Mindo

Went on another two-day trip this weekend, this time to Mindo with the school. We left almost on time for once, only twenty-five minutes after scheduled departure, and arrived in Mindo two hours later. The hotel was pretty, actually made up of a bunch of separate buildings connected by paths and separated by trees. Our guide told us to put our stuff in our rooms and meet back in the center dressed in clothes that could get wet.

Our room:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1910.jpg

View from the balcony:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1911.jpg

More balcony view:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1912.jpg

Liz and I had heard a rumor that we were going white-water rafting, and we weren’t sure we wanted to go. I nearly begged off, given my unfortunate history with water, but we decided to at least put on our bathing suits and see where they were taking us. We met with the rest of the group and climbed back onto the bus. It was only a ten-minute drive to the edge of a river, where there was a small rocky beach and a truck full of black inner tubes. The tubes were roped together seven at a time into large rafts, and we were given life jackets and helmets and told how to properly sit and hold onto the rafts.

Each raft had two guides with it to steer. I didn’t bring my camera because I didn’t want to get it wet, but Morgan took some pictures that hopefully she’ll email to me, and I can post them later. The river was white water, all right, full of large rocks and “holes” and little waterfalls. The water was freezing cold, but I had had the sense to put jeans and a t-shirt over my bathing suit, so I wasn’t miserable. In fact, it was pretty damn fun. I felt like the raft was going to tip over a couple of times, but it didn’t, and when we arrived at the end point, we were all disappointed that the trip was so short.

Liz with a raft:
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Lunch was in the hotel restaurant; I don’t remember exactly what we ate, but everything they served us there was comida típica, which we’re all starting to get a little tired of. In the afternoon we went on a short hike to the mariposaria, or butterfly aviary. That was where I took the most pictures. The butterflies were neat (although unfortunately the only Blue Morphos we saw were dead!), and there was a huge spider that was probably the most picture-worthy of all.

Hotel dining room:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1915.jpg

Butterflies:
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Flowers and plants:
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Spider:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1934.jpg

Mariposaria:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1941.jpg
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After the hike, we were looking forward to a rest, but instead they took us on the bus into the town of Mindo proper, and told us we had an hour and a half to wander. I don’t know what they expected us to do for that long, because Mindo is a tiny town, but they told us that if we wanted to, we were free to come back to the bus early and sit inside. Ali and Liz and I wandered around town for about forty-five minutes, then decided to return to the bus. When we got there, though, the driver was nowhere in sight, and the bus was closed. Ali tried to climb in through an open window, but didn’t quite make it, so we wandered off again. Liz bought a soda, and the three of us sat on a bench and waited.

Sign in the marketplace:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1944.jpg
(Translation: “We pierce ears, nosez, navels, painless and free.” Yeah, sure.)

Statue in the park:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1949.jpg

While we were parked there, Ali suddenly had another idea for how she might climb into the bus. Back we went, and this time she managed to get all the way up and into the open window. Then she opened the door and let us in, and closed it again. We sat in the dark in the back of the bus until the driver showed up again, and then we crouched down and hid. I’m not honestly sure why we hid, but we waited until more people came on the bus before sitting up again, and I don’t think the driver ever noticed that we broke into his bus. We could even have stolen it, as he had left the keys inside…but none of us had driven such a large bus before, so we contented ourselves with just breaking and entering.

Ali climbing the bus:
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Ali successfully in the bus!
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We crashed early after dinner, and the three of us decided to skip the hike the next morning. Our guide told us it was two hours to the top, a quick swim in a waterfall, and an hour back down. So we got up in time to eat breakfast with everyone else, and then spent the morning lounging by the pool, reading and sunning ourselves, and agreeing that that was a much better alternative to an exhausting hike. I read through another large chunk of the question pool in my geek book over the weekend, and I’m doing really well. I can’t wait to take my license test when I get back to the States.

The drive back to Quito after lunch was dreary, rainy, and uneventful. I was in bus coma the entire time, just sitting and listening to music and looking around, not talking to anybody and not sleeping. For quite a while, Liz and I were the only ones awake aside from the driver, which was fine with me. People started waking up again once we hit Pichinca province, and we got back to the school about six o’clock.

Spectacular storm clouds in Quito this afternoon:
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Otavalo

I mentioned in my last entry that I had spent a weekend in Otavalo. It was a trip arranged by the school, and most of the exchange students went. We met at the school at 8am on Saturday morning, since María Ísabel had told us to be punctual so we could leave on time. Of course, we sat on the unmoving bus for forty-five minutes before we actually went anywhere. So much for “en punto;” this is Ecuadorian time.

The drive was a couple of hours, and the four of us from KSC took up the far back seat of the bus and spent the ride goofing off and taking stupid pictures.

Braulio unable to take a nap because we’re taking pictures of said nap:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1513.jpg

Rockin’ out to Manson, Juanes, and a punk band whose name I’ve forgotten, respectively:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1515.jpg

The bus took us straight to the marketplace, where we spent a couple of hours wandering around.

Fruit stand:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1516.jpg

Hand-painted plates:
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More fruit:
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Dead chickens:
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Beads:
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Gourds:
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Map of Otavalo painted on a wall:
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Spices:
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And more spices:
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Native kids sing in Kichwa on the bus so they can get a ride (sorry it’s out of focus, my camera was acting up):
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Liz and I bought matching jackets in the market:
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Marie and Braulio at Cabañas del Lago, the hostería we stayed in:
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The hostería’s dog:
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Plotting to take over the world from my cabaña:
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Marie having a laughing fit after I trapped her in the wardrobe:
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Falling over after struggling to drag the tire swing up the set of steps:
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Having fun flying!
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Me and Marie preparing to swing together:
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Marie and Luis trying to put together the ping-pong table they broke:
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The night that we stayed at Cabañas, they took us out on a boat on the lake. There was a Mariachi band, and they lent us ponchos for warmth and served canelaso, which is a cinnamon-flavored alcohol, served warm in bowls.

Marie, me, Braulio, and Liz on the boat:
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Marie and me on the boat:
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FIRE!!
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Dork from Idaho that we have nicknamed Frosted Tips, for obvious reasons:
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María Ísabel’s hair “on fire:”
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Mariachi:
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Canelaso:
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On Sunday, we went to a native hut about half an hour from Cabañas, where they gave us a talk on native culture, and played music and danced.

Native music:
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Dance:
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Cool countryside:
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After the music and dance, we took a hike to a waterfall, Cascada de Peguche. No one had actually thought to warn us that we’d be hiking anywhere, so we were all carrying extra jackets and purses and stuff, and Liz wasn’t even wearing sneakers. The hike was hellish, but the waterfall was at least pretty.

Cascada de Peguche:
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Preparing for a “heart-cleansing” ceremony:
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Part of the trail we hiked up, from another part of the trail:
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Pichincha - or Not

Having run out of minutes for my cell phone, I decided yesterday morning to take a walk to El Jardín to get it recharged. Of course, there’s no need for me to go that far just to buy minutes; there’s a store that literally backs up to the house that cells Movistar cards. But I still haven’t figured out how to get the card code into the phone myself, and if I go to the kiosk in the mall, they’ll do it for me. Besides, I didn’t have anything else to do and figured a walk would be a good activity to take up some time.

I had forgotten exactly how long the walk was until I made it – over forty minutes, and I keep up a pretty good pace. I got to the mall and got my minutes, and while I was there, Marie called and invited me to meet her and Liz at 1 o’clock to go up Pichincha on the teleférico. So I repeated the forty-minute walk in the other direction, told Meri I wouldn’t be home for lunch, and met Marie and Liz at Quicentro. Marie’s guidebook said that we could catch a bus straight to the teleférico from Quicentro, but when we asked a guard if that was true, he told us to go to Avenido Colón.

Colón is mostly in the Mariscal, and Marie’s mom had told her that we could also catch the bus from the Rio Coca station of the Ecovía. So we took the Ecovía to the station and asked someone there how to get where we were going. He told us to take the trolebus, which proceeded not to show up for over half an hour. Eventually we got on a different bus, which took us to Estación Norte. There we switched to the actual trolebus, and rode that as far as Colón. Having successfully made a large circle around north Quito, we caught a bus for Avenido Occidental. That dropped us off just a little too far to walk to the teleférico, so we grabbed a taxi to take us the rest of the way.

By that time it was nearly 3 o’clock…and when we finally got there, we were told that the teleférico doesn’t run after 1:30 – only on Tuesdays! Tired, frustrated, and sunburned, we had the taxi take us back to Colón, where we all caught our respective buses for home. Rather like our adventure to La Mitad del Mundo, we put a whole lot more effort than was entirely necessary into getting where we wanted to go, but at least we now know more about the bus system.

And actually, I didn’t go straight home; I took a walk down 6 de Diciembre and into the Mariscal first, looking for hotels on Craig’s behalf. I had only intended to walk as far as Eloy Alfaro from Naciones Unidas (probably half a mile), but once there I figured why not walk the rest of the way to the Mariscal. By the time I realized it was a whole lot farther than I wanted to walk, I was most of the way there already. I checked out Akros Hotel, Hotel Embassy, Hotel Reina Isabel, and Hotel Bonaventura, then went home before remembering that I had also wanted to check the ones on 12 de Octubre.

The other three went out to El Nobar again last night, and I considered going, but after my rather long walk around most of Quito, I was tired. Deciding that kicking this stupid cold was a better idea than getting drunk again, I stayed home and went to bed early. Not generally my style, but my reward is that I’m coughing less violently this morning than I have been for the last ten days. I think I’ve been sick for thirteen days now, but I’m finally starting to feel like I might actually get over it soon.

On a less cheerful note, I think my computer has a virus. It’s only been connected to broadband once in the whole month I’ve been here, but it’s just my luck that that one time would be enough to get it a disease. After all, I’ve been disgustingly sick, why not my laptop too? Of course, to be able to fix it, I have to connect it to the web again to be able to download virus and spyware definitions. I just hope that whatever’s screwing with it isn’t a trojan, or connecting it to broadband might just download a whole lot more unsavory crap. I REALLY don’t want to have to reinstall Windows while I’m here. Sure, I could do it, but I don’t have original discs or any of my software, and I’ve never made the Microsoft activation call that I’m sure they’d stick me with from outside the country.

Later update: asked Craig about the virus (so handy to have a boyfriend who's even geekier than I am!) and he said I probably picked it up off one of the local computers via my flash drive. When I remembered that McAfee said it had deleted something off the flash drive, I figured he was probably right. But that doesn't help the fact that my computer is still acting funky.

Sunday January 27th

I woke up this morning at 7am and had to force myself to go back to sleep. I listened apprehensively for the gas truck, but it apparently doesn’t run on Sundays. Thank god for small miracles.

I met Marie and Liz at the school at 9:30 – Braulio decided he would rather sleep – so we could catch a bus to Cotacallao, and from there to La Mitad del Mundo (the magnetic equator). After waiting for forty minutes, though, we gave up and took a taxi to Cotacallao. There we did find the bus we wanted, and rode another half hour south.

The last time I was in Ecuador I went to the Mitad del Mundo, but I figured why not go again, as I didn’t have anything else to do. We spent a couple of hours there, took the obligatory dorky pictures with one foot in each hemisphere, did a little shopping, and had lunch in a café overlooking the square. There were live music and dancers in the square because it’s Sunday, and we had a good view from the restaurant. Marie and I also had a very good view of a dead guinea pig, which was our lunch.

I’ve been wanting to try cuy since the last time I was here, and I finally got my chance. There was very little meat on it, and what there was had an odd sort of salty, fishy taste. I don’t think I’d order it again, but at least I tried it.

Eventually we caught the bus back to Cotacallao, but decided once we were there to stay on and see where it went. It ended up at a bus station nearby, where we caught the blue line into Quito. Liz got off near her house and Marie and I continued all the way to the next station, where we caught the Ecovia. Marie got off at school to catch her bus home, and I stayed on the Ecovia until my stop in Jipijapa, which is the last one before the terminal. So we spent more time in transit than we actually spent at the equator, but I’m glad I went.

There’s a type of tea here that mom serves me after dinner every night, called cedrón. It’s an herb tea, and I know I’ve had it before, but I can’t remember the English name or where I’ve had it. Mom, is cedrón something you have at home?

Now for pictures.
Me and Marie at La Mitad del Mundo:
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Liz, me, and Marie:
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One of many tourist-trap shops:
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Local ketchup. Read it closely, it says squeezie with a Spanish spelling!
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Chifles, fried plantain chips:
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My lunch:
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Me looking the part of the dorky tourist:
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Entrance to Mitad del Mundo monument:
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Random cool gardening:
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