Street of Quito
Ecuadorian meal
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| July 12, 2002 A taste of Quito Last night, I kept waking up during my sleep wondering where I was then fell back asleep within minutes. The sun beat hard on the window shade at 7:00am. I rolled out of bed and took a stroll down the street. It was my first day in Quito and I wanted to feel the freshness of this town in the morning. But the freshness in my body seemed to have gone out the window since we landed. This altitude sickness has put me in a strange mood. I would get tire and sleepy very easily. After a 30 minutes of walking I returned to the hotel for a crash landing. Quito is more than 9000 feet above sea level. And since it sits in a basin surrounded by the peaks of the Andes, you get an illusion of being very low. In about an hour of nap, I appeared to gain my consciousness and proceed to go down stair to have breakfast. I ordered “huevos y café con leche” (eggs and milked coffee). The waitress brought out a pitcher of steamed milk and began to fill my cup. I didn't see any coffee accompanying her. And then suddenly, she pointed at a glass jar on the table. It contained a dark substance looking like soy sauce or vinegar. “Café esta,” she pointed again. I began to get the message, the coffee is extracted and stored in the jar. I grabbed the glass jar and poured some in my cup. The brownish substance began to stain the virgin milk. It was the last time I saw coffee in liquid form. There was no coffee bean or ground coffee to be found anywhere in Ecuador. Instant coffee was the only kind of coffee you get in Ecuador. And Nestle was the brand. After breakfast I went out for another stroll. Marching down Amazonas Blvd., I passed by many people who begged on the street. They were mostly indigenous Andes people, often only a women with her children without any men around. These kids were dirty and persistent. They'd follow tourists for a long time and frantically held out their hands for change. A lot of older orphans worked as shoe polishers and chewing gums dealers. A few of them professed in thievery as well as peddling goods. We found that out in a hard way as a few of us, including me, were victims to their web of extraction. I reached park El Eljido, (the same park mentioned by the young man on the plane) after a 15 minutes walk. There seemed to be a circle of buses and taxis racing around its vicinity. And they all spitted out black fumes. Like many other third world cities, Quito is beyond polluted. Sometimes, I didn’t know whether the fume or the altitude that gave me the sickness. I continued on to Parque Alameda and went forward. There I arrived at a crowded section of town where the market sprawled out onto the street with merchants. Cars competed with market goers squeezing by the entrenched sellers. I felt hungry after the long walk but held out as I bypassed many restaurants on the way. They were either too crowded or too unsafe to look at. I wandered the market for awhile then decided to give in. I entered the next food stall I saw. This one had 5 sets of benches sitting in a dark room. I ordered combo 1. The waiter brought out a metal cup of chicken vegetable soup. The china and the utensils made from the same material- cheap metal. My main course arrived with quarter of a chicken, french fries and some rice. And of course, a bowl of aji (Ecuador version of salsa) was always at presence. The meal was meager, nevertheless fulfilling. The price was even right- $1.00 When I returned to the hotel, some of the people in the field school began to show up. We gathered and went out for dinner. The strip where the enclave of our hotels located in the Mariscal district of Quito which was popular with tourists. Internet cafes, perked among a row of restaurants, travel agencies, tour operators and hostals, constructed an eclectic of business aimed at the gringos. Many hostals catered to the pack-backers. One was El Centro Del Mundo (The Center of the World). Here, I saw so many young travelers from other countries; mostly European. Inside, it resembled a college co-op housing. Mattress laid out in semi-circle on the floor, centered by a large coffee table. Plates and bottles and glass strewn about in every corner. Up on the fire place, the TV often commanded the young, exhaustive travelers’ attention except for Wednesday and Friday nights. Those were Free Rum and Coke nights where the living room was filled with people scooping free rum&coke out of a metal cooking pot. This version of concoction tasted like Rum sin Coke (rum without coke). El Centro Del Mundo was a very interesting place to say the least. Covering the wall of this place were photos and descriptions of points of interest: Cotopaxi, the highest peak in Ecuador, the Amazon jungle, Banos and Oyacachi for their thermal baths and water falls, etc. The author of the posters on this wall was a guy name Pierre. I have never met Pierre and didn’t know whether he existed. But Pierre claimed that he had spent more than 1000 hours on the project that sat on the wall, and I believed him. El Centro Del Mundo was exploited to the max as far as possible space for rent is concerned. Walking through this place was like wandering into an intricate maze with room after room appeared out of places you wouldn’t imagine existed. These rooms had no security system except for the locks that we brought for our luggage. The last night in Quito, me and another member in the group stayed in a tiny attic that was so close to the roof we practically had to crawl in. |
