Training montage

I want to be hopeful that my cards will turn up today, but it´s a stretch of my imagination.

After wasting away much of the day with Leonard and Sheldon and Raj and Howard, I drag myself up for a run. The big park in Quito is pretty impressive. Aside from being big, it´s got football pitches, basketball courts, volleyball nets, a concrete BMX track, a dirt BMX track and a running track with stops for sit ups, pull ups, balancing on logs, rope climbing and doing whatever any amateur can hope to do on those gymnasts rings. That´s all the motivation I need to act out some generic training montage.

My dream montage isn´t playing out how I'd like. Since Bolivia my stomach has not been quite right. It's not very bad at all, but it's not quite right. There's something in South American food that offends it. Running is unsettling me. It doesn't like being shaken all about the place.

After twenty minutes of gingerly running, I'm feeling a stitch coming. It occurs to me that I don't even know what a stitch is, but I know it means game over. At best I can manage forty seconds of this limp jogging before it threatens again. None of stopping, stretching, and cursing seem to ease the problem. Carl Weathers himself couldn't rescue this. We're done here.

Walking back through the park, I can at least play with the fitness equipment. After a few sit ups, I come to the conclusion that they're hard and my beer consumption renders them utterly pointless. Shimmying across and between pull up bars is equally difficult, but at least it has a satisfying computer game action hero novelty. I thought I could climb a rope, but I'm disappointed to find that I can't. Pah. Forget this.

There's no mail today.

Stuck in The Middle with You

I'm trying to balance an egg on the head of a nail. I'm assured by the guide at the Mitad del Mundo museum that it's possible. When I stepped, up I was entirely determined to do it, but after twenty seconds of not getting close, I huffed and puffed and gave up.


Apparently, the hostel's English contingent and I are precisely on the equator. The museum includes some shrunken heads from a shrunken head tribe and some demonstrations of how the forces on either side of the equator are neutral down the middle - hence the egg.


It's all very novel, but we've been assured that neither of the two Mitad Del Mundo museums are accurately positioned on the equator, and that the demonstrations are all unrelated to the real equatorial line. The museum claims to have pinned itself on the equator using a military GPS, some fifteen years ago. Being a part-time sailor, I'm particularly smug with the knowledge that a fifteen year old military GPS would be lucky to pin the tail anywhere on a fifty-foot donkey. Nonetheless, everyone is having a great time taking photos of each other straddling an arbitrary line on the ground. Sometimes I'm glad I lost that camera.

Stargazer

Much like yesterday, today doesn´t promise much excitement. Once again, I just need something to validate the day. That thing is the Quito Osbervatory. The Observatory museum includes a glass case that features two hand wound pencil sharpeners that were actually used by scientists in their work. For the visit, I´ve no better idea of how the Greeks took two stars and drew a dog.


The girl at reception isn´t optimistic for my mail. She tells me that when this has happened before, it has taken upto four weeks to get mail from England.


At least, I have my friends Charlie, Alan and Jake for company.

Bad Reuptation

I've got to do something to validate the day, so I head for the Naitonal Museum. I'm not terribly excited about it. The hostel has cable TV, and in all honestly, I'd rather watch Two-and-a-Half Men re-runs. As far as pottery and history can go, the museam is sort of interesting. At least, it's enough to burn an hour-and-a-half and validate the day.


From what I've heard since arriving, Quito has the most dangerous reputation of any city I've seen yet. I gather the mugger's weapon of choice is the machete. There's a short list of no-go areas, but apparently, the less well-armed muggers aren't too shy about stalking the relative safezones. Everyone seems to have a story about a friend who's been robbed. Today, a fresh story comes from a German guy in the hostel. He was taking a picture in the old town in the middle of the afternoon. One guy pushed him, another guy took his camera, and that was the end of that.

In the evening, Emma and a couple of girls from the hostel drag me away from my Warner Brothers marathon of Two-and-a-Half Men and the Big Bang Theory to hit a nearby discotheque. I need a hell of a lot of sauce before I can, or should, hit the discotheques. As I predicted, the disco is not my scene. The scene is a little disco-lit bar, playing the same pop music that's followed me around for that last three months. It soon fills with gringos and what look to be eighteen year old boys. My scene is a quiet wooden Cask Marque pub of old men and a soundtrack of Thin Lizzy and CCR. I'm able to persuasively feign enjoying this scene for a few hours, but as midnight comes, I'm relieved when one of the girls starts feeling ill.

Snakecharmer

My replacement cards are in the mail, but I'm still not keen to blast through what remains of my emergency dollars.

Quito's park is home to the Vivarium, which, in turn, is home to a selection of snakes and assorted creepy crawlies. I'm not scared of snakes and spiders per se, but I wouldn't choose to go anywhere near one, given the choice. For that matter, I'd avoid dogs, if I could - especially, the dirty, insesently barking muts all over South America. The Vivarium is a worthwhile visit. Enough of the snakes are in motion for my entertainment, but I'm unable to make them stand or dance.

Are You Going My Way

After an overnight bus, I'm soon into my hostel in Quito. My German surf student, Ben, is here, and thankfully has hearing restored to full Dolby stereo. On the standard tourist trail, you often to bump into the same people each time you check into a new city and hostel. I met an English couple, Christian and Juliette, at the Paraguay-Boliva border, then again in Santa Cruz, again in Copacabana. I repeatidly bumped into a travelling group in Sucre, Potosi, on the Salt flats, and finally in a Cusco discotheque. Here I've found Emma, also English, who I met in La Paz whilst I was a grim jester and she was a frog, then Mancora and Montañita, sans costume. 


It's a reassuring to see familiar faces. Back in the bank, we had a nice open plan office, and it was my business to know the better part of three-hundred people in my immediate vicinity, and many more beyond. Travelling, largely alone, for these four or five months has been a different story. I think what I miss is the sense continuity in people.


Emma and I spend the day wandering around the Quito's old town. The Basillica here has a famous view from the top. We enter the Basillica for two bucks. As churches go, it's big, but it's nothing special, by a long shot. The gates between the main church and towers of stairs to climb up to the bell tower are locked. We're told we have to exit and walk around to another exit. We're greeted at the entrance to the bell tower with the news that our two dollar ticket only covered the church. The climb and the view is another two dollars. The view is nice, but for the rest of the day I'm trying to contain how absolutley livid I am at having fallen victim to this shameless, malevolent church con. I only pray that the whole thing is destroyed by raging hellfire.

Football Fight

I´m not sure I´m going to the game, but I´m already wearing my Deportivo Cuenca shirt, so I´ll make a last attempt to get a black market ticket. The newspaper talks about our offensive trident. Apparently, we play a three-four-three formation. I´ve never heard of that formation, but it must be pretty aggressive. From the locals I spoke to last night, I'm assured this is an important game. I'm also given to understand that Manchester United's Ecuadorian, Antonio Valencia, is playing for us.

The streets are awash with my yellow shirted foes. I´m a little confused by the lack of red shirts, given that this is the home team. Nonetheless, after circuiting half the stadium, through hundreds and hundreds of metres of yellow entry queues, I'm the proud owner of a twelve dollar ticket, and for just thirty dollars. I manage to find an entry point dominated by my fellow red shirts. At the front of our queue, there's a woman with an arm covered in belts. As I close on the front of the queue, it seems that each person is being stripped of their belt by the police. It must have been an ugly day in Ecuadorian football history when the fans started going at each other with belts. Despite being disarmed, the fans, stadium and a a good distance around, is thoroughly policed by both policemen and soldiers on foot, horses, and Honda Tornados.

In the stadium, the extent to which the local supporters and I are outnumbered becomes very obvious, given separated blocks of fans. Over three-quarters of the stadium is yellow. Ahead of the match, the Barca' fans are singing, and frantically waving tube balloons. My gang is doing much the same. There's a hardcore of our fans going particularly crazy, but I can't work out what they're singing. Rolls of streamers and balloons are being handed out. Several of the fans have big wads of paper, cut into five-by-five centimetre squares for confetti. 


Cuenca score in the first half, triggering emphatic animation amongst my crowd. I join in with the jumping and shouting. Balloons are flying. A few pieces of confetti land on me - one piece is from a magazine, the other is piece of a child's maths homework on squared school paper. There's no love loss between the fans. A few of our fans are gesturing and shouting things at the Barca' fans that probably aren't very polite.


In the late stage of the game, we're still holding a one-nil lead. The yellow three-quarters suddenly goes crazy, then begins cheering as Cuenca concede a penalty. Our number one pushes the shot out and it's quickly cleared. The celebration on our side huge. The yellow fans receive a torrent of verbal abuse.


As the final whistle comes close, the yellow fans are singing and dancing again. The Cuenca fans are still loud, but nowhere near the volume of the yellows. I'm pretty confused. As the game ends, the two sets of fans exchange a hail of missiles - mostly empty bottles and corn cobs. I manage to escape from the stadium unhurt.

In town, I'm walking around looking for the celebrations, but there's little sign of the reds. There's plenty of car fulls of yellows making their way out, beeping their horns as if they'd won. I eventually confirm that despite losing, they've now won the league.

It's Sunday night, and although this is still a huge win for Deportivo, the standard South American Sunday night behaviour applies. The streets are empty and everything is closed. It's time to get out of Cuenca.