A tour around town

Today was a fairly slow day for us. We did not have any major plans tell 11am today so we got to sleep in a little today. Although some people did travel to the local supermarket to shop a little before our ride arrived. But even still we did not leave the hostal tell around 11:30 because of Dr. Demerath being a little late getting back.

At around 12:15 we visted the Virgin statue, which is a giant statue of the virgin mary that 0verlooks Quito. But before that the ride to the statue was fairly interesting. To get to the statue we had to drive through an older part of Quito and I must say that it was in fairly poor shape compared to the part of town we are staying at (even though it is not the best place in the world either). The amount of people walking the streets was a lot higher, many more stray dogs were around, the roads were crawling with street vendors, even the air smelled horribly of exhaust and believe me as a native Houstonian I have a fair amount of resistance to this kind of stuff but it made me even gag. The buildings were also more cramped and they looked a fair deal older as well. Aside from this the statue was fairly nice, the statue itself as I said is of the virgin mary, she is standing on the world and the moon and interestingly enough a snake as well. I was told that the snake symbolizes the virgin mary to be someone who has tamed the snake that had forced Adam and Eve down, marking the virgin mary to be someone who does not even have original sin. Only a few people climbed the statue while the rest of us took in the surroundings to view the city. It was a remarkable view, the spots that we had stopped from the previous day could be seen in the distance. Quite is a fairly large city that covers the land as far as I could see even from the mountain we climbed the day before.

After our statue viewing, we hoped in our van and headed to a restaurant where we were going to meet a man named Mark for lunch. The lunch was the most suprising lunch so far, the first dish was a type of fish soup that we all enjoyed, but the second dish we had a choice of either a beef dish or cow utter! Yes, cow utter (yummy). I ate the beef but I was told that the cow was alright, seems that its texture is that of squid and has a fairly bland taste to it. Aside from lunch, Mark was a fairly nice guy we met, from what I was told he is in Quito working as a leader for a group of volunteers who are helping out Quito. From what I understood, people pay $7000 to cover their own living expenses and come and work in Quito for a whole year helping out by working on projects (the average yearly salery in Quito is said to be only $6000 so they dont have a hard time with money) After lunch we walked together with Mark to his home, along the way he would hug and kiss the local children, it seems he has built a very good relationship with the locals that he is always trying to improve. As we reached his home it started to rain. Inside we took a tour and saw how he was living together with his fellow volunteers. After the tour we hoped in our van and drove to a couple of the local schools that Marks group have been helping out in. They are teaching children english and literature to them. It seemed that the kids were very happy and were having fun. The drive back to Mark´s was a bit rough in that the rain made the road pretty difficult because the part the schools were in had fairly undeveloped roads, even pipeline had never been laid down yet.

After we said our goodbyes to Mark we made our way to dinner. Along the way Dr. Demerath told us some interesting facts about the trees in Quito. None of them are native to Ecuador because a long time ago when the land was mostly used for farming, small time farmers who could not build farms in the valley because of rich land owners would have to go up the mountains and clear out all the trees to create farms for themselves. But this caused all the vegetation to be wiped out. After this happened, the people became worried about the soil due to lack of vegetation keeping it from eroding by planting foriegn trees. This helped the erosing problem but caused a few others as well. The trees used sucked a lot of water from the soil and caused other plant life to die out even more because their was just not enough for them to survive. Anyway, the ride to the resteraunt for dinner took almost an hour to get to (seems we took a special way this time), As we went I noticed that we were heading into a better part of Quito because my surroundings began to improve a lot. Spaces between the buildings began to appear, cars were not driving around like maniacs, a lot more stop lights appeared, even some old school favorites like Mcdonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut were seen. This was really a better and more upscale part of town because it was starting to remind me of home in America.

Our dinner tonight was very nice, every meal we eat we have a $10 limit on our order including drink, but the food is always so cheap we have never had a problem (that lunch from earlier I was shocked to find costed $2.15 total each and it was a fairly big meal too). I had a glass of lemonaid with a cheese steak sandwich. It was fairly good and I had a fun time playing around with Gus and Ela (The Demerath kids, I like picking on them wherever we go) After dinner the rain had finally settled down (but the girls sure hadnt because they started singing Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys for the whole ride). It has gotten a little colder here now that it has rained. We are all in good health still and are enjoying our trip, tomorrow we leave this Hostal to go to our next destination for our trip. (although im told tomorrow is a shopping day...)

P.S. This has nothing really to do with the blog but because I know she will read this so I would just like to say Happy Birthday Mom! (Yes it is on May 28th no joke) Sorry I cant be their for you but I promise I will get you something nice!