Thursday, March 30, 2006
Things I learned in Ecuador: - Being nice to people actually get you niceness in return. As Kepfram mentioned we got a free gondola ride across the river south of Baños because we´d helped move bricks for a few minutes. We also got a free ride back up the hill from Rio Verde to Baños with the bikes we´d rode down on - all because we´d tipped a guide a couple bucks for giving us a free tour....
- There is a marked similarity between the dress of indigenous people in the Andean region of Ecuador and those from Guatemala. The functionality is the very similar, and the shape. Women here ware heavy pleated skirts, cardigan sweaters with blouses underneath and dress shoes, many carry things on their backs supported by heavy strips of cloth (in fact if an indigenous women is not carrying something she´ll often have that same strip of cloth tied around here waist - just in case?). Men wear capri length pants and ponchos. Both men and women wear narrow brimmed hats. The biggest difference between the lose in Guatemala and those here are the colors - cloths here in Ecuador are much plainer, lots of primary colors, and only a few decorations. In Guatemala everything was woven with multiple colors. And then there´re the hats - some people wore scarves in Guatemala, but hats are definitely Ecuador.
- The uniforms that school children wear in Ecuador are not always the dress slacks and shirts we´ve seen in other countries. More often than not the children here are dressed in matching track suits with their schools emblems on them. What a great idea!!
- Chinese restaurants here are not "Restaurante Chino" like in Costa Rica, but "Chifa" - I have no idea why.
- Marbles is not only played by children in old movies. In Baños we saw children playing marbles in a vacant lot in town, carving a circle in the dirt with a stick.
- Ask a lot of questions before you take a tour. (This should go without saying, but sometimes it needs to be said again.)
- Buses here vary from US style Greyhound like buses with many working features (including bathrooms), to old decrepit buses with seats that may once have been comfortable but are now falling apart, to regular city buses and San Francisco style electric trolley buses in the cities, to big trucks (the size of flat bed tow trucks) outfitted with bench seats and a roof in back, to big ol´ trucks with a frame and walls around the back where your can ride along with cargo - standing up, bouncing down the dirt roads (in the rain in our case).
- Long distance buses have no real preference for paved roads. (This seemed to be true even if there was another route with a paved road.)
- Some major highways change to unpaved roads for LONG stretches for no apparent reason. (But still, ALL the roads we´ve traveled on here are preferable to those we experienced in Costa Rica....)
- There are no "express" buses (no matter what the company name is). The buses stop wherever they can pick up and let off passengers, and seem to take on as many as they can stuff in.
- There are no real "bus stops" (with the exception of the bus terminals, of course). Otherwise, if you want to get on just wave at the bus as it passes (or nod at the attendant who´ll be shouting destinations from the open door as the bus roles by). When you want to get off call "Gracias" to the driver and he'll pull over for you.
- The soundtrack: Most of our hours on buses were accompanied by those slow romantic Spanish language ballads that everyone here seems to know the words too. The really cool this is, I can understand most of them!
- Many of the long distance buses have TVs too( but not all of them work. The movies they show are generally old action movies from either the US or Hong Kong dubbed into Spanish.
- Jackie Chan movies are pretty funny.
- Luggage generally goes under the bus, but when there´s no room underneath (a lot of passengers carry cargo) so after the space underneath is full the passengers just pile their stuff near the entrance of the bus as they get on (keep this in mind when you consider sitting in the front row).
- While this wasn´t quite like Guatemala, you can fit a lot of people and a lot of stuff on an Ecuadorian bus.
- Long distance buses have bathrooms but they are almost always locked. When you need the facilities you have to ask the bus attendant (the guy who takes the money, calls out the destination, handles the luggage, and very rarely takes over the wheel) for to unlock it for you. My personal theory is that they are locked not only to keep them clean, but to keep people from using the space to sit, store their stuff, etc. when the bus fills up....
- There are not many tourists in Ecuador. Generally we are the ONLY gringos on the buses we ride, and there aren´t a lot of tour vans carrying others around.
- The military men who search the buses don´t like it if you´re not carrying your original passport (we found this out when we were traveling home from the Jungle with only photocopies - they let us get away with it each of the 3 times we were searched, but not without telling us never to do it again).
Kepfram & Ellie, 11:41 PM
