Ecuador

Ice cream break with Monica and Paulo

Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, is where we dip our proverbial toe into the great continent of South America. This is where we had planned to take a 2 week intensive Spanish course before we continuing into the mostly Spanish speaking beyond. We arrive in Quito after another 35 hour journey to find that our luggage never made it. Dressed for 80 degree Africa, we step out into the brisk low 60s evening, really really bummed that we only had the thin clothes on our backs for at least the next 24 hours. Gustavo, the owner of our Spanish school had been waiting a good 2 hours at the airport for our delayed flight and lost luggage fiasco. But he was all smiles and was unwavering in his patience until he safely delivered us to our freezing cold, dank, crap hotel. But it was alright, we only had one night there. The next night we would depart for the coast for our first week of classes.

The next day, worried that our bags might not arrive, we went shopping for another change of clothes in case this was all we had to take to the coast with us. Thankfully, we found our bags on the carousel later in the day when we returned to the airport. Yipee!!

We met Monica and Paulo, our young (26 and 25 year old!) teachers at the bus station at 8 in the evening, for our overnight bus to a blink-and-you´ll-miss-it town on the coast called Puerto Rico. They spoke very little English and we spoke little to no Spanish. Initial conversation contained a lot of smiles and hand gestures and very slow speaking. The 11 hour bus ride we were not looking forward to turned out to be much worse than imagined. We drove downhill almost the entire time at top speed, angling through windy mountain roads. Music was blasting through the speaker all night and the finicky thermostat in the bus swept between bone chilling tundra to suffocating milky humidity. It was impossible to sleep or go to the bathroom. Yes there was a bathroom in the bus but you couldn´t make it down the aisle from all the breaking and violent turning let alone actually pee in the pitch black bathroom once you got there. We were sure to die from driving off the cliff or in a head on collision with another bus. When we arrived at 6:30 in the morning, we were ecstatic to be alive. After a shower and some breakfast, we launched into 5 hours of intenive Spanish. We were hanging onto our last sleep deprived nerve, trying our hardest to concentrate and make it through the day. Our intructors, a good 10 years younger than we, were excellent teachers. We spent almost every waking hour with them, hanging out and eating all our meals together.



By day two we had enough new words to have a rudimentary conversation, still needing to switch to English to get some points across. By day 3, it felt as if our heads would explode and bloody Spanish phrases and present tense verbs would spray all over the furniture. That being said, it is the only way to learn a language and we learned very fast. At the end of 5 days, we returned to Quito for the weekend and remained there for the next week of classes.



Roughly 9,000 feet above sea level, Quito is nestled at the base of an emerald (and still active) volcano in the Andes mountains. Ecuador is so named because the Equator runs right through it, about 15 miles north of Quito.

The temperature ranges between the 70s and 80s in the daytime and cools down to the 50s and 60s in the evenings. It happened to be unseasonable rainy the entire rest of the time we were in Quito. It poured every afternoon at around 3, making it difficult for us to see any of the sights after class. We ended up putzing around a part of town aptly nicknamed "Gringolandia" for the many hostels, internet cafes, restaurants and bars there catering to foreigners.

Food wise, the Ecuadorians sure know how to do soup. Soup is eaten at almost every meal as a first course, followed by some sort of meat or fish dish and rice and dessert. The Ecuadorians also do love a good Guinea Pig, called "Cuy." Cuy is a favorite meal, usually prepared whole and deep fried, complete with little ears and paws and face. This was a little too close to eating our own pet, so we could not bring ourselves to try it. Paulo took us to a great local lunch-only spot where we could eat lunch for an unbeatable $1.25 each! Usually a huge bowl of soup and a plate or chicken or fish with rice and a small chunk of vegetables and a glass of juice. Perfect if you have small change. Ecuador has been using the American dollar since 2000 I believe, but there is a prevalent change problem. They say that a $20 note is worth about as much as a roll of toilet paper. A $5 bill is pushing your luck.

After two weeks with Paulo and Monica, we were armed with a decent number of present and past tense verbs to use on our trip. The problem usually arises when people reply in rapid fire Spanish, using the three other tenses we did not learn and we´re reduced to bumbling gringos again. Still, it´s made a huge difference to be able to communicate on a very basic level. We may not be discussing the meaning of life with the next guy, but we´re able to get rooms, food, alcohol and the bathroom which is all one really needs. We finished our classes on December 22 and hightailed it back over to the coast to a tiny little pueblo called Monteñita.