Tag Archives: espanol

‘You speak Spanish like Obi-wan-kanobe’

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I think he probably meant Yoda, but I let the reference slide. In any event, I had a great opportunity to practice my Spanish when I went out with An (my friend from Montreal who I met in Cochabamba when we were stuck inside for Census Day) for happy hour in Sucre on Tuesday night.

An has been working for nearly six months in Sucre, and knows lots of co-workers and locals from her time there. She graciously invited me out to happy hour, where drinks are two for one. We ordered 4 mojitos, which I thought meant well, 4 mojitos, but apparently that means each person gets the two for one special. So the four of us ended up with 8 mojitos, which cost us a grand total of 72 Bolivianos — approximately $10. No, not each. Total. 

I laughed, thinking about what I would have been able to write in BostoNite for drinks that price. They weren’t weak either! We had a great time, and even though my new friend told me I speak like a Star Wars character (the flaw of thinking in English and speaking in Spanish) I was happy to have the opportunity to go out and socialize in a different language.

Other Sucre highlights?

I went to visit the Cal Orck’o, a ‘museum’ built around the longest sets of dinosaur tracks found on earth. Tourists have relatively visceral reactions to these prints when they find out the ‘wall’ with the sets of tracks (because of tectonic plate shifting millions of years ago, the prints appear on a wall which was once the floor of the earth) is quite far from the museum and they can’t actually go touch the prints, sit in them, or do other terrible tourist-like things. Regardless, I decided to fork over the very pricey $4 admission (hah) and check ’em out myself. Included in my $4 was a free guided tour, and I was the only person at that hour who needed an English tour. So, Juan Carlos met me and showed me around, explaining tons of interesting facts about dinosaurs and Bolivia and geology. I learned more in 20 minutes with him than I did in 2 days in ToroToro. Shocker. Anyways, Juan Carlos was clearly infatuated with me a little bit, and in between learning about dino prints, making me pose for many awkward photos, and practicing my Spanish, he managed to slip an awkward “want to go get a drink and talk about Bolivia?” question into our conversation. Earlier, we’d talked about where in the city I was staying, and since he was harmless enough, and when he offered to stop by the next night, I shrugged and said sure, I’d be happy to grab a beer.

Chillin’ with some (fake) tyrannosaurus rex bones.

Fast forward to 30 hours later, I’d finished making dinner and left the hostel to meet An and her friend at her apartment from some girl time with a bottle of wine. When I got back to my hostel around 10 PM, Mike, the owner, had a message for me. “Juan Carlos stopped by for you…” he said with a smirk on his face and a questioning sparkle in his eye. Shoot. I feel totally guilty and like a complete jerk. Even though I wasn’t interested in him romantically whatsoever, I would have loved to practice my Spanish with a local guy, and feel so badly for accidentally standing him up. Yikes! Even worse, I had no way of apologizing or being in touch.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on a bench in the main plaza with my eReader when two little boys came trotting up to me, shoe-shining kits in hand. When I tried, in Spanish, to explain that my cloth mocassins cannot be shined, they showed me the magazine they were selling instead. Similar to the Spare Change newspaper made by and for the homeless population in Boston, the publication costs 3 Bolivianos, 1.50 of which goes directly to the child, and 1.50 of which goes to the non-profit helping the poverty-stricken children. I gladly bought a copy, especially when one of the boys proudly grinned and pointed to his picture in the magazine. After some more nagging, I let them use their brushes to ‘clean’ my moccasins, which, admittedly, were getting to be more brown than black. They each took a foot, working meticulously, and though most shoe shiners only charge about 3 Bolivianos, with wax, I handed each boy a 10 Boliviano note. Just seeing their little eyes light up and the grins spread across their faces was worth the $2.50 I’d just forked over. That money means so little to me and so much to them, and it was a very humbling reminder of what a poor country I’m traveling through.

Sure, Bolivian cities are hectic, disorganized and relatively dirty. But when you’re staying in a hostel with hot showers, full kitchen facilities and tons of other English-speaking tourists, it’s easy to forget the poverty around you. Bolivia is an incredibly poor country — as Westerners, we marvel at how cheap the produce and food are, but many families can barely afford those prices, as is. When you’re traveling from hostel to hostel, city to city, on the gringo trail it’s easy to forget the poor people in the countryside, the ones you aren’t interacting with, and the ones who have to shower once a week in the public shower facilities scattered through the city.

Mostly, I just spent the last 3 days doing lots of wandering, reading in the sun, drinking real-sugar Coca Cola’s, and cooking using a million fresh veggies I bought for just a few cents at the nearby mercado.

I was going to stay in Sucre through the end of the week and go on an all day hike to the siete cascadas today, but, to no surprise, the tour I was depending on to take me got cancelled. Surprisingly, not because of Bolivians — the couple I’d met who committed to go with me (and knew I couldn’t go without them because the agency needed 3 people for a tour) bailed on me last minute when we were supposed to go pay. So instead, I took an afternoon bus to Potosi, and tomorrow I’m seeing the two highlights of the town: the mines and the Casa de Moneda, before hopping on a night bus down to Tupiza.

Adios Moñtanita, hola Manta!

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Well, I’m two bus rides down, approximately three dozen more to go!

Our supposed 3 hour bus ride north along the coast from Moñtanita to Manta this afternoon turned out to be more like 4 1/2 hours, and was quite the experience. Kathleen, Pascal and I are the three students participating in the traveling classroom program for the month of October. On Friday, each of us were each handed a piece of paper with a printed map we could barely make out, the name of our new host family, their phone number and the phone number for Manuel, the director of the spanish school we’re studying at in Manta. Along with our illegible map came a $5 bill – our bus fare.

Silly me, I was picturing a nice private van, which would shuttle the three of us up the coast and directly to our host families houses. Once I realized we were stuck taking a bus, I imagined the nice, over air-conditioned tourist busses I took in Peru and Bolivia, similar to the one I took up to Moñtanita from Guayaquil. We’re in South America after all — I should’ve known better. 

The bus we needed to take has no schedule, but between 6 AM-ish (emphasis on the ish) and 6 PM-ish, it runs every half hour, stopping for all of three seconds in the middle of the main road that runs through Moñtanita, allowing passengers to hop on and off. When the bus finally came, we shoved our packs in the back and jumped on to discover that there were no empty seats. Luckily, after standing in the aisle for 20 minutes or so, the bus stopped two more times and enough people got off that the five of us (we’d befriended a French girl and a Canadian guy also waiting at the bus stop with gigantic travel packs) were able to find seats. They were only going an hour or so north to Puerto Lopez, but they were able to get on the same bus as us. I should have seen that as a warning sign.

Instead of the direct bus I’d imagined, we ended up stopping close to two dozen times over the course of the next several hours. Our seats were barely padded, and as my ass went from sore to totally numb, my head began to pound from the ruckus around me.

For starters, there were children everywhere, of all ages, some crying, some screaming, some just talking and playing at an escalated volume. Women and men of all ages spoke Spanish loudly throughout the bus, and loose speakers, which had clearly been hand-wired into the two overhead luggage racks, blared a constant stream of static-y Spanish music. But it gets worse.

Have you ever heard the sound of metal scraping along concrete or asphalt? Imagine a gigantic metal dumpster being dragged across the ground, vibrating and scraping loudly… for hours on end. Okay, so there were pauses every few minutes or so, but I swear the engine of our bus was dragging directly along the highway with the tires. Every time our driver accelerated above 45 km, the roaring would start, slowly getting louder and louder until the scraping noises was booming. I wish I were exaggerating.

I was, ironically, thankful that I’d gone to bed ridiculously late on Friday night (I only got two hours of sleep.. oops!) and had a long day Saturday at the beach in the sun, so even though I had slept 8 hours on Saturday night, I was more than exhausted from the weekend. Eventually the noises around us because a sort of horrific lullaby that rocked me to sleep. I passed out for an hour and a half, and woke up for good as we pulled into yet another bus station to let passengers on and off.

At several points throughout the drive, the bus would stop for an instant and teenagers selling snacks — pans of stuffed breads or water and soda — would hop on, trying to make a few dollars.  It was certainly the Ecuadorian experience, and we were the whitest ones on the bus by several shades.

Thankfully, once we finally got to Manta I was able to call Manuel and let him know we’d arrived in one piece (yes Dad, the cell phone and Ecuador SIM card you insisted on making me travel with did in fact come in handy — now you can say I told you so in your next email.) Thankfully, a young man from our school came to pick us up, and took us each to our host families in a taxi.

My casa for the week isn’t a single house for one family. Instead, it’s a family-run hotel and my host family — a mom, dad, two daughters and a son — lives on the first floor. I have my own private room and bathroom (with hot water!) in the hotel, which is much nicer than I was expecting. The first night was by far the most challenging, but as I’ve gotten more comfortable and my Spanish slowly improves, I’ve been able to communicate relatively well. Of course my vocabulary is far from impressive, so I often need to stop them (or slow them down) when they ask me questions, but I’m getting by.

Overall, Manta is a relatively ugly harbor city. It’s spread out and none of the buildings are higher than five or six floors. I haven’t seen a single other tourist thus far, and I have to admit as weird as it is, I’m more than happy to be out of the tourist trap and fiesta town of Moñtanita. Of course living on the beach in a crazy party town where booze costs $2 wasn’t a horrific lifestyle for a week, but I’m ready to really experience the cities of Ecuador and move on to a more authentic part of the trip.

The only complaint I have thus far is our new schedule: starting at 8:30 AM, we have four hours of Spanish, broken up only by a single twenty minute break. It’s a lot, and by the end, my brain literally starts to hurt from all the information being thrown at me. I must be retaining some of it though, because I find I’m much more capable of having conversations with strangers, even if they’re relatively basic and brief!

The rest of my week is jam packed: tomorrow we have a trip to a panama hat factory, Thursday is a national holiday and we get to go paragliding (ah I can’t wait!), Friday we have a cooking lesson, and Saturday we have an all day trip to Puerto Lopez where we will be snorkeling and whale watching. The Sunday we get on our 7 hour bus ride east and into the mountains to Quito. Thankfully, we’re booked on a tourist bus with AC and nice seats, so there will be no repeat of our last bus journey!