Hola todos
So here I am in Ban~os. I can't get that squiggle to actually go on the letter n like it's meant to, but basically you pronounce it ban-yos. Banos literally means baths, or also bathrooms, or toilets. An English couple I met in Quito actually thought the town was therefore called Toilets. It's Banos due to its natural thermal baths, rather like our English town called Bath. I'm writing this post on my iPhone so we'll see how that goes, it gets kind of tiring but perhaps I'll find new wells of patience. The room just shook and I wondered if it was an earthquake or an eruption from the volcano that watches over the town. The volcano is called Tungurahua, and I believe is due to erupt at some point fairly soon but hopefully not in the next 24 hours. It's pretty windy outside (enough to make the room shake?) and rained a bit this morning. You're probably wondering what the weathers like here in Ecuador, with it being on the equator and all that, and if you're not wondering that then you should be. Basically here in Banos it's temperate I would say (if I was teaching a TEFL class that's the word I would use as technically that's what it is I think), which means it's kind of warm and sometimes cold and a bit breezy - is that what temperate means? - I actually have no idea. There are often clouds as the town is surrounded by mountains/the volcano.
I got here on Thursday morning, after the night bus on Wednesday. I had seat number 38. This was at the back, next to a man I didn't like. I didn't like him because he told me to move out of his seat (37), but told me it in a gesture rather than words, which I found a bit rude. It wasn't a rude gesture though, I just felt that words would have been better. Anyway I listened to Manu Chao on repeat for most of the journey from Guayaquil, and got to Banos at 530am. Luckily the hostel I'd booked was 2 blocks from the bus terminal, so I found it easily and went to sleep on the sofa near the reception until about 9. It was freezing so I put layers of clothing on top of me, and sofa cushions too. When I eventually ventured out for some breakfast my 7 layers of clothing was a bit excessive as it was a really warm day actually.
The last blog I did was about the weekend in Cuenca so I should update about Monday to Wednesday of this week before starting to talk about Banos. I was in Guayaquil with Kim from Sunday night to Wednesday night. As mentioned on the last blog with the pictures etc, she's been putting together the exhibition of all the work she's done with the 3 groups of children she's been working with in Guayaquil since January. The 2 themes were superheroes and community, and they had made superhero outfits and parks and gardens with animals and little people in them to represent their communities. On Monday we put together the community section, and put the pigs and iguanas and snakes in their little houses with the little figures too. There were some workers from the museum there to help us install the various bits and pieces, they brought down screens for us to display all the superhero outfits and stands to put the community stuff on etc. They were a bit resistant to being told what needed doing and Kim was amazingly diplomatic and strong in dealing with them, I was getting stressed just trying to follow the conversation and realising that they didn't seem to want to help that much. We wondered if it was a cultural difference in that they didn't like that Kim was telling them what to do, ie she's a woman, but also a foreign woman. Or perhaps they were just lazy. They needed some wire to hang the screens from the ceiling so we could mount the work on them. They didn´t have any wire, and wanted Kim to provide it, which she didn´t want to. They said she should pay for them to take a taxi to the wire shop, but there was a wire shop just round the corner. Kim said nevermind we´ll get our own wire, they asked how she could possibly walk the 20 blocks to the wire shop, didn´t she know it´s dangerous. But there´s a wire shop just round the corner. Whilst this was going on, one of was asking me how old I was, if I was married, if I had children, if I wanted children, if I was religious, what type of christianity it was (I pretended I was Anglican - it´s way easier at times like this, though I don´t know the details of Anglicanism, it sounds pretty convincing as it sounds something to do with being English - feel free to correct me). At one point the director came down to see how things were going too, and apologised if the men hadn´t been helpful, but we said they had, and then she launched into a kind of diatribe about how little funding the museum gets, and how the worker men are shared between other places in the city and how she works 9 hour days and still there are things that don´t get done and she twizzled around a bit and threw her arms in the air too, and I felt like I was watching a piece of performance art, and I understood very little of it, and then she was gone.
We rewarded ourselves with some cake from the local I´m-not-Starbucks-but-I-appear-to-be-very-similar-to-Starbucks café. The strawberry cheesecake was amazing. Kim´s boyfriend Tyrone then picked us up and we set off back Kim´s house, which is in the north of Guayaquil (I´m actually kind of guessing this fact, but I think it´s right). Here´s something you should know about Guayaquil - there´s a lot of traffic here. We stopped to buy some wire at the wire shop, and then decided the best thing was to let the horrendous traffic pass for a while, so wandered around a mall and ate some mcdonalds for about an hour (we didn´t eat mcdonalds for a whole hour, that´d be a bit like that fast food documentary programme where you eat mcdonalds 3 meals a day for like weeks and see what happens to you - I think the conclusion was you get ill and fat and throw up quite a bit). Apparently, waiting for the traffic to pass meant that instead of it taking 1 hour or more to get home, by waiting around an hour, it now would only take about 20 minutes. Though obviously we´d also spent an hour in the mall. All of this made my head explode a bit, like one of those questions on a maths exam about trains leaving from Norwich. Had we actually saved time by spending an hour waiting for the journey to get quicker, or would the end result be the same if we´d just have stayed in the traffic anyway. Does it depend how you spend the hour waiting for the traffic to pass as to whether you made the right decision? How do you measure something like this, it´s all a bit intangible.
Tuesday we went to the gallery again to finish putting everything together. The worker men were less resistant today, but there was a funny kind of Laurel and Hardy moment when 2 of them were up a ladder and having an argument about something and practically beating each other up and going ´estas loco o que´ (are you mad or what), and get away from me you´re too close, Í´m not gay you know. All whilst trying to change a lightbulb or something that probably demanded a bit of attention in order to not get injured. It was pretty hilarious. Today we had an almuerzo de dos dólar (2 dollar lunch) - I can´t remember if I´ve mentioned these before, but basically they´re amazing bargain lunches where you get a soup and a main course for 2 dollars. In fact I have mentioned these before, so I won´t mention them again now, apart from now it´s too late as I have mentioned them. I love eating at places like this, it´s where the locals eat and you get to do some great people watching. On Monday we had gone for encebollado for breakfast at a local café near the gallery, me and Kim and her co-workers Ronald and Juan Carlos, and Joseph. Encebollado is a very fishy fish soup with potatoes and yucca in it, you add chifles (the platain crisp things) and spicy sauce to it, and have lemonade with it too. It´s really fishy and really really yummy and apparently an amazing hangover cure as it´s full of spices and protein. This morning in Banos we (me and Danny) had jugo de mora y coca (BlackBerry and coconut juice - wow look at that, the word BlackBerry automatically converts to capital letters so it´s the proper trademark BlackBerry phone thingy), and balones con café (a big ball of kind of doughy corn stuff with coffee) in the local market. I actually have a slightly dodgy stomach now, so perhaps I was too keen with eating the local food like a local.
Tuesday was when Kim´s friend Kory showed up from Bolivia, so that evening we just hung out at Kim´s all of us, and Tyrone too. We had plans to go to yoga, or go cycling (Tyrone had lent me his single speed and as you know I have brought my bike helmet and pedals and cycling clothes thinking we would do loads of cycling..... hopefully we still will as we plan on being in Guayaquil again this weekend coming) but instead we did a chocolate taste test, comparing the 3 English chocolates I´d brought (maltesers, caramel, and galaxy), with an Ecuadorean chocolate and from the US (Hershey´s). The end result was the Ecuadorean bar won..... we were not expecting that. We had really good fun doing the test, but I´m not convinced Tyrone and Kory were that into it. Kory refused to give the maltesers a mark out of 5 as they´re not just chocolate he said - this is technically true, but it skewed the data somewhat. Tyrone is a dentist, so I think it´s pretty funny we made him eat loads of chocolate just for our own amusement.
Wednesday was Kim´s big day at the gallery - the opening of the exhibition, to which some press were coming, and the directors of JUCONI (the foundation she´s working for), and a third of the children (there´s 3 groups so one was coming each day for 3 days, as there isn´t space for all 90 of them in one day). Kim had to make a speech (in Spanish obviously) about who she was and what the projects have been about and what the aim of the work has been, which she did amazingly well, so well that I actually cried a little bit as I was so proud of her, and especially when another lady did a speech that mentioned how amazing Kim has been working with the children here. The kids gave her a card to say thank you and after the speeches they all went to look round the gallery. Me and Kory were official photographers for the occasion which was pretty cool too. That night we went for a drink in an area of Guayaquil called las Penas (the n should have a squiggle on it, and be pronounced pen-yas). This was a road with lots of step up it and a lighthouse at the top though I didn´t actually see the lighthouse. We went with most of Kim´s housemates and drank a large beer sitting on some benches. Becky had once muddled up the word for lighthouse ´el faro´, with the word for dickhead ´el foro´, when at the lighthouse and asking a question about the lighthouse. Her question was actually about a dickhead. Sorry for the rude words infiltrating an otherwise very polite blog.
And then I got the nightbus which was a little tiny bit stressful this time mainly because I had no idea what time the buses left and how long the taxi to the bus station would be. Taking a taxi in Guayaquil can be dangerous so we had called one specifically from a safe taxi company and they text you the driver´s number plate so you know to get in just that one. Guayaquil bus station is massive and like a huge mall, really clean, and nothing like what you´d expect a South American bus station to be - normally they´re a little bit dodgy and smelly and in a funny part of town.
So that was the end of my time in Guayaquil. And now I´ve been in Banos since Thursday morning and will most likely leave tomorrow, but I´m not entirely sure where to.... Possibly head back up north to a place called Latacunga where you can see some more mountains, and then possibly have a few more days in Quito because I didn´t see the equator or Otavalo market yet, which I may regret and won´t have chance to see the following week as me and Kim are planning on travelling up the coast, after taking the Devil´s Nose train from down south in a place called Alausi. I ought to go and read my guidebook, which I´ve been quite resistant to doing so far, but otherwise nothing will get planned for tomorrow.
I´ll try to post some pictures up and do another update about Banos soon. I did start this blog on my iPhone but it seemed to have a technical hitch so I have done most of it on a computer. There was a scary moment when I thought I´d lost all of it but then half of it came back. Phew.
Adios for now. And congratulations to Sarah and Rod who had their baby (Poppy) this week!!!!
Pickles xx
We rewarded ourselves with some cake from the local I´m-not-Starbucks-but-I-appear-to-be-very-similar-to-Starbucks café. The strawberry cheesecake was amazing. Kim´s boyfriend Tyrone then picked us up and we set off back Kim´s house, which is in the north of Guayaquil (I´m actually kind of guessing this fact, but I think it´s right). Here´s something you should know about Guayaquil - there´s a lot of traffic here. We stopped to buy some wire at the wire shop, and then decided the best thing was to let the horrendous traffic pass for a while, so wandered around a mall and ate some mcdonalds for about an hour (we didn´t eat mcdonalds for a whole hour, that´d be a bit like that fast food documentary programme where you eat mcdonalds 3 meals a day for like weeks and see what happens to you - I think the conclusion was you get ill and fat and throw up quite a bit). Apparently, waiting for the traffic to pass meant that instead of it taking 1 hour or more to get home, by waiting around an hour, it now would only take about 20 minutes. Though obviously we´d also spent an hour in the mall. All of this made my head explode a bit, like one of those questions on a maths exam about trains leaving from Norwich. Had we actually saved time by spending an hour waiting for the journey to get quicker, or would the end result be the same if we´d just have stayed in the traffic anyway. Does it depend how you spend the hour waiting for the traffic to pass as to whether you made the right decision? How do you measure something like this, it´s all a bit intangible.
Tuesday we went to the gallery again to finish putting everything together. The worker men were less resistant today, but there was a funny kind of Laurel and Hardy moment when 2 of them were up a ladder and having an argument about something and practically beating each other up and going ´estas loco o que´ (are you mad or what), and get away from me you´re too close, Í´m not gay you know. All whilst trying to change a lightbulb or something that probably demanded a bit of attention in order to not get injured. It was pretty hilarious. Today we had an almuerzo de dos dólar (2 dollar lunch) - I can´t remember if I´ve mentioned these before, but basically they´re amazing bargain lunches where you get a soup and a main course for 2 dollars. In fact I have mentioned these before, so I won´t mention them again now, apart from now it´s too late as I have mentioned them. I love eating at places like this, it´s where the locals eat and you get to do some great people watching. On Monday we had gone for encebollado for breakfast at a local café near the gallery, me and Kim and her co-workers Ronald and Juan Carlos, and Joseph. Encebollado is a very fishy fish soup with potatoes and yucca in it, you add chifles (the platain crisp things) and spicy sauce to it, and have lemonade with it too. It´s really fishy and really really yummy and apparently an amazing hangover cure as it´s full of spices and protein. This morning in Banos we (me and Danny) had jugo de mora y coca (BlackBerry and coconut juice - wow look at that, the word BlackBerry automatically converts to capital letters so it´s the proper trademark BlackBerry phone thingy), and balones con café (a big ball of kind of doughy corn stuff with coffee) in the local market. I actually have a slightly dodgy stomach now, so perhaps I was too keen with eating the local food like a local.
Tuesday was when Kim´s friend Kory showed up from Bolivia, so that evening we just hung out at Kim´s all of us, and Tyrone too. We had plans to go to yoga, or go cycling (Tyrone had lent me his single speed and as you know I have brought my bike helmet and pedals and cycling clothes thinking we would do loads of cycling..... hopefully we still will as we plan on being in Guayaquil again this weekend coming) but instead we did a chocolate taste test, comparing the 3 English chocolates I´d brought (maltesers, caramel, and galaxy), with an Ecuadorean chocolate and from the US (Hershey´s). The end result was the Ecuadorean bar won..... we were not expecting that. We had really good fun doing the test, but I´m not convinced Tyrone and Kory were that into it. Kory refused to give the maltesers a mark out of 5 as they´re not just chocolate he said - this is technically true, but it skewed the data somewhat. Tyrone is a dentist, so I think it´s pretty funny we made him eat loads of chocolate just for our own amusement.
Wednesday was Kim´s big day at the gallery - the opening of the exhibition, to which some press were coming, and the directors of JUCONI (the foundation she´s working for), and a third of the children (there´s 3 groups so one was coming each day for 3 days, as there isn´t space for all 90 of them in one day). Kim had to make a speech (in Spanish obviously) about who she was and what the projects have been about and what the aim of the work has been, which she did amazingly well, so well that I actually cried a little bit as I was so proud of her, and especially when another lady did a speech that mentioned how amazing Kim has been working with the children here. The kids gave her a card to say thank you and after the speeches they all went to look round the gallery. Me and Kory were official photographers for the occasion which was pretty cool too. That night we went for a drink in an area of Guayaquil called las Penas (the n should have a squiggle on it, and be pronounced pen-yas). This was a road with lots of step up it and a lighthouse at the top though I didn´t actually see the lighthouse. We went with most of Kim´s housemates and drank a large beer sitting on some benches. Becky had once muddled up the word for lighthouse ´el faro´, with the word for dickhead ´el foro´, when at the lighthouse and asking a question about the lighthouse. Her question was actually about a dickhead. Sorry for the rude words infiltrating an otherwise very polite blog.
And then I got the nightbus which was a little tiny bit stressful this time mainly because I had no idea what time the buses left and how long the taxi to the bus station would be. Taking a taxi in Guayaquil can be dangerous so we had called one specifically from a safe taxi company and they text you the driver´s number plate so you know to get in just that one. Guayaquil bus station is massive and like a huge mall, really clean, and nothing like what you´d expect a South American bus station to be - normally they´re a little bit dodgy and smelly and in a funny part of town.
So that was the end of my time in Guayaquil. And now I´ve been in Banos since Thursday morning and will most likely leave tomorrow, but I´m not entirely sure where to.... Possibly head back up north to a place called Latacunga where you can see some more mountains, and then possibly have a few more days in Quito because I didn´t see the equator or Otavalo market yet, which I may regret and won´t have chance to see the following week as me and Kim are planning on travelling up the coast, after taking the Devil´s Nose train from down south in a place called Alausi. I ought to go and read my guidebook, which I´ve been quite resistant to doing so far, but otherwise nothing will get planned for tomorrow.
I´ll try to post some pictures up and do another update about Banos soon. I did start this blog on my iPhone but it seemed to have a technical hitch so I have done most of it on a computer. There was a scary moment when I thought I´d lost all of it but then half of it came back. Phew.
Adios for now. And congratulations to Sarah and Rod who had their baby (Poppy) this week!!!!
Pickles xx
No comments:
Post a Comment