A Day in Quito

Since I have decided to extend my stay here in Ecuador I have been spending a good amount of time trying to figure out what I have to do regarding visas. For US citizens, upon arrival in Ecuador they are given a 12-X visa – which allows them 90 days in a calendar year to be in the country. Since I am staying over 90 days, this visa won’t suffice. Until about a year ago it costs 10 cents and a visit to the local consul to extend the visa to 180 days in a calendar year but over the last few months the policy for tourist visas has changed numerous times and for this reason it has been really confusing figuring out exactly what I have to do. Gracias a dios, I finally got all my papers together (and found out that they were the correct ones, yippee), so I headed to Quito yesterday to apply for the visa (unfortunately I have to return to Quito Monday to see if my application has been authorized in order for it to be processed).

QUITO. Not wanting to travel alone, I asked Segundo (the mountain/treasure guide I have mentioned before), since he doesn’t work anymore (although he is almost 80 and still leads trips into the Llaganates…the mysterious national park that borders El Triunfo), to accompany me to Quito. After picking some fresh fruit for a tonga (Kichwa word meaning food supply) we set off for Quito and 6 am from El Triunfo arriving to Quito at 11:00 (which didn’t give us much time to make it to the consulate which closes as 12). Luckily, we got all the visa drama settled, so we had the rest of the day to track down one of Segundo’s friends that he wanted to see. Segundo has a lot of friends. Having led over 200 trips into the Llanagantes, and having befriended I am guessing all of the trekkers, it is no surprise. We finally got a hold of his friend Juan del Hierro who invited us to his house at 3. Having time to spare we headed to the Instituto de Geográfico Militar (the military institute of geography) to look for maps of the Llanganates. The military officer working in the map area figured we were setting off to search for the supposed 60 plus tons of Incan gold hidden in the Llaganates, and pointed to a random spot on the map saying he already knew where the treasure was. In reality, Segundo just wants to take a trip to a lagoon in the Llagantes that he flew over once in helicopter. We ended up buying two maps (the first maps the honored guide had ever owned of the beloved Llanganates) even though he could walk the trails with his eyes closed, and then we spontaneously called another friend of Segundo’s who invited us to lunch.

This friend, Fernando, who called Segundo “hermano,” treated us to a delicious seafood lunch. When he had to head back to work and Segundo and I still had about a half hour to spare before heading to the house of Juan del Hierro we decided to order dessert…which ended up being two huge banana splits. According to Segundo desserts like ice cream are like liquids and have lots of vitamins, thus you can eat as much as you want. I like this idea. Eventually we grabbed a cab and headed to the northern part of the city where Segundo’s friend had given us directions to his house. Or rather, we had scribbled down on scrap paper one street name and about five times “turn right,” “turn left at the next curve,” “turn right and go straight for a while,” “turn right at the auto shop.” As I’m sure you could have guesses, we got pretty lost. The cab driver not being the nicest, and me being out of cell phone credit to call and ask for directions, we got out of the cab where we figured we were pretty close and set out to find the house on foot. Having entered two other houses, taken about ten wrong turns, and an hour later we arrived to the house of Juan del Hierro. A huge white house in a gated community overlooking all of Quito, my campesino friend Segundo definitely looked out of place. But, I could tell from the start Juan and Segundo were old friends. Sharing story after story about trips into the Llaganates and reminiscing about old friends, it didn’t matter that Juan had a huge house and two BMW’s in the driveway. Not to mention he had beautiful original artwork hung all the house, half of which was signed and dedicated to Juan del Hierro himself. We spent the latter part of the reunion talking about the Ministerio de turismo and about the possibility of El Triunfo being a site for a community tourism project. It is in this conversation that I got roped into helping gather personal stories and history of the Llangates, along with photos, routes, tourist packages, etc. to present to the Ministerio de Turismo in a couple months.

After our visit with Juan del Hierro (I really like this name, which is why I keep mentioning him by his full name), we headed to the bus terminal and back to Baños. In Baños we finally convinced a taxi driver to take us up the mountain to El Triunfo and ended up arriving to our respective houses at about 11:45 pm. What a day!