Quito Living

Stunning Quito

I have now been living in Ecuador for 2 months. I feel settled. Life here is pretty manic but at least it´s never dull, and I prefer it that way. I ´m loving my new room and hostel. The people who run it are amazing. I´m such good friends with the family now all, it makes living there a pleasure. A few weeks ago two of the young guys in the family joined me on a pub crawl around Quito with loads of others from the hostel. Between there and The Secret Garden I have everything. A perfect, private room and relaxing atmosphere or parties over the road. I´ve met so many people between the two hostels and made so many incredible friends - life here is certainly fun.

In The Secret Garden hostel they run a pub quiz every Thursday. Since Ivé been here I have been on the winning team 4 times. The prize is $50 for The Secret Garden hostal in the Cotopaxi National Park. Most times I´ve given my prize away because with working Monday to Friday, it was difficult to get time off to go down to the Cotopaxi Volcano. However, last time I was given the prize so I´m planning a trip at an up-coming weekend. I also want to climb the Volcano. It´s high (5900m) and tough but I have to give it a go. In practice, last week a group of us went up Vulcan Pinchincha. First you get a cable car up three quaters of the mountain. It´s 4100m here. If your not aclimatised, you can feel the lack of oxygen at this height. I had already been up the cable car, during my first week in Quito. I remember feeling the altitude then, but this time it was certainly easier. Last time I didn´t go any higher as some people in my group were struggling, but this time everyone wanted to climb to the summit. It´s a 4 hour round trip. It isn´t particularly difficult in terms of being a technical climb - just a bit of scrambling and some clambering in the final stages. The summit is 4700m. Thats the highest I´ve ever been, and a good way to get my body trained for Cotopaxi. Actually you didn´t really feel the altitude at the top. The first part of the walk was probably when you feel it the most. I think your body gets used to the height once your up there and going up an extra 600m isn´t too strenuous on the body at that height. Cotopaxi is a different matter though. There you start your climb at 4,800m and then going up to nearly 6000m (almost 20,000 feet) is tough, both physically and mentally. I´m definately going to try it though and soon.

Working at the IG is still very exciting, especially with Tungurahua constantly huffing and puffing. It hasn´t yet gone off in a big way yet but it continues to threaten to. I have been out for many drinks with my work colleagues recently. If there´s one thing I have realsied it´s that the pressure of a volcano crisis makes people want to drink!!!

Actually work has been tough for me this following week and will continue to for another 49 days. I have booked a Spanish course at a University round the corner from the Politecnic University where I work. It´s 3 hours a day of learning Spanish, 5 days a week and for 8 weeks. Thats 120 hours in 2 months. I now go to work at 7.00am, work till 9.00am and then head off to Spanish school. Then its three hours of language learning before returning back to work till 5.30 / 6.00pm. It ultimately means I´m up at 6.00am every day during the week now!!!

The Spanish lessons is run as an offical school course, with mid term and end of term exams. I have to get 30 credit points out of 50 to pass and recieve my official (world recognised) certificate. I study with 7 other students - mostly american´s but also an egyptian a chinese guy and an indian priest. It´s a good mix of all ages. We are all starting at the basics though. The course has been really useful so far and I certainly believe my Spanish is improving, if slowly. I´m hoping by the end of the 8 weeks I´ll really be talking fluently, or at least half fluently!!! I´m still having my Spanish lessons on Saturdays with Jackie too, so i´m really pushing hard to get this whole language business mastered now.

After all my recent drama´s, life appears to have settled for a bit. Instead of bailing friends out of jail, I´ll spend a week night going to the cinema. Avatar 3D was incredible - please go and see it if you haven´t already. Not even the Spanish subtitles put me off - in fact it helped my learning. I also play football with some of the guys from work - my boss even has a kick-around with us, and every Sunday I play football with the egyptian guy (Kareem) from my Spanish course, and some of the other guys from the course come to play too. Maybe my life here is returning to normal.........or am I just kidding myself? This is South America, where normal is situated somewhere between crazy and insane. It´s only a matter of time before the next major event pops up and through my bedroom window, but when it comes, this time, i´ll be ready for it..................