El Viaje a La Playa

I'll start this week with some pictures of canyoning in Baños...

Chiva ride to the falls

Before

Climbing up to the falls

My serious face

Zip line

Bueno. Last week I was pretty busy with school because we had finals for my Spanish 301 class which turned out to be pretty easy so that’s good. Went to the Asilo twice as usual. I’ve made some new friends with some of the ancianos (old folks) there and also with some of the other volunteers there that are my age. I’ve been talking with an Ecuatoriana que se llama Carol (Ecuadorian girl named Carol) which is big because I’ve finally made my first Ecuadorian friend! Last week she dragged me to the jardín with one of the ancianas she was wheelchairing around. I met a man there and started talking to him. I ended up asking all the wrong questions and felt so bad by the end of our conversation. I learned that he hated it at the Asilo. He hurt his leg so he could barely walk even with a cane and he could never sleep at night because it hurt too badly. I changed the subject to his family and then learned that his wife had died two years earlier and he started crying and I didn’t know what to do. Thankfully Carol knew and she gave him a hug to console him and said, “por favor no llores o voy a llorar también.” (please don’t cry or I’m going to cry too). It was a tough experience at the Asilo for me.

On Thursday we had salsa lessons again which were a little tougher this time since we had a different teacher. This guy wanted to teach us moves called the ocho which for some reason looks like a figure 8 with both dancers’ arms (how odd). That one was fairly easy but then he tried to teach us the ocho loco (crazy 8) which was far too much for me. The footwork was easier than the normal ocho for the guy but when put into practice with the arms and stuff it was a disaster for me and I didn’t end up getting it haha. Was a little frustrating but was still fun.

That Thursday night we took a bus at 12am to the beach. Our plan was to go to Tonsupa which we had heard was a tranquil little beach where we could get some good relaxation in but when we got there at 6:30 that morning it was basically a really ugly town with a beach and some really crappy looking hostals with some more expensive looking hotels. We were walking on the beach looking for a place to stay and a guy on a bike came up to us and started talking to us. I just assumed that he was a guy trying to get us to stay at his hostal but apparently he said that there were some guys behind us that had been following us and were probably going to try to rob us. We decided at that point that the town was a little too deserted/dangerous for our liking and we decided to take a quick 10 minute bus over to Atacames, a much more popular tourist beach where some of our friends were already. We got there and the town looked a LOT better with tons of beachfront hut type bars and restaurants. On the other side of the bars were a bunch of restaurants and hostals to stay at. We ended up finding one called La Casa de la Playa (The Beach House) which was fairly decent for $7 per night. It was operated by a family but almost entirely ran by this little kid named Victor Manuel who was probably 10-13 years old.

The weather was sorta cloudy and there was some rain on Friday but the beach was pretty nice and had good waves for boogie boarding and body surfing. I really wanted to find a surfboard to rent but they didn’t have any at that beach. The whole weekend was pretty much a broken record because we ended up doing the same things over and over again. We’d go to the beach, walk up and down the main street and stop at some of the vendors who were selling touristy trinkets like bracelets and stuff, then we’d eat some food at a restaurant/shack or a street vendor. One of the highlights was definitely this ice cream shop called Gabelo’s which had some of the best ice cream I have ever had I think. Went probably 4 times. I also fell in love with a little guy I called my mango boy who would sell huge cups of cut up mangos for a dollar I was sure had to contain more than just one mango but didn’t in actuality. Went there probably 5 or 6 times. Another favorite was the ceviche de camarones (shrimp ceviche). It was only $5 and included a TON of fresh shrimp. It was quite tasty. I ate a lot of fresh fish like calamari, corvina, and shrimp that weekend because we were right on the coast and the quality was supposed to be really good.

I’ve started getting a little reckless with my eating habits while I’ve been here. At first I was a little hesitant to eat anything that wasn’t made by mi madre but I started eating at little hole in the wall places and even eating things like mangos off street vendors. The worst thing I’ve done so far is eating pinchos (kabobs) that had chorizo (a type of sausage), beef, and chicken on it. It tasted good but I sort of knew that it was kind of sketchy. I bought it from a little 12-year old (also named Victor) who was operating this little BBQ stand. When I came home that weekend I told mi madre what I had eaten and she was downright shocked/horrified. She said that a lot of the meat used in the chorizo is pretty bad and that the carne de vaca (cow meat) can be bad on the coast sometimes because most of it is from the mountains and can turn rancid by the time it is transported to the coast. My theory (which is probably really stupid and will disappoint Big Mama) is that I can tolerate some diarrhea if the food is really tasty. Thus far, I think I’ve been really lucky because most of the students have suffered stomach ailments from the food they’ve eaten here and had to go to the doctor for medicine. All those people have gotten sick from legitimate restaurants though which is sort of scary. On top of that, I think I’ve been a lot more adventurous than my compañeros in the food that I’ve tried (like the pinchos) so the fact that I haven’t gotten sick is even luckier (and quite nice). I should probably just recognize that and stop the risky eating but it’s been so tasty! We’ll see. Big Mama is probably going to scold me now. After I told my host madre that I’d eaten that she brought me to a place in what looked like the ghetto of Quito which had comida típica (typical food) of Ecuador. The place was even more of a hole in the wall than the other places I’d been to. It didn’t even have a sign on it and looked like it was pretty much inside a garage. We ordered some mollejas asadas y cuero (grilled chicken gizzards and pig skin). Both were quite tasty. The next food I really want to try is cuy which is roasted, grilled, or fried guinea pig. Mi madre says it’s her favorite food so I’m pretty excited.

Back to Atacames, there was a LOT of down time while we were there. This was probably the reason we kept doing the same things over and over again. All this down time on Friday made me a little miserable because we were expecting the beach to be sunny and beautiful but instead it was rainy. On top of that we barely slept on the bus so we were all super tired. Throughout the weekend, the down time was fairly boring so we decided to play a bunch of middle school games, some of which I had never actually played before. We ended up playing “spin the bottle” one night, “truth or dare” the next, and “would you rather” and “live, sex, die” the next. It was pretty juvenile but was really fun/funny anyway. Was an interesting way to bond with my new friends in Ecuador haha.

Hostal we stayed at

Half motorcycle, half bench. These were the cabs in Atacames. I like to call them moto-centaurs

The main drag

La Playa

Ceviche place

Sketchy BBQ

Sunday morning we went to go buy tickets back to Quito but found that almost all of the buses were full. We had planned to leave in the afternoon or early evening but ended up having to go at 10:30pm because that was the only one that could fit the remaining 5 of us. We got on the bus and an hour and a half through the ride our bus got stopped by the police (which apparently is pretty common) and searched. All of our bags got searched and we all got out and had to present identification. We had been told that our passports were required for travel outside of Quito but none of us wanted to take the risk of losing them or getting them stolen so we only brought photocopies of them which turned out to be a mistake which could have been a big problem. We got stopped and some of us were told that it would be ok this time that we didn’t have our passports but we needed them in the future for the stamp we got at customs which showed that we were legally in the country. One of the girls in our group was going to be detained but we talked to them and they decided to let us go and it all turned out alright. We got back to Quito at 6:30 that morning and thankfully it was light out and the buses were running so it was easy/safe for Sam and me to take a bus back home instead of having to call a cab.

We’ve started our new classes which involve 2 hours of literatura en Español every Monday through Thursday and also 2 hours of cultura also en Español on those days. They are pretty interesting so far. I’m learning about Latin American history and culture with specific emphasis on Ecuador at times. Today in cultura class we basically just asked our teacher questions about random things in Ecuadorian culture like food, customs, and even prostitution for some reason. Four hours of the same thing every day is a little much for me but I really shouldn’t be complaining at all.

El Asilo

My friends, Meghan and Sam dancing with a cool anciano

Therapy room

Sam getting her groove on

Today (Tuesday) at the Asilo there was a local high school that had come with speakers and music to put on a dance for the ancianos. Naturally, some of them were not able to dance seeing as they were wheelchairbound but that didn’t stop them from moving around a little and the others that could dance were very excited when we arrived and demanded we come dance with them. I didn’t dance very much but it was fun to watch some of my friends dancing with the old folks.

I forgot to talk about a soccer game we went to a couple weeks ago. It was the local Quito team called La Liga. They were playing some team from Colombia and were killing them the whole time and missed a bunch of good chances including a PK. In the second half the Colombian team scored and were winning the whole time until the last minute of play when la Liga scored on a pretty nice header. Was pretty fun. Here are some pics of that...

Apprently this is the sign this team makes?

La Muerte Blanca (White Death). La Liga's devoted hooligans

That about sums it up for last week. I have plans to stay in Quito this weekend and go hiking/mountain biking at Mt. Cotopaxi, a nearby mountain that is the second tallest in Ecuador. That should take a day. The other days I plan to do some museum hopping in Quito and hopefully do some salsa dancing at night. Tis a tentative plan for right now so we’ll see what happens.