June 17th – 2:37am
Today actually wasn’t horrible. Surprisingly. Everything with Jack has seemed to have blown over. At least, for the most part.
Sarah and I did Cazapamba by ourselves again. With no guide. Again. We did the trail really fast today though. It only took us like 3 hours to do it, even with us having to walk the whole way up, wait at Sanuel’s for 30 minutes (only for him to tell us he wasn’t walking with us) and then back down. It was a lot easier this time than the previous ones. We didn’t stop for nearly as many breaks and I didn’t have to stop for water too often. The only downside was that we didn’t hear any bears. No Frida. No Enrique. Nada.
We got back to the house around 12:30pm and the last bus to Otavalo leaves at 3:00pm. So, we had plenty of time to pack and get everything situated. Dan didn’t show back up at the house until 2:15pm and everyone was really starting to worry that he was lost or something. Luckily, he packs really light and had no trouble being ready in 15 minutes.
The bus showed up about 15 minutes early and we were lucky to snag it. However, this was an awful bus ride. No seats. No room. Standing for 2 and a half hours. Lovely… Plus we we’re lucky enough to be standing next to two women who apparently had to breast feed the entire drive down. Awkward. These two women also felt the need to change their babies’ dirty diapers on the bus. That was charming. And what did they do with the dirty diapers? Oh, they threw them out the window of course. Disgusting. But, I guess I’d rather it be out of the bus than in it. One of the babies kept trying to climb up my shirt and kept putting their hands in Dan’s pants. It was downright terrible. I’ll take yesterday’s bus ride any day.
Getting to Otavalo was awesome because we finally got off the bus from hell. Then we had to find our $7/per night hostel that we were staying in for the night. That took a good 20 to 30 minutes, because we had no idea where we were going. This also got really irritating, because it seemed like the guys didn’t want to make any decisions, so it was left up to Sarah and I to make all of them. Super frustrating. I hate indecisiveness. Hate it.
We found the hostel and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Thankfully. When 4 people are being crammed into a room, the last thing you need is a crappy room. After getting checked in and sort of settled, we decided to go for dinner. Where do 4 white people go for dinner in Ecuador?
To a Chinese restaurant, of course. This was the most ghetto Chinese restaurant in the world. It really wasn’t even Chinese. The menu was in Spanish with a couple bad English translations. There were more misspelled words on this menu than there are on a first graders English Writing test. Pineapple was spelled Pincapple. Beef was spelled Beed. Does anyone know what Crackless Chicken is? Because I sure as shit didn’t. Despite the menu and atmosphere, the food was actually pretty good. It definitely wasn’t Chinese though. Not at all. Ecuadorian Chinese consists of a choice of protein, some julienned vegetables, fries or rice, and a shit ton of American Brown Gravy. I had what I would consider a Salisbury steak in a “Chinese” restaurant. Luckily, it tasted good and the fries were good with the gravy.
After that, we went back to the hostel for showers. YAY! Hot water with pressure. It was soooo nice. During this period of time, we learned that Jack takes forever to get ready to go and that he uses the bathroom like 2-3 times in an hour. It’s outrageous. Annoying too.
We left the hostel to go on a pub crawl. Our first stop was a place called The Red Pub. Which, again, wasn’t really a pub at all. It was more like a hookah bar. It was also too loud to be a pub. The guys had rum and cokes which they said tasted bad. Sarah and I had some really, really disgusting blue curacao and pina colada drink. It was awful and was so strong that it knocked both Sarah and I on our asses. TERRIBLE.
So, we moved on to another bar, which didn’t have a name and just said Bar in English. Dan had like 4 rum and cokes here, because he liked them. Sarah and I had a glass of white wine that took us over an hour to drink. This bar was actually really cool. The music wasn’t too loud. There was artwork all over the wall and the absolute best part was… there were Banksy (the graffiti artist) tag prints all over the place. It was awesome. Jack and I found out that we both love Banksy and bonded over our love for political graffiti. The night was starting to look up. Sort of.
After the 2 hours we spent in there, we went back to The Red Pub for some nachos and a round of shots. We each had a shot of Rum and some really boring nachos with queso. But it helped sober us up.
After the nachos, we met up with some other white travelers who were working with GVI. Still not sure what they do, because they all said something different. They invited us to a bar called Shots, so we went. This bar was completely not my scene. It was a dance bar. Eww. Sarah and I kept getting grabbed up on by creepy Ecuadorian dudes. We kept having to push them away too and they didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. This caused us to move outside. There we talked with the other travelers. We met a really, really crazy Canadian guy who was hilarious. I think the worst part about this place is that the gender ratio is completely off. It was like 90% dudes. So, anywhere we walked it felt like there were 20 to 30 pairs of eyes on us. It was really gross.
When we got back to the hostel, everyone completely crashed. It was the best sleep I’ve gotten in Ecuador. I’m just glad I didn’t have to punch anyone in the face for touching me inappropriately.
Just a hint… don’t go bar crawling in Ecuador. It’s creepy. Totally not my scene. Not at all. Still had fun with Sarah though. We made each other laugh so much tonight. We are kind of getting to that point where I can look at her and she’ll look back and we just burst out laughing because we know what the other is thinking.
Fun times.
Love and Andean Bears,
Ashley
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