Well, Here I am In Quito, Ecuador! I finally arrived on Sunday night after a 6 hour flight. Quito, for those of you who don't know, is the capital city of the Ecuador with a population of about 2 million people. Situated high in the Andes at 9,500 feet this is perhaps the highest city I have ever been to. The town of about 2 million people is laid out lengthwise, similar to Manhattan, except that it is flanked by two massive mountains instead of water!
Just to give you an example of how high this place is, before I left my dad let me borrow a fancy watch that he has with an altimeter. As the pilot took off, he set the differential of the cabin pressure at about 6,000 feet while he cruised at 27,000 or so. Then when the plane began its descent into Quito, instead of lowering the pressure, he actually had to raise it further to local elevation!
Stewart Hill, my cousin, met me at the airport and gave me a ride to the apartment we're staying at, I could tell he was thrilled to see someone else from home, as he has been down in SA (South America for those in the know) for about 2 months. I stepped onto my plane in Birmingham, Alabama to a ¨nice¨ ambient temperature of about 80 degrees and 90% humidity. I arrived that night in Quito to a light drizzle and about 55 degrees. Thanks to the altitude, the city get downs to about 50 degrees every night, and then up to 75 degrees during the day. AND, because the city is right smack dab in the middle of the equator, there are absolutely no seasonal fluctuations in temperature. It does have a rainy season though, which began the day I arrived, and every afternoon it pours big heavy ecuadorian raindrops for about 2 hours.
The town is absolutely gorgeous! The population is predominantly descendant from the indigenous people that lived in mountains and down in the rain forest, as well as some Spaniard blood mixed in. Stewart and I live in a nice (or at least original) section of town called "old town," and most of the architecture dates back to colonial periods. This is actually the cheaper side of town with most of the development and business happening in "New Town" with a typical ugly (in my opinion) post-modern architecture.
I began Spanish classes yesterday, and enjoyed the look on my teacher's face when she asked how much Spanish I had, to which i replied "Nada." "NADA?" Ci, Nada. While regretting not taking Spanish in the states, to the tune of 80 dollars an hour in college, I am glad I am taking it here, where I get 4 uninterrupted hours of one on one instruction for about 16 dollars.
The city is a good degree cheaper than say traveling in Europe, although there is an area known as La Miscal, where all the gringos and ex-pats flock to spend outrageous prices of 10 dollars a meal.
Hopefully I´ll be able to get an international cell phone this weekend, which will make communications vastly cheaper back to the states. Cheers to all those back home and I hope to have some pics up as soon as I can find an Internet cafe that lets me plug in my camera!
Cheers,
Merrill
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