Maya has a friend who lives in Quito, Nelson, who is Ecuadorian and came to Oregon last year as an exchange student. He is now in college, in a band, and has a job, so Maya had a bit of trouble trying to contact this busy person, but her perseverance paid off and he called back on Friday. Just in time for Maya's cell phone battery to go dead while ( Read more... )

We woke up early, again, to meet our taxi to take us to Otavalo, a wonderful little town well known for its crafts market. Maya had been there once already with the Rotary group, but wanted to go back. The taxi, more like a modern station wagon, picked us up in front of our hostal with no problem. We then went tooling all around the streets of ( Read more... )

During our stroll through historic Quito, we were approached by little boys with shoe shine equipment. I should say I was approached, since my shoes were black. It didn't matter that they were Reeboks or that I was a girl, the boys would approach and ask to shine my shoes. One little kid was particularly assertive and insisted "Shine shoes, YES!" ( Read more... )

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So, yeah, Maya's friend, Jacob, an exchange student from Texas, called and invited us to go to see a live, Spanish language performance of Jesucristo Superstar. Yep, Jesus Christ Superstar, live and translated! It sounded interesting, plus I'd listened to the record a million times as a child and enjoyed all except the Yvonne Ellison track (how on ( Read more... )

I think our airplane to Quito was at 8:30 am. We woke early, had packed last night (thank goodness!), and checked out of the delightful Posada del Angel (leaving two large suitcases locked up there awaiting our return, however), and took a taxi to the airport. The flight to Quito was uneventful, up down in less than 30 minutes. We weren't really ( Read more... )

So, maybe it was Wednesday that the icky old men ogled me on the street. I can't remember, and it's not important ( Read more... )

After the Museum of Medicine, and after the rain cleared up a bit, we ventured back out to go to another type of museum. As we were trying to cross the big street along the Tomebamba, a city bus drove by and one of Maya's exchange student friends (Chase) yelled hello from the bus to her! It did my motherly heart good to know that Maya has friends ( Read more... )

Today we set off to go to some museums mentioned in my travel guide. I think we both had breakfast in our quaint little breakfast courtyard again, then relaxed in the room and made phone calls about tours and trips to Quito. We made a plan and began the late morning walk to the Super Maxi (supermarket) which is across the Tomebamba River. We were ( Read more... )

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