Pensamientos de Sudamérica: Viewing the World through Polarized Sunglasses

When you wear brown polarized sunglasses, everything is warmed up. Greens are greener, blues are bluer, and everything generally looks more colorful and beautiful. Because of this, I sometimes look at the aesthetic beauty of a place based on the difference between wearing my sunglasses and not wearing them. Yes, I know this is strange, but try it sometime and you might understand. Anyhow, because I have to wear my sunglasses pretty much anytime I walk out the door in the insanely bright mountains here, I can make this judgement fairly easily. There is hardly any difference. In fact, it may actually be more beautiful without the sunglasses. Ok, now onto the stories.

A few words of culinary advice for travelling through a foreign country: when unsure as to the meaning of something on the menu, and if you are not 100% positive that you are willing to try anything, be sure to have the waiter or waitress specify past "una parte de vaca", or "a part of the cow" in English. K.T. and I did not specify this until it was a bit too late, and thus, we ate guatita, or as you all would know it, cow stomach. The peanut and potato sauce in which it was stewed was pretty delicious, so it wasn´t until I was spitting out all the pieces of meat because they all seemed to be completely fat, and K.T. stumbled upon a piece that slightly resembled some sort of animal tongue, did we ask a different waiter just exactly what we were eating. "Panza de vaca", with a smile and a motion to his belly explained it quite well. So yeah, we didn´t quite finish the whole dish.

This began the new set of adventures. After a minor bump in the road involving K.T.´s bags and the Delta airline, we discovered we were going to have to stay in Quito for New year´s, which neither of us were exactly keen on. Oh well. Shit happens. We were willing to make the best of it, and we did. We were finally able to grab K.T.´s bags and make it back to our hostel by midnight with the help of a life-saving local friend who was stuck in Quito as well. As the three of us went out to celebrate, K.T. and I were quite glad to A. be with a guy from Quito, and B. be with a guy from Quito who has a car. We were slightly less than comfortable with the fireworks shooting every which way through the street causing and immense haze over the city, the flaming puppets the people burn representing their last year, and more than anything, the massive fight between twenty or so guys involving beating each other with bats and large sticks. However, as disconcerting as it might seem, all was well. We were safe and sound inside the car, and after a few strike outs with places to celebrate that didn´t have a soul inside, we found a second floor club in Mariscal playing salsa and danced until five in the morning. It was a good New Year indeed.

The adventures only continued from there. The following day we made our way a bit further north to Mindo for some zip-lining. I can definitely see why it´s so popular. Sailing nearly carefree above the trees is somewhat addicting. However, notice how I say nearly carefree. Having somewhat of a climbing background, I feel that I know a few things about, oh I don´t know, locking a carabiner for instance. But, since only the guides were allowed to adjust anything, I could only try to explain that I would like my carabiner fully locked. They would then spin the locker that was holding my harness to the zipline once and send me on my way, only to have it rattle open half way through. Oh well. I decided it was pointless to miss the views worrying about a safety feature. Besides, I was backed up on a slightly fraying runner with another wide open carabiner anyway...so I was, naturally, completely safe. In addition to this, I probably should have gotten the hint when our hostel had mosquito nets over the beds, but I paid no attention and wore cropped pants and chacos, and now my ankles look and feel like some sort of war between various types of insects has taken place. The ziplines were followed by a couple days of climbing in Baños, which for me, was better than anything I could have done there. After the desert trip I took right before I left for Ecuador, I was craving some climbing, and it was presented to me on the ash covered rock along the river in Baños. It was a bit difficult trying to follow the beta being yelled up at me in Spanish, but it was amazing nonetheless. That´s one thing I miss about home right now. BUT, I think the need for playing outside is going to be filled plenty with K.T. here. Tomorrow we continue south to Vilcabamba for some hiking and horseback riding.