Ecuador Part 6: Quito and Cuenca

I was still fucking ill. Was having lung and breathing problems. I had not quite twigged yet that my allergy was taking on a stronger proportion. Still no light so I had to walk all the way into the city centre to check my e-mail. I could not see Liz today, so I used the day to finish of my writing. Felt good to get my nlog up to date at last and I am now vowing and trying hard to keep the thing up to speed, with regular updates that I used to do. Currently its going well as I am about 10 days back here. I tried to go to a pub quiz with some Swedish couchsurfer for the evening, but I could not pick them out in the heavily Gringo packed bar. So I went online and that stupid bitch who me and Dom had failed to get rid of last time in Quito found me again somehow and kept tapping me with her rose. Puta.

No electricity again. Met Liz. The hotel wanted $5 more if she was staying for more than 20 minutes. Who the hell is going to have sex in under 20 minutes. The world's least energetic couple. Useless. She was on her period and for the first time I decided ah fuck it its not important. She ended up staying for 5 hours and the bed got covered in a fair bit of blood. The hotel staff never seemed to complain though, which was nice of them. I suppose the $5 covered the cleaning bill. We ended up sharing a shower to clean off the blood. Was fun, just a shame it limits what you can do as I am not a fan of the taste of blood. She left to study and I went and found pizz hut. Why I keep getting cravings for that place I don't know. I am always disappointed everytime I eat there and this time they burnt it. Fuckers. I had bought my first book in Spanish as well. Marqeuz's 'Chronicles of a Death Foretold.' Have yet to start it but hope it will imrpove my vocabulary knowledge. Algeria, Greece, Portugal (Hate Ronaldo), Slovenia, France (by the hand of Henry) and Uruguay completed the line up. The draw is this thursday. Will hopefully be back from Machu Pichu in time.

I met Liz again the next day and she came back to the hotel again. We just spent all our afternoons lounging around and having fun. I decided I would make a move on the saturday for Cuenca. I went out to meet some couchsurfers but ended up at the wrong coffee shop. When I eventually found them they took me to some weird dragstrip part of town where everyone hung around their cars, which were blaring out music. We went to a rock bar and played a lot of table football and pool, before ending the night chatting about global politics in Spanish. I am getting there slowly. I had not spoken any English since leaving Bogota as well and would not really speak it at all in Ecuador.

I went to meet Liz by her university and then we went to the cheap Chinese place for lunch. They gave us these horribly bitter little mandarin things, that the old man/woman/thing spent all day peeling. Liz reckoned it was a gay man, I thought it was an old woman. Either way the mandarins were not pleasant. I maxed out my Nat West card. That was one card down and I would only touch my Nationwide cards from now on. We spent 7 hours together in the hotel for the last day we would have together. Being latin america and her being 19, she was never going to be able to stay the night. She was crying a lot when we separated and seemed genuine. I had figured she saw me as foreign meat, but I think maybe I had her wrong. She said the week was magical and hopefully I will see her again in Buenos Aires. She dances tango very well, so she said we should dance after I have lessons, but I figure I will be too low a standard lol. Some English girl invited me to a party, but I opted out because I wanted to get some sleep and was leaving early in the morning. Some weird taxi ended up stalking me over the pedestrian crossing. God Ecuador is dangerous at night. No people in the streets and no street lighting.

I had only $51.35 left. I hope my mum did the transfer. She had for 100 quid, but it would not arrive in time so I would have to start using the credit card. Taxi wanted $15 for the bus station. Fucking ladron. I ended up paying $10 to cross Quito and $10 to go all the way across Ecuador to Cuenca. Something is not right there. It was a big day for Spurs' rivals. I hate these high roads the buses go over. Especially with the drivers down here. Some of these people speak retard Spanish. I got to watch 'Taken' and 'Ironman' again. Great. Some bastard in the lunch restaurant insisted on speaking to me in English, even though I was consistently using Spanish. Idiot. I booked into a hotel near the terminal and was finally going to meet Gabriela after we missed each other last time. All the results went for us. Man City drew with Liverpool, Villa drew and Arsenal lost. I saw an old musician play in the park and then met Gabriela, her friend and a Yankee at the cathedral. She is very hot. You can only say that about Cuencans in this country. We went to the mirador which has a great view and afterwards for coffee in my old hostel from last time. Brought back great memories of being drunk and very sick on antibiotics and rum lol. She is coming to Buenos Aires in march so we will meet up for some tango and I went back to the hotel, avoided the fat prostitute and settled in to decide which of my two channels I would watch.

9-1. FUCK YEAH. That's how my day started off as Tottenham took full advantage of their rivals weaknesses to smash Wigan. Bring on Villa I wrote. That lifts the energy. Shame it was to be wasted on two back to back night buses. I watched a Dennis Quaid film called Pandorum or some such. I really enjoyed it, except when some idiot Ecuadorean stood in front of the tv for ages and the fact that they turned it off with 5 minutes still to play. God I hate this country. Bus was really quick and we passed through some shithole before we got to Machala. Then we entered Machala which is also a shithole. I remembered the town and grabbed a bus to the border where I ended up walking across into Peru. Woohoo. Out of Ecuador. Just a long and dangerous walk to the Peruvian checkpoint.