The Spring Break within Spring Break

I’m back! Sorry for the delays in posts but I realized I’m not quite as dedicated to this blog as I hoped to be.   However, I figured that this blog will be my best bet for remembering my time here in South America and also stopping now would give Adam Gallagher one more thing to rip on me for – I can’t give him that satisfaction.           

The Saturday after we returned from the Galapagos, we took a trip to a big indigenous market called Otavalo.  There were just blocks with every inch of space completely covered in tents selling basically anything you wanted.  You would walk down the streets and as soon as you turned to take a second look at a good, the venders would be all over you.  The most fun part about it was that you were able to barter for everything you bought, and it was like a game to see who could get all their stuff for the cheapest price.     At one point, I wanted to buy my mom a hand painted dish and the guy was asking for 14 dollars for it.  By the end of it, I used my magic to get 2 for ten dollars total.  Also, I got some blankets down from 30 dollars to 11 dollars each and alpaca jackets, one of the comfiest pieces of clothing I’ve ever worn, from 28 to 12 dollars.  Needless to say, I’m the bargaining master.   Later that afternoon, we went to a restaurant that laid right in the summit of a volcano.  Although it wasn’t active, it was pretty awesome looking.

Later that week, I finally went out with my host sister, Majo.  She also is 21, but rarely ever goes out and is pretty shy. Anyways, she asked me to go to a barbeque with her at her friends house, luckily it was at house of another host family so I knew at least one other person there, even better that he knew English.  It was weird first getting there because greeting everyone is awkward in Ecuador.  You have to go up to everyone you see and greet each person individually with a kiss on the cheek, and half the time I couldn’t remember if I had already been introduced to them or not and so I’m pretty sure I attempted second kisses, which led to surprises on the receiving end.   However, by the end of the night we settled down and was able to even make jokes in Spanish (I’m either quite funny in Spanish or they were just laughing at me for how ridiculous I sound).  Things got really interesting when Majo whipped out the cards and we started playing Kings, especially when we got to Never Have I Ever – I may have admitted to being a druggie whore, but I would not have known.  This actually surprised me though because after two months here I feel like I can understand almost all of the conversations that I have with people, even if my speaking hasn’t improved that much, yet at this barbeque I found it really difficult to understand what was going on.  I’m thinking that it’s either cause they were all young kids just talking extremely fast or they were mumbling because they were drunk.

            Thursday night, I went to another Liga game, but this one was better because it was a night game and an international game against an Argentinean team.   We sat a lot closer to the really crazy fans this time, called the Muertas Blancas, who never sat down or shut up the entire time.  They actually brought their own fireworks and flares into the game and would shoot them off each time Liga did something good.   We were able to see another 3 sweet goals and finally learned that chants that everyone cheers after them, which made us feel like we were really part of the crowd.  From that game, we went to the bus station to begin our journey to Playas for Carnaval, a huge South American where everyone gets the following Monday and Tuesday off from work and parties throughout the entire weekend.  

The 8 hour bus ride from Quito to Guayaquil was probably one of the most miserable rides of my life.   I sat in the seat directly behind the driver, and the entire night I had to listen to his horrible radio music that sounds like a soundtrack from a horror movie.  I maybe slept 10 minutes the entire trip.   From Guayaquil we took another 3 hour bus to the city of Playas and made our way to our house for the next five days.   It was a really nice house that had three cabins, that fit 10 people altogether, (but we had another sleep on the floor) and had a nice pool, a place to grill, and a direct path to the beach.  For most of the days it was just basically beach days, hanging by the pool, swimming in the waves, tanning, and making fires on the beach.   But other nights things got pretty crazy.   One night we went to the Washington kids hotel, the other kids who go to the school we go to in Quito, and basically our groups just didn’t get along well with each other.  We ended up breaking a couple chairs, their screen door, one boy in our group ended up punching a girl in the throat because she called his shirt ugly and threw a drink in his face, cooking all of the food in their fridge, and many other unmentionables.  Although I was not a part of this recklessness, it was an interesting experience to be a part of.  Understandably, we were not invited back, and we got a phone call the next night saying they actually were kicked out of their hotel and had to find another hostel to stay that night.    Another night when we went into town, a guy in our group climbed over the railing of the second floor of a bar we were on, and fell through it – we tried to escape sneakily, and somehow managed although we were basically the only white people in the entire city so we didn’t blend in well.  Later in the night, my sandals broke, and one of my friends danced on the streets for money so I could buy new ones, which we then proceeded to barter for.  He had some pretty impressive dance moves I guess, because he made 10 dollars in probably about 10 minutes. 

However, the real dance moves did not really come out until the last night we were there, which turned out to be one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had.  We started the night with our usual transportation into town,  hitch hiking in the back of pick up trucks that would drive down the main road.  From the back of this, we had a huge bag of water balloons that we would launch at anyone in sight – even when we would pass the cops and they would do nothing.  At one point, one of the guys took off his shirt and was swinging it over his head when he lost it,  only to retrieve it five minutes later when a random taxi drove up next to us to hand it back to him.   When we got to town,  we soon realized that we were out of place because of one thing thing (other than being white) – we didn’t have huge foam cans to carry around and ambush people with.  The other two girls and I managed to talk our way into getting them for free, and that’s when the real fun began.  My first target was the street-performing transvestite made us his center of his stand-up routine the night before – on a mission, I went into his circle, sprayed him in the face and sprinted away.  Ahh, the sweet taste of revenge.   Right after that however, I was ambushed from behind from some Ecuadorian who smudged black paint/tar/charcoal, who knows, over my face.  At the time I thought it was a normal Carnaval activity, but now recalling the event, I can’t seem to remember anyone else that night but the girls in our group who had this happen to them.    Finally we made our way to the beach side of town, where we saw a small stage.  Naturally, we all jumped on stage and started a dance party.  Yet, this stage only gave us a taste of the stardom we wanted, so we moseyed down the beach about a hundred yards to see a humongous stage with about 400 people surrounding it and lights and music blaring.   As we got closer, we could here the MC addressing the crowd, “and that was our last contestant…who do you think is the winner?”  Immediately, one of the boys sprints over to the stage and yells, “one more contestant, we have one more contestant here!”  While the man stares at him confused,  the other boys hoists myself and the two other girls onto the stage, which stood probably 12 feet off the ground.  About 5 minutes later, the boys joined us, and there were 8 gringos simply owning the stage.  I was told later that night that I had busted some of the best dance moves I ever have – now if only I could remember what they were.  In total, from the two dance contests, we won prizes of 24 beers, but more importantly was the stardom.  As soon as we jumped down from the stage, each of us were encircled by Ecuadorians following us around and asking us for photos.    Although there was a Backstreet Boys concert back in Quito that night, we felt like we were the real stars in Ecuador.

            Now I’m back in Quito, with only a week and a half left here, then its off to Peru.  It’s crazy how fast time has gone by, but hopefully we can make a few more great memories before we move on to conquer another South American pais.