Quitting Quito

Wednesday came round again and as an escape from all those mierdas irregular past verbs we chicas once again sought solace in the free stomach churning (the next day they work as an amazing laxative) cocktails of Bungalow 6. Beforehand I went to The Reine Victoria Pub (Queen Vic) with my US housemates Kavitha and Devlin. It was a little surreal but lovely to have a dark (if a little fizzy) microbrewed beer on tap and there was a pub quiz in full swing, shepherds pie, fish n chips etc on the menu and pictures of The George at London Bridge and the church on Blackheath on the wall. The pub is part Canadian owned and we were able to watch Ecuador beating Canada at football (I´m sure Canada would thrash ´em at ice hockey) and later at B6 to help the locals in their bright yellow shirts celebrate. Unfortunately on the 3 block walk back to our appartment building Kavitha´s bag was snatched by the loco guy who normally is bumbling around the Mariscal area but he proved he could move when he wanted to and we were in no state to give chase and fairly unreliable witnesses at 0130. Fortunately she wasn´t hurt and only $20 and a set of appartment keys were taken. Also Fernando had stuck to his word and not put the extra lock and chain on the door.
Thursday was chuchachi day, hooray! Lovely Adriana took pity on us and for most of the lesson we went for a walk arount Quito in search of ingredients for our cookery lesson after class. All very well but she took Michael and I to a massive indoor market at Santa Claro and the smell and sight of exotic fishes and dead animals caused my stomach to turn a few flips. That lunchtime with the other students and techers in the school we prepared chicken ceviche and ate it with the usual accompaniment of popcorn - a-maize-ingly it really works. It was tasty but not quite up to the standards of my Ecuadorian mother Monica´s squid cerviche. Friday was mine and M´s last day in school but Adriana was not up for any last day at school fun until we had covered a little more grammar. So in la pausa Michael and I nipped to a local florists to get an exotic arrangement in a goldfish bowl and a half bottle of wine to say gracias to Adriana. She was chuffed and delighted when Michael suggested she used the glass vase for fruity cocktails. But there were some more exrcises to cover as we sipped the vino from plastic beakers, which did the trick as A got a little tipsy and class ended with a game in Spanish and a vocab test on body parts, which we didn´t quite understand at first and stared open mouthed when A instructed us to "touch ourselves".
Saturday and whilst Laura, Scott, Mike and Jen went off to relax in some thermal baths, K, D and I signed up for the Cotopaxi volcano/biking trip and had to rendezvous with the our driver, guide and other participants near to Plaza Foch at 0700 Saturday morning. The drive to Cotopaxi mostly on the Pan-American highway was pretty uncomfortable with eight of us squashed into the back of a Toyota filled with diesel fumes, with some respite when we pulled off en route to pick up a trailer with the bikes and had a chance to look at some tree sculptures created by artists for the village. Then on into the Cotopaxi National Park where the road became rougher and the landscape more lunar. We stopped for energy supplies (including coca tea) and to buy handknitted alpaca gloves for the climb. Up we wound shaking over the ridges created by the wind and water coming off the volcano and admired hardy "Alpines" growing amomgst the spongy algae-like carpet on the ground. Because of the altitude and conditions one species of plant takes 7 years to grow, if it´s not eaten by the wild horses before, and is the symbol chosen by the hardy people of the region.
We stopped in a car park at 4,500 metres beneath Cotopaxi (Quechua for "Neck of the Princess", all volcanoes have a gender and Cotopaxi, a perfect conical shape, is female) and Andres our guide pointed up to the refuge 300m above and asked us whether we wanted to walk the steep sandy path up or the path traversing gently across the slope. The boys wanted to go the straight way up and Bene from Germany said it should take 5 mins. Andres laughed and said that we should take the other path and it would take 1 1/2 hours. He wasn´t wrong and it was a hard climp as our hearts and lungs heaved for oxygen in the thin cold air and forced our bodies on along the red and grey volcanic dust track strewn with pumice stones and boulders. In the end after several stops it took an hour and a quarter and Andres was pleased as the day before an older party (I was the old fogey on this one) took 2 hours to reach the refuge. Once inside at 4810 we reorientated ourselves with hot chocolate and looked around the hut which had bunks upstairs for the brave climbers who attempt in the middle of the night to reach the summit at 5,900m. Thinking we had gone as high as we were going to Andres then motivated us to go on and reach the edge of the glacial cap. All but two of us made it (Kavitha felt dizzy and Anita had burned out) and some with ridiculous levels of energy threw snow balls whilst Benny slid down the steep slope on his feet.
Returning down to the car park was much more fun as we jumped and zig-zagged down the steep slope like Armstrong bouncing on the moon, passing sick looking Quito day trippers, lunar-white and wrapped in sleeping bags. Then the next part of the adventure an hour´s mountain bike down to the large lake some distance below. All very well but the roads have horizontal ridges along them and on bikes without "Rock Shox" standard suspension and the necessity to constantly apply the ineffectual rear break our hands and arms vibrated and the pain was intense. Poor Kavitha came off her bike twice owing to skidding when cars passed and joined Anita (Quito girl whose mother owns the tour company) in the support vehicle. Anita had not even got onto a bike as she explained just before we set off that she had had an accident before and nearly died. The helmets we were issued with had no padding whatsoever and it was with considerably relief that I lay beside the lake at the bottom sucking in the thicker air. The trip had certainly kept my finger nails away from my Mindo bites, still itching after the little buggers had feasted on my red platelets enriched by the altiude of Quito. I only hope that some of the beautiful birds had in turn eaten the blood suckers.
Back to Quito at 1800, our relaxed and bathed friends joined us and we treated ourselves to pizza and splashed out on a couple of bottles of Chilean red with more drinks afterwards as it was Scott´s last night in Q before heading to Manta on the coast for some diving and it was the last time we would all be together before radiating out across the continent.