didn´t dare to look to see if there was anything in it - I just tried not to think about it. Anyway, unfortunately Barcelona lost (again) and the Liga fans were obviously ecstatic, and the barcelona fans obviously irate. Danilo and I started to make our way out of the stands early to avoid the inevitable chaos after the game ended, but when we got to the doors to exit the stadium, we were blocked by police and it turned out that every single person from our stand, which were the barcelona fans, had to wait for like 40min while the liga fans left first. This was a preventative measure against fights breaking out just outside the stadium, which is so crazy that they actually need to do that. I would have been quite scared if I had been one of the policemen because at first all you have is sad or frustrated barcelona fans because we had just lost, but thanks to being barricaded in while their sworn enemies get to leave first, it soon becomes a very very angry mob, kicking doors, pushing, swearing and everything else. I think eventually someone kicked open one of the gates and everyone crushed forward and burst out into the open. It seemed like all those measures were all for nought anyway because when we got up to the main street, I could see a huge group of policemen on horses rushing over to break up a huge fight that had broken out. I guess maybe it´s not so much for prevention as minimisation.

After all this south american futbol madness, time for some lunch, so we headed to the market where I tried the local speciality - jugo de alfalfa con huevo or alfalfa juice with egg!!! Sound weird? It totally is - it´s this fantastic green colour though and I think they put in scoops and scoops of sugar, so it doesn´t taste like alfalfa, but more like apple surprisingly. Not sure what the raw egg added to it does for the flavour or consistency, but that wasn´t bad either. I didn´t have my camera with me, so sorry no pic. Maybe next time.

Back at home, I quickly threw together some brownies that I promised to make for people at work, and then Danilo and I headed out to see Transformers, which was very cool.

Anyway the reason I say "Ignorance is bliss" is because I´ve got absolutely no idea about places in Ecuador and I just go along because people say it´s good, but they never really elaborate about it all, so when I get to these recommended places I don´t really have any expectations, so I´m completely surprised by everything and that´s probably heaps better than knowing too much and being disappointed (not that I think that´s possible here).

Oh and just a quick note about my work - it´s going pretty well. Only two more weeks - can´t believe I´ve been there for 6 weeks already. But it was cool this week because Kathy brought in some colouring books and other stuff and we got the kids who inevitably peek their heads around the corner to check out these foreigners, to actually come in and colour in stuff while they´re waiting. So that was fun to give these kids something like that.

Mucha Comida

This is almost all the food I encountered this weekend - I missed out huevos chilenos (yummy corn balls, which taste pretty much like donut holes) and pinchos (an ecuadorian kabob type thing with sausage, banana, potato, chicken and steak - mmmm..yum), but will get those pics later. Here are the ones that I did manage to get:

Hornado, but only the heads - not sure why and what happened to the rest of them. Also not sure how exactly to go about eating that - thought i´d give it a miss this time.

Espumilla...on the go.

Fairy floss or cotton candy - whichever you prefer.

Ah mango - my favourite.

"Cuero Asado" - this is that pig skin I mentioned before where it´s soft and chewy and you can totally see the hairs *shudder* - sooo disgusting.

I love the way they carry their kids here. Seriously I have not seen one pram yet the entire time I´ve been in Quito. Every kid is either carried like this on the mum´s back, or they´re just carried in their arms. Anyway, this lady was selling this combo of stuff - don´t think there is an overall name for the resulting plate of food but it´s made up of chochos (like white lima beans), tostados (toasted corn kernels), a tomato & onion salad and chifles (banana chips). I thought it was quite amusing that every person I saw selling this combo, had a bottle of mylanta or some other digestive aid like this bottle of LBS (lower bowel stimulant) that I saw, tucked away in the basket in addition to picante sauce or salt. hmmm..makes you think what they would need that for.

"Ceviche de ostion" (oyster) - similar preparation to the above combo, but this is more of a soupy main meal, whereas the first was more of a snack. There is also a lot of popcorn in this dish and the seafood is raw except that it´s marinated in lemon for several hours. The mum made me ceviche de pescado the other day and it was actually quite nice - very lemony, but good.

"Tortilla de maize" - mashed corn with queso - not too bad, but not too flavoured either.

"Cuero Reventado" - this is absolutely the biggest bag of pork crackling I have ever seen in my life. And they were selling it in massive sheets at a time. Crazy.

Caña - sugar cane.

This is canelazo, a local Ecuadorian specialty. It´s made of hot water, puntas (sugar cane liquor), lemon, sugar and cinnamon. It´s actually really strong, hot and spicy - not sure it´s my favourite drink, but it´s ok.

Don´t you just love global food chains and their local variations? This is KFC´s menestra lunch combo ie chicken, salad, rice and bean stew. Not bad for $3.

Ah..cuy or guinea pig as we know it - I have yet to bring myself to try it. I think maybe only if I watch them freshly cook it. This plate of cuy at machachi looked like they´d been out for a while, so I think I´ll wait for another chance.

Guyasamin, Machachi & Teleferiqo

On Friday, my mum took me out to see the Guyasamin Museum - he´s like the most famous Ecuadorian artist, hence having an entire museum dedicated to him. It´s one of the newest museums I think, because he only died a couple years ago or something like that. Anyway, here are a few examples of his artwork.



They´re all pretty much centred around suffering, tragedy, misery and it´s all a bit depressing, but the guy´s obviously got skill. I really liked the big mural in the middle which shows a condor crushing a bull - condors are the symbol of indigenous people and the bull represents the spanish, which I thought was pretty cool. Then the pic below is us outside the museum and kind of a bit of a view behind us (you can totally see the height difference in this one).

Anyway, after the museum, we headed out to have lunch. We went to this place called La Suiza, which I soon found out was buffet and I had been told it would be cheap - well anyway, we start eating and then the mum tells me that it normally costs $4, but today being Friday, it was going to cost us $9.80!!! Yes that might not sound like much, but when all I ever want for lunch is to go to one of the local $1 lunch places that are everywhere, putting down $10 for a single meal is insane!! I totally filled up on all the dessert and made sure I got my money´s worth. I know all my family wants is to show me nice places and hence a little on the expensive side, but I somehow need to make them realise that I just want the local stuff.

So after we had had our fill plus more from that buffet, they drove me to the Metropolitan park, which is the biggest in Quito and it´s more like a national forest than a park. It´s strange but it totally reminded me of the bush from Australia - there are heaps of gum trees, scrubby bushes and it´s all kind of dry and browny. Anyway, we passed this huge dirt car park on the way up that they told me was where Gabriel and Danilo learned how to drive, so the mum suggested, well why don´t I learn how to drive manual too? So in I went, getting my first lesson of how to drive manual, in spanish! But I did know the most important word - ¡pare! (stop!), so I was all ready to go.


Surprisingly it all went really well - I didn´t stall once, and I even made it to third gear, just by picking up speed circling around this car park - really cool. It was funny because basically after I had just managed for the first time to change a gear, my mum was totally egging me on to go out and hit the real streets and I was just like, hang on a tic - just one more round! But eventually, she thought I was ready, so I actually did go on the actual road, up the hill about 1km to the next car park - all nice and smooth, albeit really really slowly. But hey not too bad for my first lesson.

We then headed to the Mariscal (the touristy area of town) because there are English bookstores there and guess what I bought right at the time it was released ie 6pm on Friday 20 July 2007?


The last and final Harry Potter !!! WOo hoo!! I was totally excited and it didn´t matter that it was a completely exorbitant price compared to buying it back in Australia (equated to $50AUD!!!) - I would have paid anything, seriously and once I had it, I just couldn´t wait to start it - Emily you would have died if you saw the light I had to read with in the car, but I couldn´t help myself. Screw my eyes - this is Harry Potter ! =) That was basically my night after that - I started reading at 8pm and couldn´t finish until I had finished the whole book, which I didn´t realise it until the last page, was at 5am!! I had read for 9hours straight - kind of bad because I had to wake up at 6.30, so only managed to have about 1.5hrs sleep, but totally worth it.

The reason I had to wake up that early was because I headed out with Kathy (other volunteer) and some other people gotten together by her spanish school, to go to Machachi - this little town about 1hr from Quito. It was their annual fiesta and parade, so thought it´d be cool to check it out. There was so much food (as seen by previous post) and it was packed with people, which was cool and also dangerous. Twice, when I had my bag on my back, I would bring my bag around to the front and the front pocket would be totally open! Good thing I didn´t have anything of value in there and that I soon switched to always wearing my bag on my front. It totally sucked, but within the first 5 minutes of us being there, Sebastian - this belgian guy who came, had his camera stolen!! It was strange to see something like that happen to somebody else - I was totally expecting something to happen to me as well, and when I actually managed to get home that night with all my stuff intact, I seriously could not believe it. I checked and re-checked =) Unreal. So poor sebastian, even before the parade started, couldn´t even taken any photos and there was no chance of recouping it like I was lucky enough to do before. Anyway, here are some pics from the parade:







A lot of dancing, horses, Chagras (Ecuadorian cowboys), music and kids taking part in the parade. I loved the pants that the guys wore - those big furry things - they looked sooo warm.


This was totally weird - They had so many huge blow up promotions there for coke, water and other products, why not promote breeding? ;)



For lunch, we headed to this local "food court" I guess it could be called, except it was just this little eatery where each stall sold basically just hornado and one sold ceviche. Anyway, from the front left side up, it´s Miguel (Spain), Noemie (Paris), Sebastian (Brussels) - right side of table, Carlos (head of spanish school) and Kathy.

Oh, guess where I am and what I´m doing?

Yes, I´m in a massive meat locker for the nearby market, waiting to go to the only toilet available, which was to be found at the back of the meat locker - ahhh, lovely - glad the line wasn´t that long.

So the parade went for pretty long - I think it went for something like 5-6hours! Crazy - They do love fiesta here in Ecuador. But while the parade was wrapping up, the bull fight was just starting. Here I am about to venture into the rickety wooden, but still triple storey stands that everyone packed into.



The bull fight was totally cool - my first time seeing one. It wasn´t like normal spanish ones (from what I think they would be) ie with the single matador, and the spears and everything. This is basically this huge rectangular dirt field - it totally made me feel like we were back in the medieval times, and people were going to come out and start jousting or something, and the king and queen would have their own stand somewhere. It was just like that. But this is called the Toro de pueblos (I think) - pueblos are those wooden stands (again, I think). So anybody can get into the arena and await the bull. There were heaps of drunk people, as this was towards the end of the day of fiesta-ing, and those were the ones most likely to get charged and tossed around by the bull. One guy got rammed by the bull and thrown into the air and in so doing, lost his pants! Everyone was shrieking with laughter around me, and his friends rushed into to drag him out of harms way, sin pantalons - quite amusing =) But as you can see from the second pic below, when the bull gets near to teh sides, all the people just jump up and grab as high as they can to teh stands and let the bull run along below them - it´s pretty funny to see everyone just jumping up all over the place.



So after the bull has had its fill of running around and venting all its rage, the Chagras (cowboys) come in with their lassos and try to rope the bull back into its pen, and once that´s achieved - which can take really long, that´s it for that bull. Then out comes another and another - I think in total there were going to be 8 that day, but we didn´t stick around for all of them. We just got out stuff together and headed back to Quito and I was so exhausted from not sleeping becuase of HP the night before, that i just totally crashed when I got home.

The next day was pretty relaxed - eventually we made it out of the house and headed to the Teleferiqo - this huge cable car thing that takes you to one of the highest points in Quito. It´s quite a new attraction, and so while I was expecting it to be really touristy, in fact it was packed with locals. It´s kind of like their own amusement park, with carnival type rides everywhere, with an arcade with all the usual games and stuff and there´s even a mini roller coaster.


Here are the guys standing in front of half of the rides section with the teleferiqo cable car going up the mountain in the background.

Anyway, Luis and I wanted to try this "ejection seat" which is one of those balled cages attached to kind of like a rubber band that they stretch back and then release you so you go flying vertically up and then falling back - kind of a reverse bungee, but in a caged ball. But unfortunately, turns out it was $10/person, so no way. Instead, we saw they had go karting, so we gave that a go - only $5 for 5min, which is not too bad and although it sounds like not long, 5min is actually a good enough time to just have a bit of a go.

Luis is in front, then Danilo and then me third. It was really fun - I was skidding around corners, almost spun out (all captured on film, which is cool), Luis crashed into me and then got stuck (haha) and then it was over. It was the first time for both Danilo and Luis, so that was also exciting for them.

We had a quick lunch and then finally went up on the cable car. There was a ginormous line that woudl have taken us 1.5hrs to get through, so we thought no way and we bought the express tickets which were double the price ($7), but instead of waiting all that time, we got on almost instantly. Sooo much better. Anyway, it was Danilo´s first time up too, as you can tell from his expression :)



Also a scenery shot from the cable car. You see that cloud appearing on the right side of the pic? Well that cloud followed us up the mountain and by the time we had reached the top, all we could see was cloud. Such a bummer, I thought at first, but after we just sat in one of the summit restaurants and tried to warm ourselves (it was freezing up there) with a canelazo (a local hot spiced alcohol), the cloud started to pass and we then walked along the mountain´s ridgeway path to take some totally amazing scenery pics.







It was absolutely breathtaking up there.

At the top where the cable car dropped us off, is 4,100m above sea level and then after we walked to an even higher point, the dad estimated we were about 5,000m. It was one steep walk and I was again getting totally puffed and feeling really unfit and I was confused because I thought I´d be used to the altitude by now. When I got home though I searched for some stats about elevation levels in Australia and other places I´ve been and here they are:

So Quito itself is 2,800m. I found out that Australia´s highest point, Mt Kosciosko, is only 2,200m!! In fact, Melbourne is only 63m, Brisbane 24m and Sydney 0m (3feet)!! Man, no wonder I´m feeling the altitude difference here. But then I thought, well all the mountains I´ve been to where there was snow, surely that was also really high - but for example, Les Contamines (the place in France I went to to snowboard) is only on average 1,164m and Mt Buller is 1805m.

So Quito alone is taller than anywhere I´ve ever been and then when we got to the top of the teleferiqo, which is 4,100m and then climbed to maybe 5,000m - holy crap - I was high! No wonder I´m still finding my breathing when I´m climbing or running difficult.

Hence, when we reached the top, the dad suggested that I fly the "australian flag", which turned out to be my scarf, to symbolise my achievment. =)



And then that was it - we descended from the summit and then headed back home.

Oh, I just thought this was a good way to show the average height here - this is basically what my reflection is like in every bathroom in Ecuador. I can never see above my shoulders.



For dinner, we went and got chinese food - chaulefan con pollo (fried rice with chicken) and sweet and sour pork. It was funny because no one liked the sweet and sour pork and didn´t even want to barely touch it - it was obviously different to stuff back home. It wasn´t deep fried or anything, but still pretty msg-ish.

Anyway, after dinner I headed out to catch up with Geoff (from my Quilatoa trip) who was hanging out with some of his other friends at the hostal. It´s cool meeting other foreigners because we´re all basically volunteers and all interested in community development and all that junk, so it´s good to be around similar-minded people. I met this american guy who is pretty much exactly like me - he did his med entrance exam just before coming, so is in the middle of his application process hoping to get in next Fall, hoping to specialise in tropical medicine and end up in the field of third world medicine. There are actually a lot of medical or wanna-be medical people here, which is really cool.

Phew, ok well that´s it for this posting. I feel like I need to cut down and not waffle on so much, but I think it´s just not in my nature ;)