New Heights?

I know the name of the maid! Mercedes. I'd heard Pilar say it before, but assumed she was talking about the car. I feel a lot better knowing the name of the person I spend every breakfast and dinner time chatting to. And chat we do. She still speaks too fast for me to understand everything, but it's much better, and I can talk to her back. I tell her all the stories from the school, and what I get up to, and we can even have a joke! Pilar, Belen and Alvaro (the cool son whose name I didn't know before either) seem quite impressed by my Spanish, but then going to anything from nothing is definitely progress.

I had SUCH a good weekend. Friday night out in "Gringolandia" was so much fun. We started off in a bar with loads of pool, ping-pong and table football tables. The music was a bit too English/American, but pool was great. I potted the black to bring victory for our team and beat a couple of guys, of which I was quite proud. Then we moved on to another, less game-based bar, and did a bit of dancing. After a mojito (at $2) or two, dancing was easy! And one of the guys from the school, Oliver, showed me a few moves. It was fun chatting to the other students and a few locals, and generally letting my hair down. Amazing how drunk you can get at this altitude though, I was seeing double by the end of the night. Though fortunately I think I managed to avoid standing on too many toes, so all was good!

The next day, slightly hungover, Marilyn (from Sweden), Sam (from New England), Aldis (from Iceland) and I went to the Mitad del Mundo. We got a few photos posing in front of the equator monument and the official line, had a traditional Ecuadorian lunch (minus the roasted whole guinea pig, thankfully), and browsed the touristy tiendas. I really wish I'd bought the llama finger-puppet! We were persuaded by a guy in the car park to take a trip to a nearby volcano caldera (impressed Tash?) for a bit of a hike. Sadly it was too cloudy up there to see much except a few metres of the path ahead, but it was really cool - more cloud-forest type scenery. The guide showed us various medicinal plants and persuaded us to try them. We sampled anis, rosemary, mint, some wierd plant that is supposed to help with period pain, and some hallucinogenic berries. It takes 40 to have hallucinations, we only had 1 each. Probably a good idea since the path was quite narrow and the drop quite steep!

On Sunday, having recovered from my hangover (but not from being continually teased about it by Mercedes), Marilyn and I took the Teleferico (a new cable car) a good way up the volcano that looms to the west of Quito, called Pichincha. From a height of 4,100m (at the top of the cable car), we hiked to the top of one of it's summits, at about 4,700m. It doesn't sound much, but it was so tiring at that altitude! It took us about 3 hours to get up to the top, and the terrain was really tricky at times. I got scared! The paths were narrow and the drops so sheer. At times we were scrambling up scree slopes and traversing almost vertical walls of rock. I don't know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that clouds obscured the views at times. It definitely didn't help me to know that some mountaineer died up there last Saturday, which we found out half way up! Maybe because of that, there were various arrows and "NO"s graffiti-ed on the path suggesting that it wasn't the best idea to take this route, but everyone else was... And we made it down okay! The views were spectacular. Not only were the mountains we were amongst dramatic, but we could see Quito sprawled out in front of us, and in the distance the perfectly cone-shaped, classically snow-capped volcano of Cotopaxi rising out of the clouds.

I'm still not sure whether it's a great idea, but Marilyn and I are joining a group that Oliver is getting together to attempt Cotopaxi this coming weekend. He suggested it on Friday night, and maybe I wasn't in the best condition to consider the idea rationally. But he's a rock climber - in fact he teaches it - and he's spoken to a good company about getting a guide and seems to know what he's doing. At least, I thought so, until yesterday, when I heard what happened at the weekend. He and two of the other students, Matthew (from the US, like Oliver), and Maria (Danish, like everyone else), hired a car to visit Columbia for the weekend. I think all they really wanted was a Colombian passport stamp. Oliver invited me to come, and I would have been tempted had I not made other plans. Anyway, they got stopped by the Ecuadorean police on the way and searched. Incredibly stupidly, Oliver had marijuana with him. The whole group were interrogated individually, in Spanish, and Oliver ended up forking out a bribe of over $700 to let them go. They made it on to Columbia and back without a hiccup. But Oliver has not been his usual cheerful self since! He claimed he was going to use or get rid of it all before they attempted to cross the border, but even then there'd have been a detectable residue, surely. It makes an interesting travel story (which kept my host family entertained), but a very expensive one for Oliver. Glad I wasn't persuaded to go. Well, kind of...

Nevertheless, I put my name down for the Cotopaxi trip today. I'm hearing various reports. One guy at the school did it last weekend, and says it was the hardest thing he's ever done. But he made it. My host family think I'm crazy, since I have no experience of ice or snow climbing. It's true, crampons and other gear is required, but the company provides all the specialist stuff. It's expensive relative to other things I could do at the weekend, but at $140 it's a bargain, and I'm not going to get an opportunity like this again. I didn't quite make it to the top of Kilimanjaro, but I coped alright with what I did do, so I'm determined that I can do this one. Okay I'm not great with heights, but I hear it's a relatively gradual climb, and we're trussed up to one another. Plus it'll be nighttime or snowing, so I won't see the drops! I've spent nearly 2 weeks at nearly 3000m in Quito, including some running, plus I did an acclimatisation climb on Sunday. We're a group of 7, and most of them have as little or less experience than me. So I'm going to go for it. We leave at 8am on Friday (so I have to rearrange my lessons) and should get back on Sunday evening. I'm scared!

One more thing

Oh yeah, and my phone doesn't work over here. I paid 20 English pounds to have the thing unlocked, but I am told that South American SIM cards won't work with it. I may try and get a cheap phone this weekend, but until I do, my phone is just my alarm clock. Not that I need one. I'm still waking up at 5.30 or 6 every morning naturally! Anyway, send me emails, I'm missing you all!

Bloody Ecuadorean Weather

I thought that, travelling to exotic tropical places, I'd escape the English weather. How wrong I was. It was disgusting last night; I got drenched on the way home. This morning was the same. It's cold and wet. AND I hear England is getting snow! So not fair!! Plus I've got a stonking cold. Couldn't speak when I woke up this morning. I thought that with all the exciting fruits I'm getting I'd be more than meeting my vitamin C requirements.

I've just finished my first week of classes in the Academia. What have I learnt? Well, I'm not fluent yet, that's for sure. My vocabulary is certainly growing (the fact that you can often just add an "o" or "amente" to English words helps), but I'm a bit useless at conjugating my verbs properly. We had a test this morning, our weekly review - it's like being back at high school! I did alright with parts of the body and adjectives, but my little composition was a bit shitty. I got confused with estar and ser, which both mean "to be". Practice is the key, I'm sure, I just need the confidence to try what I think I know with Spanish-speaking people. It's not the fear of getting it wrong that makes me wary, it's the fact that I can never understand the replies! This morning the maid (whose name I STILL don't know!) was chatting away to me, trying to speak clearly, but even then I didn't really have a clue. It's a bit demoralising when two of the other people in my class of four have absolutely no problems. Now I know what it's like to be the dunce of the class! I'm definitely improving though.

It's really interesting to learn about the culture of Ecuador. Most of the exercises try to incorporate social issues. We had a (very slow paced!) debate about the pros and cons of immigration the other day, and we've covered national festivals, religion and education too. This afternoon, in my one-to-one class, we went through an article translated from an English newspaper about an affair between the mother of a Premiership footballer and her son's teammate, who was only 14. We got into the legality and propriety of underage sexual relationships, all in Spanish, it was a little bizarre!

I'm getting to know the other traveller-types in the school too. There's a real mixture. There's probably about 30 students at the Academia, and at least 15 are between 18 and 25. There are some more mature students, they're really fun too. There are a variety of nationalities, with the inevitable collection of yanks, but fewer English than I expected, and a surprisingly high number of Danish students. Most people chat in English: I'm so impressed by the Icelandics and the Danes speaking near perfect English and learning Spanish! I'm getting to know more of my fellow students. At first it seemed a bit cliquey, since some of them have been here for over a month. But it's not really. Some people are here for aaaages. Their Spanish will be great, but I think I'd get reeeeally bored staying here for so long. I'm already itching to get off travelling again. Can't wait for my tour of Ecuador!

This week has been mostly filled with learning Spanish, but there have been more exciting moments. As well as the amazing soups and veggie meals I'm getting for dinner, I got lemon meringue pie for dessert on Tuesday! My maid tried to scare me by telling me it was made of fish, but surprisingly I wasn't fooled. Bless her. The Ecuadorians do think I'm weird to be vegetarian. I hate to think what the reaction will be in Argentina, home of the best steak in the world. So, because I just can't resist all the good food I'm getting, I really need an alternative strategy to stop me putting on an extra 3 stone. I'm walking to and from school (it takes about 45 minutes) - except this morning when I got a taxi (for $1.80) because the weather was so disgusting - and I went for a run on Wednesday. It's incredibly tiring at 3000m! Good job too - I got lemon meringue pudding Wednesday night as well. My host mother seems to be on a diet and has no carbs or dessert and really small portions, whilst I get a huge bowl of soup (which sometimes consists of pasta, potatoes, cheese and milk), a big plate of rice, bean mush, salad and sometimes fried and caramelised bananas, followed by a huge slice of pie. Still, I think it makes the maid happy that I have a good appetite!

Last night there was a dancing class in the Academia. It was led by a really cute black guy with the fastest feet and hips in the world! I just about managed to keep up with the first few moves, but then it got so fast I coudn't even see what his feet were doing, let along try and copy him! It was really energetic and good fun though. We did a bit of salsa, marangue and tango. Think I'll have to have had a fair few drinks to try them out for real! Marilyn, the Swede, besides being a genius at Spanish, is also an amazing dancer and did a few songs with the teacher after the class. Wish I could dance like that! We went into the area of Quito nicknamed "Gringolandia", for obvious reasons, for a meal after. It was one of the most expensive places in Quito: I paid about $7 for a dish of veggie spaghetti and a diet coke!

Tonight the plan is to go out dancing in one of the salsa-teques. Oh dear! I'll be trying not to make a huge fool of myself. Tomorrow a few of us are going to go to "La mitad del mundo" (the middle of the world), a site right on the equator where the water goes straight down the toilet when you flush it, and various other interesting gravitational or magnetic phenomena occur. There's a museum and such like. And on Sunday, weather permitting (which, as in England, it probably won't be), I'll be going up el teleferico (a cable car) into the mountains for a bit of hiking. Quite excited about that. It'll be practice for Cotopaxi, a big 6000m-plus ice-capped volcano that I'd really like to climb. Only problem is that you need crampons and stuff... and I'm not great with heights...

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to a statistic of which I am most proud.

Items lost so far: 0

To all of you who are placing bets, ha ha ha. (Admittedly there is another statistic of which I am ashamed. Items left in the computer room of the Academia: 1 purse. But that doesn't count, because someone handed it in for me. Right?)

Cloud Forest

I got very very excited on Saturday when Pilar said that there might be a squash court at the Academia, where I'll be learning Spanish for the next month. I've just had the tour; there isn't. There is a tiny indoor sports hall with a volleyball net in, so it has potential, but definitely not for squash. After blogging and lunch on Saturday (during which I stupidly decided to stir up my diet coke with my straw and made it explode all over me in a quiet little cafe) I went into the park in the bit of the city I'm based - mainly to dry off. Everyone was playing football, volleyball and basketball, and running or cycling! I got such a craving to do some exercise. I decided that I'd go for a run round the park on Sunday. But then Pilar invited me to go out with "la familia" in the morning, so my plans fell through. I ended up spending most of the day sat in the back seat of the car as we went on a big road trip.

It was fab though. The family, it turns out, for that day at least, was Pilar, Maria-Belen, and her gorgeous "friend", Carlos - or Charlie as he seems to prefer. Charlie is an ex-boyfriend who has been studying in Argentina for 4 years and got back a month ago. Pilar claims they're just friends at the moment but they're clearly together, they're very cute! We spent about 2 hours driving around Quito: picking up Belen and Charlie from his flat, driving back to the house so Belen could have a shower, driving to a shop for some picnic material (where, having been left to melt in the car, I succeeded in setting off the car alarm by trying to open the door for some air - a story Pilar took great delight in recounting to Belen and Charlie), and driving back to the house to pick Belen and Charlie back up. Finally, we were off. I thought we'd be going to a cafe or something, but an hour later we were driving through mountains of dense forest - the "cloud forest". It was spectacular - misty clouds swirl around mountainsides and valleys, every inch of which are covered in lush green vegetation. We arrived in a touristy cloud forest town called Mindo, and stopped at a lodge retreat. It's prime attraction, it seemed, was the "frog concert", every night from 6pm till 8. It turns out that hundreds of little frogs that live in the pond find that dusk is the best time to make themselves known to potential mates, and they do it by "singing". Sadly we were too early for the live spectacle, but the manager of the lodge had it recorded on his mini digital dictaphone! The lodge consisted of several log cabins and a restaurant surrounding a little pond in the forest, with butterfly and orchid enclosure attached. Pilar asked lots of questions about the place, suggesting she was interested in staying here (was she pretending?), so we got the full tour - and some speciality ice-cream! I managed to supress my fear of flying insecty things in the butterfly enclosure; I impressed myself. The best bit was the hummingbirds - loads of them, beautifully coloured, flying freely around the retreat, hovering silently around some nectar pots. Hopefully I'll get to go back to Mindo one weekend; there were adverts all around for rafting, kayaking, tubing, and that thing where you go on a wire between trees. And next time I'll bring my camera!

So right now I'm sat in the computer room of the Academia Latinoamericana. I've just had my first day. I'm definitely being thrown in at the deep end - everything is explained en español! I did a little Spanish test (verbal and oral), which confirmed how bad my Spanish really is, and then we were taken into the old colonial centre of Quito. We visited museums and churches and watched some traditional changing-of-the-guards type ceremony outside the presidential palace. All described to us in Spanish, of course, so I have only a vague clue what we were actually looking at. It was very pretty though, and I took photos, so will try and figure out how to get them on the net. The nuevos estudiantes all seem really cool - there are 6 of us: 2 career-breaker English women in their 40s, as well as a cool Swedish girl, an Icelandic girl and an American guy who are more my age. Not sure who'll be in my class, I shall see tomorrow! Because I signed up for super-intensive classes, I've got 4 hours of group lessons in the morning, then an extra 2 hours of 1-to-1 in the afternoon. No-one else seems to be doing that! I'm going to be so sick of Spanish, and I'm getting that way already!

Right, I'd better be off to have my meal cooked and presented to me back at the house by my maid. She gives my my food and just chats away to me in Spanish. I've got no idea what she's saying, and I'm sure she knows that, but she rambles on anyway. I really have to learn so I can at least understand her!

It Begins!

I disagree with what the guidebooks say: it's hot in Quito! I'm regretting wearing my jumper and bringing my bloody heavy ski jacket to explore. There are some English looking girls walking past the window of this internet cafe wearing vest tops and shorts. I've spent the last 3 hours wandering round with the sun getting stronger searching for an internet cafe and dying for a pee. I've tried asking around but my Spanish is seriously pitiful and no-one speaks English. Eventually I found this one, and the guy running it had to ask a customer what I wanted when I was asking for the toilets! "Donde estan los servicios, por favor?" doesn't seem to work here. After a overlong flight it's been good to stretch my legs at least, I suppose.

I can't decide whether I was lucky or unlucky with my journey. Getting to Manchester Airport was the worst bit - it was the windiest day ever on Thursday and we had to shift tree debris off the road before we could even get out of the drive. The traffic was awful, there was a telegraph pole hanging precariously over Glazebrook Lane, Thelwall Viaduct was shut because two HGVs had toppled over, and a tree was blocking our alternative route. When I finally arrived, an announcement declared all runways at Manchester closed and most flights cancelled. Fortunately it turned out that mine was just delayed. For some reason I'm developing a real fear of flying, which wasn't really helped by the weather conditions, or by what I thought was a fun light-hearted travel journal about South America that I decided to finish off whilst waiting for my plane. It suddenly stopped being so light-hearted when one of the 3 main characters unexpectedly drowned in the sea off Columbia, leading to lots of philosophising about the meaning of life and death and travelling. Let's just say I was very relieved to make it to Madrid! My hostel was shit. The rain dripped through the roof onto some echoey metal thing right outside my window all night. Had to shove a towel under it at 3am.

Driving to the airport the next morning, Madrid looked really pretty, I wished I'd had more time there. I thought I might have had my wish granted when I tried to check in for my Quito flight and the Iberia man told me that the flight was over-booked. Apparently this happens often! But fortunately, he said, there were some spare seats, and I was just in time to get the last one. There was some mention of an upgrade to business class but that never materialised. What happened to the people who couldn't get "spare seats"?! The flight was long and dull, but I quite enjoyed "The Queen", and got through a lot of "Into the Heart of the Amazon" (thanks Tash, it's great!). I got a bit worried arriving into Quito about the box of chocolates and tin of biscuits I'd brought for my host family, because food was mentioned as something I'd have to declare when I went through customs on the forms we were given on the plane. I confessed to the customs man and offered them up, but he laughed and waved me on. I didn't even get an Ecuador stamp on my passport! HAVE to get one on the way out. (Managed to blag one in Madrid though!)

Sure enough, amongst the crowds of people waiting to greet people off the plane (it's a small airport and it seemed ours was the only incoming flight all day), I spotted a sign with my name on in big capital letters. It was held up by a small, friendly-looking native Ecuadorean woman, who greeted me with a kiss and a hug. Aww, I get to stay with a cute native family, I thought! She spoke no English at all, and my efforts at making conversation were just dire, so we waited in friendly silence for the car to meet us outside. It struck me how small everyone was - I felt like a giant! And that's saying something!

It turned out that this sweet little lady is in fact the servant of the family I'm staying with. In the car that met us were Pilar, a retired widow (I think), and her lovely 23 year old daughter, Maria. They're tiny too! Pilar speaks a little English, so we can say some things to each other, sort of, but Maria speaks great English. She's a student of Eco-tourism currently doing her thesis, and she plays football for her university team. There's no sign of the 28 year old son, who apparently works in the oil industry (which seems at polar odds with what Maria does given the damage the oil industry is causing to Ecuador's natural environment and native communities...). In fact, I think I've got his room. The maid (who's name I've forgotten, I feel awful) cooked me a yummy dinner of soup followed by pasta carbonara (no bacon, they know I'm vegetarian thankfully) and a salad, and then some black tea. I was still a bit wobbly from the flight so went to bed at 9.30ish - which meant I woke up every half hour after 3am. Felt very refreshed after a much-needed shower. The house - or rather, flat - is lovely, I'm living in luxury! I'm very much enjoying the double bed. And the family seem perfect. I just want to learn Spanish fast so I can actually talk to them properly! There's only so far muchas gracias and muy bueno (which are probably wrong) will take me in conversation.

It's 11.30am and Quito is busy. It's an amazing city, stretching for miles in a valley about 2,600m above sea level, flanked by higher mountains, which are often shrouded in mist. I definitely felt the altitude when I was lugging my backpack up 3 flights of stairs last night! After much wandering around, I have a few observations. It's more upmarket than most of the African cities I visited (the cars don't churn out black smoke and break down every 5 minutes, and the buses and taxis actually look safe enough to ride), and I've only come across a few street kids so far. There's a hint of military presence, but not too much. And although there are the few inevitable whistles and comments, I don't feel like I stick out like a sore thumb amongst the locals here as I did amongst the Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians. The sunshine probably helps, but I feel pretty at ease for the moment. And very hungry...

I'll be impressed if anyone reads to here, I've written loads! Will try and keep it shorter in future! Right, off to find a Spanish dictionary and some lunch.