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 ;)