June 11
My first day in Quito. I wake up in a five star hotel, where breakfast is served in a Miami style "Lowes Hotel cafe". Not too shabby. The hotel consierge is extremely helpful and all is going well. I go to the mall in the new part of the town near a lovely park. I get a cell phone, get back to hotel and about to transfer out. I notice, I feel hungry here but cannot eat. Breakfast consumption was weak, not hungry the whole day, somewhat sleepy and perhaps dizzy...I try to supplement with sugar and water, but without much help. I transfer to a much cheaper, however so much more quaint hotel. I like the staff, and the place is out of this world magical. Hacienda at its best, with real ecaudorian restaurant in the courtyard with a central fountain where mama and papa cook the dishes and sons serve them. I smell the food and am dying to bite into it. I even order while the young boy asks me for my phone number. But you see, I learned my key phrase here. Ahh, gracias, pero tengo un amor. Sometimes it works...As I greedily go for the soup, which is just to die for, I get extremely nauseated and dizzy. I can´t even move, that is how badly I feel. My head nearly explodes and nothing helps. One of the bus boys/waiters offers me an herbal tea, oregano...I don´t know why but it helps though I slowly start to doze off. Of course, I have developed a mild case of altitude sickness. Darn, I was bragging to John that I grew up in the mountains. I should have listened and gotten Diamox. Instead it took all of my non existent spanish to say to the pharmacist that i need a diuretic due to "alture" and so a pill later combined with two hourse of sleep, I am again a human. Since I wasted half of the day and still unable to concentrate on the book, I close my Lonely Planet and decide to get lost in the city for the remainder of the light hours. It gets dark here right after 7 pm and the city becomes empty. That is El Centro does. Some streets on Mariscal Sucre are always pumping but due to several people, including locals I am incredibly scared to be in that neighborhood after dark sets in. I put on my worst clothing and still I am a magnet for comments.
So I walk around Centro Historico, g-d bless my headache and getting lost, I have walked through the entire Centro in three hours. I have been where i shouldnt have been and I have walked in the poorest neighborhoods, and as the dark slowly sets in, I suddenly realized that i have warmed up to this city. Strangely, I have no fear in the dark. In the dark, I am only a shaddow for most of these peoeple, with real concerns and real dillemas.
The funnest part of the day was getting lost in an indigenous neighborhood and stopping in a tiny restaurant for their juice. Sits were hard to come by and I offered a family with a small boy my table. The boy was so delightful. We managed to converse for half an hour (with my non existent spanish!). He caught me by surprise with the opening sentence that I am a cat knowingly pointing to my eyes. Only cats have eyes like that here. As he and I try to exchange information about each other, I realize that had I become a doctor in any other country in the world, I would have been a pediatrician. Treating kids like this one, without fear of being awaked at night by beeper pages and never having a quiet vacation, with parents who are willing to rip you apart at any moment, I sooner would move to Ecuador and work for free. Of course, the mother tests the boy´s love by saying maybe he should go back with me to New York. At which point the boy, Christian, drops the converstaion completely and hides in his mother´s hugging hands. Mother´s love and love for mother...so beautiful.
I return to my hotel, with a delightful mood and I run into the guy who helped me move in. As I question him about where I can still go in Ecuador at this hour, he suggest i wait until he gets off and he will take me to some spectacular streets in the old town, not to be attempted alone. So, I wait and we go and I realize once again that the best way to see the city is to get lost there. I have already seen many of these streets. Anyway, we chat at the internet cafe and I learn that his father is too a doctor, as well as his sister and he actually went to high school in Connecticut. But there are no coincidences in life, and meeting this young man had proved to be my biggest gift in Quito.
