Week 4

July 6, 2007

With all of the excitement going on in week 5, I seemed to have forgotten to write about week 4. Let´s see, week 4 was slightly uneventful because I still had a bit of the gripe (flu). I stayed home one day from work, and the other days I just tried to hang in there. However, by the time the weekend rolled around, luckily I was feeling much better. Friday night, I went to a salsa concert with Claire (Australia), Marco (Germany), Barbara (Holland), and Antonella (Ecuador). The concert was a lot of fun! There were bands from Ecuador, Colombia, and Cuba. The music was great, and everyone in the crowd was dancing all night long. It´s too bad that we gringos don´t really know how to dance, especially to the salsa. I ended up spending the night at the Ecotrackers apartments with everyone else as we got home around 1:00 am, and the buses don´t go that late back to Pifo.

The next morning, Claire and I decided to go on an adventure. We set out for the Incan sun festival, Inti Raymi. We took the bus over to Pifo (they were working on the bridge in Tumbaco, so this took about 2 hours) and then hung out with my family for a while. After a few drinks, we got on the bus to Otavalo, as we planned to spend the night there. However, for some reason we both feel asleep and didn´t wake up until we reached Ibarra, a town about an hour north of where we wanted to be. Of course there were no more buses back to Otavalo that night, as it was almost 10:00pm. So, we managed to share a cab with a local lady and we made it a hostal. From there, we used the trusty Lonely Planet and made our way to Café Arte, where we watched Andean bands play music while we had something to eat. The music was wonderful (I love the flutes!), and we had a great time.

The next morning, we took the bus to Cotacachi, the town that was having the festival that day. When we got there, people were beginning to gather in the park in front of the church. It was really fun to watch as the day went on. There were groups of native people dressed up with chaps made of llama fur and very large hats, and each group chased the one in front of it around the square. There were tons of police to make sure that the groups didn´t run into each other. It was very loud with whistling and chanting, and everyone was having a great time. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd started running like crazy. W e assumed a fight broke out, so everyone was stampeding, but then we realized that it was more than that- the police had set off tear gas. It hit us; our eyes were blinded and we coulnd´t breathe very well. We ran into a side street to try to escape the gas, and we found a bench to recover on. That stuff can really burn your throat!! The natives thought it was funny to see us gringas get tear gassed, because we had no idea it was coming, and obviously they had known it was inevitable, so we had to pose for a few pictures. After that, we decided it was time to head home. So, we hopped on a bus to Otavalo, where we hoped to catch another bus back to Pifo. Unfortunately, the last bus to Pifo had left just before we got there. So, we had to detour all the way back to Quito, adding another 2 hour bus ride to the trip. And then, the bus decided to drive around the entire city of Quito and enter through the south side (we were coming form the north)….. I ended up getting home around 7:30 that night, and as I was walking down the hill to my Uncles house, a crazed poodle attacked me and I got bit on the leg. What a way to end a crazy weekend. We had a great time though, and it was quite an experience!!!!