Vamos a Baños!

This past weekend, a huge group of GAIAS students descended on the tourist town of Baños for some R & R and adventure. Baños is a cute little town, littered with rows of identical stands selling various sugar cane products or taffy. It was also filled with incredibly vibrant street art and murals everywhere. There were gorgeous ones on the ceiling of the bedroom and bathroom in the hostel we stayed at and others on walls and cafe fronts all over the city.

There were also smurfs everywhere. On candy, cookies, signs, and in doorways, like this creepy girl whose hand got broken off shortly before we left:

I spent most of Saturday shopping through the little tourist joints and wandering around the city with friends. Most of the shops sold the same sort of thing, colorful bags, clothing, headbands, alpaca sweaters, keychains, etc.

Saturday evening everyone went out for dinner, had a few drinks in the pub at the hostel, got frozen bananas for dessert, and went dancing at a place called the Leprechaun Bar. It was fun, but I wanted to be up early to do more stuff in the city the next day, so I ditched at about 12:30.

Sunday, a friend and I went for a ride in one of Banos' famous tarabitas, little rickety metal baskets that run back and forth over river canyons.

After the ride finished, I snuck inside the control room and asked the guy about the motor apparatus. Turns out it was just your average car motor that they'd hooked up to a pulley apparatus. Safety standards are a little looser here...

After the tarabita ride, we went to a restaurant that served cuy, a traditional Ecuadorian food, for lunch.

They look like giant rats but they're actually guinea pigs all stretched out.

Whole pigs are almost $20, so we decided to get two single serving plates, which include about a quarter of one cuy, potatoes, and rice for $3.50. The cuy was pretty tasty, although actually not very meaty, and I was surprised that they had become a staple food when there was so little meat on their bones. I suppose breeding prolifically makes up for it...

The only disconcerting thing about the cuy place was that it didn't have a bathroom, so we couldn't wash our hands before eating. We'd been touching all sorts of nasty stuff all day long, including the tarabita, and naturally you eat cuy with your hands, so we were a little worried that we were going to get sick, but nothing serious came of it.

After the cuy, we walked around town a little bit and I hiked up a ridge to the neon cross that gets lit up above the city at night. None of the houses on the ridge and the hills leading up to it have electricity, so at night the cross looks like it's floating in the middle of a black sky.

On top of the hill, there was lots of agriculture, including an orchard of tomate de árbol.

Here's some more of the quirky cafes and other stuff around Banos:

The rhino train.

Cafe Blah Blah.

Inside Cafe Blah Blah.

Cafe Ricooo Pan.

The TV remote salesman.

Last week rewind--Our first field trip!

I've been slacking off when it comes to updating this blog, in part because I've been out of town a lot recently, but I thought I should write about our first field trip with the Tropical Ecology class.

For the trip, we went up to about 4200 meters elevation and the paramo landscape, which consists of the super-páramo, grassland páramo, and sub-páramo. Our hike started on top of a mountain in the fiercely cold and windy super-páramo. Literally inside a cloud, the landscape consisted of low vegetation, a few birds, and a muddy trail heading off into the white distance.

I had brought my dSLR with me since we were on a university-sponsored bus and I wasn't worried about it getting swiped, but of course since I haven't been using it I didn't realize how low it was on batteries and it died pretty soon into the hike.

I did get a few photos of the first section, though.

We stepped off the bus into a blast of cold weather, 3.5 degrees C with 60-70 kph winds, light rain and muddy slopes. Our professor had mentioned that there might be a little mud, but we had no idea what we were getting into. The path was muck almost all the way and going downhill was incredibly slippery... I must have fallen twenty times by the end of the day and most other people were also covered in mud from their own falls.

The super-páramo is fascinating, and not just because of its misty-and-mysterious atmosphere. All of the vegetation grows incredibly low to the ground to avoid the wind and the cold, and some of the plants are quite interesting.

This is our professor, Esteban, with a "cushion plant." The cushion plants grow like coral, with a layer of living rosettes growing on top of the skeletons of their dead counterparts.

Later on in the hike, we passed by gorgeous alpine lakes, rolling grassy hills, and even some small forests towards the bottom of the mountain. We also saw several deer and tracks belonging to skunks, mountain lions, and deer. At the end of the day, we stopped off at a hot springs in a little town lower on the mountain we had just hiked down, which was a welcome relief after the bitter cold and wind from the morning. Overall, a fascinating day!

No water!!

Ecuador is not renowned for its incredible infrastructure. For instance, it's almost always a bad idea to flush toilet paper here, so it generally goes in the bathroom trash can. Yesterday, something happened to the local water system, so our water has been shut off. There was a tank on the roof, but with two extra people in the house, we burned through that in about a day. (They said the water would be back on by midnight last night, but like the tale about the bus routes changing, that one proved false.) Now there's no more water so I just "showered" with a tiny bit of our bottled drinking water.

The dangers of Quito

We got the most incredibly terrifying lecture ever today at orientation. They got one of the bodyguards/security experts from the US embassy to come and talk to us and it was all fine at first, your standard bit about purse snatching, how to hold your bags on buses, what side of the sidewalk to walk on, hilarious because of the horrible background images this guy's intern had stuck in the slides... Then we got into some crazy stuff.

Ever heard of scopolamine? It's this drug that makes you act like you have demetia, i.e., it leaves you conscious and able to respond to people but you aren't aware of what you're saying and doing, so people will take all your money or make you withdraw everything you have from an ATM or have you take them to your house. To other people, everything looks fine, because you're still walking and talking, you just have no idea what you're doing.

The kicker is this: It's absurdly easy to administer. A person need only inhale a little bit or have it come in contact with their skin to be affected. One of the ways the embassy security team has seen in administered was dissolved in a perfume sampler bottle at a kiosk in the mall. When a rich-looking lady walked past, the girl behind the counter sprayed it at her saying "Smell this, smell this!" When she inhaled a little bit of the vapors, she began to see stars and sat down, then a guy came up to her and just had her hand him her wallet, jewelry, etc... She called the embassy when she recovered and they found security video footage of the whole thing.

In another instance, guys dressed as policemen in one of the squares in the historical district would come up to a young woman walking alone and grab her arm, saying that they needed to ask her some questions. They were wearing gloves that had some scopolamine powder on them and when it came into contact with the woman's arm, it dissolved into her bloodstream and she was led off, raped, and robbed. In another episode of dermal transmission, one of the embassy ladies was walking away from an ATM when someone just brushed against her and she started to see stars... She had barely taken a few steps when she blacked out. It works that fast.

Apparently the most common method of administration is for someone, often an old person, to come up and shove a map/address in your face and ask for directions. The paper has some of the powder on it and just having it close to your face causes you to inhale enough to be affected. We were told not to accept any pamphlets or handouts on the street, but honestly, when anybody just brushing against you could be drugging you, they don't need to tell me twice to avoid people on the street...

The hour finished off with some gruesome descriptions of other forms of deception and crime here... For instance, the famous "condiment scam", where someone spills something on you and then distracts you by wiping it off while someone steals your stuff, has been upgraded in the historical district to a poop-throwing scam. Apparently they shake up dog poop in water bottles and throw it all over tourists. Then while the tourists are freaking out, the thieves either offer to help clean it up or just grab their bags and run.

Then there are the bank tellers who let accomplices outside know how much people have withdrawn so that they can know who to accost. Apparently one guy took out like $12000 and had the bank's security guys escort him to his car, but the robbers were waiting for them and there was a shoot-out in the parking lot. Peace Corps also lost $45000 this way last year. And there are the taxi drivers who have accomplices jump in the cab with you and take your ATM cards around to all the machines in town before driving you home and looting your house.

We also asked about robberies on buses. Apparently guys just come up to people randomly with knives and demand their stuff, but even if other people see it, they won't do anything to stop it because the criminals are professionals who work the same route all the time and nobody wants to face repercussions.

On a side note, the bus we took to campus today was so full that we at first had to ride hanging out the back door.

Anyway, that's all for now. If I remember any more horrifying stories from today's lecture, I'll add them later.

Historical District Tour

After orientation today (during which we received many thrillingly lurid stories of past students' transgressions of either program rules or Ecuadorian culture), we went on a tour of Quito's historical district.

Our first stop was La Basilica. In place of gargoyles, it has animals from the Galapagos Islands on the south end and ones from the Amazon on the north end.

Galapagos:

Amazon:

Inside:

They also had a neon saint. And a neon Jesus. And a nativity scene on the altar that was covered in strings of multicolored lights.

Our next stop was a pass by the President's mansion. There were people all over the front promenade but I only saw one security guard standing around!

After that we went to La Compañia, a church that is almost completely coated on the inside with gold leaf. There were intricately carved columns and altar pieces, as well as a traditional design similar to simple Celtic knots that laced around the walls and ceiling, and all of it was covered in gold. (I stole the second photo from one of the guys in our group, who snuck a shot even though photography technically was not allowed inside.)

Apparently the church was built by the indigenous people under Spanish rule, although as soon as the building was completed, they were no longer permitted to enter it.

We ended our tour in a little plaza, where we milled around a bit and went into a cafe/gift shop to use the restroom. Right as a bunch of us lined up to use the toilets, one of the waitstaff bustled out of the bathroom holding two cups of ice cream that were obviously intended for a table, and we were glad we'd already had lunch.

We didn't hesitate to take this sign seriously, though.

The Rompope and Licor de Café were really good.

The day ended in Parque Itchimbia, which overlooks most of Quito. The city is surprisingly large and sprawling from up above, and stretched for miles on either side of the hill we were on. I was more interested to see Pichincha, the volcano that dominates the local geography. (It's in the background of the first photo.)

Three flags of Quito in front of a monument of the Virgin Mary.

And one last volcano sighting, Cotopaxi.

My new school

It's effing beautiful.

The last photo is of one of the dining halls. All of the dining halls at USFQ are student-run, but this one is special because students compete like in one of those reality cooking shows to produce the best menu each week, and whoever sells the most food gets the best grade. Despite its fanciness, however, my host father mentioned that loads of people who eat there for the farewell dinner get sick... So it may be secretly poisonous under all that glamor.

Here's another one of the food stores on campus:

 

Sarah Joseph, eat your heart out!

This is the "Ivy league hall":

And the small lake surrounded by tropical gardens...

The second photo is of one of the exotic trees on campus.

Across the street I found this:

I'll post more later!

Grocery Shopping

I hate to say it, but what with the numerous hours spent in orientation these past two days, grocery shopping with my host family this evening has been one of the highlights of my trip so far. We went to MegaMaxi, a store specifically designed to overshadow the famous and once very popular SuperMaxi. MegaMaxi is only a few blocks from the house, and even though it's a behemoth that sells everything from orange juice to car parts and electronics, it's housed inside a large mall complex. (This mall was also where we went to get phones earlier in the afternoon.)

We got in and of course, my family wanted me to point out every single thing in the store that I liked so that they could buy them all for me. I tried to equivocate rather forcefully at the cheese display, but that only brought more urging from the family and amused stares from the guys behind the deli counter.

While shopping, we encountered a number of unusual and occasionally unnerving items.

For instance, there was the aisle of bagged milk:

The family claimed that there was something magical about those bags that allowed the milk to stay fresh even though it wasn't refrigerated. I wondered how they could possibly be practical since once you cut them open, there's no way to reseal them. So far, I haven't seen one in action.

Here's another item I've long considered perishable that just wasn't refrigerated:

Nothing special about those packages...

Also amusing were the pea scoopers they had in the vegetable section. I would think that of all vegetables, the tiniest, squishiest one wouldn't be a first choice for scooping, but whatever.

I've been trying to sample all of the wild tropical fruits available here, and I tore through the fruit section grabbing anything that looked unfamiliar. Most of the super weird stuff came prepackaged in slices or as juice condensate. We mixed a batch of guanabana juice tonight and it wasn't bad. Yesterday, we tried maracuya (my favorite so far) and naranjilla, and at lunch, various people tried other juices, the only one I can recall being mora. All I heard about mora at the time was that it was a berry, so I assumed it was some exotic local thing... Turns out it's just blackberries... Oh well.

When we checked out, the guy bagging our groceries threw them into bags so fast I thought we would pull a muscle. Then he took our cart into the elevators that serve as the store's front doors and we carted our groceries out into the mall parking garage, all of which I found incredibly surreal.

Overall, an interesting experience, and I'm looking forward to sampling some of the crazy stuff we got!

Fun with cars

Today was our second day of orientation at IES, again a lot of talking but this time with pizza for lunch instead of awesome Ecuadorian food. Oh well. At least they were conscientious enough to not order it from Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, or any of the numerous other American imports.

On the way to the IES Center, I sat in the front of the bus and therefore got to observe our driver crossing himself before pulling out into traffic. The small collection of Virgin Mary idols in the windshield also testified to the putting-your-life-on-the-line nature of Ecuadorian driving.  Our host father had warned us about this yesterday when I tried to sit in the back of his van with my co-hosted IES friend and discovered that only one of the seatbelts in the back was functional. He promised that he was a very safe driver and wouldn't get into any accidents, then retracted the statement a little bit by admitting that everyone in Ecuador drives like a maniac. And then he whipped the van into the middle of oncoming traffic, where it stalled for a second because we were on a hill...

We were likewise warned about the dangers of crossing streets today at orientation. Since size is the sole determinant of who has the right of way in Ecuador, pedestrians yield the right of way to everything else on the streets, meaning that crossing one involves a lot of strategic running for your life. We practiced today by walking a few blocks to the mall near the IES Center so that we could get cell phones. Our big gringo group attracted a lot of attention.

Naturally, my host sister and I didn't have enough cash on hand to pay for phones, and the cell phone store in the mall doesn't take credit cards, so we're going to go out later with our host family to get them.

The other interesting thing we've learned is that our university, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, is considered one of the top ten schools in Ecuador. Why? Because it has the most professors with PhDs, of course! Here, you only have to have a master's degree to teach, so having a faculty of doctors is a big selling point. Not only that, but almost all of them got their doctorate in the States, because a US degree carries even more weight here!

Orientation Day 1

We had our first (of four) days of orientation today, and since it was held in IES' Quito headquarters rather than our college campus, we had to drive a bit to get there. On the way up, we had the radio playing and got quite an interesting slew of songs, with Justin Bieber followed by a Shakira song in Spanish followed by the Ghostbusters theme... Two songs later, we got the Ghostbusters theme again!

I was wiped out from getting home late last night and the subsequent insomnia due to my excitement at being in a new country and meeting several people in my program. Basically, I ended up with 3-something hours of sleep (they wanted us assembled at 8:15, so we were up early) and it was barely enough to make it through 6+ hours of extremely slow, rambling descriptions of the program. There were a few high points to the discussion, though, such as the lecture about gender roles, homophobia, and racism in Ecuador, although it unfortunately had to be squeezed into about ten minutes since everything else had taken so long and it was the last thing before lunch.

About 7% of Ecuador's population consists of Afro-Ecuadorians, who live in conditions that have been compared to those in the USA pre-Civil Rights Movement. There's not a lot of job opportunities here for them and we were told that Afro-Ecuadorians typically either go into sports or become security guards. True to stereotype, there was a large black security guard at the door of the silver jewelry shop where our host grandmother worked, which we stopped by in the afternoon after our orientation ended. Apparently, discrimination also exists against the indigenous people, who can get most of the same jobs as mestizos (the majority), just for half the pay. Homosexuality is widely discriminated against as well, and it was illegal until 1998. But I suppose at least there is progress in the right direction, albeit slow.

We ate lunch today at a fantastic restaurant--it had a view overlooking the entire valley, which houses the university we'll be studying at, as well as all of the homes we are staying at. The view was amazing, but of course, my camera picked that exact time to run out of power, so I didn't get any photos for myself. I'll try to steal someone else's photos later.

As an aside, there are three other U of R students here, although they are all in the Quito program instead of the Galapagos one. One is even BCS, but embarrassingly enough, I didn't know any of them.

One thing that I've noticed is that most of the graffiti in Quito consists of legible phrases, not scribbly tagging like in the US. I don't remember most of the phrases and they don't mean that much to me, the non-Spanish speaker, but I was interested to see that most of them were trying to communicate something very specific, if seemingly irreverent, to the world. Again, photos later.

New Fun Fact

That bit about roosters crowing at daybreak? Total lie... They crow all night long. In the city.

Arrived at my home in Quito!!!

Okay, I am ridiculously, absurdly excited to be in Quito. I met my host "sibling" (the other gal who is staying with my host family) at the airport today and together, we went with our host family to their house. The house is quite nice, very modern, behind a gate and alarm, with three floors and roof access, and four dogs. All the members of the family speak insanely good English. Our host father is a child psychologist and speaks Spanish, English, and German, all fluently and with a superb accent. I don't know yet what our host mother or host sister do, but all three of them are unbelievably kind. They were happy to chat with us today but promised that starting tomorrow morning, it's going to be all Spanish. That's fine with me, though. I want to learn more Spanish and I'm excited for the challenge.

The trip back from the airport was interesting. I couldn't figure out how to get my seatbelt to work, so I just sat on it while we careened down the incredibly twisty roads from the north of Quito to the valley, where our family lives. Before we had even gotten out of the airport parking lot, another car started pulling out of a parking spot right in front of us. Without even slowing down, our host father just flashes his high beams a few times and barrels right in front of him, commenting that he bet the other guy didn't want his paint messed up. Flashing the brights seems to be the most common form of traffic communication in Quito, and we used it several times on the way home, such as when changing lanes suddenly or when passing a large truck.

I decided that the most important thing to do upon arriving in the house was get on the internet to check facebook and post on my newly minted blog. My host sister spent the time unpacking her suitcase, which impressed me since I'm the type that will happily live out of a suitcase for months and she finished before I had even finished my last paragraph. That being said, she went straight to facebook afterwards... Such Americans!