Ecuadorian Bus Drivers

9-5-08

Today was an interesting day. We woke up and ate our $3.50 breakfast which included French Toast today. We then decided to visit "La Mitad del Mundo" (interestingly there are 2 places that consider themselves the center of the world but the actually center is on the top of a hill with nothing around it). We started by going to one bus station which sent us to another bus station which finally sent us to another station. Now all of this was in Spanish and I got bits and pieces but Unger's Spanish is really good and we definitely were told to go to three different stations. "La Mitad del Mundo" is 30km from Quito which takes about an hour by taxi and 2 hours by bus. The bus costs $0.50 total with one transfer. Naturally we took the bus. Now let me tell you something about Ecuadorian bus drivers; their mentality is "I have the biggest vehicle on the road so you better move out of the way or I will a. run over you or b. pass you going 70mph in the U.S. equivalent to a 25mph zone." We would learn later this mentality applies to all bus drivers. It was not an isolated incident. I guess the fact that we were not locals allowed us to wait for the bus to make a full stop before we got on or off. This generosity does not apply to most, as typically if the bus slows down to 5-10mph to allow passengers on or off, these people are lucky. So of course we were happy when we made it without killing anybody or dying. We first went to the most famous site, took about 20 pictures, bought jerseys for the soccer game (Ecuador vs. Bolivia), had a beer and empenada, and left. We also met a girl from Germany named Silvana who we spent the rest of the day with. We then went to the other museum that claims to be the "real" center of the world. We chose to have a Spanish speaking guide and I actually understood most of what he said so I was happy. The tour consisted of a bunch of different experiments and exhibits with water, sundials, etc. I'm not going into details but it was fun. I will mention we saw a real shrunken human head that was 150 years old and we got to try to shoot a blowdart at a cactus. Based on the fact that if you missed the cactus, and everybody does, you could possibly hit a passing tourist, I don't think this activity will be allowed in the states anytime soon. we then took another bus to the only inhabited crater in the world. We showed up and the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 20 feet down. Luckily the fog cleared and we were able to see a good amount of the crater. We then left and caught the bus back to Quito. Luckily a passenger told us we had to get off or we would start to go around in a circle. Unluckily we had no idea where we were. So we grabbed some food (corn, mini potatoes, and mystery meat, possibly chicken) and walked in the general direction of the hostel. we found our street and got some more food (chicken skewers and mystery ball of something with something inside; it tasted ok). Got to the hostel, played "pub quiz" aka trivia, lost miserably, then went to an Irish Pub called Finns. Went to bed at 4am. The end...for now