Andrea in Ecuador

I am sitting at papaya.net, an internet cafe in the modern part of Quito, country music is playing in English...Clint Black, I think. There is a huge crowd of people cheering outside, waving Ecuadorian flags, and driving around in nearby neighborhoods to honk their horns and cheer for victory. Ecuador just beat Argentina in a soccer match and spirits are high. Last night at our hotel we met a radio announcer who travels around with the team and he told us about the match today. He said he will be in New Jersey next for a match between Ecuador and Italy, I think.

Claudine, Eve and I took a bus north to Otavalo today to the huge Saturday market. It was fantastic and I bought many very good quality souvenirs for next to nothing. My favorite item (for me) is an alpaca poncho for $7. There were many women there in traditional dress selling their woven, knitted and sewn crafts. The traditional dress of the area is a dark skirt, white blouse with lacy, puffy sleeves and embroidered with bright colors and then usually a shawl that has some gold thread and other colors and multi-strand neckaces of gold beads. The market took up several city blocks and we probably only saw ¼ of it although we were there for about 5 hours.

Yesterday's adventure was at the museo de ciudad or city museum. This is in the old part of town in what was once a colonial hospital. They had separate rooms for each historical century. The theme is time travel . You walk through a silvery curtain and walk through corridors that are meant to look like caves to 10,000 BC where there are displays showing people using stone tools and fire, many archaeological artifacts from this early period are displayed. You continue to travel through time to various periods of history. Some of this is quite depressing, as you see how the Spaniards came in and made people slaves until there was an uprising. Also the Catholic influence was very strong and involved various tortures for sins. Then to lighten the mood, there were two rooms which had modern exposés. One had charcoal sketches and oil paintings, the other was filled with black and white photos of people doing very odd things, half-clothed. From this room they sent us through another curtain and we stepped onto a model's runway. Lights came on, the camera started, and the sound of a crowd cheering and clapping startled us. We finally figured out that this was for make-believe. There was a box of props for us to play with so we took turns walking down the runway and took photos of each other. Maybe you had to be there but after all the scenes of Spanish inquisition, we found the runway room to be hilarious. Photos of the last couple days will have to wait until after we reach Riobamba because I haven't had time to download them from my camera yet. Tomorrow we will be on about a 5 hour bus ride to Riobamba and I will send some pictures when we get settled in. T he crowd outside is chanting in Spanish, still hyped about the game. Now there is a bus loaded with people honking continuously as it drives past. Viva la Ecuador! -- Andrea