Happy 9th Birthday Zephyr 2010!!
On my return to Quito I soon discovered John Lennon and that there was a growing anti-sentiment towards the machoism so prominent in the country, including a concert(!) against it and a lot of feminist graffiti around Mariscal.
We arrived at El Cafecito, a hostel-cum- restaurant and stayed the night in our lovely room with amazingly shit beds. The next morning I transferred out to more of a bed and breakfast type place called Galapagos Natural Life and Yvo & Helen, booted out of their Cafecito room, followed me over. The next few days I spent enjoying more food and coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee! Yvo and Helen & I spent a half day in Old Town - we went to a photography exhibition we thought was recommended by my English friends (still not sure) where we saw various photos of subjects like indigenous women with beer, out of focus people with rubbish and blue-themed kids play-fighting. They then spent a good day organising their week-long Galapagos trip (I was jealous until I heard the $1000 price tag)
and we then said good-bye after having great times together. Thanks guys! I watched a great movie at the hostel - `The Boys are Back`, a recent Australian/English flick with a prominently Sigur Ros soundtrack. Absolutely fantastic, and not in a `Date Movie` kind of way.
I purchased the Guide to Hiking & Climbing in Ecuador, with excellent and comprehensive coverage of lots of great hiking throughout the Andes and more. I decided to do one of the day trips up to the cloudforest close to Quito on a Monday but was fundamentally thwarted. The first section of the trip to Cotocallao was straight-forward but after that some typical South American direction giving and refusal to say the words `I don`t know` sent me spinning in circles not to mention walking along some quite iffy backstreets in suburban Quito. I did get to see a poorer side of Quito but decided after an hour of searching to abandon the ordeal and return to the safety of Mariscal.
and we then said good-bye after having great times together. Thanks guys! I watched a great movie at the hostel - `The Boys are Back`, a recent Australian/English flick with a prominently Sigur Ros soundtrack. Absolutely fantastic, and not in a `Date Movie` kind of way.I purchased the Guide to Hiking & Climbing in Ecuador, with excellent and comprehensive coverage of lots of great hiking throughout the Andes and more. I decided to do one of the day trips up to the cloudforest close to Quito on a Monday but was fundamentally thwarted. The first section of the trip to Cotocallao was straight-forward but after that some typical South American direction giving and refusal to say the words `I don`t know` sent me spinning in circles not to mention walking along some quite iffy backstreets in suburban Quito. I did get to see a poorer side of Quito but decided after an hour of searching to abandon the ordeal and return to the safety of Mariscal.
There I searched out the Botanic Gardens, only to find it was $3.50 to get in, which is essentially equivalent to 8 or 9$ here in Australia. Stuff off¡¡ So I didn`t go. Probably should have but it wasn`t that big anyway. Instead I sought out the Guayasamin Museum. Ecuadorian Oswaldo Guayasamin designed buildings, made sculptures but primarily painted. His paintings were obviously influenced by Picasso and cubism, but he drew such emotions from his characters that it impressed me no end. Zoe, I remember your description of how you felt looking at Hunderwasser`s works in Vienna - I think I felt a similar way towards this artwork. Very impressive.
That evening two Israeli girls at my hostel were celebrating the Passover weekend with a special vegetable and dumpling soup which they kindly offered to share with me. Yum yum, muy muy... rico. The next day I visited a great gym (run by an Irishman, not Ecuadorian, of course) with all you could want really except for a sauna that went hot enough!!
After my failed attempt at a day-hike, my failed attempt to skype Zephyr for his birthday and my failing attempts at securing satifactory volunteer work I felt the need for a cleanse. I had been trying to find hiking partners through the internet to no avail so I went to the South Am Ex Club but flopped there also. Oh well, hiking alone can be some of the best hikes. So I shopped (including purchasing this very exclusive upmarket Guava Jam - see photo), packed, prepared, stored excess stuff and said goodbye to Galapagos and their awesome breakfasts. The night before I had attended the SAE trivia night at an over-priced English pub and met some lovely Americans Julien and Dominique and Hannes from Estonia (whereever that is...). He had the weirdest and coolest accent in history. Trivially though, who shot JR on Dallas, who would win in a fight between a polar bear and a lion and which country has the best looking men¿ Well, Sue-Ellen`s sister, the polar bear and Australia, of course. The hint for the best-looking men question was there was one of them in the room. My being the only Australian in the room everyone immediately saw why it was such a dead giveaway hint. Afterwards I thought of lots of suave and sexy things to say to the ladies and audience in general like `As I`m one of the best-looking men in the world... ` and something to do with `The thunder from Down Under`. It felt cool just thinking about saying those things.
Now if there`s one imperative reason to avoid splitting up with someone after you have children together I can tell you what that is. `For the children!`. Nope. Because God will be angry¿ Try again. It`s actually so you don`t have to deal with the Child Support Agency(CSA). The Government must hand-pick the most unhygenic, gutter-crawling, baby-eating, souless bullies from the Official Guild of Dip-shits and selectively breed them together to achieve these sub-human mutant spawn completely incapable of any kind of thought or action even remotely humane. Disclaimer: if you work for the CSA please don`t take this to heart or seriously, take it VERY seriously. :)
The tenuous link there was that I was a bit late getting going for having to deal with the CSA long-distance style on my morning of departure for Sangay National Park. So... brave the first of two Pick-pocket Rockets (or as the locals call them the Ecovia and Trole express buses). Travel a good hour out to the south bus terminal. Take a bus to Riobamba. In Ecuador`s bus system you can`t pay more to get a better service. The buses are reasonably comfortable but have no air-conditioning or toilets. The driving is OK compared to other South American situations I`ve been in, but the most annoying thing is the constant stopping to pick up more people. So you can be guaranteed of a over-full bus for the entire journey. They let on children up to about the age of 8 without a ticket, who then occupy seats until they have to sit on parents` laps. People including our mobile salesmen friends clog the aisles and make it quite uncomfortable at times for full fee paying sitters. Just my spit, to let you know. Not really that bad. He he, one rica (rich woman) paid for a seat (and whole ice-cream) for her pedigree Scottish terrier. Funny. Also funny is the photo of the back of another bus with some rather intersting versions of the names `Jonathan and Christopher`.
Once in large Riobamba I taxied over to the other bus terminal and market to find out I was to wait 2.5hrs for the bus to Candelaria. No problems - Eat, internet, drink fresh coconut juice and restrain myself from starting a fight with staring and rude locals. On the breathtakingly beautiful trip to Candelaria I chatted with a local medical student about the Chilean earthquake, volcanoes, weeds and skydiving (or paragliding, Im not sure). The scenery was amazing, despite the ravaged landscape. We passed through a beautiful valley filled with farms and climbed next to insanely steep cliffs into a smaller valley past rich soils growing lots of corn and potatoes. The smiling and laughing locals were predominantly an indigenous people who dressed in Northcote hats, colourful woolen shawls and fine jewelery.
It grew dark coming into Candelaria and I thought I wouldn`t make it to the Hacienda Releche that night... but upon asking for directions found it quite simply. The Hacienda was a lovely old farmhouse converted to a great hostel. I was exhausted! After sleeping on a terribly limp mattress for a week in Quito I was rewarded with a bed of about the feel of a concrete bust of a hard rectangular German bread.
That evening two Israeli girls at my hostel were celebrating the Passover weekend with a special vegetable and dumpling soup which they kindly offered to share with me. Yum yum, muy muy... rico. The next day I visited a great gym (run by an Irishman, not Ecuadorian, of course) with all you could want really except for a sauna that went hot enough!!
After my failed attempt at a day-hike, my failed attempt to skype Zephyr for his birthday and my failing attempts at securing satifactory volunteer work I felt the need for a cleanse. I had been trying to find hiking partners through the internet to no avail so I went to the South Am Ex Club but flopped there also. Oh well, hiking alone can be some of the best hikes. So I shopped (including purchasing this very exclusive upmarket Guava Jam - see photo), packed, prepared, stored excess stuff and said goodbye to Galapagos and their awesome breakfasts. The night before I had attended the SAE trivia night at an over-priced English pub and met some lovely Americans Julien and Dominique and Hannes from Estonia (whereever that is...). He had the weirdest and coolest accent in history. Trivially though, who shot JR on Dallas, who would win in a fight between a polar bear and a lion and which country has the best looking men¿ Well, Sue-Ellen`s sister, the polar bear and Australia, of course. The hint for the best-looking men question was there was one of them in the room. My being the only Australian in the room everyone immediately saw why it was such a dead giveaway hint. Afterwards I thought of lots of suave and sexy things to say to the ladies and audience in general like `As I`m one of the best-looking men in the world... ` and something to do with `The thunder from Down Under`. It felt cool just thinking about saying those things.
Now if there`s one imperative reason to avoid splitting up with someone after you have children together I can tell you what that is. `For the children!`. Nope. Because God will be angry¿ Try again. It`s actually so you don`t have to deal with the Child Support Agency(CSA). The Government must hand-pick the most unhygenic, gutter-crawling, baby-eating, souless bullies from the Official Guild of Dip-shits and selectively breed them together to achieve these sub-human mutant spawn completely incapable of any kind of thought or action even remotely humane. Disclaimer: if you work for the CSA please don`t take this to heart or seriously, take it VERY seriously. :)
The tenuous link there was that I was a bit late getting going for having to deal with the CSA long-distance style on my morning of departure for Sangay National Park. So... brave the first of two Pick-pocket Rockets (or as the locals call them the Ecovia and Trole express buses). Travel a good hour out to the south bus terminal. Take a bus to Riobamba. In Ecuador`s bus system you can`t pay more to get a better service. The buses are reasonably comfortable but have no air-conditioning or toilets. The driving is OK compared to other South American situations I`ve been in, but the most annoying thing is the constant stopping to pick up more people. So you can be guaranteed of a over-full bus for the entire journey. They let on children up to about the age of 8 without a ticket, who then occupy seats until they have to sit on parents` laps. People including our mobile salesmen friends clog the aisles and make it quite uncomfortable at times for full fee paying sitters. Just my spit, to let you know. Not really that bad. He he, one rica (rich woman) paid for a seat (and whole ice-cream) for her pedigree Scottish terrier. Funny. Also funny is the photo of the back of another bus with some rather intersting versions of the names `Jonathan and Christopher`.
Once in large Riobamba I taxied over to the other bus terminal and market to find out I was to wait 2.5hrs for the bus to Candelaria. No problems - Eat, internet, drink fresh coconut juice and restrain myself from starting a fight with staring and rude locals. On the breathtakingly beautiful trip to Candelaria I chatted with a local medical student about the Chilean earthquake, volcanoes, weeds and skydiving (or paragliding, Im not sure). The scenery was amazing, despite the ravaged landscape. We passed through a beautiful valley filled with farms and climbed next to insanely steep cliffs into a smaller valley past rich soils growing lots of corn and potatoes. The smiling and laughing locals were predominantly an indigenous people who dressed in Northcote hats, colourful woolen shawls and fine jewelery.
It grew dark coming into Candelaria and I thought I wouldn`t make it to the Hacienda Releche that night... but upon asking for directions found it quite simply. The Hacienda was a lovely old farmhouse converted to a great hostel. I was exhausted! After sleeping on a terribly limp mattress for a week in Quito I was rewarded with a bed of about the feel of a concrete bust of a hard rectangular German bread.
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