It´s all so clear now

Woohoo!! There was sun, real legit sun, all weekend long. Now I can finally stop complaining about the weather. Waaaaaaa-waaaaa-waaaaa, I hear the waaaaaaa-ambulance coming, I must´ve dialed Whine One One.

Anyways, a number of things have become quite clear to me. I made a classic mistake in my last post. Overwhelmed by all the newness of Quito, I could do nothing but compare it to Central America. First of all, that´s about as logical as winding up in Ottawa and comparing it to Florida and Georgia. Second, I made the fatal error of completely ignoring context. My travels in Guatemala and Nicaragua were almost exclusively in small towns and rural areas. I spent a grand total of one week in the two capital cities combined, over the course of 5 months of travel. Yet in Ecuador, all I have seen is Quito, and really all I have seen in Quito is La Mariscal. La Mariscal is inhabited by high-flying Quiteños and foreign tourists galore. La Mariscal has far more in common with NYC´s East Village than it does with a small village in rural Nicaragua. So please ignore any and all comparisons I have made between Quito and Central America, for they are pure bullshit.

Interestingly, this sort of mistake is quite common in anthropology. I´ve been reading Charles Mann´s 1491, a fascinating look at the Americas before disease incapacitated civilizations whose grandeur often surpassed those of Europe and Asia. Mann gives an account of an anthropologist by the name of Holmberg who visited a remote region of Bolivia (the Beni) in the early 1900´s. The peope he found there (also called the Beni) were truly living like savages (or if that offends you, hunter-gatherers). They had no agriculture, pottery, weaving, buildings or any of the other things that are thought of as hallmarks of civilization and culture. They were sickly, weak, hungry, cold and wretched. Holmberg observed all this, and concluded that they had been living an ahistorical life since Pleistocene times. The first thing that had ever happened in their lives was his observations of them. Turns out he should´ve investigated the context of the Beni´s suffering. Just a couple decades before he arrived, their entire civilization had been wiped out by an epidemic. Further investigation found widespread agriculture, cities, massive public works, religious institutions, etc etc etc. An interesting anecdote that applies to many aspects of life, especially when one encounters the new and unknown.

Life in Quito es muy tranquilo. Tranquilo is by far my favorite Spanish word, as it means chill, except you get to draw it out to emphasive the chillness. Traaaanqeeeeeeeelo, todo es tranqeeeeelo. O tranquilEEEEEEEEE-seemo. Erin Noble and I are living in an apartment, we´re super close to all the action in Quito. There is a family that lives off and on in the apartment as well, a few adult daughters our age and La Mama, who is possibly the most hilariously overdramatic person I have ever met. We have Spanish school during the day, explore the city during the afternoons, and find amusing ways to study at night, such as playing chess or getting wasted (in Spanish, of course). Despite all the english in this text, I am actually speaking almost exclusively Spanish, which is incredible. I have a terrible time coming up with synonyms in English as a result.

Yesterday, we climbed Ruco Pichincha, the volcano that towers over Quito. It was an excellent adventure in all aspects. We made a new friend along the way, we got hit with a snowstorm as we ascended the peak, we didn´t fuck up in any meaningful way, and we finally got out of Quito. My first time out of the city since I arrived!! As I aspire to talk about rocks in every post, I will mention that I did collect a few likely samples, but did not investigate them thoroughly, due to the deleterious effects of altitude and exertion on the geology portion of my brain. First order observations...they are volcanic. That goes for almost every rock in Ecuador. I´ll scope them out tonight and report back.

Good news!! Erin has a camera, and uses it to take pictures. While I have long espoused the superiority of mental pictures, as they cannot be stolen and are very unobtrusive, they are surprisingly difficult to share. So, I will soon be posting some very sweet pictures of Quito, La Mama y la familia, Ruco Pichincha, and of course Erin and myself having the time of our lives. Picture blogs are more fun to write and to read!!!

Que vaya bien