After a less than ideal welcome to Ecuador (ie no welcome at all) I was introduced to my host family for my week in Quito the following morning. I was staying in the home of a grandmotherly lady who lives in the Mariscal area of Quito (affectionately known as Gringoland, as coincidentally this is also where a lot of the hostels and bars are....I felt like my placement here was less of a coincidence and more of a `my reputation precedes me` kind of thing). Anyway Señora Blanca lives alone but her daughter and grandchildren live in the apartment below, (maintaining proximity to family seems to be pretty common here) so the children are around from time to time too. Mind you...I am fairly clueless about what to say to kids in English, let alone Spanish so you can safely assume I was fairly out of my depth here.
I arrived at the homestay on Saturday and wasn`t starting school until the Monday, so I had an entertaining and challenging few days trying to utilise the very small amount of spanish I had learned via a bootleg copy of Rosetta Stone (one basic module). As my host spoke no english whatsoever the burden was on me to communicate....didn`t fill me with confidence.
In fact as I found out on Monday at my first spanish class (my teacher actually burst out laughing on hearing this), I had been making the schoolgirl error of saying `Mucho gusto` after every meal (6 in total at this point) thinking I was saying `I like it/tastes good` etc. Instead I discovered what I had been saying was more like `pleased to meet you`....over and over and over again. She must have thought I was just SO happy to be there. For future reference the term I SHOULD have been using is `me gusta mucho` which I feel is unnecessarily similar to what I was saying...but lesson learned regardless!
My week in Quito was pretty intense I have to admit. I had originally planned to have c15 hours of Spanish over Monday to Friday, before flying to Medellin the following Saturday, however realising I wasn`t going to see anything outside of Quito that way, I condensed it to 4 hours a day, with school finishing at noon Thursday and giving me time for a small sojourn to Baños a small spa town south of Quito.
I can verify that 4 hours of spanish one-on-one is a LOT. There is no respite and certainly no opportunities to be lazy and let someone else answer when you can`t be bothered trying to form an answer. Add to the fact that I was staying in a homestay and it shouldn`t come as much of a surprise that I spoke no english for almost 3 days. I didn`t speak much at ALL, I should point out, but the words I did manage to string together were in español. The days of the week passed without much incident; 4 hours of spanish, have a wander around the town, sampling some form of street food (humitas and ceviche are a new addiction plus of course the ubiquitous empanada), bit of spanish homework and then go to bed ludicrously early due to brain exhaustion. I met up with an aussie girl I`d met in Cartagena a couple of nights which basically resulted in me blurting out what I can only describe as verbal diarrhoea as actually being able to speak english was a bit of a treat to say the least.
Quito was, on first impression, a fairly charmless city; big, polluted and quite poor. However there are parts of it that are stunning, the city lies in a valley dominated by mountains and the views are pretty spectactular (when you`re fortunate enough to get clear skies for more than a few hours). It didn`t feel like the safest place in the world, but I ended the week unscathed regardless.
After school finished for the week I jumped on a bus to Baños and relaxed there for a couple of days....thermal pools, cheap massages and a few (relatively) easy walks outside the town. I say `relatively` because when you are 3000m above sea level, climbing a 2km staircase doesn`t actually seem remotely easy. I had to stop every 5 minutes - just to enjoy the view obviously, and not because I was red faced and gasping for breath...
I did get an opportunity to practise my spanish a bit too. I paid a visit to the Baños el Virgen which are a couple of thermal pools at the bottom of a waterfall and did note as I descended into the pools that it seemed to be (at a guess) 80% local men, 15% local women and children and 5% tourists. It wasn`t long before 3 men had cornered me and were asking me the usual questions "where are you from/how long are you travelling in Ecuador/do you have a boyfriend" etc. (The answer to that last one is always an emphatic "SI, tengo novio").This was all fine, I was quite proud of being able to understand and BE understood and I did have to laugh at the reactions I got when I admitted that I was travelling alone (eyebrows go up), was 31 and unmarried (jaw drops), and also do not have any children as yet (jaw now sitting somewhere on the bottom of the pool). I think they thought there was something wrong with me....and in fairness I have heard of Ecuadorian and Colombian girls who are GRANDMOTHERS by 31, horrifying thought.
When it got to the point that they were suggesting I sack off my bus back to Quito and join them for a drink at their hotel followed by dancing, I took that as my cue to leave. An entertaining hour though, and educational too.
I would have liked to do more of Ecuador as apart from Baños and Quito I only managed a couple of day trips to Otavalo (tiny little town dominated by its artesanial market) and of course the obligatory trip to the equatorial line (worth a visit if only to do the Museo del Solar where you get to do all sorts of childishly fun experiments based on supposedly being in the middle of the world). Guess I`ll just have to come back...
