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October 21, 2004

Type A Stranger in a Strange Type B Land (Part I)

11

Quito, Ecuador

Thursday, October 21, 2004:

Its tranquil and peaceful in Quito. Too tranquil and peaceful. I think the high altitude might be to blame for the calm, leisurely and all around mellow pace of life here. Its really starting to get on my nerves. I might even consider actually doing something about it, if it werenīt for the fact that Iīm feeling so fantastically lazy these days. It must be the switch from regular coffee to instant. Whatever the case, I find myself wanting to do something fast-paced, intense and adventurous. The only problem is that I just donīt want to do it right now. Poor Unemployed Wandering Me.

Part I (Saturday and Sunday, October 16-17, 2004):

The Saturday and Sunday after my arrival marked the official commencement of my Adjustment Phase in Quito. "Adjustment" for me being rather a relative concept. Bright and early on Day 1, after alternatively burning and freezing myself in a shower even moodier than myself, I hit the city streets for a Saturday morning spent wandering in ever-widening concentric circles. Iīm not happy in a new city if I canīt dive right in upon arrival and get myself at least somewhat lost in an effort to grasp a feel for its layout and key sites. But its hard to get yourself lost in a city with several massive volcanos looming immediately above it in the foreground and so I settled for merely exhausting myself within a wide, geographically-recognizable measure of space.

At first, I scoured the New Town, the hub of travelers rich and poor and the consequent heart of over-priced cafes, tour operators, travel agencies and purveyors of assorted colorful schlock. Eight-year old shoe-shine boys, women selling rainbow knit-sweaters and an old man selling Panama hats flagged me down. Everywhere there were signs reading: "Galapagos! Last Minute Discounts!", "Bargain International Calls!" and even (how pertinent) "Learn Spanish Today!" And yet I didnīt feel like learning Spanish today. I felt like wandering around in circles and bigger circles and even bigger circles so as to familiarize myself with the city in which I wanted to learn Spanish tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after that.

I wiped myself out. The symptoms of "altitude sickness" include fatigue, headaches, dizziness, cotton-mouth, loss of appetite and insomnia. I donīt remember the last time that I ever suffered from loss of appetite, but I definitely had the fatigue routine down pat by 3 PM, after wandering several miles from my hostel and into the heart of the cityīs colonial old town. It was a hill leading up to the cityīs basilica that did me in. Massive, imposing and sufficiently important-looking, it seemed a key site worthy of climbing towards. But the climb was really hard. I had to sit down for a while when I got to the foot of the basilica. Panting heavily, I thumbed through my Lonely Planet book. Commenced in 1926... never finished... yadda yadda yadda. I am convinced that someplace, in some big important book, writ LARGE in bold print, is a RULE, never broken, stating that massive gothic basilicas may not be completed in a timeframe of less than 259 years and 8 days, give or take. Come to think of it, the book is probably somewhere in Italy. Way to wipe me out there, Uncompleted Basilica. Good going. You could at least have been finished.

I wandered several miles back to hostel Vamara. Yes, there are buses --- cheap, efficient buses --- in Quito but I hadnīt the damnedest idea of where to catch one at the time and, if I had, I wouldnīt have known which bus to have taken. In the final stretch of my return journey, haggard and not a little demoralized, my Appetite kicked in yet again. After all, it was probably low blood sugar plaguing me. Eating would fix that. Sure, sure it would.

I am fairly certain that the meat-on-a-stick that I purchased from a fast-food fry-joint for $1.25 included some form of unknown animal testicle. I have no actual proof of this, mind you, except that two of the little multi-colored nuggets of critter on the stick looked a whole hell of a lot like... take a guess. This occurred to me right around the time I was finishing the last piece of the second one. Gulp. I then finished the rest of the completely unidentifiable animal parts on the stick in an effort to rid myself of the taste of the previous parts. Clever thinking there, eh?

Back at the hostel, I found my Kiwi dorm-mate curled in a fetal position on her bed. "I wandered all the way down to the old town and I think I have altitude sickness," she said.

"I wandered all the way down to the old town and back," I said.

She looked at me like I was a complete and utter moron. It is a look I have been getting used to these days.

"You took a bus back?" I asked.

"Mmm hmmm."

"Well, I feel like crap and I need a nap," I said, ever the poet romantic. "Also, I just had mystery meat."

Assuming my own fetal position, I dozed off for about an hour. When I woke up, I didnīt feel quite so exhausted or dizzy. But I did have cotton-mouth. Kristen seemed to be doing a bit better herself.

On our way down the stairs of the hostel, en route to going somewhere , we met Bronte, from Australia, who was just checking into our room (our Canadian roommate had vacated). After 11 days stuck in the Peruvian Amazon, where she was, among other things, stuck with no boat out of a tiny village and flogged randomly with plants by a stoned shaman witchdoctor, she seemed quite happy to have arrived in a civilization again. We walked aimlessly for a while. I was starting to get sick of wandering aimlessly. Also, the old Appetite was relentless. "Testicles, shmesticles," it said; "feed me again."

We wound up at a small Syrian restaurant where we tried to order beer to no avail. Ecuadorīs elections were to be held the following day and the law prohibits the sale of alcohol on the evening before. I am not sure if this is a law we should consider implementing ourselves in the U.S. (Judging from past results, quite possibly.)

It was lights out at the hostel by a little after 10 PM. Literally, the lights went out. I thought it was the hostel but found out the next day that it had been a city-wide power-outage. In the middle of the night Kristen woke me to tell me to stop snoring. Much giggling in the background. I donīt normally snore, so I blamed it on altitude sickness and mystery meat.

Sunday, Day 2, was a partial rehash of Saturday, at least so far as aimless city-wandering was concerned. Kristen, Bronte and I, along with Rebecca (our German room-mate), tried to find ourselves a cheap spot for breakfast. Turning down places that charged $2.75 in an effort to find an authentic $1.50 desayuno, we found ourselves back at the hostel 45 minutes later, collectively hungry and irritated. All the cheap places seemed closed. I admit that I myself was a little irritated that we had to find the cheapest possible place to eat, but then again, my budget is my budget and their budgets are their own budgets and if I didnīt want to dine all by my poor little lonesome self, I would have to suck it in and wander around the streets some more (and besides, would it really kill me to save more money if possible, oh Jobless Wonder?).

One of the guys at the hostel directed us to a place he highly recommended. It took us 20 minutes to find it and it turned out to be a cevicheria, serving principally... ceviche (raw seafood marinated in lime and/or lemon-juice). Prices started at $4.00 and up and so we left quickly. However, the fact of the matter is that this place was jam-packed with Quiteņos having ceviche for breakfast. It had to be good, it just had to be.

Finally we found a place serving breakfast for $1.25. It consisted of 2 fried eggs, a hunk of cheese on a small roll, a cup of milk with nescafe powder and a choice of juice --- orange or tomato. I chose tomato. I chose wrong. It was tomato de arbol, or "tree tomato," as it turns out. Iīd never had it before and I would have preferred to have kept it that way. In my view, tomato de arbol tastes a lot like a cross between tomato and a rotten lemon, only without any tomato flavor. The Kiwi and Aussie drank it for me. Insane.

After the meal, we split up for the day. Determined to conquer the old town at last, I hit the streets with renewed gusto. I wandered through parks, down cobblestone streets, through Independence Plaza and around the various 16th and 17th century churches and their respective parks filled with vendors and playing children. At the Church of San Francisco, I stopped on some stairs to watch the crowds go by for a while. I was beginning to really appreciate the old town, with its historic architecture, congestion and frantic pace. Also, there were Quiteņos here, whereas the New Town catered mainly to tourists and out-of-town business travelers. Its not that the New Town isnīt Quito, mind you, or even that it isnīt an interesting place (I go there daily), only that it doesnīt really reflect the reality of the lifestyle of the majority of the people living here. I decided I might want to switch my accomodations and move down here.

Meanwhile, a guy, roughly my age, sat down on the stairs next to me. "Beautiful city, isnīt it?" he said in a thick German accent.

"Umm... Eh heh," said I.

"Iīm [Name of Weird Boring German Guy Censored] from Germany," said he. He was kind of weird. As it turned out, also boring. (The fact that he was from Germany is really irrelevant, however. Iīve met a lot of Germans during my travels so far and this was the first among them who wasnīt remotely impressive.)

"You are on holiday?" he asked.

I gave him the 2-minute rundown. In my limited but consistent experience, budget-traveler-meets-budget-traveler conversations are often effectively two separate droning self-important monologues carried on in a void, much as this journal/blog is one droning self-important monologue carried on in a void (but not one that you are being forced to read). I keep my story short and vague when I meet other travelers because I sense that most of them donīt really give too much of a crap. There is no novelty in it for them because they are doing the same thing. In fact, I have sensed a tendency among a number of people taking budget long-term trips to regard their own excursions as grand or romantic adventures, while they regard the vast majority of trips taken by other travelers doing the same or a similar thing as disdainful, touristic excursions.

But I am generalizing. The above does not hold true in many cases. And perhaps I was being unfair to Weird Boring German Guy. Perhaps he was just a decent fellow trying to strike up a pleasant conversation on a pleasant day for no greater reason than the hell of it.

Perhaps, but he was still weird and boring.

"I am an engineer for German car companies," he told me, "perhaps you may have heard of some of them..." The tone of voice was caddy, almost coy. Was he gay? He had sort of a mullet. That made it doubtful. In any event, appropos of nothing, he proceeded to provide me with an extensive resume of German automakers he had worked for such as BMW and Daimler-Chrystler. He then lapsed into a pensive, expectant silence. He really had nothing to say, which was fine because I wasnīt at all curious. We sat there saying nothing for a few minutes. My personal space felt cramped.

I stood up. "Iīm gonna go wander over there," I said. "It was really nice meeting you." It wasnīt.

What a Rude Anti-Social New Yorker, I can imagine Weird Boring German Guy thinking, right before sidling up to some unsuspecting lone Aussie or Swede. "Beautiful city, isnīt it?"

I went to lunch. While you can get a breakfast for $1.25 instead of $2.25 if you want to, you will also get approximately 1/2 to 1/3 less food. Its not rocket science to figure this out. I was starving after my pitiful breakfast, so I stopped in a small hole in the wall place for a $1.50 lunch. This was more substantial, consisting of fish soup and baked chicken with rice, potatos and salad. When I was finished, I wandered down to the Secret Garden Hostal (www.secretgardenquito.com) to see if they had any spaces available. I had written to them a day before flying to Quito to check if there were any beds, but they evidentally hadnīt received my message in time to respond to me. After a quick tour, I made up my mind to move there on Monday. At $5.00 per night it had a lot more to offer than Vamara did. In particular, the view of the city from the rooftop bar and terrace won me over.

I managed to navigate a bus back to the New Town. For dinner, Kristen, Bronte and I settled down at a tiny Afghani/Indian restaurant where we sat for 3 hours watching 40 Days and 40 Nights (bad but good bad) and smoking a sheesha pipe. I announced my intentions to move out the next day. Kristen announced her intentions to start a volunteer job out in the cloud forest. Bronte had plans to move on to the town of Baņos before heading into Colombia en route to Brazil.

"I need to do something," I told them. "I really need to do something." Two days of city-wandering and already I was getting antsy. I felt unproductive. Here I was, at the end of the third week of a 15+ month trip and I was already beginning to feel unproductive.

"Iīm learning Spanish tomorrow," I said.

"Mmm hmmm." The two of them didnīt seem all that concerned by my self-imposed call into action. Theyīve both traveled around for years. Aussies and Kiwis do that. New Yorkers who go to law school to become corporate lawyers generally donīt. Moreover, when they do, they are not exactly of the right mind-set. I was green, very very green. I needed to relax. Maybe puff a little more on the sheesha.

"Really," I insisted to nobody.

"Mmm hmmm."

I didnīt start learning Spanish the next day, however. I slept late for once (8:00) and spent it wandering through a vast open market with Kristen and Bronte in the old town. But I did start learning Spanish the day after that. And thatīs what Iīll get to next, when I feel like doing something, anything (like writing), again. Maybe.


Posted by Joshua on October 21, 2004 09:52 PM
Category: Ecuador: Quito
Comments

Yes Josh, don't worry. I still hate you tremendously. Still waiting for my plane ticket to arrive in the mail. Any day now, I'm sure...

Posted by: Sarah on October 24, 2004 12:46 AM
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