It has been a week of comings and goings. Our month long experiment into Chris's facial hair finally came to an end with no substantive growth recorded between days 10 and 28. We blunted a razorblade trying to de-Yeti him, and at one point almost came to blows after I stabbed him in the face with the nail scissors while pruning him in the chin area, but I am pleased to report that he now looks normal and smells bewitchingly of lavender shaving soap (Thank you Martin!). My bedbug and fly bites have all but disappeared now. In the interests of science I made Chris switch beds with me and oddly and annoyingly, he hasn't been bitten at all. The new bed presents its own challenges as it unmakes itself over night, and I wake up each morning with my feet knotted in the blankets and wearing the sheet as a turban. However, I shall perservere.
For Valentine's Day we took an excursion up to the (very big) statue of the Winged Virgin which overlooks Quito. I had assumed it to be ancient but it dates from 1975. Despite this, it is an excellent view and the statue itself is most becoming although I have been unable to discover why the wings are there. After this we went to the main square where some form of military ceremony appeared to be taking place and the President of Ecuador was waving to the people from his balcony. Naturally we took this opportunity to get a picture of Colin the Caterpillar next to Sr. Correa. I was dead chuffed with this sighting but it turns out that he does this every Monday morning. Considering he was shot at and rioted around a few months back I felt this was quite brave.
To celebrate love and the president we then blew a days budget on a couple of steaks. I take nothing away from the Ecuadorean Rice Diet when I say it was so good that I have actually since woken myself up dreaming about my pepper steak. The Rice Regime, incidentally, has now expanded to incorporate puddings. Yesterday we ate chicken- and- rice, with rice pudding for dessert...
We also took the super-touristy plunge and visited Mitad del Mundo, the place the Equator runs through. Actually the guide books tell you that the 18th century world measuring chaps were off by about 300m but this site has an orange line on it for use in taking pictures and a yellow sign for similar and a planetarium so why quibble about a couple of hundred metres was our reasoning. Despite the overwhelmingly touristy nature it was good fun and there was live music and dancing so we had a jolly time and a beer, of course. Sadly I am unable to confirm whether the toilet water goes round the other way as I stupidly forgot to check. Nor did I balance an egg on its point as is also apparently feasible. But everyone weighs less at the Equator due to some trick of gravity, which is nice. Our next trip takes us slightly further afield to Cotopaxi, the world's highest active volcano- although I believe/hope it is not actively active right now.
Finally, to explain the title of this posting: One might suspect this has something to do with the fact that from the Equator you can see both hemispheres of the night sky and can therefore see the southern cross AND the big dipper (the planetarium confirms this and it is rather cool) but I am afraid that the actual reason is less erudite. Due to the ongoing book drought I have borrowed the Twilight Saga from one of the other volunteers. I had been warned by my good friend Ashers (happy birthday!!) of the addictive nature of these books but even so I was totally unprepared. It is not seemly to stay up until 4am reading teenage trash literature in your thirties but I am afraid this is what I did and I am as powerless to resist as Bella in the arms of Edward. One small snag- we've only got the first three books. So if someone could fax me the first hundred pages until I can get back to the bookshop I'd be really grateful...
First, select your llama...
Monday 21 February 2011
Sunday 13 February 2011
Literary Pursuits
This week I finished the last of the books I had brought with me from home and was thrown into a bit of a spin. Our South America on a Budget is frankly a depressing bedtime read, filled as it is with places to avoid if you don't want to get mugged (basically, everywhere) or food poisoning (ditto). In the office there is a small library of books abandoned by former volunteers. Here I realised that despite the repeated application of germolene my fly-bites (still unhealed!) had developed into a dangerous brain parasite, as I finished the latest Dan Brown novel without wishing to kill myself, the author and the entire universe more than a handful of times. Dark days. So it was with something approaching orgasmic joy that I discovered that there is an English bookshop in the Mariscal that does swaps and furthermore, a curry house two doors down from it. Armed with all the books that I thought we could usefully recycle into society we headed to the largest repository of Dick Francis novels and Harry Potter hardbacks that I have ever seen. Naturally it was also the graveyard for every Dan Brown novel on the continent but after some hunting, we emerged with some fat paperback novels that should stave off madness for a couple more weeks.** In fact I did quite well as other people asked me for book recommendations and in this way I managed to ensure that the volunteer library now reflects my own personal tastes. And then we ate a chicken tikka masala and a garlic naan bread. Yes, yes- experiencing a different culture blah blah but trust me, it was a relief to encounter rice in its natural habitat (curry sauce) again.
A word on guidebooks. Chris purchased a hefty, sharp-cornered tome,which I shall not mention by name here, which appears to have become totally out of date within a year of publication. Thus far it has directed us to a bus terminal that hasn't existed for five years and to restaurants which never seem to have existed at all. It just about manages to accurately place the cities in Ecuador in a loose approximation of their relative geographical positions but then lies about the distances. Although at 1000 pages we are sure never to run out of toilet paper. How anyone is supposed to navigate around this country remains a total mystery to me. The buses make absolutely no sense- you essentially have to make friends with an Ecuadorean to avoid ending up on a non-stop rattletrap to the Colombian border. However, they do have one extraordinary redeeming feature which is their price. You can travel cross country for eight hours for about $8. Transport for London, take note.
Given the mendacious nature of guide books and bus timetables it was something of a miracle this week that we managed to get ourselves to the mountains to go hiking around a little village called Peguche. The scenery was absolutely spectacular, culminating in a 100ft cascade waterfall in unspoilt Andean forest. (Unspoilt except for a bad dog that bit our friend Eva, but that's another story). We lunched on bread, cheese and olives on the mountainside. I saw another hummingbird. A wrinkled old shepherd with a panama hat on gave us directions. I don't think he'd moved from his stool for about a decade. Put him in the guidebooks!
** If anyone feels the need to point out that this whole problem could have been avoided through the purchase of a Kindle, eReader or similar diabolical contraption- don't.
A word on guidebooks. Chris purchased a hefty, sharp-cornered tome,which I shall not mention by name here, which appears to have become totally out of date within a year of publication. Thus far it has directed us to a bus terminal that hasn't existed for five years and to restaurants which never seem to have existed at all. It just about manages to accurately place the cities in Ecuador in a loose approximation of their relative geographical positions but then lies about the distances. Although at 1000 pages we are sure never to run out of toilet paper. How anyone is supposed to navigate around this country remains a total mystery to me. The buses make absolutely no sense- you essentially have to make friends with an Ecuadorean to avoid ending up on a non-stop rattletrap to the Colombian border. However, they do have one extraordinary redeeming feature which is their price. You can travel cross country for eight hours for about $8. Transport for London, take note.
Given the mendacious nature of guide books and bus timetables it was something of a miracle this week that we managed to get ourselves to the mountains to go hiking around a little village called Peguche. The scenery was absolutely spectacular, culminating in a 100ft cascade waterfall in unspoilt Andean forest. (Unspoilt except for a bad dog that bit our friend Eva, but that's another story). We lunched on bread, cheese and olives on the mountainside. I saw another hummingbird. A wrinkled old shepherd with a panama hat on gave us directions. I don't think he'd moved from his stool for about a decade. Put him in the guidebooks!
** If anyone feels the need to point out that this whole problem could have been avoided through the purchase of a Kindle, eReader or similar diabolical contraption- don't.
Thursday 3 February 2011
Animal, Vegetable, Rice
We have this week been experiencing the delights and otherwise of Ecuadorean flora and fauna. Being an extraordinarily biologically diverse country we have been on the keen look out for enormous cockroaches, venomous snakes, spiders that live under the bed, huge belligerent frogs, toothy sharks and of course the eponymous llama. I regret to inform you that apart from a few hummingbirds-I was thrilled!- and the odd vulture, the only specimens of native fauna we have encountered have been stuffed (Quito Museum of Natural Sciences had a stuffed bear that I poked around while Chris had his back turned), dead (quite a big cockroach) or executed before our very eyes (RIP Nanegal the Chicken, but you did make a very nice sopa de gallina)
On the subject of food, I should put on record here that the staple food group in Ecuador is rice, the principle domesticated food animal is rice, and on special occassions the main dish eaten is rice. On non special occasions the main dish is rice. Rice is served with meat (non-specified) and a variety of accompaniments including bread, potatoes, and pasta often in the same meal. Extreme dieters take note: this is no place to try the Atkins diet. Flesh-wise we don't believe we have eaten a guinea pig yet although it is only a matter of time. At the Friday market where we work there is a nice stall where you can buy your guinea pigs fresh i.e live and take them home and play with them before you cook them. I admit I have been tempted each time I pass to liberate the guinea pigs while singing Born Free but have resisted on the grounds that the stall owner has a machete and that the guineas would only be eaten by one of the thousands of stray dogs that lope around in Quito and the surrounding area.
I have this week myself become part of the Ecuadorean food chain. As some form of karmic revenge for our murderous carnivorism in the countryside at the weekend I have been savaged around the feet by vicious flies. Now as most of you know I am very very brave and hardly ever complain about anything but ye gods! I have never had such itchy fly bites in my life. At time of writing my feet are slathered with germoline and I smell like a hospital waiting room, but I have been reliably informed that said flies are not vectors for malaria or dengue fever and I am not expected to die from my wounds. However, do feel free to send medicinal jaffa cakes c/o the British Embassy in Quito.
To further cement my reputation as a brilliant after- dinner speaker and raconteur I decided to find out what animals said in spanish as opposed to english. Dogs, for instance, say Gau gau instead of woof here and I can confirm that large frogs hiding in bushes say merk! instead of ribbit. But the greatest divergence to date is our old friend the chicken. In Ecuador the chicken says kikiriki instead of cock-a-doodle-do. Our host family were entranced and spent the next hour or so perfecting their cock-a-doodle-dos. Now imagine if you can, a respectable middle class family around a dinner table all gravely trying variants of this in a somewhat quizzical tone in heavy spanish accents. It has now become a sort of standard house greeting. Cockle doodly doo. Now we all say it before we eat our rice. Happy days.
On the subject of food, I should put on record here that the staple food group in Ecuador is rice, the principle domesticated food animal is rice, and on special occassions the main dish eaten is rice. On non special occasions the main dish is rice. Rice is served with meat (non-specified) and a variety of accompaniments including bread, potatoes, and pasta often in the same meal. Extreme dieters take note: this is no place to try the Atkins diet. Flesh-wise we don't believe we have eaten a guinea pig yet although it is only a matter of time. At the Friday market where we work there is a nice stall where you can buy your guinea pigs fresh i.e live and take them home and play with them before you cook them. I admit I have been tempted each time I pass to liberate the guinea pigs while singing Born Free but have resisted on the grounds that the stall owner has a machete and that the guineas would only be eaten by one of the thousands of stray dogs that lope around in Quito and the surrounding area.
I have this week myself become part of the Ecuadorean food chain. As some form of karmic revenge for our murderous carnivorism in the countryside at the weekend I have been savaged around the feet by vicious flies. Now as most of you know I am very very brave and hardly ever complain about anything but ye gods! I have never had such itchy fly bites in my life. At time of writing my feet are slathered with germoline and I smell like a hospital waiting room, but I have been reliably informed that said flies are not vectors for malaria or dengue fever and I am not expected to die from my wounds. However, do feel free to send medicinal jaffa cakes c/o the British Embassy in Quito.
To further cement my reputation as a brilliant after- dinner speaker and raconteur I decided to find out what animals said in spanish as opposed to english. Dogs, for instance, say Gau gau instead of woof here and I can confirm that large frogs hiding in bushes say merk! instead of ribbit. But the greatest divergence to date is our old friend the chicken. In Ecuador the chicken says kikiriki instead of cock-a-doodle-do. Our host family were entranced and spent the next hour or so perfecting their cock-a-doodle-dos. Now imagine if you can, a respectable middle class family around a dinner table all gravely trying variants of this in a somewhat quizzical tone in heavy spanish accents. It has now become a sort of standard house greeting. Cockle doodly doo. Now we all say it before we eat our rice. Happy days.
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