futbol & pan pipes

On Sunday, Danilo and I headed out to go and see a futbol game being played between National and Barcelona (both are Ecuadorian teams). Even though National is the Quito team, Danilo and so I as well, supported Barcelona who is apparently the better team and is from Guayaquil - the biggest city in Ecuador. So even though they weren´t the home team, the crowds outside and inside the stadium was just a sea of yellow (Barcelona´s colour). It was totally easy to buy tickets because I guess scalping is either legal or just not policed, so as soon as we got off the bus, within not even 1 min, we had already bought two tickets from this old lady just standing in the middle of the street selling a huge bunch of tickets - it´s so much more convenient and easy than standing in the actual line, and only 50cents more expensive - I reckon scalping should be allowed back home ;)

So we didn´t manage to get into the particular fan stand just because it was full up already, but here´s a pic to show you what that section was like:

I had heard crazy things about South American futbol before coming, like how refs get death threats and need body guards and stuff and so obviously how fanatical it all is. I think this picture sort of shows that:
Gotta love the fully armed riot police protection for the refs and players.

So the game started and people were cheering and so forth, but I was sort of more concentrating on all the types of food being sold around me. There were so many vendors selling a huge range of stuff:

There were fruit ladies selling bags of grapes, mango and lemon and the lady on the right was selling potatoes with pork skin, and not the crackling type, but just the soft fatty skin - eww...so gross - you can totally see the hairs still in it and everything.

I decided to try the local Ecuadorian beer - only $1.20 for a huge glass! It went really well with the peanuts that some guy was selling by the cupful. I also got a bag of mango (yum) and tried empanadas de morocho (which I guess is like a south american curry puff to put it in familiar terms, but it´s totally skinnier and crunchier, with meat and rice inside) with a lot of aji on it - yum again.

It got pretty hot, so some had to improvise:

It was so funny - there was this guy in the stand on the other side of the stadium to me and he was basically all alone out there, but he kept on waving his flags the entire game and he must have packed himself and his bag full of confetti, because he´d be constantly throwing up a bunch of confetti and then keep on waving his flags all by himself - it was so funny to watch. Anyway, unfortunately Barcelona lost 2-1 (Danilo mentioned how there is a bit of a disadvantage for Barcelona playing in Quito because they´re not used to the altitude so maybe that played a part, don´t know). It was still fun anyway - apparently here whistling is to show disapproval, not approval, which I thought was interesting - so whenever National had the ball, we´d all whistle really loudly and then when Barcelona finally scored their only goal, flares went off everywhere and there was much flag waving etc etc - it was really cool. I want to go to a Barcelona v Liga game because apparently that´s a really bitter rivalry and the last game they played fights broke out between not only the fans but also between the players - ooh, exciting - i´ve got to check it out. =)

After the game, the parents picked us up and we went to Parque de Carolina, which is the biggest park in the city and it was packed with people and also with food vendors again - this time selling all sorts of stuff. I ended up trying Espumilla:

If you can see, I´m going nuts with the hundreds and thousands sprinkles shaker, which actually is the reason I just had to try this Espumilla, just so I could do that =) What it is, is this mixture of guava juice and egg, all whipped together - sounds weird hey, but it´s actually really nice. It´s really really sweet and when you add all the condiments on offer ie hundreds and thousands, chocolate syrup, strawberry jam, condensed milk and dessicated coconut - oh man, that is one sugary dessert.

So we left Carolina Park and headed to Panecillo - one of the lookouts above Quito. It has this huge statue of the Virgin of Quito (who I´m presuming to be Mary - how many other famous virgins are there) that you can see pretty much everywhere around Quito. I guess it´s like the equivalent to Rio´s Corcovado mountain with that giant Jesus statue on it - but obviously Quito´s is not as big. Here´s a pic:

Also on top of that hill, there were heaps of people, mostly kids, but also adults, all flying kites off the edge. It was really cool - some of the kites were way way out there - it seemed like almost a kilometre or something, i don´t know. Seriously some where like tiny little specks in the clouds - that´s a whole lot of rope.

Anyway, my camera battery died right after taking the kites photos, so didn´t get any actual photos of the view. Kind of defeated the purpose of being up on the lookout, but doesn´t matter because I´m going to go to the Teleferiqo, which is this huge cable car thing that takes me even higher, so I´ll take more scenic pics from there.

We then went off to get some food from the nearby shopping centre food court. There was this Chinese food franchise there and their slogan translates to "Eat Chinese, Eat Healthily", which I thought was really funny because their food is just total oil. The dad got a plate of the Chaulefan, which is just this oily rice and noodles mixed together - hmm..wish they could try real chinese food.

Oh, and it was totally hilarious but you know how shopping centres always have that really annoying pan pipe music of popular music playing as the centre´s soundtrack - well I guess since I´m in South America, they don´t need to have a CD, becuase there was a real guy standing there playing his pan pipes to broadcast over the centre´s sound system - playing songs like Killing me Softly and that song from the movie, Ghost. I thought it was so funny how here they just have the real thing since it´s local and all. =)