Being the first stop on our RTW trip, Quito was a gentle initiation to our vagabonding lifestyle.  Although most people only spoke Spanish, they were very friendly, often going out of their way to help us. It also makes shopping much easier to have the US dollar as the official currency of Ecuador. The following are some interesting things we learned about Quito and its colorful citizens:

  • If you look like a tourist, expect good-willed locals to come up and tell you to be VERY careful of pickpockets, armed robbers, and give advice against  going out after dark. It is very kind of them to be so mindful of clueless strangers, but also a bit unsettling at the same time.
  • The preferred method of pickpockets in Quito seems to be spraying an unsuspecting tourist with some form of liquid or condiment, and grabbing his wallet while he fumbles with the mess.
  • Do not walk to the angel statue (Virgen de Quito) EVER! The way up supposedly goes through a very poor neighborhood and you are almost guaranteed to get jacked along the way!
  • A cheap way to get a hearty meal under $2 is to go to the small restaurants in Old Town and order their daily special, almuerzo. They often include a giant bowl of soup, whatever the main course is for the day, some form of beverage, and a small desert.
  • Hostels in Old Town have VERY slow internet connections. If you plan on using the internet a lot during your stay in Quito, you might be better off staying in New Town.
  • Citizens in Quito are heavy into protests and political graffiti. While we were there, three groups were continuously protesting outside of the president´s house.  Some protesters carried long spears, while others were clad in full black ninja suits!
  • It is heartbreaking to see very young children selling gum, candy, and miscellaneous small items. They would hop on and off buses by themselves, and are very persistent. We have heard the argument not to support this type of child labor, so parents would put them in schools, but it is hard to look into their eyes and turn them away.

Go to the end of the line on  Quito’s city buses and you will get a ride to Mitad del Mundo, where it’s a forty cent bargain  to put a foot on each side of the equator and walk on the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time.  An hour and a half on a bus with locals popping on and off gives you time to practice a little Spanish especially if their children smile and play for your attention. I asked Ben to look up in his trusty Spainish/English Dictionary what the word for “cute” is. According to the book, it’s “mono”. Now that I was armed with this word, I thought I could try it out on the precious, rosey cheeked kids on our bus. A little  boy across from me stared and smiled at me as did his parents. We exchanged a few words and I was trying to remember the word for cute so I mumbled something about “mono” and the parents kinda chuckled. I thought, “success, I used a new Spanish word properly!

We jumped off when a kind stranger told us that this was the stop for Mitad Del Mundo. It was an arrid uneventful place to be dropped off at, with shanty towns burrowed in the distant mountainside, and a quiet so errie, I could not even hear the hum of powerlines. With no one to ask where this elusive equator was, we swung ourselves around 360 degrees, and found a few local families trudging toward a gate, emblazoned with gleaming white stones: “Mitad Del Mundo”. Eureka!

My pulse quickened because I have always had a fascination with maps, and I was about to see the equator! After buying tickets, we entered the sprawling amusement park-like grounds, complete with colorful cottage shops, and a row of austere head statues lining the walkway. Little patches of well kept gardens spaced out the little shops selling bright souvenirs. I so wanted a llama sweater, but decided to hold off until Peru.

I finally found the equator clearly labled with a bright orange line under bundles of tourists. The four of us balanced ourselves gingerly on it, singing the Johnny Cash classic, “I walk the line”! An Ecuadorian man nearby took a picture of us all, and showed us how you could balance an egg on the head of a nail, where the Equator ran through.

The Museo Etnográfico Mitad del Mundo, the museum of indigenous cultures loomed under a giant bronze globe laying on its side.  Thantcyn, walking in the northern hemisphere, Deenaree, in the southern hemisphere, and Ben and I walking on the equator  approached this massive structure. We were ushered into an elevator at the equator (I thought that was so funny for some reason) and came out at the top of  the pedestal holding the giant globe. It had the same feeling as going into the pedestal of the Statue of Libery. It was a vast panorama of life at the equator – an amusement park, shanty towns, desert plants crawling up the Andes Mountains, and a smiling me in the middle!

All this excitement made for hungry stomachs. Fearing amusement park prices, we compared a few restaurants before settling on one that offered something for everyone – that means I could eat a vegetarian, wheat-free, no sugar meal and still be satisfied. It was a meal of visual wonderment. Deenaree and I ordered the same thing: huge lima beans, a thick cut of cheese, a cob of fat corn, and potatoes served on a teracotta plate with ancient animals chasing each other around its rim.

Ben brought his GPS to mark the exact location of the equator, but the apparently the magnetic equator is a little different, so we hiked along the road outside the equator museum, and counted down the approach to where the GPS truely picked up the equator’s location. It took us through an area where stray dogs and bits of garbage floated, across from an old run-down tire company. We got a few strange looks when we put our four feet together and took a picture of the spot. After we satisfied our quest for the equator, we hopped on a bus bound back to Quito, and nestled into the four seats lining the back. On the return, I flipped through Ben’s English/Spanish dictionary to find out that the word I believed to be “cute” was also the word for “monkey”.  So we couldn’t contain ourselves and howled wildly when I realized that I probably called the little boy on the bus to Mitad Del Mundo a monkey.

Old Town fills our lungs with baked sweets, peeled oranges, oily simmering peanuts, vats of sweet golden plantains, unrefrigerated meat, and swelling clouds of diesel. Shops huddle close together selling produce, medicines, bootlegged movies, and empanadas in their shallow alcoves. Five days of trotting up and down Quito’s colorful, colonial, rag-tag cobblestones in Old Town showed me a world of sales I’ve never seen before.

On the street you sweep along a head above bowler derbied ladies in skirts swirling with embroidered flowers. School children weave through you in uniforms with books in hand. They take themselves to school on foot and on public buses. Some even click down the cobbled streets still in school clothes and “Sunday Shoes” to peddle bubblegum to locals and especially tourists.

One persistent four year old went from person to person at the same table in our tiny restaurant and stood for a few minutes repeating the same plea to buy some candy for a few cents. When he heard “no” he hung on and patted your arm earnestly to get your attention. That little one was out by himself in the dark, chilled Quito night. It was aching to see his big, black eyes searching for buyers and knowing that someone supplied him up and sent him out. At least he looked like he went to school in his tiny uniform and black dress shoes because we’ve seen other petite vendors during school hours. A few grubby boys around six and nine years old hopped on our bus laden with mandarin-filled tubes slung over their shoulders called out for quick sales down the bumpy aisle in between bus stops. If they made enough money to make it worthwhile they were more valuable out of school.

Not just little ones pound the pavement here even the weathered crooked-over grandmothers sit on stoops braiding handicrafts reflecting their culture. One miniature woman hauling sacks of papayas craned her neck up severely to look at us then settled into a hard corner to pass her day selling her precious fruit across from a protest filled square rimmed with the military police. Location,  location, location! That pint-sized lady knew the protesters had to leave the president’s house and get hungry sometime. Cha-ching!

The plane lurches, jolting me from a haze of exhaustion. Courtney and I have barely slept a dozen hours in the past three days, preparing for our round the world (RTW) odyssey. Why are we here, in cramped confines of a humming hull, zooming away from friends and family, structure and normalcy?

Minutes earlier, as we pull up to the terminal, my eldest aunt, Kyee May, takes my hand, cradles it against her forehead, against her cheek, and mumbles a farewell. Mom’s telling me to be careful for the hundredth time, that she loves me. My sister, Kaythi, flips me a smart-ass comment, but I know this is just her way, and my heart breaks…

Courtney squeezes my hand the instant we tear away from Houston. She doesn’t like this part either, the sudden sense of detachment. The feeling of weightlessness passes, as we round back upon our home, now just a gleaming collection of boxes, trapped in a maze of cement and steel. We penetrate the clouds, and I imagine my sister driving Mom and Kyee May back to their routines and prayers. I love them so much…

I woke to the rattle of miniature liquor bottles. It’s dinner time, and Courtney scores a ‘strict vegetarian box’ filled with yummy Indian curry and rice. She’s elated that for once her meal looks better than mine, and starts chatting with a jolly, portly man, crammed to her right. Patricio is a professor of neurology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, on his way back from visiting his neurologist son in New Orleans. He beams as he tells us his son wants to go into teaching, then rattles on about Ecuadorian ceviche, and cafe au lait, from the Big Easy.

The lights went off after the meal for the family-friendly in-flight movie. I look out the window at the tiny clusters of light ebbing below, and dream up stories about the denizens of these tiny towns wrapped in darkness: a child kneeling bedside, mumbling his prayers, a young servant girl scrubbing turquoise checkered tiles, lovers tangled in bright red sheets…

The movie mercifully ends and we begin our descent. Quito materializes through clouds, an empty illuminated labyrinth nestled in the Andes. Its glowing angular streets strangely seem void of cars and people. We touch down on time a little past 11 pm, and quickly went through Quito’s very organized immigration, customs, and baggage. We zone in on the two giddy faces of our friends, Ben and Deenaree buried in the customary collection of happy receivers, swelling behind ribbon barricades. After the big hugs, awkward pictures, and squeals of happiness, we haggle for cab fare, and settle for an $8 ride to our hostel.

Quito’s main streets were wide, bright and bare, and our cabbie takes full advantage, blowing through every red light and stop sign. We dive into the cobblestone side alleys, bathed in yellow lamp light, and catch air a few times, before screeching to a stop, thankfully intact, in front of the Chicago Hostel.  We quietly lug our luggage up four flights of stairs,  in complete darkness, fearing any peep will bring the sleeping dead down on us.  We finally arrived outside our ‘room zero’, heaving for breath from exertion and altitude; Ben informed me we were some 9000 feet above sea level, quickly coaxing my ego.  After tumbling in, more squeals, excited chatter, and a hearty bowl of Deenaree’s doughy pasta (with bay leaves), Courtney and I finally cuddle in for the night, bringing to close one of our most exhausting weeks.

© 2010 Our Traveling Circus Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha