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.

Extreme adventure in extreme weather

Hello hello, it seems a lifetime ago that I last wrote in here but methinks that may be my mind playing tricks after a week away from civilisation. Anyhow, it was one fabulous week which I will treasure forever and I succeeded in doing many crazy outdoor things that I had never dreamed I would ever do or want to do.

On Monday morning we set off on a typical Ecuadorian bus armed with our backpacks and any collective change we could scrape together for the bus fare (nobody here ever has any change, it is insane). Hannah and Ada were running late so once we arrived in the humdrum town of Machachi about one hour south of Quito we waited for them to arrive and then piled into the back of a ´cabina´(in Macachi this was just a sort of truck with space for four inside and then plenty of outdoor floor space for the rest of us)! We were thrown around every which way while the vehicle wheezed and skidded up a mud track to the hostel, but the discomfort was made up for by the opportunity to stare goggle-eyed at all the goings on in village of Pedregal, where two kids were collecting water in a bucket and everyone else stood outside their houses alongside their various pigs, cows and chickens as we swung by.

The hostel itself was like a dream; Tarquin and Katherine (an Ozzie-Ecuadorian couple) are realising their venture of building a hostel up in the mountains near Cotopaxi and have done a great job with a cottage and three more buildings constructed in the Adobe method (which keeps those inside nice and warm) and running on energy-saving power methods. It is beautiful and in the evenings there we all crowded around the fire and apart from in the kitchen there was only candle-light for us to see by and one electrical socket to be used for our MP3 players. For around 70 pounds worth I got a warm bunk bed for four nights, hot showers, three meals a day, endless supplies of hot chocolate and beer, good company, plus all the activities we did throughout the week - really not a bad deal all in all!

The first day we set off on horseback and didn´t return until six hours later, which resulted in very sore muscles but a very happy Kate after being outside all day in indescribably stunning surroundings - I am so not a city person, I have finally realised! As with all sport I was pretty slow (and I also ended up with the slow horse!) and after losing a stirrup - which had no grip and looked more like a clog to me! - I managed to get completely lost on the way back and only realised when our very smiley Chechuan guide Janet started waving and yelling across the fields to me. The following day I had some strange reaction to the altitude (we were mucho mucho above sea level, even more than in Quito) and had to stay inside and recover for most of the day, but I only missed out on mountain biking and it left me much stronger and raring to go for the next day´s adventures. On Thursday it was the big climb up Cotopaxi (not to the top, but up to the refuge and on to the glacier, which stands at an awe-inspiring 5,000 metres above sea level) and once again we piled into a rickety truck, this time with a leaking exhaust which gave off a big bang and lots of fumes each time we went through a puddle; hilarious but not at all healthy for the lungs, and Hannah pointed out that we were practising a popular suicide method en masse (either that or a thrilling stimulated concentration camp experience - "is it the gas or the water?"!) Once at the national park, we began our ascent up the volcano and wow, what a weird, amazing experience that was. At that altitude, it was necessary to take things very slowly and to stop frequently to catch our breath, but I think the first bit was the hardest as after the refuge it was slippery but not as hard-going. As we climbed it began to snow (at which point I discovered my´waterproof coat was not in the least bit waterproof) and the mist rose all around us, which gave the whole thing quite an eerie, surreal feel. I think after all the frustrations and lonelinesses of the past few weeks, standing on the side of a volcano in South America having a snowball fight really made me realise that it is all absolutely worth it, and I feel incredibly lucky to be here on this diverse and ever-surprising continent.

The last day I was told we were going for a ´nice walk to see some waterfalls´and this is when I really surpassed myself as everyone who knows me well knows that I do not do adventure, but it seems that now in fact I do. Basically all the land around there is private land and the guys who own it are generally well disposed towards tourists because, well, there aren´t many that go up there. But this particular man next to the hostel is a cranky character because he reckons one of the hostel staff left a gate open, allowing a local bull through to impregnate all his cows, who usually only receive artificial insemination. The experience may have been a treat for them but the man has now told Tarquin that he doesn´t want to do any tourism, the result being that the nice walk to the waterfalls is a life-threatening scramble through a stream, across rocks and over the waterfalls themselves. I therefore spent my day clad in a pair of wellies and scrambling, falling, climbing and stumbling across all manner of natural formations, which I have to admit was a lot of fun (after getting over the fear of hanging precariously from a rope and clambering up an almost-vertical landslide). Predictably, as we neared the summit of the hill we were attempting to conquer, the heavens opened and our man Carlos decided it was unsafe to go back the way we had come, much to my relief. However, the alternative route home was equally traumatic and nightmarish, with it being impossible to see where our feet were heading and constantly falling down ditches. At one point we were standing in a ring surrounded by various waterproof clothing and shielding our faces from the hail stones, which reminded me strongly of my Manchester. We also then had to trespass across the said farmer´s land, which culminated in a farcical episode of us hiding very badly behind trees and bushes at any sight of a neighbour. Eventually we arrived back at the hostel, sporting scratches, bruises and other war wounds, just in time to catch our cabinas back to Machachi and from there our bus to Quito.

Now I am back in the big city and surprisingly after my break from it I am warming to its oddities and annoyances. I can no longer be bothered with any anger towards cabbies, who still constantly rip me off (but when it is a difference between 1 pound 50 and 2 pounds for a ride across the entire city, is it worth getting stressed?) and I am amused by the policemen who stand there in the road blowing whistles in some futile attempt to control the manic traffic in the torrential rain. Now I know that I am moving out in a week, I can deal quite serenely with the impatience and criticisms of my host family and am accustomed to the lack of a concept of privacy (I think it is acceptable for Latin American mothers to re-organise your stuff while you are out of your room). I can see an upside to being woken up at ludicrous o´clock at the weekend for breakfast, as the best weather is in the morning and it is pleasant to sit outside in the sunshine and drink a coffee while reading a book. I am interested in this culture where people can only be friends with people who are of the same wealth and class as themselves, and I am intrigued by a table service which necessitates its staff to avoid all eye contact with customers as far as possible to evade actually serving them.

However, I have grasped already that unlike in Europe, where any country could become my home within two or three years, I would always be a fish out of water in South America and there are so many cultural and social issues here that I could never quite understand, however strong my language ability became. I don´t know what hunger or curiousity drew me to this strange, beautiful, angry, jealous place, but I do know that I am glad that I came and that by the end of these three months I will see the world in a slightly different way because of it.

Too many gringos

The last few days have been really busy and tomorrow I am off to a place that has no internet connection until Friday, so I thought I ought to update this before I leave! My Spanish lessons have still been going spiffingly and I can really feel my language improving (although that doesn´t stop everyone in this bloody place from trying to rip me off all the time!) so I have been more able to hold conversations and find out more stuff about the culture here. My homestay has been generally draining and stressful and in hindsight I really wonder what brought me to think it would ever be a good idea to live with a family. So I am counting the days until I can move out - luckily as of tomorrow I will be in Cotopaxi so I will be freeee for a few days, hurray! Yesterday was possibly one of the worst days of my life as I had managed to really offend my homestay woman on Friday night and also had the hangover from hell. Basically I had popped out ´for a few drinks´with a friend from the Spanish school and her friends and ended up in the middle of gringoland (the Mariscal) at some club until the early hours, dancing about with my friends and a Kiwi guy I had met. The kiwi guy was walking me home and we were just walking round and round in circles giggling over this map and when I eventually found my way back I staggered in only to be faced with a VERY ANGRY homestay lady. She was shouting at me (I caught ´tu no respectes la casa´ but not much else of it) and I was desperately trying to look sober while slurring back at her, probably in French. Needless to say the next day I could not face her and I am still avoiding being in the apartment as much as possible. Cringe. Call it cultural difference but I think as they treat me like a lodger and never invite me to anything, it is a little odd to then tell me what time I should come in at night, but it is their house and I guess 5am is quite excessive! However, after a bad start the day turned out well and my friends and I went to see Ecuador play Venezuela (for 15 dollars - bargain!). The atmosphere was incredible, and so much less masculine and aggressive than the atmosphere at football matches in Manchester. It was truly amazing to be at that match, even in the torrential rain (now a daily occurence!). I have started writing stuff for Martijn´s website and a bit for the newspaper this week, so I feel more purposeful, and I am enjoying spending time with some of the people I have met here, mostly gringos, so not good for my Spanish! Today Catriona, Steve and I caught the bus to a nearby village to see the Mitad del Mundo and its cheesy gimmicks - it is a farce really but great fun doing the water and egg experiments to show that it really is the equator (which it isn´t - it is about 150 metres off!). We also met up with my Spanish teacher Nancy, who is an absolute star and the most wonderful Ecuadorian person I have met so far, and she and her husband took us to see the Inca remains (stunning) and the crater (beautiful). I have realised that I am most happy when I am out of this scary, polluted city and out in the fresh air and mountains, so I plan to travel about quite a bit more. As you may have picked up, I am still not thrilled by Quito itself and am getting quite tired of being tricked out of extra dollars by taxi drivers. I am trying to be positive about Quito but it is difficult when you don´t even feel safe walking around alone and every local you meet seems to be out for themselves (and as for the majority of Brits and Ozzies I have met - they are like those awful obnoxious people I avoided at university!) I have heard that my boss at the paper is a pretty shady character with quite a bad reputation in the area, so I am in two minds whether to disassociate myself, but then again it is only a few weeks and I have a laugh with the others in the office, plus I am adding to my portfolio so will probably stick with it. On the up side, Quito is a good base for visiting other places (and transport is so easy and cheap), I am enjoying my writing, I´m meeting lots of people and there are plenty of cultural things I still want to go to in the old and new towns. I also think once I have moved into the apartment with the other young chicos and chicas I will have a very different perspective of the place andI certainly won´t have to worry about reporting where I´m going and when, and being back for meals etc etc. Still got lots of language to learn too, including remembering simple phrases and words. There was an amusing incident the other day when I was in a bar and I asked for the bill and the guy didn´t understand me, then I was ranting for about ten minutes about how nobody here understands me even when I´m speaking perfectly clearly, before Catriona´s friend Mike informed me that I had said ´cuesta´instead of ´cuenta´and it wasn´t even the right word! So yeah, I have a long way to go. I can´t wait for tomorrow as bus journeys here are my favourite thing, with so many different types of people getting on and off and cramming on and hanging out of the doorway, and traders jumping on to sell their fruit and bread and so on. So next time I write I will hopefully have stopped moaning about everything!

Quito days and nights

My first full week in Quito was a bit more of a struggle than I had envisaged, as my memories of living abroad had somehow blotted out the difficulties of mastering a language and settling in to another culture. So for a few days, I was feeling quite fragile and come my birthday I resembled a leaky tap as I was ready to burst into tears at the slightest drawback or, indeed, nicety (not much hope there either way!). However, all in all the week was good and I had already met a great group of people with whom to spend the evening of my 25th – at Quito´s cheesy, gringoid, sticky-floored answer to the Raz in Liverpool or Brest´s Red Lion! - so I was alright really and I would put my fragile state down to the overhang of jet lag and general fatigue.

The Spanish school that I have been attending, Apu-Inti (which apparently means senor-sol or Mister Sun in an indigenous language), is absolutely wonderful and the profesors and profesoras there seemingly would do anything for anyone. Alongside the superb intensive one-to-one language classes we are invited to take part in Ecuadorian cookery classes and visits to various museums, which breaks the week up well. On my birthday they made me a cake and sang happy birthday to me in Spanish; admittedly this was slightly embarrassing but I was touched by it. Last Friday night I headed to a salsa club called Seseribo in the Mariscal with one of the teachers and some other students and I was pretty enchanted by the atmosphere and the music, although my own salsa dancing leaves a lot to be desired and I intend to take classes before I attempt to go again! Some guy tried to sweep me away and teach me to salsa but alas he himself was fairly ridiculous with two left feet and reminded me of a Latino uncle at a wedding, so I won´t be practising any of his steps in a hurry. Just to watch other people dancing was amazing and although Ecuador isn´t renowned for its dancing like Cuba is, there are clearly plenty of enthusiasts here to learn from.

Saturday night saw me join the Ozzies (Hannah is Australian) and other westerners at the Secret Garden hostel in the Old Town for an all-you-can-drink slap-up meal complete with burgers and familiar feel-good humour. Much as I would love to integrate, it is quite difficult to do so in this city and I was well in need of some light relief. Feeling much more myself, I then went to meet up with Erin and some others for Martijn´s birthday drinks in the Mariscal and we ended up at a raucous house party full of beautiful Latino boys (I don´t think it was just beer goggles) and muchos language-swapping. Using my frog-radar I managed accidentally to suss out the only French boy in Quito and there we embarked on a conversation that began in Spanish, lapsed into French and ended in English – all very confusing, especially when mixed with tequila.

Although I seem to be managing a social life quite well, I do find my homestay a little bit restricting and exhausting but I appreciate that it is really the best thing for my Spanish. It has been fascinating finding out what Ecuadorians eat for their various meals, and in these parts dinner is invariably sopa (a lovely, thick creamy soup with lots of veggies) followed by rice, meat and fried banana (delicious) and for breakfast scrambled eggs on toast with a hot drink, fresh fruits of all kinds and fresh fruit juice. It is a very ´wholesome´ diet and I could probably never tire of the gorgeous selection of fruits they have here, although perhaps after a month I will be sick of the meat and rice combo (but never the fried platano!). Seriously, Martha and Alejandro are the perfect host family but I value my independence far too much and can´t bear to have everything done for me, so I have found a room to rent in an apartment for my second month here.

Quito is a beautiful city full of charismatic people but I haven´t fallen in love with it as I have with many other cities – perhaps I just like my cities industrial and faceless! Quito is a massive city which is very narrow but stretches for an eternity alongside its mountainous backdrop. On Saturday morning, having been woken up early by my surrogate family, I paid a visit to the Museo del Banco Central, with its varied and interesting array of perfectly crafted Inca domestic tools and ceramics, colonial art and modern paintings, before wandering to the Parque Carolina to catch up on some reading and then lunching in the old town near the Plaza Grande. On the downside it is hard for me to adjust to being somewhere where it is completely unsafe to walk around at night – honestly, all the guide books are like “you WILL get a taxi even if it just two blocks away”and the locals echo the same thing – but I will get used to it. Plus on Saturday afternoon three girls tried to mug me in the old town using the charming method of spitting on my hand to distract me and then opening my front pocket, but luckily I had my arm around it so they were unable to get away with their dirty trick. Definitely not carrying all my stuff around again though! I haven´t seen as much poverty as I expected to (save that awakening for Peru) but there is supposedly a lot of petty crime and random attacks here, sadly, on both tourists and natives.

The Quito City Paper itself is quite shambolic and disorganised, which got me down last week as I felt as though I had no purpose and not enough work (no really, after Adfero that is particularly hard to deal with!!) but I have just sent Martijn an extensive list of my story ideas and I am excited that my next few weeks of work consists of exploring various bars, restaurants and music venues and writing about them; jammy, huh?! I am also considering going with Hannah to Cotopaxi next week to do some horseback riding and to climb the volcano itself, if I can rearrange my lessons and convince Martijn to let us both be out of the office. Either way, I am anticipating much more fun to be had in the weeks to come, and I am quite amazed by how much Spanish I am coming to understand and speak, so I think that will enrich my experiences along the way too.

I hope Manchester and your various other towns are treating you all well; you will all no doubt be amused to hear that once again I have chosen a location with high rainfall - every time! Although the mornings are hot and sunny and I know that approximately what time it will rain each day and when I need to take my trendy cagoule along with my other highly trendy travelling clothes (wearing the same three outfits day in day out is also quite hard to fathom at first!).

Culture shock

Only a few days in Ecuador and already I feel as though I have a lifetime of stories to tell. This country is so diverse and constantly surprising and although it may be clichéd to say so, my life is being transformed by the things I have seen. Where to start…

Before I had really even had chance to settle in to life in Quito, I set off on Friday on a trip with the other writers from the paper, a few hours´bus ride away to the northern highlands. We were based in Ibarra, the ´white city´ of this region – which basically means it is a major colonial town with pretty Spanish-stylee white houses.

Ibarra itself is gorgeous and we had a bit of a hike around the city, as well as a couple of nice evenings eating Mexican food and drinking wine in its Café Arte (which was the only place serving alcohol). Sunday was the big election for Ecuadorians and they have this rule over here that the weekend of an election is a ´dry weekend´. I think the logic is that a lot of people spend their weekends getting blind drunk (esp in the villages) and they would then go and vote for some random politican whilst in their inebriated state. As all the politicians seem to be as corrupt as one another, I don´t think it would make much difference either way.

On Saturday we set off early to take the áutoferro´(a curious, colourful open decked bus on rails) to Salinas, an Afro-Ecuadorian town named after its salt mines, which should strictly have taken around two hours but we were sharing the ride with Ecuador´s four ´reinas´-beauty queens – and a film crew, the purpose of which was to raise the profile of the region, but resulted in us stopping, reversing and re-filming things several times over.

Nonetheless, it was a stunningly beautiful journey around the valley of the Rio Chota with its breath-grasping fields of sugar cane and mountainous backdrop. As we tootled along the tracks we were obliged to duck to avoid being beheaded by stray cables hanging down and then plunged into darkness as we travelled underneath a rocky tunnel, after which the train proceeded across a precarious looking bridge with no rails, straddling the deep valley. All a bit of a safety certificate-less fairground ride but muchos fun anyway.

On reaching our destination, Erin and I hopped on another bus to the Oasis hotel and water park, joined by the beauty queens and a band playing the area´s bewitching mixture of salsa and bumba, while Martijn and Hannah went off to interview someone else about something else.

The day then took Erin and I to Huncal, another Afro-Ecuadorian community, where she interviewed people and I attempted to converse with the kids who were mobbing me and we both watched the guys playing football on their gravely pitch. Apparently one third of the country´s professional footballers originate from the village and so despite their poverty most of the young lads dream of fame.

A few erroneous bus rides later and we were on our way towards Mascarilla, a hub of creative activity, where a passing truck carrying half the village´s population picked us up and took us to our destination, giving me a real authentic taste of their lifestyle and the true bohemian dream of travelling South America. We came back down the hill at sundown and saw our surroundings in their full beauty; I can hardly believe all I have seen is real, as it is so far removed from what I know.

Yesterday was equally eye-opening as I went to Otavalo with Hannah and Erin and skimmed the market before hiring bikes and undertaking a strenuous and long ride up the mountain to see the lake and the indigenous communities that surround it. At one point, I became separated from the others and all my false sense of security fell away as I realised I was stranded on a mountain top, without my purse or water, exhausted and unable to communicate. The scenario ended with me waving my arms around dramatically at some indigenous women and attempting some poor schmangle of English, French and Spanish at them to communicate that ´jái perdu mis amigas´– at which point Erin came cycling around the corner (what relief!) and enlightened me that the people I was speaking to hardly spoke Spanish let alone any other European languages.

The only frustration that I have is that I have such limited Spanish and that even when I understand what is being said to me, I cannot reply coherently as yet and I intend to work on this as rapidly as possible to make the most of my time in this beautiful country. I had my first Spanish lesson this morning and moved in with my host family at lunchtime so with that and my guessing-the-word-from-the-French-word technique I am expecting myself to progress in no time!