Resumen de Mindo

Mindo fue bien chevere y divertido...

This past weekend me and seven other friends traveled to Mindo, Ecuador. It was a very very touristy town full of everybody on the street as soon as you get off the bus, trying to sell you this package and that package for a ¨descuento¨. We walked through town a little bit before finding a hostel that was listed in one of our guidebooks and took it for $5 a night. It even included a very nice breakfast for $2 more...everything cost money, there were even waterfalls that you could see....for a price, I´ll pass, there are some free ones back home on the Cahaba River...

Once we got there we went out on the town....nothing exciting as you can see. We found a restaraunt that found it extremely crazy that my pickyself wanted nothing on my hotdog, they returned the favor with a lukewarm weiner inside a toasted bun, cost 1.50, so i´m not complaining. That nite we just stayed up playing CatchPhrase, while others played jumprope with kids in the town.

We woke up rather early off of our brick beds at 9, ate, and went to go ziplining, through the dueño of the hostel. She had the hookup with all her costa rican buddies since there was now competition from an ecuadorian group. It cost 13 per person, but apparently 30 usually and it was worth every dime. There were 13 cables to go on, and almost all offered up awesome views of the countryside. They even let us do two trucos(or tricks).

One called the superman as shown below

And one called the mariposa(butterfly) as shown to the side.

After that we went into town, got some pizza of course and headed back to the hostel. The owner then called a taxi(truck) to pick us up for tubing, down white water rapids. Definitely couldn´t have done this in the states which is what makes it so awesome. It only cost 5 but was pretty dangerous and fun and freezing cold.

After that it started to rain so we just chilled at a restaraunt to wait for the rain to let up so we could go get some marshmellows for some smores later on that nite. It took us about 2hrs but my Eagle Scout skills finally came in handy getting a fire started with damp wood. There we played cards, ate smores and talked in English, which I now see now was a mistake as changing over to spanish was a little rough this morning with my host mom.

We were discussing my plans to go to Machu Picchu, which included 3 nites in Lima which she said was bastante and that I should get more than just one day at Machu Picchu. So I´m going to talk to the travel agent this week and try and see if I can´t get anything changed.

Till next time, stay fresh.....chao

Mindo, Identidad Afro y Lluvia a catarnos!!!

So this weekend, I am probably going to go to Mindo, about two hours north of Quito away from any volcánes o inundaciones. Apparently there is a lot of nature stuff to do and it would be cheap as well....which is always good, especially when you´re planning a trip to Machu Picchu!!!!


So earlier this week Chisara gave me a invite to a lecture being held at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar(UASB). We took a bus from Cumbaya where USFQ(the school I go to) is located to Guápolo which is part of Quito, just another part. I had three midterms yesterday, one of which murdered me...my colonialism class. Anywho, I asked mi profe de Anthropología Andina donde está la UASB. She was kind enough to write me a map and showed me which bus to take and everything. She also asked me to contar( or tell about) the lecture to the class on tuesday, so much for sycophancy.

So, I liked the uinversity a lot better than USFQ because it was actually in the city of Quito while USFQ feels secluded from the rest of Quito in a nice safe rich bubble(UFSQ is the most expensive university in Ecuador with half of Ecuador´s Phds teaching there). Anywho, when my friend Kristina and I got out of the bus in Guapalo we walked about 7 cuadras(blocks) in the pouring rain, I had no paraaguas(umbrella, ella, ella, ella, haha). We finally got there a little after 6 soaking wet.

It was a book talk on a book called Identidad Afro by the main author and two other reaserchers. It focused on Afro-Choteños from la Valle de Chota, an area in the province of Imbabura that is notorious for the fuente(fountain, or source) of Black sport talent and afro-ecuatorianos in general. That is where Chisara is traveling every weekend to work with a community in Chota. It was really intersting for an African-American Studies major. The book focuses on four hitos(milestones): electricidad, una nueva carretera(highway), políticos democráticos, y reforma agraria.

I got the e-mail of the author and hopefully will be in contact with him!

Oh and it´s been constantly raining for the past 3 days straight...horrible!

gotta go, thanks for reading...

Teddy

Alguien me robo!!!!!

So this past week I had my cell phone stolen!!!

Fortunately it was just my Ecuadorian phone and not of too much importance, although it did cost $50 to replace it!!!!

I was riding on the Ecovia, the main bus I take to get around Quito. It goes from North to South and stops a block away from my apt. It was packed beyond capacity, literally it was soo packed that people were pushing each other just to stand, not just to move. I was turned the other way and not paying attention when I got this feeling. Sure enough, a moment later I feel my pant leg pocket and no cell phone.

Needless to say I have a 39 pocket jacket that housed my ipod, flashdrive and several other valuables to be stolen. I just had gotten comfortable on that damned bus and let my guard down, and at that moment, my phone was gone. Apparently my friend who got off the bus before me said that there were some guys behind me eyeing my backpack...

From now on...phone in the jacket!!!

El Oriente, una Broma de los Dios...

Finally getting back on track with the blogging... I´ll explain why I titled this post the Amazon, a joke from God throughout...

There´s some background info. on the Amazon or Oriente here in Ecuador. While the Amazon river does not run directly through Ecuador there are several rivers and tributaries that empty into the Amazon. The Amazon is home to Ecuador´s largest indigenous population and second official language Quichua. At USFQ I am taking a class on Quichua so it was interesting to be able to use it a good bit this past weekend. Quichua became the official language of the Incan Empire at the height of their campaign across South America. Because Quichua is not a written language there are several differnent spellings for it. In the the southern bordering coutnry of Peru, the official second language of the country is Quechua. Throughout the Sierra, Oriente, and Costa you´ll find different dialects of the language and Quechua is one such different dialect.

A Brief Lesson in Quichua from a student...not professor....

So far we´ve mastered several common questions and responses in Quichua, such as,

Pregunta: ¿De dónde eres tú?========>¿Maymantatak Kanki?

Respuesta: Soy de Birmingham========>Nukaka Birminghammantami kani

So for this one you would respond with Nukaka, then whatever city you are from with mantami added to it and then kani. It´s definitely a different sentence structure with the verb coming at the end. One more:

Pregunta: ¿Cómo se llama?========> ¿Imashutitak Kanki?

Respuesta: Me llamo Teo ==========> Nukaka Teomi kani

The same as before except simply add mi to the end of your name. That´s very basic! All of the accents are the same as in spanish because it was the conquistadors who first attempted to write quichua. Solamente hay diez millones de quichuahablantes en el mundo. Todos están en Sudamérica.

Ok back to the trip. This trip was organized by IPSL there for it was gratis(free) for me. Which was nice because I´ve been spending too much traveling on my own. We left Saturday morning at 7 from a large centro comercial se llama Quicentro para ir en un bus privado. It was private, but don´t let that fool you. Private in Ecuador is NOT private in the U.S. On the way there we had to go over more mountains as expected and got a great view of a mountain called Napo. WE got out an took pictures. Further on we made another stop at lake Papayakta near a mountain named the same thing. Papa meaning potatao and yakta meaning lake in Quichua.

By far, this was the MOST bumpy ride I´ve ever experienced in my life. The roads were in such bad condition that literally for two hours the bus was constantly shaking furiously. WE finally got to Tena, the last semi-large town before there was no signal. We then made it to our destination, Misahualli. And this is where my ¨bad luck¨began. So apparently I left my wallet on the bus because it had fallen through a crack in one of the seats. I didn´t realize this until hours later and suspected someone from the hotel. So the entire time I was there I was worrying about my billetera. Because there was no way to get intouch with the bus driver because he was across a river and we had no sginal.

That night we went to a ¨shaman ritual¨ which proved to be quite hokey and seemingly artificial for tourists. We had to take a boat ride there and almost everywhere but it was more like a canoe with a motor. There was smoke and dances but it all seemed very tourist oriented unfortunately. The speaker also led us to a rock where apparently there were profiles of a woman, snake and other things, here´s one of a snake.

That night we had tilapia for dinner,which was a first and not that bad. I slept like a baby...and the pulgas(feas) feasted. I didn´t realize it until we had made it to an animal rescue center called Amazoonica which was one of the best parts of the trip. My arm was covered in red bumps that itched like mosquito bites but I hadn´t seen THAT many mosquitos, certainly not on my skin. I came back and took a shower and looked at my pillow and sheets and saw little black bugs jumping....worst nightmare. At first, it felt like that movie...¨Bug¨, because I couldn´t see them that first night nor during the day. Eventually I got a new room even had a portable air conditioner.

Amazoonica was a center for animals from the Amazon that had been taken as pets and then dumped off and before they are reintroduced to the medio ambiented they come here. They had capiburra, oceltots(tigrios) and several other animals that are popular as pets. That night we went on a caminata for more foe-quchiua rituals. By the way, becuase I wear a size 11 shoe I had to buy my own botas(boots). And I got a size just too small too, so I had blisters, bug bites, and no wallet all weekend. Somebody had to be laughing at me.

That evening we went to a Carnaval celebration across the river in Mishualli. It´s apparetnly all about getting wet. If they see any extranjeros that are dry they soake them with buckets of wather and foam in areosal cans. So I had to stay away from all of my woman counterparts because they were just asking for it. Needles to say I still got wet but they got drenched. THere as stage with a popular band called Los Inquietos playing there hits near the river while everyone got soaked. Later that night the stage and all the trash got swept away by the rain that came and wiped it all away.

It was fun and I got great pictures but boy oh boy was it hell for a while until I found my wallet on Monday. I´ll try and upload some now but I´m under the bullet now at an internet cafe.