Internship, Middle of the world, Teliferico

Internship, Middle of the world, school trip, Teliferico

Hey guys, finally some time to write some things about Ecuador! Again.

As I just started collecting bracelets from everywhere I go now I still have seven and I guess something like 100 to go so this far I have collected 1 from Q restaurant, one which says Ecuador, one with Mitad del Mundo (or middle of the world in plain English) one with lat 0,0’0” one with the ecuadoran flag, and 1 just bought at the market which looked cool and another one I bought at mitad del mundo as the guy did not have 25 cents change… So I am wearing all 7 of them now and it feels still quit alright, but I guess I have to make them overlapping as I reach 10. But enough about the bracelets, let’s talk about what I have done.

Some weak or so ago my new room-mate, Niels, also Dutch arrived and we get along pretty well. The apartment we are living in now seems to be in the middle of a discotheque so on Friday and Saturday there is not a lot of sleep for the both of us, but I have to say I am pretty used to it already. The internet connection is pretty bad by the way so I hope I can put this online very fast that’s why I am pre-typing this in word and then get it online as the devil himself is trying to stop me .

On Wednesday it was ladies night again, so all women get drunk until 11 for free and after that the guys are also allowed in the bar, a pretty special concept and it is always really funny to see that LatinAmerican culture is a bit different from our western one, did you ever find a bar in Holland where women drink for free every Wednesday night from 7 until 11 ? This time it wasn’t a really long night as I wanted to get up early so I only had 2 beers at the bar and then went home to sleep again which was pretty good as Ecuadorian beds seem to be way way way softer then Korean ones. Oh and a little cultural fact on the side, did you know that two guys walking hand in hand in Ecuador can be fined as being gay is totally not accepted here.

So the next day, some of my class and school mates still a bit drunk reported at the school at 8:30 to go on one the nice trips school organizes every Thursday. So we went by buss to the Pannecellio, or better known as the Virgin of Quito, which I already saw with Sophie at the first week I’ve got here.

After this we went to a very impressive graveyard in Quito, Latin American graveyards are different in the following way from European ones: The bodies go into a kind of flat building for the dead which has an opening about a little bit bigger than the monitor you are looking at at the moment, to my best estimations… and for those of you following my blog on an absurdly big flat screen. That DoEsN’t count! But every grave is neatly decorated by the family, that is if they have the money for it. Wandering around the graveyard we also came across what are like private graves or like houses for the dead which are beautifully constructed very over the top monuments which act as a family grave. The only bad experience with the graveyard was that we could not take pictures, and in a way this was also for a good reason, there were some coffins standing around from graves which were recently cleared. These weren’t particularly placed on the side of the graveyard but just in the path. These graves were cleared because in many cases you only hire a grave for 20 years and then the deceased is … probably transferred to a more permanent residence or I guess destroyed. At the special children’s part of the graveyard we even saw some bones in a coffin as after years of decay the lid had slid of and the remains were partially visible.

After we got of the graveyard we went for a stroll through the “Centro Historico” of Quito which is a very beautiful place to walk around and see the nice churches & museums the city has to offer. The thing that struck my most actually was that there was a very nice neighborhood surrounding the graveyard with to Ecuadorians standards very nice houses and streets, a bit what we in the west expect as a general street view in Latin America. So when strolling around the streets there you could have a very nice view of the Virgin of Quito which is places on top of a hill and can be seen form almost everywhere in Quito, This Virgin statue by the way was constructed by the Spanish around the 1970’s from about 2000 pieces of aluminum and shipped to Quito in pieces where it has been put together on the Panecillio. After we had a little interesting tour it was already time to go for something to eat so we went to this cheap (but quite good) American style diner our teachers happened to know. Here we could order empanada’s quesadilla’s and more quite typical Latin American/Mexican food . After having tasted something which was more a cupcake then it was a quesadilla it was time for my empanada “con carne” or with meat… but they only had it with “pollo” or chicken so without asking my anything they just served me the chicken one and just told me we don’t have the other one so you will get this one. But it was nice anyway so that was a great idea. I was already getting a bit nervous when sitting in the diner with my class and school mates, because I had to meet the people from my internship company for the first time and I had to meet them at half past one, but I had no idea what time it was. So after taking the bus back to our “Hood” Mariscal I reported to Nicole from the Spanish school and we went off the meet the guys I would be working for, for over 4 months.

This said we went to the Plaza Foch, the main square in the Mariscal area to meet up with the guys and the seemed pretty cool as they were all by bicycle and not that formally dressed. And they took me to this great Almuerzo (Lunch) place but I wasn’t really hungry as we had just eaten at the Old town of Quito. This place had Menestras which is a dish which simply contains beans with a sauce, rice and fish or beef or pork and it costs around $3 for the one with fish and $2,75 for the one with fish. I would say that for eating in a quit hygienic restaurant that is really not a lot. I will surely return there with some of my friends one day as the smell of the food there was great for real! And the guys from my internship also turned out to be great, even though they don’t know a lot about Europe and see it as one country they really want to export their product to the Netherlands and or Germany and Belgium. For more about their product just look at www.fuireciclado.com knowledge of Spanish comes in handy when you visit the website as they do not have it in English yet. They are producing bags and other items from commercial banners and inner tires from trucks. So I have finally moved away from a tire company and I still have to do with tires,. . . . . . It’s a small world after all.

So my new room-mate Niels had arrived on Thursday as well, I had already moved all of my stuff to the new apartment the day before, which is very cool by the way but a little bit less luxurious as the other one, for example we are totally lacking a dining table. But it is a nice and small place, but as I already said during the weekends we are living in a discotheque. The plan was to go to the Teliferico which is the world second highest cable cart on Friday and to visit Mitad del Mundo, or the middle of the world as well.

So on Saturday after waking up and having breakfast we went to go to the Teliferico which ends at 4100m that is really high and there is not a lot of air to breath, but already taking the bus to this altitude we were getting the idea that Quito just lies on a different level as we had to drive up a hill for about 20 minutes to get to the point where we, Myrthe, Sophie and me were shipped into a free bus, to get even higher and higher. Niels didn´t join us as he still had to get used to the “normal” height of Quito which is abour 2800 meters by the way. So there we went, after buying a ticket the moment was finally there to get up with the cable cart which was really cool already and you could see a lot of Quito from that height. Some of us were feeling the effects of altitude sickness already, which was to be honest not really strange as there is just no oxygen at that height and if there is one thing we learnt from biology it is that it is just that oxygen that we humans need to breathe. To give you another example the “death zone” or the height in which you can already die if you stay there too long is 5000 meters and we were travelling to only 900 meters under that point just to give you a good example of how “high” we were. But when we finally got up there we had a very nice view over Quito and could see the city in its full glory. The scenery was sincerely breathtaking and even if they were not they would still take your breath away, especially as while we were up there we decided to go and find the “horse rental” and walk up a small hill which exhausted us already like we were 88 years old. The no smoking signs on the hill were totally obsolete if you’d ask me. So while we almost lost our hope of finding the horse rental there it was in the distance, plus there was another astonishing view. As the horse rental was only $5 we decided to give it a try and finally after a lot of years I was back on a horse again, only this time way up in the mountains which was really cool. As our half our of fun with the horses was almost over we asked the women if you could gallop back to the stables and so we could which was a cool experience, even though the horses wouldn’t really gallop for a long time but still. As this wonderful experience came to an and we decided to go back down again to pick up Niels to go to “Mitad del Mundo”. Oh, I almost forgot, when we just arrived at the mountain we found out there was a church at that height… Christianity is so unbelievably relentless…. But if I every would want to marry in a church it would be there!

As we about an hour and a very interesting taxi ride later returned to get Niels, we were still determined to go to the Middle of the World… it feels to me as if I am saying Middle Earth (for all you Lord of the Rings fans…) but first, the girls wanted to get “Pan de Yuka” which is bread made from the Yuka fruit/root/plant at least it doesn’t contain gluten so Myrthe who has a gluten allergy can safely eat it. Then we went on to find the bus to Mitad del Mundo, the Middle of the World, or Middle Earth, you decide. When we finally found it, waited for it, waived it, it drove straight past us to stop like a 100 meters away from us so we weren’t able to catch it… After this fiasco we decided to go to the local handicraft market again as the girls wanted to buy something and it was close as well, at the market I could once again use my haggling skills which are becoming pretty decent. These markets have a lot of Alpaca products which is a type of wool from the mountain Lama, it is really soft and is in Europe very expensive, though not here. But that is not what we came for anyway. It is always nice here to walk across the markets and see what typical Ecuadorian handicrafts are made here, laying just next to the soccer club shawls and shirts.

After our fiasco on Friday to get to Mitad del Mundo, we tried again on Saturday, and this time with success. After about an hour in the bus we arrived at our destination, latitude 0,0’0” or did we? After first having lunch we decided to visit the monument put in the place where the French … thought the middle of the world exactly was. It was very touristy and they made a bit of a fun-fair out of the whole experience, so after we got our passports stamped with “Mitad del Mundo” we went onwards with our Quest to find the real middle of the world, but not after taking some pictures of lama’s standing around somewhere. When searching for the real middle of the world we walked up this sandy path, it looked a bit like a total dump from far, but we decided to give it a try, and yes finally we’ve found it we had to pay $3 dollars entrance to get the guided tour.

The tour consisted of seeing the gruesome things the indigenous people did to their enemies, even when they are dead.

WARNING, for people with an weak stomach, it’s better to skip to the next paragraph where I will talk about the normal bits. Ps: also skip the last photo if you can’t handle!

So, I see you are still reading, good at least you stick to rule number 5 (people from Korea will definitely understand) The indigenous people of Ecuador used to cut the head of their enemies, then boil it to get the skin off, then dry and shrink it and wear the dried and shrunken skin of the skull, which now is the size of a fist as an amulet to ward off evil spirits, to intimidate enemies and to establish in which rank as a fighter/soldier they were. It is believed the last of these acts was performed in 1970 as afterwards it got forbidden. The cool thing was that at the museum you could actually see a live example of this, it was believed to be a 12 year old kid, as you can see in the last photograph of today’s photo upload.

After this nice introduction about how to treat your enemy the tour continued with something a little more peaceful, the weapons the indigenous people use to hunt like blow darts which are first tipped with curare a poison extracted from a certain kind of root. A nice fact to know is that they actually only used the blow dart for hunting pray that were up in the trees, only numbing them so they could finish them off on the ground. After this we saw the grave of the indigenous which was pretty interesting, but still not what we came here to see!

Finally, we will now get to the point where it gets interesting, the corioliseffect which states that the water should turn the other way around on the southern hemisphere than it does on the northern hemisphere and it should fall straight down on the Equator itself for example by empting a bathtub. And it actually does, I can tell now. But actually the influence of the earth’s rotation is so small that anything can fail the experiment, like a gust of wind, people moving around, the water that is not totally still. After this it was the turn to the famous “Eggmaster experiment” It is easier, or so it is said to balance an Egg on the head of a nail on the Equator than it is anywhere else in the world. Believe me, it isn’t… but if you could achieve it and it would last for more than 3 seconds you would get a diploma which stated that you did just that… When the tour finished, the people who could do the Egg thing could get their diploma, and the rest could get another stamp in their passport, Great! So after exiting through the gift shop to buy our Mitad del Mundo and Latitude 0,0’0” bracelets it was off to Quito again…..

That’s all folks!