Ecuador D.I.S.C.O

Hullo pals! Happy xmas, Hannukah and New Years likes!

I´m in an internet cafe in Quito, jouked down here from Pasto to see what the old Ecuadorean chat is. The centre of Quito´s a belter, beautiful old colonial buildings and churches and old theatres with peeling paint and faded gilt lettering inlaid in the floor spelling out "Teatro Bolívar". And they have a trolleybus system! The wires make that amazing whaaang noise that those type of wires always make and the drivers invite you onto the bus in a kind voice at every station, sigan, por favor. I keep getting lost and ending up in strange stations with names like "La Ye" or up hilly side streets with unexpected parks and huge grey churches.

To arrive here i jammed my way onto a very hot and crowded bus from the Colombia border, stuffed full of crying weans, indigenous ladies in frilly blouses and strings of gold beads and guys selling crisps, water, ice lollies (tamarind flavour, magic) or"bizcochos" which in Colombia are cakes (or nice looking men, depends on the context) but here are a very delicious buttery biscuit. I decided to stop in a town called Otavalo to check out the market but as i stepped off the bus in the dark to find myself in the midst of panorama of motorway and petrol stations i began to question the sanity of this choice, especially since like a classic eejit i didn´t bring a guidebook, names of hotels, nada.

However, help was at hand from a large and welcoming family of Colombians who upon being asked if they knew any hotels immediately shepherded me into a taxi with them and whisked me off to a cute wee hostel where i was rapidly installed in a tiny but cosy wooden cabin with a view of a VOLCANO and a huge bed with one of those soft sinky mattresses that make you want to stay in it forever. The family were a family of anthropologists and i spent the whole day wandering round the market with them talking about Andres Caicedo and salsa joints in Bogotá and where to get good cameras. They were such a decent bunch of people, so kind and welcoming to a total stranger, and when we went our separate ways they invited me to go back to Popayan any time i wanted and stay with them. This is why i love Colombia chaps, the people are seriously grand.

The market itself was unbelieveable, a huge maze of stalls draped in beautiful woven cloth in vivid stripes, bags, jewellery, fruit, chess sets, dolls, shirts, apparently animals somewhere but i didn´t make it to that point. Throngs of people milling around the stalls haggling, tourists taking photos of everything and locals carrying huge bales of cloth strapped on their backs or selling cool watermelon slices. I bought a big swathe of cloth, stripes of red and purple and orange with odd designs woven into it, ah it is magic just to look at this thing it´s so colourful and beautiful.

Last night i bumped into some guys who work with Mark in la Sabana, horribly small world but the upside was we went out to an ECUADORIAN DISCO!! A dark, sweaty wee room with pounding music, flashing lights and smoke machine. Up on the stage several tight-shirted men prance around as the gruesome techno cumbia booms away in the background, before the DJ announces that there´s to be a contest for the best dancer and would all the men clear off the stage. Our dancers peevishly slink off while girls, "only the most daring ladies" according to the Dj, start to gyrate wildly and swing their hair seductively in time to the music. The stakes are upped when it is announced that the sexiest couple will win the bottle of horrible local alcohol, and several excited men bound up to the stage where everyone then begins gyrating and then some t-shirts come off, exhibiting comedy male love handles. Hilarious. The couple who win are a small chap with 90´s boyband curtains who won them the drink by picking up his partner, a hefty lassie with a brutally low-cut top, and jiggling her around for an unfeasably long time. While this was going on everyone else was dancing around wildly, a spattering of foreigners sticking out because of their brutal dancing. I saw a really short Haitian chap being shown the salsa ropes by a glamorous high-heeled woman, and the poor guy tripping over his feet and all his friends watching with tears of laughter running down their faces.

Quito today has been good but a little lonely, the city is deserted because it´s Sunday and Mark and Cherie forgot their passports so i´m here by myself. It´s half brilliant and half awful, travelling alone. I think you get to talk to more people and probably have more interesting expereiences (anthropology family, for example) if you´re alone, but then on the other hand sitting in a restaurant sadly wiring into lasagna for ONE while all around you people are having a good time is garbage.

However, back to Colombia tomorrow to go to the carnival in Pasto and chuck flour around, and then probably back to Bogotá! I miss Bogotá. Although it´s nice to come for a visit i have to say that Colombia is MUCH better than Ecuador and the men are better dancers, well mine is at least.