Some Things You Need To Know About Life In Quito (And Ecuador In General)

Roasted Guinea Pig

There are some things you should know about life in Quito and in Ecuador in general, they are;

Spanish is a real must. I mean you can get by with English and some hand signals, well at least most of the time but learning this great language is top on my list of things to really improve. Unfortunately, at this current moment in time my Spanish still needs massive amounts of work, in fact, massive amounts of seriously hard work at that. There are a few people at my work who speak English, but then I don't really want to talk to them in a foreign language. I'm in South America and here everyone speaks some form of Spanish, and I now must join this language party. To be honest, I can get by. Of course you pick things up here and there and I've been taking Spanish lessons every Saturday with my fantastically enthusiastic teacher - Jackie, but to think that I might one day be fluent in this language is more than a far away place that I really think will be a struggle to ever reach. In the opinion of a scientifically brained person such as myself, learning a language is far harder than processing seismic data or predicting the next volcanic eruption, thats for sure. I have however become fluent in ordering beer and I can now successfully say..... "theres no way i'm paying that much for this cab mate", so i'm getting there - slowly.

Food in Ecuador is interesting. Actually, most of the time it´s really good. They eat a lot of chicken (generally fried chicken) and rice too. Fruits of all different kinds are popular, especially in the form of shakes which are always deliceous. There isn´t a lot of beef as cows are rare here and milk is certainly hard to get - at least fresh (non UHT) milk. Mexican food is popular, so you can always find a burrito or empanada and salsa is always on standby in pretty much every restaurant. They have some local, traditional foods too. They eat Yuca, which is closely related to the potato, but actually is a plant root found in the Amazon Jungle. It´s very tasty. The weirdest thing I have eaten is birds skin. Its cooked with potato´s in a peanut sauce. The bird skin isn´t like that from a KFC chicken, its thick and rubbery. It doesn´t have too much taste but the texture is slimy and quite unpleasant. Their main traditional dish however, is guinea pig. Its cooked whole, generally on a skewer and it looks pretty unappertising. I haven´t yet had the opportunity to try it but it will happen, just when I have built up the courage to order it.

In the New Town however, I was shocked to see McDonalds, KFC Pizza Hutt and even Papa Johns Pizza, which I was positively sure you could only get in Palmers Green in London. I tend to stick away from these localitites. Finally the soups here in Ecuador are quite unbelieveable, perhaps the best Ivé ever had. Everything here is so cheap too. The US Dollar is the main currency used in the country although they do have their own coins, used in conjunction with the Dollar. A general meal (sometimes 3 courses) can cost as little as $1.50 and a night in a hostel just a few bucks too.

Unfortunately, Ecuador now has a worse reputation than Colombia in terms of crime. Pretty much everyday someone staying in the hostel comes in telling me they have been mugged usually at knife-point, sometimes with pepper spray, occasionally with a gun. Colombia seems to have cleaned up it's act while Ecuador and particulalry the cities of Guayaquil and Quito (where I am living) have been left to unsavoury characters. It got so bad, just before I arrived, that the Ecuadorian Army were drafted in to help out the police. Now when you go to a cash machine or bank, or walk the streets of La Mariscal at night, there is usually an officer on every corner with a large automatic weapon, which often scares most other back-packers but in an odd way makes me feel that little more protected from lurking thieves. I suppose the key to keeping safe is just to be a little street-wise and use a bit of common sense. You wouldn't walk down the dodgy streets of London on your own at night and you don't do it here. Luckily, I have yet to experience the whole mugging routine, yet I haven't met a long term traveller who hasn't been a victim of crime at least once - I suppose eventually you do end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I've just settled for the fact that it's going to happen at some stage and that's that. If your not getting mugged, the people of Ecuador are very friendly.

Seriously though, locals here are so willing to help, will happily chat to you about pretty much anything and are very patient when your getting your Spanish completely wrong during a conversation. My work colleages at the Instituto Geofisico are perhaps the friendliest of all.

Going out in Quito is an experience. The nightlife here really is interesting. You can choose between the more authentic Old Town for some drinks and often live music in one of the plaza's or down the main party road known as La Ronda, or head to the popular New Town, with bars and clubs on every corner and a sea of both locals and travelers alike. Here the drink prices rise, the venues suddenly appear trendy and the next drunken person is usually just around the corner. This part of town is La Mariscal. When you enter a club, things seem normal at first, but half way through the night they stop playing the familiar RnB and Hip Hop and suddenly put on Salsa - thats usually the point I leave. I'm adding it to my list of things to learn in my life, it would certainly be a great asset out in this part of the world. I have had a few lessons in the art of Salsa dancing, from various friends who were willing to teach me the basics. More lessons are certainly needed. Amongst the bars and clubs I have also found the local Irish Pub known as Finns. It not only has a worker there who lives pretty much round the corner from me at home (an Enfield girl), but also shows all the Premiership football, which keeps me very happy.

The weather in Quito is pretty perfect. It´s on the Equator, so when the sun is out it´s hot. Yet because the altitude is so high, when the sun goes in it can get quite cool. As long as you always have a jumper on standby you can´t go wrong. It makes my life very easy. once you get out of the mountain ranges and down low, the sun continues to shine, but the heat is far more humid, staying hot pretty much all of the time.

In Quito, they usually have a major downpour for one hour or so during a typical day, yet because this appears to be an El Nino year, the country is far dryer than it should be. In the month that I have been here, I have rarely seen the rain at all. Actually this has become a major problem for Ecuador, as most electricity is run off water. Since I have been here it has meant that power cuts are frequent, even if my tan is constantly topped up.

This is my world right now. A South American country, where some form of chaos is usually not too far away. As I would soon find out, chaos for me would come thick and fast....................