Nueve de febrero

Hi readers,

I write from Quito, Ecuador, where we arrived yesterday from Santiago de Chile, um...Chile. All is well, except for very minor altitude sickness, probably more accurately called laziness with associated unfit-ness. As a result, blog time!

The exceptionally long flight got us as planned from Melbourne to Santiago within the alloted time frame, although an unusual confluence of bad luck and incompetence reduced our stopover in Los Angeles from five hours to about five minutes, necessitating some sprinting through terminals and judicious defiance of instructions from overwhelmed airport personnel. We had the pleasure of being passengers on the NEW, AMAZING Airbus A380 between Melbourne and LA, although all I can say for it is that it´s shiny and provides a dizzying choice of Simpsons episodes for in-flight viewing. While seated in economy one can take a virtual tour of the First Suites section, which seems pretty rad, although this was an empty experience as the First Suites sections pricing structure eliminates me from being allowed physically near it, let alone take a flight in there.

We arrived in Santiago at about 7am, and it immediately impressed as a more modern and developed city than we had imagined. Good public transport, nice buildings, terrible "river", pretty real and smelly markets, and many abandoned dogs (some quite healthy, some...less so). Santiagans seem to love kissing passionately in public, and to my mild surprise my attempts to immediately participate in this local custom were not totally rejected by Mel. Tragically Quito does not appear to encourage this kind of behaviour quite so much.

A highlight of our Santiago stay was a visit to poet Pablo Neruda´s house. My entire previous knowledge of Neruda was from a Simpsons episode where Lisa high-mindedly quotes Neruda to Bart, who wearily replies "I am familiar with the work of Pablo Neruda". And now, so am I. A little bit. Well, I bought a book after the tour. Neruda was a communist and as such did not fare well when Pinochet took over in 1973. In fact, he died of a heart attack 12 days after the coup many of his friends having "disappeared" in the ensuing days. This tour was a good source of 1973 coup goss, this being a subject I´m interested in but too scared to talk to Chilenos about.

Mel and I were separated on the flight from Santiago to Guayaquil and the Quito, and so I was a bit lonely sitting next to a taciturn lady reading some trash fiction in Spanish, and a broad shouldered chap constantly playing backgammon on his iPhone. At some point I glanced out the window and saw the Andes cutting through the blanket of cloud below. As the thrill passed I concentrated hard to avoid thinking about rugby players eating each other.

The flight took most of the day and we got to our hostel about 10pm. Just as I began to sulk about a lost day travelling and achieving nothing I arrived at the hostel deck which provided a magnificent view of the city of Quito, the buildings climbing the hills in a fantastic contrast to dead flat Santiago. Quito is at 2800m above sea level and even getting up to go to the toilet last night resulted in an unusually elevated heartbeat. After checking in I strolled up the street to a mini-mart and bought two bananas and a chocolate bar. After successfully deciphering the proprietors request for payment (setenta y cinco = seventy five cents) we parted with a mutual "¡Buenas noches!". As I stepped from the store a voice screamed through my head: HOLY SHIT, I´M IN FUCKING ECUADOR SPEAKING FUCKING SPANISH!!!!!! My excitement is hardly dimmed by the daytime realisation that this latter claim is stretching reality a little.