The Highest Bathroom in the World

We´ve gotten to the end of our first week of spanish classes here in Quito, Ecuador. The people here are much easier to understand! Especially the tutors who are used to speaking slow for dumb gringos like ourselves. We are staying with host families here, separate families so that we don´t just speak in english to each other all the time. My ecuadorian mum is called Maria and she spoils me by making me delicious food and cleaning up after me. I´ve tried to insist on helping with the dishes but she called me "loco". Despite my poor language skills, we´ve had some interesting yarns including one last night where I managed to explain the workings of the NZ student loan system!

Quito is an interesting place. We are living in the Mariscal area of town known to locals as Gringolandia for the abundance of flashy bars and restaurants serving the tourist trade. Its meant to be quite unsafe late at night and many of the houses have huge concrete walls with broken glass of spikes atop. The neighbourhood has a strange vibe to it, during the day everyone goes about their business but as soon as it gets dark people seem very nervous. It seems as though something bad went down here recently and people are still quite wary.

Yesterday we went for a cruise to the "old town" which is like going to a completely different city. Our trip coincided with a protest by local indigenous people so the city was jammed with colourful tradition. We wandered about a bit before finding our way to the Basillica de Voto Nacional and this is where my day got a bit frantic....

Something about our new diet hasn´t been agreeing with me at all and as such, like clockwork everyday I have to find a toilet in fairly short order. I figured we could safely find a loo in the basillica and go about checking out the church. When we entered, I asked where the baño is, the answer was "arriba". I found myself frantically scaling the stairs to the top of the basillica towers trying to find what I firmly believe is the highest bathroom in the world. Yikes.

Judas in the Alleyway

Hola

We arrived in Chile to met by one hundred and twenty seven taxi drivers but eventually found the family that we had arranged to stay with. They are the Pino family and theyhave been very generous and patient with our terrible spanish. We´ve been on a few trips into the city and taken the fenicular (cable car) up to the top of San Cristobal where there are good views and an open air church with a statue of the Virgin, we´ve been to O´Higgins park and seen the new uni students on the booze and done a whirlwind tour of Central Santiago.

Santiago is a huge sprawling dry splurge of a city with chaotic traffic. There is a serious problem with stray dogs and noone can agree what to do about it. There are times though when partsof the city remind me of NZ, NZ in spanish that is.... We went out on Wed night with Katyta, one of the family, and wound up dancing and drinking Pisco to the wee hours.

We have spent the last two days in Valparaiso which is out on the coast from Santiago. The area we stayed in is called "Bohemian" by Lonely Planet which seems to mean its pretty grotty and grungey. There is some really wicked street art through a maze of steep windy streets. There are delapidated cable cars all through town which allow you to head up and explore the hills.

While we were searching for our hostel at night down some sketchy looking alleys, we turned a corner to find a man slumped asleep\unconscious in a window sill with what looked like a white scarf across his face. This quite rightly put the willies up both of us and we scarpered away from there pretty quickly. BUT, as it turns out there is an easter tradition here of making "Judas", i.e stuffing old clothes full of paper and using a plastic bag for a head, and burning him. Turns out Judas was just biding his time in the alley before his ultimate fate.

I liked Valpo for its diversity. Along with old sketchyness, was a hectic naval port and a vibrant town centre. Everyone we have met here seem friendly and happy to help us out.

Anyways, we be catching a plane to Ecuador tomorrow so I better be off to bed with me then. Hasta Luego.

The Start of Something

Well, we leave tomorrow on our wee trip. A quick run down.... we are staying five days in Chile before heading up to Ecuador. We'll be studying spanish in Ecuador for about 3 months. After we become real awesome at spanish, it'll be off to travel about South America until Octoberish, then on to Canada.

What do people eat for breakfast in Ecuador?

The last week has been a bizarre mix of panic and relaxation. Today I think will be more on the panic side ("Have you double checked the date of our flights?") It's been really awesome/sad to see people off before we go. I can already tell that we'll really miss everyone back here once we're on the road.

I hope to keep this blog pretty up to date with what we're doing. The picture is courtesy of Mat Wilson and some film, I cant remember the name of it though. I don't know how to say "copyright infringement" in Spanish... Happy reading!