al infinito, y más, allá!

For those who didn't catch the title reference (e.g. anyone not born in the 90's), this is Buzz Lightyear's famed line recited while stuck in Spanish Mode in Toy Story 3.  Today marks one month of my stay in Quito and the past few weeks' series of adventures tells me that at this rate the discoveries are only getting bigger.  This weekend I've literally reached new heights.

After hopping on and off a total of four buses after class on Thursday, two friends and I finally wound up at this weekend's destination two hours north of Quito: the not-quite-world-famous Otavalo, known for its Saturday markets.  As it turns out, the shopping neared the bottom of weekend highlights, and at the summit of the list were a series of crater lakes and volcano hikes.  We arrived toward the tail-end of the festival of Yamor in Otavalo, a two-week celebration of what seemed to me to be music and..corn?  I am adding the significance of the festival to the list of things I never fully understand...

On Thursday evening the three of us just ate our avocado and queso fresco sandwiches on the roof of our hostel overlooking the city at nighttime, followed by a record-length 1.5 hr-long round of Egyptian Ratscrew.  Friday morning, we feasted on a breakfast of coffee, fresh juice, eggs, and cheese-with-bread for a solid $1.50 pp, and found a cab willing to drive us the half hour outside of the city, up rocky roads to the base of Cerro Fuya Fuya and the crater lake Mojanda for $10.  On our left there was a crystalline lake surrounded by mountainous peaks.  To our right, a tall cliff.  At the top we would reach 4,276 m--over 14,000 ft.  The only sign of human life was an idling blue tour bus.  As for the rest, the world was ours!  

View of lake Mojanda from FuyaFuya

Although it took a good half hour to find the trail (errr, a trail), the ascent was well worthwhile.  As it turns out we took the steep route, gaining altitude faster at some parts on all fours.  While I didn't admit this to my buddies, who have been running and/or otherwise been keeping active while in Quito, this was some of the toughest hiking of my life.  Granted, I've only ran one time while living in Quito, if we can call my 5-minute spouts "running," but my heart has never pounded so hard after only a few paces.  It's invaluable having travel buddies who, at points when I would contentedly claim, "wow, this was great!  Time to head back," they say, "I wonder what's over that peak over there."  We would then proceed to backtrack half an hour, slipping on the dew-covered grass, only to start another ascent from a different angle, catching views I wouldn't have thought to pursue.  My first instinct when they make these suggestions is "NO," but by now I know that saying "yes" is a habit I plan on keeping this semester, regardless of my whiny body.  And, of course, little frustrations seem to shrink to nothing at the end--it's always worth it to say yes.  It helps that, from them, I hear no complaints, no sore muscles, no hunger, only a thirst for more vistas, a sense of curiosity of that species of bird, a further inspection of the land type called "paramo," where grasses reign and some of the weirdest, surprisingly colorful plants flourish amongst the rocks.  I have never seen anything like this.  

At Fuya Fuya, there are two peaks--one of which you ought to have mountaineering equipment, and the other you can make it in sneakers.  In our sneakers, we accidentally pursued the wrong peak, scrambling over rocks as far as we could before exhaling and enjoying the view, as clouds rolled in and covered the view of the snow-capped volcano in the distance.  Fresh, albeit thin, air.  After dropping back down and meeting the "real" trail, we joined it and started chuggin' along, running into a group of touring expeditioners and passing them to the next peak.  I am not the one with the binoculars (although I'm sure she appreciated the sight much more than I did), so all I can say is that we saw some pretty big birds, and occasionally caught sight of hummingbirds.  On our drop back down, we heard some strange, large noise that wasn't quite wind, wasn't quite thunder.  Uh-oh.  That'd be the sound of rain on the faraway lake.  We had at least another km to go when it hit us, lightly.  It's all good, as we got to see bolts of lightning above the lake and thunder crack from all around, although it would have been a better idea to prepare for a ride back to Otavalo before waiting under a sign for 20 minutes.  Damp and frigid to the bone, needless to say the hostel shower felt damn good.  

A friendly, but pre-hired, taxi driver who called us a cab from the lake told us that there was a music festival going on in Otavalo.  This led to a pleasant hunt on foot for a high school that turned out to be across the city.  Otavalo, unlike Quito, is inviting to nighttime strollers, with its tiled sidewalks and street entertainers.  It's a cute place.  We met up with our night of traditional Ecuadorian music, where everyone else in the outdoor arena sang along to songs we'd never heard before.  I've never been into showy singer-entertainers who spend their time on stage encouraging the audience to clap their hands, so the first couple of women who repeatedly yelped "SI, SI SI SI! Donde esté la gente mas feliz?" received a less-than-feliz reaction from me.  However, for every mediocre singer there's a funky band with a maestro who knows how to tear shit up on the guitar.  The final group was a trio of matching men, and if you've ever tired from rock groups from the US, try Ecuadorians for a reinvention of the guitar.  

A vendor claiming these bugs heal ailments. Just cut'n'rub.

The Saturday market was, sure, big and stuff.  Vendors of fruits and vegetables, shoes and backpacks, artisan jewelry and paintings, and even animals for sale overtook blocks and blocks of road.  At Chichicastenango in Guatemala, the market really blew my mind, so maybe this time around the only reason I wasn't mindblown was the been-there, done-that sentiment.  I bought a pure Al Paca sweater that I later found out from my host mom is not real Al Paca (and was proven so by feeling her luxiously expensive blanket), but the whole bartering experience is a guaranteed sporty time.

We saw some other USFQ students, with bags and bags in hand, who claimed to have finished Christmas shopping in the one morning (ahem, in September).  One girl bought six little llamas dolls.  I'm enjoying the lack of STUFF of this trip, so apologies to all who don't receive knickknacks upon my return-- I'm just having too much fun without them!

Bobcat, or bird?

We taxi'd to Parque Condor in the afternoon, a reserve that only houses rescued or donated birds, from the most impressive birds of prey to some of the weirdest animals I've ever seen.  We saw the bird of Ecuador-- the condor, stretch out to almost its full wingspan (which can reach over 10ft!).  Our nonchalant timing was perfect, as we came just in time to see a bird show of more Ecuadorian folk with the coolest jobs ever.  Birdmen.  Owls, kestrels, eagles, more intricate species that I'd never remember, all perched on their forearms as they explained the bird's history and habits.

El Corazón del Imbabura

Amurrica!

We repeatedly ran into a group of 30 students from an organized program of another university, who met their tour bus outside the park after the show at a scheduled time.  We nixed the taxi and took the 5km walk back down to Otavalo, catching flocks of egrets take flight over the farmland, sights of a heart naturally built in to the side of a mountain, a view of San Pedro, where the annual swim across the lake would take place in the morning, and finally enjoying a pink sunset over the city of Otavalo as we made it back to the hostel.  I've grown more and more grateful of the fact that we've done this on our own.  I was nervous to come to Ecuador sans program (how would I ever make friends??), but the ability to acknowledge and pursue the activities I am interested in, and do so on our own planned scheduled based even on nothing more than hunches, is an incredibly empowering feeling.  Especially when the whole weekend probably cost less than their bus ride.  Wanna see condors this afternoon?  Hey, sure.  Wanna walk the hour home? Sure, why not? 

Saturday night we found another music festival, this time with a dancing crowd.  We added our rhythmless hips to the masses, and baile'd for hours.  I happily accepted a few Ecuadorians offers, and soon I was being twirled by a man at least three times my age.  Aside from the fact that I stepped in a huge pile of human poopie and had to spend half an hour late at night back at the hostel scrubbing my sneakers armed with nothing more than pieces of paper folded into a scrapey-tool, it was a great night.

The other side of Cuicocha

Sunday: a casi-4-hr walk around the more well-known hiking spot of Cuicocha, another crater lake whose surrounding mountain-parts have a clear path along their peaks.  I found that my patience has grown at least a teensy bit, as the breathtaking view trumped any budding annoyance as we stopped every time there was a bird noise so my bird-loving friends could label them as a long-nosed flower-piercer or whateverthefucktheywere.

 Back to Quito.. for now.

things I like and things I don't like

In an attempt to steer my blog away from the "and then I did this..." trap, here's a half-assed list of my observations and/or experiences so far that will hopefully paint a better picture of the country than one I've given so far. 

I was asked the other day if I was "loving it" here in Ecuador, and I couldn't give an honest yes.  With more time I will be able to see this place in a more consistently positive light, but even with an open mind, after only three weeks I'm finding it difficult to "love" Quito.  However, bittersweet sentiments aside, gotta admit this place is a wonder.

Things I like:

• Ecuadorians are enormously expressive.  Besos everywhere!  What a warm culture, where walking into a room full of strangers warrants an individualized greeting to each person by means of a cheek kiss.  Most family members exchange them when leaving the house and coming home, friends greet each other with them daily at school, and students even give a kiss to their teacher when leaving the class.  At orientation, our director told us that upon his first trip to the US (for college, in Oregon) he reached out to kiss his teacher and she cringed so far back that it looked like she was doing the limbo.  Prepare yourselves for my return, fellas.
• Directness.  If there's a thought, it's voiced.  It's rare to "offend" someone with a curious question.  "Rude" just..isn't.  The honesty of physical descriptions, even, are beyond refreshing.  In the US it's perfectly fine to poke fun at someone for being skinny, but it's socially unacceptable to refer to someone as chubby.  Here, if you're gordito, you're a gordito!  No feelings hurt, just the truth.  Even the empleada sometimes refers to me as "chine." 
• Fresh fruit juice at every meal.  In Ecuador, the licuadora, or blender, is the most important kitchen appliance.  It's used for nearly every meal, to make juices and prepare the daily soups.  I've grown partial to a fruit called "tomate de arbol" (tree tomato!) in addition to a bunch more whose names I am fully aware I will never learn.
• Buses to any point in the city cost $.25.  This means that when I get on the wrong bus (as I did today) it's never too much of a loss.
• Food.  This summer I spent tons of time reading up on how I would adjust to the meat-heavy culture of the Sierra in Ecuador.  Prepared for a plate of carne after living 11 years as a strict vegetarian, it turned out that this preparation (as with the majority of "preparation" for travel) was completely unnecessary.  I'm enjoying avocados from the family's farm, daily soup, potatoes, plantains (disguised as anything from fried balls stuffed with cheese to boiled and sliced plain), veggies, rice, eggs on rice, eggs on other things, peanut sauces, etc. 
• Nature (i.e. opportunities to interact with nature).  I've only taken one real trip from the city so far, but the landscape is so beautiful and varied, not to mention the crazy-looking critters.  I will be heading to a indigenous market this weekend which sits conveniently near a crater lake, to a biodiversity station in the jungle at the end of the month, and I have plans yet to be cemented speckled throughout the semester to hike snow-capped volcanoes, visit some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and see Incan ruins.  All cheap, albeit long, bus rides away!
• Huge families. Everybody has countless tios and hermanos and primos.  My host mom had a family reunion last year that consisted of 300 people, each group wearing a different colored T-shirt signifying which kid of the grandfather they originated from.  She herself is one of nine daughters.  My friend's host family has 4 (four!!) generations living under the same roof, including a 90-something abuelita that hobbles to the dining table on her own each day.  Coming from a family of teeny-weeny, lacking a presence of extended family, it is refreshing to see the inherent community into which each person is born.  These people stick with each other forever, and someone always knows someone else with a connection that can help out.
• The vistas.  Quito's all mountains.  That means that there are so many viewpoints that can make any problema seem pequeño.  There's nothin' like feeling small to feel a part of something huge.
• Random, wonderfully nice people.  Not to say nice people are few and far between here, but given my horrendous Spanglish I'm not exactly the most inviting person with whom to strike up conversation.  After cutting through a street below mine for a few days, the security guard stopped me.  At first thought the sirens went off and I attempted to implement my first route of action when encountering any man-IGNORE, IGNORE!  But he had a huge enough smile that I brushed that off.  We spoke for 20 minutes--a welcome break from his 14-hr shift guarding the street, 7 nights/wk.  I left 'cuz I was hungry and it was 9pm and I was just getting back from my day.  Come back, he said, after you eat!  I told him I'd see him next time.  I'd like to think it was more than boredom that led him to be so open with a stranger, but I'll leave that conclusion for later.  Either way, I acknowledge the fact that I look different from the everyday citizen and it's nice hearing people voicing their curiosity as to WTF I'm doing here.  Beats apathy, in any case.
• The feeling of living.  Even though a good chunk of my time is spent frustrated over the list below, it's all just fuel for the brain and food for the senses.  I am absorbing new-ness from every angle possible.  New sights, new smells, new tastes, new feelings, new music and the weird transition from hearing noises of this new language to distinguishing meaning as they slowly (and very sparingly) form sentences and thoughts and ideas.
• Oh, also, there are no mosquitoes here.  Too high up.  Win.

Things I don't like:

• Ecuadorians are enormously expressive.  While it's true that the US is an extremely non-PDA culture, and that any sign of affection more than hand-holding in the streets can disgust a passerby, Ecuador defines PDA in a new light.  It's nice how couples are always holding each other in their neutral state, but being pushed up in a crowded bus against a couple sucking face so hard I could smell their spit takes it a little too far.  The average age of marriage is a few years younger than that in the States (23 vs 26.5, or something) and this emphasis on amor is very blatant proven by the very many pregnant bellies and millions of niños.  But really I'm only bitter about the face-sucking.
• The poverty.  To be more exact, the huge socioeconomic disparities.  All of the exchange students live with middle-upper class families, so we are not directly exposed to this extreme, but it is obvious in the form of children just above toddler age who act like little adults selling snacks or knick-knacks on the street.  Given the number of beggars on the sides of the street, with inflamed skin and missing appendages, it's difficult to fathom how fancy the malls are twenty feet away, filled with fancy boutiques and shiny glass.  It's an odd feeling to act apathetic on buses, looking away from people asking "por favor," or to vendors chanting their goods--from bags of mandarins to plaintain biscuits to dvds, but the desire I sometimes have to take on the responsibility of giving to everyone in need is absurd.  After all, those are temporary solutions to a greater problem.  Especially, as foreigners, we exchange students are targets for thieves and pickpocketers of all ages.  The desire to give is often trumped by the desire for you fuckers to stay away from my shit, but this sentiment is also absurd.  I still don't know quite what to think, and quite how to react.
• Whereas I consider Guatemala to be my big eye-opening trip, where so many live on so little, Quito is a huge city, which inherently means that everybody's got their own shit to deal with, and their main goal is to take care of themselves.  The pace is fast.  If I want to know which direction of the listed street the bus will go, the response of the money-man is "SUBE SUBE" (CMON, GET ON) instead of something along the lines of "hmm, well you might want to consider taking this other bus, label XYZ, which will take you, blah blah."  You don't give others the time of day, unless it comes in the form of...
• Hisses, whistles, stares.  "Mi corazon," "mi vida."  Los hombres.
•  Sometimes it feels as though I'm putting my mouth on an exhaust pipe and sucking in with the expectation of oxygen.  You can trail the black diesel spewing from the buses, and from higher viewpoints you can see the thick layer of smog that sits atop the valley.  Even though the EPA doesn't get as much done as we'd hope to in the US, at least it's something.  This seems to be a common theme in everyday life.  The frustrations on the homefront regarding the Obama administration's inability to get anything done seem silly when, relatively, things in the US are working so smoothly.  We have poverty, but not this bad.  We have pollution, but not to this extent.
• Bottled water is a must.  The tap water contains "bichos" (little bugs) as my host mother, who doesn't know what she's talking about, says.  I saw a sign today that read "Reduce, Reusa, Recicla," but without recycling bins there's not a whole lot one can do.  Props for putting the messages out there?  I guess?
• The commute.  This is both an embarrassingly whiny, personal complaint as well as a piece of cultural dissatisfaction.  Sure, it takes over an hour for me to get to/fro school, and this includes two buses where there is often no room to sit, and walks in between each.  But the real kicker is that this is the MOST exposure I get to Ecuadorians in my daily life, and while I would love to be able to say I've struck up some really deep and interesting conversations with the hundreds of people that are heading in these curiously different directions, my main objective of any bus ride is to not make any eye contact, ignore that stare from point blank, and look bored.  It is not by choice I am unfriendly, I am simplying doing as the Ecuadorians do.  It is extremely easy to attract unwanted attention, and so long as I don't look eager, I'll blend in rather nicely to the background.
• Now this one is solely a whiny, personal complaint, so feel free to ignore.  I came here hoping for a host family to take me in as part of their own.  I'm treated wonderfully here, but while most other students live with families with sons/daughters our age to hang out with or little kids to play with, for me it's usually just once- or twice-a-day conversation with Meche.  While most other students have big meals, often with guests, where the families spend time together and talk about their day, I almost always eat by myself at a plastic table in the kitchen.  It's kind of a vicious cycle-- to be able to improve my language I need to practice, but there's little incentive for other Ecuadorians to talk to me when I'm at such a basic level of Spanish.  My host father says little more than hello to his grammatically challenged gringita, yet the host dad of a friend spent a few hours teaching us the rules to and playing a board game.  Luck of the draw, really.

Things I neither like nor dislike, but are noteworthy regardless:

• Toilet paper doesn't go in the toilet.  Because of Ecuador's weak plumbing, where the pressure in the septic system can't handle the extra shit we flush (heh heh), TP goes in the barrel next to the toilet.  Always.
• Nonsensical explanations.  Word of mouth must be the word of God, or something.  I've been hearing some silly things (e.g. warm water is better for digestion than cold water) that only reinforce how little the population knows about science, even some of the educated, higher-class folk. 
• Having an empleada (maid/cook) live in the house.  These are mostly people from the countryside, and it's an odd feeling to be around someone of a lower class who openly accepts her role as a submissive figure. It seems that only when my mother has guests over does she speak to our empleada in a more authoritative manner.  Many of the empleadas aren't to be trusted (including ours, who once tried taking money from the fam), as they often take food or other unnoticeables from the house.  Apparently President Correa implemented new laws that gives them a more reliable salary, but I don't know how much that has changed the inner-house dynamics. Juli does cook delicious food, and sometimes while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning she'll even make my bed! 
• There’s definitely something to be said about the safety, err, lack of safety, rather, in Ecuador. There are so many badass professions that put into perspective how ridiculously strict regulations are in the US. Rafting guides in jeans using their feet to steer around boulders, babies with their first tufts of hair riding on the front of motorcycles, etc. The buses rarely come to a complete stop for men getting on/off the bus, so much so that it's almost a sport for them just to get to work. The traffic is, like any other Latin American country, wild. The streets in Quito weren't built with a metropolis in mind, so the act of squeezing two million into a network of streets built for 25,000 paves the way for some navigational creativity and a near-incessant earful of horn. Throw this against a backdrop of street peddlers at every red light or traffic jam-- a man juggling and jumping over flaming rods, a boy performing tricks on a tire while staring head-on to an SUV, a wheelchaired man in the middle of a 4-lane road during a green light, and niños running between lanes as a game, touching their bodies to stopped cars until the very last second they can get away with it without getting hit. It's just a different world.
  
  
  That's all for now, folks. My short-term objective is to actually start studying Spanish. My mind has yet to jump into school-mode, and my lacking improvements in language acquisition are unfortunate consequences. Ciao!
  
  

I promise to stop being a weekend-updater.
Okay, let's be real.  I promise to try to stop being a weekend-updater.

Anyway, this weekend I stayed in Quito and 1.) lost horrendously in a game of Risk with a friend's host family that is a bit more family-like than mine; 2.) attended an "amistoso" fútbol game versus Jamaica (Hai-mai-ka) that doesn't yet count toward the World Cup stats and did nothing but show evidence of Jamaica's terrible defense; 3.) went to a USFQ-sponsored fiesta for the international students that combined a field day complete with potato sack relay races with Pilseners and a very traditional roasted horneado (whole roasted pig); 4.) went to a concert of the Wailers and swayed with a surprisingly huge crowd as though we were in an Ecuadorian sea whilst listening to a local ska band whose brass section wore woolen animal hat/masks followed by hours of reggae that paid homage to the great Bob Marley (Jah bless!); 5.) finished the night at a hookah bar, where you could enjoy a $1.50 pipa while listening to karaoke, classic love ballad-style; 6.) visited the Basilica in the historic center of Quito, a cathedral with towers almost 80 meters high accessible by means of climbing a series of ladders and crossing a few bridges; and 7.) ended the weekend bumming around eating helado (ice cream) in the Plaza Grande and lazily choosing a winner for my Baby of the Day Award (bebe del dia!).

Under the impression that my camera would get snatched if I took it out for the majority of above-mentioned activities, I can only provide you blog-readers with pictures from the Basilica. 

 Today marked the 23rd birthday of the University of San Francisco, which meant that instead of hitting the books in a few classes, the student body gathered to a "fiesta" where we listened to some speakers, watched the school's models showcase some new USFQ gear on a runway (I kid you not), ate blackberry cake, and toasted to champagne... in real glasses.

I just got back from getting a $3 hair cut from a transvestite.  She (shim?) was a bit rough, but the quality's got to at least match SuperCuts.