Leaving Home and Arriving in Quito

Matt

January 2, 2008

This is Matt signing onto the blog for the first time. I´m actually writing this on the flight out of Austin. We just took off, and I am trying out this little word processor, which is already the best two pounds in my backpack (other than my Martin Backpacker Guitar, which technically weighs a little more than two pounds). I have to admit that I´ve never read a blog, and I had to ask Amber what the parameters were. She pretty much said that I could just write whatever I wanted and that there were no rules. So I really have no idea what to make of the blog.

So we are doing it. Preparing to leave for this trip was like no other trip I have experienced. It began more than five years ago and continued through today. This morning was surreal. We made an early morning trip to my office to execute our Wills and to perform last minutes tasks. Until we left for the airport at four in the afternoon, I was still sending last minute emails to clients. Because of my job, timing this trip was difficult, and I just got lucky on several cases and was fortunate to get to leave. It was all hands on deck to get this done, and I´m sure that our friends and families are sick of hearing about it. So it feels good to be on our way. I would like to thank Amber, my wife, for making this trip possible. She budgeted for the trip on at least two spreadsheets, saved for the trip, paid all our bills before and arranged to have them paid during the trip, arranged for her mother to keep our pets during the trip, arranged for someone to live at our house during the trip, sold her separate property to help pay for the trip, paid all of my business taxes and did QuickBooks, etc., etc. In sum, Amber is really awesome, and I am a very lucky guy. So here we go.

Later. Matt

Amber

January 2

Travel Day

It is 2:25a.m. in my body. 12:25a.m. in the Los Angeles airport where I´m sitting on the floor in the corner typing this. Matt is asleep on the floor....cradling his guitar.

It´s been a long day. Well, really a long couple of days.

After the marathon of Christmas festivities in Austin and Lubbock, my mom brought us home on Thursday. Mom and I spent the weekend doing last minute errands and seeing Ang and the boys, while Matt worked around the clock to wrap up or pass cases to colleagues, etc....

We had a family get together with all of the Gilmores along with Matt´s brothers and their crews on Saturday night at Ang and Jason´s. While these are always amazing, looking around the room just a few short days before this journey was going to start and seeing my family singing and playing was was even more wonderful than usual. That one jam will stick in my mind throughout this trip. At least since we have the Martin Backpacker, we can do a mini reenactment from time to time.

The festivities continued at our house on New Year´s Eve. Our families and friends all joined us for chili dogs on paper plates (it´s really all I could pull off), a fire in the chiminea, and cheap champagne. We finally turned in at 4:00am.

January 1st was the day of teary goodbyes. My mom headed home to Lubbock (with Max and Daisy, our weenie dogs, in tow) on Tuesday morning. I can say that I haven´t seen her that sad in a long time. It was sadness (and some fear) mixed with pride for sure, but it was a tough goodbye. Fast forward a few hours to more sad goodbyes at Ang / Jason´s, Brooke / Zac´s, and Nate / Megan´s, and Tuesday really was tough. It´s difficult to be so excited while seeing the people who I love so torn up. It just seems like a really long time to them. I have to say though, I´m honored to be so loved. And I know, because Matt has left me many times in the past to wander the planet, that it´s a whole lot more fun to leave than to be left. So I thank everyone for loving us...and putting up with us and with this. I was also stunned by the number of sweet voicemails I got in the last couple of days at home...and incredibly humbled.

The trail of tears on Tuesday couldn't´t have prepared me for hugging Jake and Ace goodbye this morning. And the funny thing is...and I can admit this, because I know they adore me as much as I do them....they were perfectly okay. I explained to them that the trip was finally here and that I would see them in NY in ten weeks. After sweet and genuine, as usual, hugs and kisses, they were quickly playing with Jason, asking for another donut, and the playing with ¨little Darth Vader.¨ I´m now confident that they won´t be scarred for life by my leaving, though I know they´ll be as thrilled as I am to be together in NY. I left them with books about each country to open as we go, so I hope they´ll have fun learning about the world and other cultures along with us. They also both promised to email. They´re 2 and 5, so we´ll have to see how that goes.

So those are the goodbyes....most of the day, however, has been a grind. We woke up at 6:00a.m. after only sleeping a few hours. We made one last pilgrimage to our neighborhood bakery to get a cinnamon roll and say bye to the folks there. The owner assured us that if worse comes to worse, he will overnight pastries to us anywhere on Earth. Funny thing is, I don´t think he was kidding.

Matt was at the office by 7:30, I spent a few hours with the boys, we signed our Wills, went to Whole Earth, dropped a file off downtown, finished packing, cleaning, / tending to Maggie (my cat), and literally got to the Austin airport in the nick of time.

The icing on the cake of a totally surreal day in our lives that we´ll never forget is the 2:00a.m. email from Kathleen, my bestfriend since 7th grade, that she was in labor. She and Will welcomed a healthy baby boy in NYC this afternoon. We´ll meet him in March. Something about it all happening on the same day feels really incredible to me. I´ve thought about them all day long. January 2, 2008 was an amazing day.

So by the time we drove to the airport, we were in a fog....so excited, proud, nervous, exhausted, and mainly just ready to go.

January 3rd

Still traveling

We´re on a flight now from San Jose to Quito. Matt slept the whole way from LAX to San Jose. I slept some and talked to the man next to me some. He was a 70  year old man from Ecuador who´s been living in LA for 46 years. He´s heading home to visit his 98 year old mother on the Ecuadorian coast. A very interesting man, who told me about his experience immigrating to the US, being a successful garment company owner, and being put out of business by manufacturing all going overseas.

Costa Rica airport was small, modern, and clean with every American food joint you could think of and an amazing view of the mountains. We were only there for an hour, but it seemed very nice.

It´s been an incredibly long travel day. We´re at about 20 hours and counting.

January 3rd

Arrival in Quito

After an uneventful last leg of a long flight (we sat with a 23 year old Peace Corps volunteer from Wisconsin who´s lived here for 18 months), we finally arrived in Quito. It´s a beautiful city. Looks a lot like a Mexican city to me, but that´s just my frame of reference because I´ve spent so much time in Mexico. It is smack in the middle of the Andes, so around every corner is an amazing mountain view. The air is so thin because of the altitude that we´ve both felt light headed all day, but we enjoyed meandering the streets tremendously . After dark, it´s not safe to wander far, so we made tracks in daylight and will take cabs after dark. In Quito, that´s not just the rule for foreigners. Locals abide by it too. Tomorrow, we´ll to explore Old Town, some parks, and Guapalo, where Matt lived when he was here ten years ago.

Our hotel is the Hostal Amazonas Inn in the Mariscal District. It´s a basic room with no window, a small bed, and a private bathroom. It´s clean enough, and the staff is very welcoming. The rate is $26 per night, which seems a bit steep, but we are in the biggest city in Ecuador and still didn´t go over our budget today, so it´s fine.

We had a great meal this afternoon that helped ease the altitude issues we were having. I had pork with tiny Andean potatoes and cream, and Matt had chicken skewers and fresh pineapple- strawberry juice. They served us great looking salads, but we had to leave them on our plates. Last time Matt was here, he ate a bad piece of lettuce and wound up with 3 types of intestinal parasites, so we have a strict no uncooked veggies rule.

Dinner was at Mirador Guapalo, a tiny place with a great view of the valley neighborhood where Matt lived when he was here. It was dark and quaint with a good guitar player. We sat there still suffering from the change in altitude but mainly amazed that we´re finally here. My food was not very good. It was some sort of tough meat on the bone along with flavorless white corn and avocado. Matt liked his though - chicken breast and some veggies. If we don´t lose weight on this trip, something is seriously wrong.

End of day 1 and all is well. More tomorrow and hopefully more interesting than the ins and outs of airport travel.

p.s. I´m going to keep a running list of books that we read. I always love to look back at my travel journals and remember what I was reading at the time. Same for food. Remembering those details helps transport me back in time.

To start, Matt is reading Leo Tolstoy´s Anna Karenina, and I´m reading Audrey Niffenegger´s The Time Traveler´s Wife. We´ll swap when done and both add a note about how we liked them. We´ll pick up other books as we find them or swap with other travelers, but if you know of something good that we should keep our eyes out for, send us an email.

January 4

Quito (Old Town and Guapalo)

After a much needed night´s sleep, we woke up feeling reinvigorated and really excited to see the sites of Quito. Started the day in a cafe with a great breakfast of eggs, bread, guanamana juice (don´t know what it is, but it was great), and coffee. I couldn´t have scripted a better meal. All for $5.

After breakfast and the bank, we walked several blocks and hopped on a local bus to Old Town, the colonial historic district. We´re not staying there because it tends to be very unsafe at night, but it´s teaming with people and activity during the day, and it´s beautiful.

We rode a jam packed bus about 15 minutes to reach it. Fare was 25 cents each (Ecuador uses the US dollar) a change made in 2000 and one that locals are still not happy about. One thing I noticed on the bus later in the day.....on a packed (and I mean no room to breathe) bus, a man gave his seat up to another man holding a baby. The man who gave up his seat wasn´t about to get off. He then road the bus for a very long time standing up. I´ve been on many buses in many countries, and you don´t see that courtesy in most. It said something to me about Ecuadorian culture that I won´t soon forget.

We hopped off the bus in Old Town and spent the day wandering the cobbled streets. We visited several cathedrals and museums and had coffee in some colorful local plazas. We also visited the local market, where we bought some fruit and saw the condition of the chicken and pork we´re eating all over town.

While most of Quito looks to me like most other big cities Ive visited in the developing world - basic architecture, bustling streets, people everywhere, street vendors, smell of bus exhaust...Old Town´s architecture is beautiful. The entire city of Quito is flanked by the Andes mountain range, and Old Town has incredible views from every direction.

Streets are full of indigenous women and children, men polishing shoes, blind people playing instruments for tips, people sipping coffee at outdoor cafes, and people going about day to day life. I guess we´re here in the low season, because we´ve seen very few other Gringos. Police are around in some areas and carry only batons. Privately hired security guards are in front of many businesses, and they carry automatic weapons, shotguns, and pistols. That seems odd to us, but you see it everywhere.

Here´s a list of some of the sites we hit in Old Town:

Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus - built in 1605 ' beautiful Baroque cathedral. Gold leaf was on every surface. Photos weren´t allowed in the cathedrals, so we have a few that were snuck and in no way do any of them justice.

Cathedral Primada - built in 1535 - baroque, moorish, rococo, new gothic, and neo classical styles. Great colors stuck out here - turquoise, blue, and red.

Basilica del Voto National - built in 1884 - we climbed to the top for sweeping views of Quito and the Virgin that overlooks the city.

Later in the day, we visited the cathedral in Guapalo, which was built in 1649. It was actually closed, but they unlocked it for us, and we visited the museum and cathedral by ourselves. They had to turn on the lights. It was very peaceful and surreal. Not all too different from others though. We seemed to be the only tourists in all of the sites we visited. If others were there, it was locals worshipping.

What else - Well, we´re at least at head taller than almost everyone. And if you didn´t speak Spanish, it would be very difficult to get around on your own.

We had lunch in Old Town at a tiny hole in the wall comidor. For $1.25, we got juice (not sure what kind), soup made with broth, pasta, some sort of cheese we think, and potatoes, a piece of chicken on the bone, rice, and potatoes. It is called an Almuerza and is a set menu. With 2 meals and 2 cokes, our lunch was $3.50 total, and we were stuffed. It was called Comidor Burguer - spelled exactly like that and not serving anything remotely resembling a burger(or burguer).

Walking in Quito reminds me of walking in San Francisco....if San Francisco had very little oxygen. The streets literally sit at 45 degree angles. Sometimes today, I thought I must be on the Amazing Race or the Biggest Loser ' with the number of sites we took in and the calories we must have burned walking these roads that have been built on mountains.

After we climbed to and up the Basilica, we headed to Guapalo, where we saw the apartment where Matt lived 10 years ago. It was great to see it but especially to see him see it. Being here in 1998 was such a life changing experience for him. We had just graduated from college (and incidentally just broken up), and he moved to Ecuador alone. It was obviously a pivotal and very positive moment in his life. Not only that, it´s beautiful. I never really knew how beautiful. It was before the days of digital cameras and Web blogs, so many of his memories just live in his head about his life here. Guapalo is a neighborhood in Quito that´s built into the side of a mountain, so again, the walk was intense. Scenery was beautiful. Great mountain views everywhere, and beautiful flowers growing in front of very simple apartments and out of stone walls. The bar where Matt spent a lot of time that´s across the street from his apartment is even still there. The climb back out of Guapalo and into the part of the city where we´re staying was great training for our coming hikes. A security guard (one with a machine gun) laughed at me near the top and asked me in Spanish if I was hurting. And I thought I was playing it super cool.

I´m now at the hotel regrouping, while Matt is scouring the city for the best tickets to Cuenca tomorrow.

Here are our photos so far:

Quito and road to Cuenca

http://share.shutterfly.com /action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0Zt FGc8

Cuenca and area (stories to come soon):

http://share.shutterfly.com /action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0Zt FGd4

I know it´s a lot, but the computers are too slow to sort and share only the keepers. Please excuse any that are not flattering (we all know I´d like to crop and delete some of these - closed eyes, blurry cathedrals, etc...Since we have to upload photos as we go to keep our camera from filling up, I will just post large groups of photos as I upload them. And everyone knows about me and photos ' I love them, and I take lots. They are as much like a journal to me as this blog is. Anyway, I know it´s a ton, but I still thought some of you would like to see the world as we go.

Heading to Cuenca tomorrow at 6:00am.....then on to Banos and Caja I think. Will keep the journal as up to date as I can. And Matt will blog some too, even though he hasn´t much yet. He wanted to tonight but is off getting tix for our travels tomorrow.

Love to all. More soon!

Matt

January 3-5, 2008

After reading Amber´s blog, she pretty much covered everything that we did. From my perspective, it is very interesting being back in Quito as a fairly seasoned traveler and seeing the same places that I saw ten years ago as a 23 year old that had really never traveled before.

Quito looks entirely different to me now. In some ways it is actually different. For example, they have created a bus lane on some of the major streets, which is nice. I rode that new bus line around yesterday and thought it made traffic on those streets less insane. Pollution from buses seems to be down overall.

A lot of Quito is exactly the same though, including the apartment in Guapulo, where I stayed with Caroline and Gina. Not only was the apartment the same, the bar/cafe across the street, Cafe Arte, where we spent a lot of time, looks identical. There are more businesses on our street now, but otherwise it was like going back in time ten years. I even made Amber walk to the church at the bottom of the hill in Guapulo and then walk back to the top. That was hard then, and it is hard now. She needs to get prepared for the Inca Trail anyway.

We hit most of the major sites in Old Town, including San Francisco, la Basilica, and several other churches/museums. I drank my favorite carbonated mineral water, Guitig, and remembered that Guitig is what got me hook on carbonated water in the first place. Now it is all I can drink in the way of water.

Last night, I left Amber in the room and made a late evening run to the bus station to get tickets to Cuenca; that bus station was shady then, and it is shady now. In all, it was very exciting to go back to the city where I caught the travel bug. We left for Cuenca by bus this morning at 6:30am and arrived about eleven hours later. I have not quite gotten past my sickness that I had been fighting for a couple days before we left the States. The sinus pressure resulting from a combination of this sickness and the winding Andean road to Cuenca has left me with a most intense headache. We just ate a really good dinner in the Cuenca square, and Amber fed me some medicine. I am going to go try to get well. Matt

Excuse the weird changing tenses. I am writing some looking back and some in the present tense, so it´s a bit awkward. Lots of typos too because keyboards are different everywhere.