Everything Else Before We Went To Mindo, Bird-Seeing

There's that Virgin of Ecuador again. This city (Quito) just goes and goes and goes. There was a lame rock concert going on up here on the mountain, but it started raining. Everyday we try to go to this part of town and keep getting rained on, hard. Gillian said today that the rain is like Quito's daily bowel movement. It was hilarious.

They are voting soon whether or not to change the constitution, so there are signs and t-shirts everywhere that say "Si". The only argument we've seen against it is a sign that said that Jesus didn't like the idea.

This is our Spanish-Learning School, Vida Verde. Takashi, over on the left, and myself we're playing during the break. 

Guayasamin Museum

This guy is soo awesome. I got a t-shirt!!! Look him up and see more, but for now, here are some cool, sweet pics.

More birds we saw at the rescued bird place in Otovalo

We saw a long demonstration of birds catching food in the air and swooping all around. I apparently sat funny because the under side of my arms got burnt. We hitched a ride home after this - first time. This guy worked for some newspaper of tv news. He was out taking pictures of the area. He didn't want a tip - that was awkward. The we went back to our 2nd of 3 weeks in Quito (the 3rd is happening now).

I hope this works better than google sites!

Wait... Which one is the vulture????? That cage seemed way to small for this guy, but these birds were all rescued and are released when they can reenter the wild so I shut up.

I ruined Gillian's joke on this one. It looked really funny but I zoomed in to much. In her honor, the next picture will be a funny one.

I have since gotten a hat to reduce squinting. BUT THERE IS NO REDUCING THESE MOUNTAINS!!! BOY HOWDY!!! (This is still on the way to the condors, fwi.)

Gillian liked this church. Not pictured: millions of stray dogs and a basketball court in the back.

My thought was, maybe if I look dead, the condors and vultures will come to us. Just jokin', I was really dead.

I don't remember if I was trying to look like I was falling or just have a hard time climbing. I do remember that we were on are way to the Condor Sanctuary in Otovalo. Gillian came with.

Oh ya, the head. There are heads all over Ecuador - squares and squares of 'em. His eyes are yellow did you notice?

Luckily, we haven't seen that many churches. Luckily, GIllian doesn't care that much about them like me, Jack. Luckily I'm Jack. Luckily, we got to this one just as they were taking down all the extra gold they put up for the Otovalo corn festival. Luckily, GIllian found that cool hat from a street vendor just before this picture was taken by me, Jack. Oh ya, then luckily, after a very excited police officer approached us mid-taking-this-picture to ask us all about us and give us incorrect directions to the dancing that night, we stumbled upon the dancing anyways - and the pre-lasagna Europeans with fruity rum - and enjoyed ourselves and the too many keyboards.

See what I mean when I said hammocks? Maybe you haven't read that yet. What did happen was later that night, our one night in Otovalo, we met some Europeans of various kinds who helped us to some cheap cheap cheap fruity rum. Like the dancing we we're watching in the streets, twas nice for a bit, but... eh, not that cool. In conclusion, it was the annual corn festival and we saw a band of three singers and three keyboards play one song for 30 minutes and then I ate lasagna.

Here we are waiting for lunch after getting to Otovalo. A bunch of college kids from down under, across the court yard and on top of hammocks, we're laughing about beer while we watched hummingbirds feast. After refueling, we caught the tail end of the infamous street market. It was still huge at that point but empty enough that nothing was stolen from our persons. 

On our way to Otavalo... We want to go back for it twas so nice and near things. Mom, we want to stay in a hostel by this lake here and hike around to other lakes and things when you get here.

As members of The South American Explorers club, we get to carry around these cards that identify us as official explorers. We also get free access to internet, clean water, coffee and Chubaca-looking dogs.

With the host family, we sleep here, next to my ear. The bed is green and comfortable and pigeon watched me shower this morning through a sky light.

One more of Quito from the church. One thing that is so odd is how brand a new new building will be sandwiched between an abandoned building and a 30-year-old building. I dunno if that's obvious from this elevation, so looking back, I'm glad I mentioned it.

This didn't turn out totally clear, but in the distance is the virgin of Ecuador overlooking everything. In the middle, that building had a serious fire a while ago and is just abandoned I guess. On the left there, that horseman is followed by this army of spirits or something. They had a fence around this, like everything, but this one you actually couldn't get over easily. It's a paradox here, you're supposed to park on the sidewalks, but parks and statues are surrounded in layers of fencing.

What Ecuador looks like the clock tower people. (Speaking of people, we met a linguist from New Zealand who is over here studying old languages that have never been documented. He goes out in the Amazon and lives with various peoples for months eating mainly bananas. He had fancy shoes and a young boy followed him around insisting on shining his shoes and waited for him outside the restaurant we ate at for at least an hour. We also drank beer.)
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Gillian's lunch in it's prevomit state. Finally, she is totally healthy (Firday Sept. 12) and we are back exploring the town. We saw an artist named Estuardo Maldonado does modern interpretations of old sculptures. Didn't bring the camera though, so stupid.

Gillian's not Japanese... What the Hell? This church was cool and I'll add more pictures from it soon. It was rented out for a wedding that day so we couldn't go in the actual church part, but we explored the tombs below and the clock tower above. The clock tower was full of teenagers kissing and smoking, ewww!

Pretty tootin' awesome, I'd say. Soon after this, we sat down to read and a police officer told us we should move because their were shady people about. Right behind him an old man took his penis out and began to pee. This did not phase the cop; Gillian cried; I punched the cop. 

This is a park in the middle of town. You can rent all sorts of boats to ride around in this moat. At night it becomes a huge lighted fountain of which I have no pictures. (This is the one part in all the parks with no bust of an old politician.)

Yeah, not sideways! (don't use google sites beta by the way.) This statue can be seen from all over Quito, The Virgin of Quito in fact. We want to go up there but I guess it is the most dangerous part of Quito for people such as us.

Gandhi and Gilli

The fountain keeps going down 5 more levels. A lot of fountains here. Some have cool lights. Some inspire love.

There are a bunch of parks full of statues and busts. It's weird, every tree is exactly 10 feet from every other tree and at least 3 trees away from another like it. Many basketball courts but all the soccer fields are makeshift. Also, there is a small, decorative fence (shown above) surrounding all the grass areas. It's slightly too high to step over conveniently, at my hight, so I don't know what the deal is.

Our room is nice.  The weather is nice. Gillian is nice. Ecuador is nice. The food is nice. The babies are nice. Fun Fun Fun in the Sun, Baby! (UPDATE) The Fun Fun Fun ran out at 4:30 in the morning Sunday When Gillian put her dinner in the garbage can. Only now, Monday morning, has her health stuck its head out once again. I´m taking a Spanish lesson and when I return, she has promised to stop being lame and return the T Bird.

The food is so good here and the streets are narrow, dirty, and cave-like. We´ve just been wandering. I´ll post pictures when I get a chance.

Chowda