Evan Hunter's Round The World Diary

Friday, June 24, 2005

Vancouver

Checked into samesun, Went to Museum of antropology in UBC.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Vancouver to Miami via Dallas Fort Worth

I had to get up very early today - 4:00am. It was rather funny as one guy was just getting back from an night out as I was leaving. I quickly got ready, then checked out and ordered a taxi. Walking out the front door of the hostel, a taxi pulled up almost straight away - I don't think it was the one ordered, but I got in it. (There were no shuttle busses at that time of day)
I was soon at the airport, and checked in, then went through the US immigration/customs, which was fairly slow due to the many people there.
I ate some breakfast and bought two books while I was waiting for the boarding call.
The plane took off, there were limited views of vancouver, due to cloud. We were soon over the rocky mountains though, and they were very beautiful from our high altitude. On the far side of them mountains was one or two twisted rivers, then the plains began. The plains stretched away to the horizon in a patchwork of different coloured farm fields. There was an occasional river snaking its way through the plains at a very shallow angle. Near the rivers were often many green circles where farmers had used rotating irrigation systems.
There were some areas that had a lot of cloud, and others that had virtually none. After several hours, we started descending toward Dallas. As we came over the city, I could see that there were many suburb areas where there was only the tiniest patch of green in each property. There were alsomany many swimming pools.
Entering Dallas Fort Worth, I soon realised just how enormous it is. There were TV screens listing the departures and arrivals - There were 15 screens for the departures - about 160 departing flights in the next couple of hours! There were flights to every imaginable place in America.
I bought some lunch, and read whilst waiting for my connection to Miami.
The flight to Miami was uneventful, except for crossing over the vast swamps in Florida. At Miami, I claimed my gear, and went out to where the shuttle busses were. It appeared to be the most disorganised system I've seen for shuttle busses - It took almost half an hour before I got on a bus/van - I was considering taking a taxi instead by then. Outside of the terminal, the air was very hot and humid.
We traveled east toward Miami Beach. I could only see the lights of the city, but it looked like a big city. By the last bit of twilight I could see a huge classic anvil top lightning cloud to the north. We crossed over the water to the Miami Beach Peninsula, and I was soon at the Clay hotel/hostel. It is a very strange setup - to get to my dorm room, I had to walk down a pedestrian only street past several restaurants and shops with heaps of people dining, and then go through a gate to the back part of the hostel. Fortunately the room had air conditioning.
I dumped my stuff and went out to check out South Beach on a Saturday night.
I very soon felt underdressed. Everyone was dressed in trendy, stylish, dressy clothes, (mostly skimpy due to the climate). It was apparent that this was the place to go to be seen and to people watch. I walked out to the road adjacent to the beach, and walked along it, looking at the art deco hotels along the strip which were lit with various colours of neon. I also checked out the thousands of beautiful people crowded along the street, with their expensive cars and motorbikes. It was a little overwhelming, and not really my scene, but was interesting to see nevertheless. Many of the signs posted everywhere were in both english and spanish, and I quickly noticed that the majoritory of people were latino or african american, and a large percentage of conversations were in spanish.
I bought some pizza for dinner, and went to bed after 11.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Miami to Quito

I got up fairly early today. After plunging into the hot humid world outside, I bought some breakfast, then some washing powder, and did my laundry, wandering around the area whilst it was washing.
After packing and checking out, I walked north through the city, got some lunch and some money for equador, then walked south along the beach. There were areas of deck chairs and umbrellas for rent spaced along the beach, with the occasional little food/drink cart, and evenly spaced lifeguard watchtowers. There were quite a lot of people already there, however the weather didn't look good - big storm clouds were all around, although mostly not right overhead, and it did rain for a while briefly. I wanted to go for a swim, but I couldn't find anywhere to get changed. After walking probably 2km or more, I eventually found some public toilets that I used to change, then went back to the water and went for a quick (20min) swim. The water was beautiful after walking around in the hot humid air. There were only very small waves forming a shorebreak. By 1:00 I had to leave, and walked quickly back to the hostel after changing again. At the hostel I caught a taxi to the airport, as the shuttle bus was apparently booked full?!.

At the airport, I checked in, which was fairly painless, bought some food and drink, and read whilst I waited for my boarding call.
Whilst in Miami I'd noticed that many of the signs were in spanish as well as english, that the majoritory of people there were either latino or african american, and that some didn't seem to speak english at all. It was almost like I was already in a latin American country.
The plane flight was uneventful, except for a beautiful sunset.
In the airport at Quito, the signs were still in english and spanish. Above the Immigration section, was an area where people from outside could see the arriving passengers - it was jam packed with hundreds of people. I didn't have to say a word when going through immigration, which was probably just as well, considering how little spanish I knew. I collected my pack, then went out through the customs. After this I saw that there were hundreds more people waiting in the foyer. After briefly being accosted by a guard who wanted to check my baggage was indeed mine ( I didn't realise that there was a luggage tag stapled to the boarding pass envelope), I scanned the crowd, and soon found a sign with my name on it. I met outside with the woman holding the sign, and she said (in spanish) that her name was Alexandra. Fortunately she spoke a little english.
We found her car (a VW beetle) and soon were driving through Quito. On the way I noticed that the road rules appear to be optional in Quito, and that there is a great deal of security, with high fences topped with spikes or broken glass.
We pulled up outside a big gate in a high wall, then went inside. Strangely. It appeared to be a half built small appartment block, with the top part unfinished, but some of the appartments finished. I was shown into a small unit with a bed, bathroom, and small sitting area, separate from, but next to their main house. I found that there was another student there already - Florien (Germany), then was introduced to the family.
After some talking (of which I understood only a tiny bit), I headed for bed.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Otovalo

Rising early (6:00) today, I quickly got ready and had breakfast, before walking down to the school. (Arriving at 7:00)
The director of the school (Martha) arrived and soon after, a car. The 4 students (including me) piled into the car, with the driver (Fernando?), or at least tried to - I discovered that in the front seat of the car, there was far too little headroom - I got in the back instead, which was still a little cramped, but was much better.
We drove north, taking quite some time to get out of Quito. Soon though, we started descending into an enormous, extremely dry valley. Reaching the bottom, we went up the other side. We did this again with another dry valley, where there were occasionally cactii on the roadside. At one point, we stopped briefly at a lookout on the side of the road, overlooking one of the wide, deep valleys.
After about 2 hours, we came to Otavalo, and we were taken to a small bakery where there were people making a strange type of bread/pastry. There were two people mixing and kneading an enormous tub of dough, and then another table of people taking bits off another enormous pile of dough, and forming it into a long flat rectangle, rolling one edge over, then slicing it into many thin strips. There was a wood oven in one end of the building.
After this, we went to the Otovalo Markets. I soon discovered that it was a very big market. We agreed to meet up again at 11:30, then went off to explore on our own. I discovered that the market was even bigger than I'd thought - it must have been at least 10 times as big as any I'd seen elsewhere. The main big square had hundreds of venors selling all types of arts and crafts. There were ponchos, hats, shirts, jumpers, wall hangings, rugs, paintings, carvings, jewelery, musical instruments (including pan pipes) and much more. Almost all of the vendors were indiginous people (they look and dress quite differently from the spanish descended people). From this main square, the market sprawled up every sidestreet, and in places covered streets quite some distance from the main square. There was a large section devoted to fruit and vegetables, enough so that I wondered who would eat all that food. Other stalls were selling CD's, DVD's, homewares and many other products. There were people walking around holding armfulls of goods that they were selling. There were a fair number of tourists there also. It was very crowded, with the stalls being quite close together, and a lot of people walking past them.
I didn't buy anything as many of the things are made of plant or animal products, which would be hard to post through customs, and I certainly didn't have room in my pack to carry anything extra, plus I figured I'd have time to buy souvineers later, as I had two months in Equador.
From Otovalo, we drove to Penguache, which is a small indigenous village, and walked through the outer wall of what had been centuries ago, an indigenous slave labour prison. There was a forest reserve there, and we walked down a path a short way to a pretty waterfall. There were quite a number of people there, but surprisingly, most seemed to be locals.
Walking to the forest, we had passed a small cooking fire, which surprised me, as it had a very familiar smell - eucalypt wood smoke - a smell that Sydney experiences every Christmas/New Years with bushfires. In fact the entire forest was eucalypt, and I could have easily been mistaken in thinking I was in Australia.
After this, we drove to Cotacachi, where we had lunch (almuerzo), and then drove to the crater-lake Laguna Cuicocha, where our driver dropped us so that we could walk 5-10 minutes along the near cliff shores of the lake to a restaurant/boat dock. There, we boarded a small motor boat, after waiting in the sun for enough other passengers. The boat took us halfway around the lake, and then through the narrow reed covered passage between the two islands in the center of the lake. Much of the lake had cliffs on the shore, but I didn't particularly enjoy it, as I don't much like noisy motor boats and the weather over the lake was quite overcast.
We returned to Cotacachi, where we walked up the main street, which is lined with shops selling all kinds of leather products. None of us felt like buying leather however, so soon returned to the car. On the way however, we witnessed a very different type of traffic accident - a man galloping on a horse bareback down the mainstreet ran into the side of a taxi that pulled out of a sidestreet suddenly. The horses chest hit the car - fortunately it had started trying to stop, so didn't hit too hard.
The trip back to Quito seemed to take a very long time, and it was fairly hot in the car, and everyone (except the driver) dozed - I was pretty tired as I had only had about 5 hours sleep.
Finally we arrived back in Quito. I said bye to the others, and went back to the house, to dinner, then to bed.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

El Panicillo & The Virgin of Quito

My spanish classes are progressing slowly, I am finding that there are so many words to remember, and the verbs are quite difficult, as there are at least 6 possible conjugations of each verb in the present tense. It would be nice if it were possible to download all the words into my head like in the movie "The Matrix"!
After spanish class today, several new students (including an Aussie), Versha, a teacher, and the shool director (Martha) went to el Panicillo, which is a hill immediately south of Quitos Old town. Atop the hill stands the huge 41m statue of the virgin. Litterally translated, el Panicillo means "the breadroll" or "the little breadloaf"
We caught a bus to the western side of the hill, going through two tunnels which were very full of the huge quantities of fumes released by buses and trucks.
There was a short road, then a longer set of stairs going up the western side of the hill. It was fairly hard work in the thin air, especially for those who had just arrived.
We eventaully arrived at the top of the hill, and had great views of the statue towering above us, as well as Quito laid out below us.
After looking at the views and taking photos, we went inside the base/plinth of the statue, and (for $1) we were able to climb up stairs to the top of the base/plinth, where there was a circular balcony at the bottom of the aluminium statue. The views were awesome, with Quito stretching out to the horizon in the north and south, with the old town immediatly below to the north, and Mt Pinchincha to the north west. We found that the bottom part of the statue is actually a huge model of the earth, which we found our various countries on.
Below the statue to the north is an water cistern which is hundreds of years old. We walked down to it, then started down the stairs toward the old town. I asked Martha about this as the guidebook said not to do this under any circumstances. It was a very rough part of town, with two prisons there, and is completely out of bounds at night, however Martha said that they'd never had a problem in the many years she had been doing it, and we were in a group of at least ten.
Eventually we made it back down to the old town, and caught the bus back to the school, where I used the internet for a while before going back to the house for dinner and bed.

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