Orientation Tour

So my camera has slowly deteriorated to the point that it now is, where less than half the screen is completely black and taking pictures is useless.The good thing is that this has happened at the point where I was just starting orientation and have already done/seen quite a few of the things that are included in the orientation. For some of the new sights, I used the camera on my phone. The first day was a pretty simple, laid back day and most of the students had not yet arrived by the time some of us went out to get dinner and drinks.

For Tuesday morning our group of about 40something international students (from US, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, Sierra Leone and Mexico) were divided into two groups to explore the old city (Centro Historico) of Quito and to visit Capilla del Hombre--a museum of Ecuador's most famous artist, Oswaldo Guayasamin's--most famous works. This year no photographs were permitted inside the museum but fortunately for me, I was able to last year. For dinner, I brought a bunch of us to La Ronda (since not many others have ever been to Quito before) for dinner but we were split up into two restaurants because there was way too many of us.

On Wednesday we headed off to Otavalo in the same two groups, with stops at nearby towns to meet with the Cotocachi weaver family, to listen to traditional indigenous music and to a shaman's house to see a ritual cleansing with Axel, one of the students, as the volunteer. The ritual was the only new thing that I had seen so far on orientation, and  I asked to be the volunteer but because the ritual involves flames and requires most of your clothes to be removed to prevent the fire from catching, my director thought it would be better to have a male volunteer.

Thursday morning we all went to Otavalo's market but since I had just been there last Saturday, I didn't buy too much. After we finished up at the market we headed to Cuicocha, an active crater lake. We took a boat trip around the lake and were given canelazo after we got off. At Cuicocha they served us canelazo without any sugar cane liquor, which made it to cinnamon-y and not sweet enough for my tastes. We headed back to Quito for the night and some of us went salsa dancing in the Mariscal district after dinner.

On Friday morning we woke up early (again) to head down toward Riobamba. We stopped at Salasaca for lunch where we had a typical lunch of choclo (corn), potatoes, and vegetables. After lunch a few people demonstrated a ritual dance and then some of the students joined in. After that we split up and learned about the dyes used for the artisan crafts (basically larvae guts) and the process of weaving.

Chimborazo

Yesterday morning we woke up, had breakfast and headed to Chimborazo--an inactive volcano that has the highest summit in Ecuador--to do a short climb from the first refuge to the second one. Although there wasn't a ton of distance between the two refuges, we were about 5,000 meters above sea level (just over 16,000 feet), making it a little bit more difficult to breathe.


I reached the second refuge with the first group, where we rested and took a bunch of pictures before heading back down. When everyone returned to the buses we started our trip down to Guayaquil, where the weather is so much warmer. We arrived around 6pm and I headed back to my host family's house. Tomorrow we will be meeting up for a city tour and picking classes.

Martin resting on the way up Chimborazo

Futbol, Cuy and Otavalo

from our seats

On Wednesday after meeting up with Javi we headed to a futbol game for the Copa Sudamerica between Liga, a team from Quito and a team from Venezuela. We got there at halftime and missed the only goal of the game but we still had a lot of fun and got Liga jerseys for 5 dollars outside the stadium.

 On Thursday night headed to La Ronda for dinner, which is a cobblestone road filled with tons of small restaurants and artisan shops and closed to cars so that we are able to walk freely through the streets. We had a dinner of one enormous empanada filled with cheese and covered in sugar that we split between about 8 of us and drank canelazo--a popular sugar cane liquor with cinnamon.

CUY! (aka, guinea pig)

Friday morning we headed to Parque Metropolitano  which has some amazing views of the city and of the nearby volcanoes. We hiked around for a little bit and then headed back for a big lunch with all of Javi´s family. For the night we headed to Javi´s family´s farm in Quinche to grill cuy and steak. The cuy was good but I just had a bite, the rest was all Dave´s.

On Sunday morning we got up around 9 to head off to Otavalo. Every Saturday the town has a large open air indigenous market--the largest in Latin America. We bought tons of alpaca items--blankets, scarves, socks, sweaters, and a little alpaca teddy bear for my nephew. I got Dave a Panama Hat (actually from Ecuador but made famous in Panama) which is made from paja de toquilla and is only grown in Ecuador and we bought tons of other gifts for our friends and family.

 This morning we went  to Parque Condor which is a climb from Otavalo. The park has the Andean Condor--the largest bird that flies, and many other birds that have been rescued from captivity or injured due to deforestation. Those that are able to return to the wild are but many are not able to. We´re headed back to Quito for the night before Dave flies back to New York tomorrow and I meet up with UEES to start my university orientation.

Quito and Pululahua

We left Baños last Sunday morning. Before we could leave though, we had to go back to Arome Cafe y Chocolate for breakfast. We had crepes and pancakes with chocolate syrup and strawberries, chocolate fondue with strawberries, and I had a hot chocolate made from Amazonian cocao. We bought some bars of chocolate, baking cocoa and coffee to bring back home and they also have a spice shop in town where they have everything I could ever want. The restaurant is run by a husband and wife, with their two year old daughter laughing on the counter playing peek a boo with customers.

from the terrace of our hostel

The bus to Quito only took 3 1-2 hours or so and when we got to the Quitumbe terminal we took the city bus 17 stops to a hostel that we reserved in the Old Town part of Quito. A German girl ended up staying in the same dorm as us so I took her and Dave around to show them the parts of Quito that I remembered from last year--the Basilica, the presidential palace and the million churches around the plaza.

On Tuesday Dave and I decided to head to Mitad del Mundo and the Pululahua crater for the day while our friend decided to stay back and book a trip to the Galapagos. The Mitad del Mundo is a little park like thing with the Equatorial monument set where the equatorial line is supposed to be (after GPS, it was discovered that the monument is about 200 meters off), some restaurants and artisan crafts, llamas and little museums.

After taking the routine picture at the monument, we took a bus to Pululahua, an active volcano that contains an agricultural town within the crater. Because of the altitude and the mountains, visibility becomes impossible by about 3pm but we were able to get a decent view around 2pm from the lookout point we hiked to when the clouds passed for a few moments. Because of the constant presence of clouds, our guide told us that the entire town gets water from the clouds and the soil is perfect, making irrigation unnecessary.

from the top of Teleferiqo

On Wednesday we took a taxi to the Teleferiqo--a cable car that climbs up the top of the Pichincha volcano that towers over the city. At the top there are a couple of restaurants, more used to be there when the cable car first opened up but now there are small empty buildings at the top. There are paths to explore more of the volcano but we didn´t spend too much time up there because it was freezing. When we got back into town, we went to La Compañia--a beautiful church that is all gold on the inside--but we were not allowed to take any pictures. After that we got lunch, bought new shoes and met up with Dave´s friend Javier who is originally from Quito.