Parlez-vous Spancais?

Only eight days left for me in Ecuador, which actually makes me feel incredibly sad, but something tells me that I might come back one day, if not here then to live elsewhere on this amazing continent. And Peru! I can´t wait to see that beautiful country - I am expecting Machu Picchu to be heaving with loud-mouthed tourists, but it will be wonderful to see all the same. In a way I regret booking an organised tour, because I so value my independence and I now know how easy it is to meet other travellers here - you are never really alone for long. But either way, I will be in Peru and that is what matters, and once I am there I don´t think I will mind missing the Fiestas de Quito which also take place that week. It is funny how places become a part of you, once you have memories and attachments there, and I never expected Quito to become a part of me but somehow it has crept under my skin and will always be there in one way or another. So much for my quiet weekend last week - I ended up going back to Mindo and its devastatingly lovely cloud forest with Emily, Vincent, Pascal and Julia (some of whom I live with and some of whom are friends of those I live with). We hiked up to the waterfalls, which was hot and sticky and hard work but fun - and reaching those waterfalls is beyond rewarding; I think that spot is one of my favourite places in Ecuador, it is so peaceful and completely calming. That night I went for a insanely yummy hot chocolate at the Colombian chocolate shop in Plaza Foch, before heading down to Guapulo to meet Hannah, Ada and Graham at Guapulo´s art cafe (every South American city and town has one of these and I love their bright, warm decor and their crazy mishmash of antiques and paintings). One of my only Sundays spent in Quito was then spent climbing to the top of the basilica, which involved battling some precarious ladders up to the towers - very South American - but resulted in unmissable views of Quito´s Centro Historico (old town). It really is incredible to look at, despite the crime and corruption that lurks in its narrow streets and around its white-washed corners. I was pondering the lack of a sense of danger that South Americans seem to have, and how they live for the moment so much more than we do, and I think it is linked to their general lack of security in life. If something happens to us in Europe we think how to solve it and how we can get help, but here there is no help and there are no solutions - there is no dole system, no welfare, nothing. It is such a each-for-themselves society in a way and as a result people just seem less cautious. In just two months here I have felt myself adapting to the mentality slightly, and I trust more in other people and in fate to deliver me safely from potential harm - but I am still European through and through, and it never ceases to shock me how nonchalant people can be. In South America people are more free from convention than I am and yet completely trapped in the economic and social state of their society with everything they do. Anyway, I have finally settled here just as it is nearly time to go, and I have loved living in the apartment with my flatmates and actually speaking a lot of Spanish with them. At some recent point, it suddenly clicked, and although I still sometimes have issues trying to understand the locals, I can have a decent conversation with people with whom I really connect. Worryingly, I am forgetting French as rapidly as I am learning Spanish and sometimes (especially with my French housemate) I lapse into a strange hybrid of the two - but maybe this is just a natural stage of language learning, who knows. I think perhaps it is a positive thing and shows that Spanish is getting into my consciousness at last.

In a twist of fate, I met someone at a one-off yoga class I went to on Monday who knew about a travel writing course that is being run by Viva Travel Guides in Quito next week. So naturally I applied, which has meant a very busy week for me finishing off everything for the newspaper so that I can concentrate just on that for my last week here. I am seriously considering really trying to get into something I want to do now, so hopefully I may even make contacts and gain some inside info on how to break in to the industry!

This weekend I was hoping to get to the jungle but it is a bit far to go just for a day and I need to be back on Sunday night for drinks with the travel writers. So as a compromise in the mañana I am heading to Papallacta, which is on the edge of the Northern Oriente (jungle country) and has good hiking possibilities and hot springs - perfecto for a chilled weekend.

From mountains to coast and back again

Photographs aren´t the same as moments in time, and the best moments in time tend to be those that are not captured on camera at all. Still, if you peruse my photos from the past week you will be struck by the same thing that I was most struck by – that every city, town and village in Ecuador that I have visited is utterly different from the next and that those differences are remarkable. From the colonial style city of Guaranda to the colourful indigenous community of Simiatug, from the garish gawkiness of Guayaquil to the friendly coastal pueblos of Montañita and Puerto Lopez, I feel as though I have passed through a whole world´s variety of places within the bounds of a relatively small country. We travelled down through the Andes, a stunning route I will never fail to gasp at, and later in the week across the banana plantations with their houses on stilts and then up to the lovely, warm, vibrant coast. In Simiatug, there was a kind of mutual staring game going on, with the locals providing endless fascination for me going about their simple daily lives in their traditional dress and me for them with my strange western clothing and ghostly white complexion (although by my standards I am now quite tanned!!). We arrived early in the day after getting up at 5am to catch the market traders´ bus from Ambato, and by 8am the place was all a-bustle with people selling livestock, vegetables and welly boots amongst other stuff. We talked to the craftswomen at a local fundacion (kind of a not-for-profit organisation – Ecuador is full of them) who hand-weave bags, children´s clothes, purses, toys and so on for a fair wage. This was the beginning of a week of long-winded interviews in Spanish which must be helping me to develop my language skills but can be pretty exhausting too. It was also the beginning of a week full of cramped bus rides as varied as the places we visited; after one particularly hair-raising journey – which included a three-point turn hanging off the edge of a cliff – I got up from my seat and my knees were completely filthy from the back of the seat in front. Meanwhile, on a later route from Guayaquil to Montañita we were given the luxury of leg room and air conditioning on a sparkling clean vehicle; the kind of thing I have really learnt not to take for granted! Guaranda, a city that is not actually colonial but rebuilt in the Spanish style still popular at the time, was a fascinating place in a very different way to Simiatug. Its main square was apparently the only one to have been designed by Guayasamin, a well-established painter and disciple of Fidel Castro, and this is evident from the way the park´s centrepiece is curved into a socialist symbol. We also were taken by one of Martijn´s many contacts to a gorgeous old colonial hospital building which is now used for a multitude of purposes including music rehearsal rooms and an archaeological museum, and to the university which I was excited to see had a student radio programme which was being recorded right in front of us. Later in the week our task was to review the nightlife in Guayaquil, Ecuador´s biggest and most ridiculed city. The industrial, badly designed waterfront, the Malecon, made me giggle and reminded me ever so slightly of Liverpool or of Brest, although it is far more hideous to look at than the former and a bit less hideous than the latter. Like the down-trodden and stereotyped cities of Europe that I so love, Guayaquil has plenty of quirky character and more than its fair share of friendly people. It also has one quite attractive area, Las Peñas, which we spent an afternoon strolling through, and my god it was hot and humid – I could hardly believe it was November and nearly fainted from the strength of the sun, but a traditional two-course almuerzo (Ecuadorian lunch) in what appeared to be a family´s living room saved me, and we continued up to the top of the 300 steps to see the panoramic view of that odd and delightful city. The nightlife in the “Zona Rosa” was predictably amusing, with the usual selection of chancers grinding up to us and trying their Latino luck, and the choice of bars was a hell of a lot more varied than that on offer in Quito´s gringo-targeted, seedy Mariscal. With Guayaquil been and done, we headed to the south coast (actually in the west) on Saturday morning to chill and check out the work of the fundaciones there. Montañita is a surfer´s paradise with as many hippies living there as locals and a beautiful beach stretching out for miles. The town was full of cocktail and smoothie bars (I could never tire of their many concoctions) and shops selling pretty things which I had to resist buying as my backpack is already bulging and I have to get to Peru and Bolivia with it yet. The following day we were met by a local lady who took us via trucks and buses to the outlying communities La Entrada, San José and Dos Mangas, so that we could see the work of jewellery makers and other craftspeople in the region. Once again, I was touched by the simplicity and modesty of these people and of their eagerness to help us out however they can. I only hope that our articles result in mutual help for them, and increased interest in their products without contributing to attracting too much tourism as to ruin their tranquil existence. Back in the more garish Montañita I also suppressed smiles as our hosts at the hostel wittered at us through huge stoned eyes and I wondered at their life; smoking themselves senseless day in, day out in a beach town and greeting travellers as they pass through; what a life! Our plans to head to Puerto Lopez, a fishing village north of Montañita for our last evening, were almost scuppered as we missed the last bus, but we decided to take an expensive taxi costing us each $5 (a bus would be $1 per hour) and it was well worth it in my opinion. I have never been a morning person but in Ecuador I have never slept beyond 8am (and these people seem to think 6am is a reasonable hour to start meeting up!) and so I managed to fulfil my plans to get up at a decent time and watch the fishermen bringing in their catch and selling it in the market tent on the beach. Although many independent travellers have caught wind of Puerto Lopez and take time to visit, the village really retains its genuine feel and the local people still seem pleased to have us in their vicinity. I ate some of the best food I have ever tasted during our time along the coast (fresh fish twice a day; heaven!) although I can´t help but notice that different foods in Ecuador´s different regions is basically a variation on a theme – rice, beans or potatoes, fried platano and fish or meat, always always with a blob of aji spicy sauce – but still quite a novelty to me so I love it. The bus back up to Quito was nothing short of a nightmare, as we left at 7pm and travelled for almost 12 hours overnight, plus the drivers were absolute maniacs and saw fit to race around corners, often racing against other buses on narrow pot-holed streets. At one point I made the mistake of opening my eyes and was faced with a typical Andean sheer-drop view as the bus continued to speed along. I thought that I would die on that bus, and was starting to mourn my unborn masterpiece writings (!) and the loves I have not yet loved, places I have not yet seen etc etc. So the sight of Quito was for once a welcome one to me yesterday morning and I slept off my exhaustion for the best part of the day. Now I have a fair few articles to write, based on all those visits and interviews last week, and I am hoping to spend the next couple of weeks catching up with people in drizzly Quito and finishing off my work, as well as learning some salsa if I ever get round to it. I would like to fit in a trip to the jungle, but that depends on my budget and on time. Luis is still under the illusion that he is taking me paragliding, but I am not giving in to the peer pressure; I think I will just watch him and his friends jump instead! My new flatmates are great and the apartment is really cosy and even has hot water sometimes (a luxury in Quito!). We are a mix of nationalities, and all can speak fluent French or English, but I am not giving in to the temptation and am struggling along in español as much as possible. In any case there are so many places that I have now heard about in South America that I have to visit, so I plan to return here one day for longer than three months – I was tempted to just not go home when I planned to this time, but unfortunately my purse is almost empty already and I also want to be in Manchester for Christmas because I think it would be pretty miserable being away from everyone at that time.

Ecuador tiene mi corazon

Hola my friends, I haven´t disappeared off the planet, but have just been super-busy the past couple of weeks – finally there is lots of writing to do, plus I have been gallavanting a bit and exploring this gorgeous country a bit more.

Last week I was mainly working in Quito and meeting up with friends here, but at the end of the week I went to Mindo and its cloudforest, the Bosque Protector Mindo-Nambillo, with Hannah and Martijn from the newspaper to interview a guy who does a lot of conservation work there. Mindo is just west of Quito and the climate is a bit warmer (hallelujah); it is a beautiful spot with “excellent bird-watching opportunities” although I kind of skipped that part of it and just soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed being out in the countryside and quite literally up in the clouds once again.

We stayed in a house made entirely of bamboo, eating from plates also made from some kind of sustainable material and using a compost toilet – quite an experience! Milton – the guy who owns the house and runs the environmental projects- had so much to tell, and the story of how Mindo went from being a town where people chopped wood for a living to a hub of sustainable tourism is pretty fascinating, especially considering this has only happened in the past 20 years.

Another lad from Holland called Martin was staying there for a month or so as a volunteer carpenter-conservationist and he and Hannah and I took advantage of the local sport, called “tubing”, which involves sitting on a bunch of tied-together tires and racing down a fast-flowing river – so much fun. We got completely soaked but it was well worth it and I was laughing all day after that. The other two also took a ride on the canopy, across a steep-dropping valley, but I chickened out of that one – however, I have to admit it looked quite safe so maybe next time?!

Last Friday evening when we got back from Mindo, after another sleepy bus journey, Hannah and I went across to Guapulo, the arty district of Quito. We were supposedly there to review the pretty wine bars and live folklorica scene, but we used the opportunity to get a little bit tipsy and chat to the locals, who were surprisingly much friendlier than most of the Quiteños I have met. Two of the guys, Luis and Santiago, then invited us to a house party the next night where there were also many chatty individuals and artsy types – so a great evening was had, and of course the party never actually ended so I ended up still being there in the early hours, stranded at the bottom of a hill north of the Mariscal and knowing full well that my flight to the Galapagos islands left in a few hours´ time and that my backpack was at Hannah´s at the other end of town.

I caught it though, a little worse for wear, and what followed was possibly the most beautiful, breath-taking week of my life. The Galapagos is everything everyone says about it, and more, and I loved seeing all these animals so close up – they are so unafraid of the human impostors and the sea lions just come bounding up to you like little puppies – they are adorable.

When I first saw our boat – a small, wobbly thing crammed full of tiny cabins – I wasn´t sure I could cope with living on it for an entire week, but after the first couple of nights of seasickness I adapted to the scary ocean crossings and the overpowering smell of diesel (which is fast becoming my most memorable Ecuador smell!) and just really absorbed myself into the moment and let myself go.

I was really lucky with the group of people I travelled with, and we bonded well over the three meals a day around a crowded table (in fact, the food was delicious and I ate enough food to last me a month) and during the visits to the incredible islands.

Our “English speaking guide”, Franklin, didn´t really speak much English, but that only added to the hilarity of it all; I think for a while I will wake up with the echoes of “dry landing, tennis shoes please!” ringing in my ears. He also referred to mangroves as ´mangolas´ and didn´t seem to know much at all about the wildlife – either that or his translations just didn´t make sense. However, despite all this, I was just completely content to be there and there were moments when I felt like the luckiest person on earth to have the privilege.

Following my recent dry-land adventures, I was persuaded by the crew to try out snorkelling and was blown away by being able to actually see under water – it was truly awe-inspiring, and especially because of the sheer numbers of tropical fish species there, not to mention the penguins, sea lions, star fish, turtles and sharks. I had failed to realise that all the creatures in the Galapagos are harmless to human beings and so when one of our group shouted “shark!”, I reacted as most people would under normal circumstances and dropped my mask, swallowed a lot of salt water and panicked, of course missing the sight of the harmless shark altogether. All was not lost, as two days later I saw two more of the creatures, and one of the days that I decided to miss the snorkelling I also saw dolphins swimming right beside the boat, which is something I won´t forget in a hurry.

Other animals that inhabit the islands include the prehistoric-looking iguanas, blue-footed boobies (no sniggering) and giant tortoises, all of which I have caught on camera and used up two entire batteries and god knows how much memory card in the process – if you want to bore yourself to sleep, they will be on Gmail shortly but you may not be quite as enamoured as I was being there beside them. I cannot describe in any words how it felt to be on that paradise, even as a tourist and even while being ordered to get up mega-early each morning, and besides the experience of being there I formed some friendships that will hopefully continue when I return to Europe (and generate more travels!).

Finally I feel that the 20 kg of emotional baggage I carried here with me is easing and I have regained a sense of freedom and contentment that I had forgotten existed. Even Quito feels less alien to me now, and I have moved into an apartment with some other young volunteers which makes for a much more relaxed environment than the homestay. My work is satisfying to say the least and it is really interesting to talk to Ecuadorians about their various projects and to see the place in a different light to most tourists. I am hardly ever in Quito itself – the writers are all off on another trip around the country tomorrow, to the west coast and to Guayaquil – but the time that I am here doesn´t seem so daunting now and I have a feeling that when the time comes to board the plane to Peru at the end of this month, it will be with some regret for leaving Ecuador.