The adventure begins...

Dear fellow travelers,

with the following message you will be informed about the current happenings of our excursion. 😉 Now again normal German: it's hard to believe that we have been staying in Quito for almost ten days now. While other travelers would already have to pack their bags again, luckily our journey is just beginning.

After several nations (Panama and Ecuador) desperately tried to keep us away from América del Sur with the help of thermometers, we somehow managed to sneak into Quito, because as we all know, Germans are ice cold 😉. In contrast, our host family is very warm-hearted and has quickly introduced us to Ecuadorian life with the Spanish language, tropical fruits that we have never seen in Germany, and of course with culinary specialties from their own kitchen: as our host father Vicente says: "Made in Ecuador" (supposedly English, but pronounced in German^^).

In our first few nights we suddenly became short-sleepers and would wake up again around 4/4:30 am after going to bed around 10/11 pm. However, we must admit that despite the ubiquitous noise of Quito we have now turned back into long-sleepers and even managed to oversleep for the first time today. Thanks to the police station across the street, which starts its morning roll-call promptly at 7 o'clock every day (todos los dias -> a foretaste of our first Spanish learning successes for our Spanish friends), we were still able to get up on time, have breakfast (white rolls, eggs prepared in every possible form, jam and of course an abundance of regional fruits) and make our way to our language school. Yes, that was exaggerated. It's not that far, but even climbing just one flight of stairs at almost 3000m can quickly become a marathon 😉. Actually, we have slowly become accustomed to the altitude, but we have to admit that even so we get tired much faster than at home, in short: ten minutes after getting up ^^.

After being bombarded with 4 hours of Spanish every afternoon, our master chef Vicente always provides a delicious and balanced lunch. Seriously: if a visitor were to collapse in this host family, it would probably be due to a Vitamin shock. At the dining table, we are constantly encouraged to talk. Current topics are always suitable, which is why one of the main topics is of course the Coronavirus. It must be said at this point that our host family has a very reasonable view on this and is very knowledgeable. One of our teachers, on the other hand, was surprised to hear that, for example, face masks are not quite as effective as many South Americans think. But there are also other topics such as other diseases, leisure activities, the content of beloved series or the preparation of dishes or fruits. By the way, all the students (currently 5) and teachers at the language school also cooked together last week. The result (balón de verde - dumplings made from a mixture of maduros [quasi ripe bananas] and verdes [green oversized bananas] filled with cheese or mincemeat and served with a side dish) was really impressive, only we went a little overboard with the salsa picante and so our host family, and therefore we as well, had fun with it for the coming days =).

In the afternoons we actually have a lot of free time, but the Spanish Laba-Palabra (😉) already takes up a lot of time, and so the sunset comes faster than one would like after some dance lessons, visits to the city, sports activities, shopping and/or numerous homework. Unfortunately, we haven't yet managed to have the energy to go dancing in Quito in the evenings, but now that we know our way around Quito and the local traffic better, we will make up for it soon. It's not particularly smart to wander around alone on the streets of Quito at night anyway.

Lastly, we want to tell you about our trip towards one of the mountains near Quito. From the moment we took the Teleférico (cable car) on Saturday morning up to almost the height of Cruz Loma at around 3950m, we were literally in the clouds. It probably wasn't the perfect day to go up the mountains, but we didn't want to sit around idly, so we decided to explore the area right away. Contrary to our original plans to just walk around a bit at the height of the cable car station, we actually headed towards Pichincha, as the city was not even visible from the station. So together with our companion Olaf, we went a little further up towards the famous mountain near Quito. At 4309m, we then decided to give in to our increasingly emerging symptoms of altitude sickness (especially headaches and shortness of breath) due to the wonderful view from 10m. [Authors' note: This means that enduring the headaches for a panoramic view of 10m was not considered meaningful.] For dinner, our host mother Martha, a teacher and also the owner of our language school Atahualpa, showed us her photos of the summit of Pichincha, which she had hiked to on the same day with another student, to demonstrate that it was a good idea to postpone the entire ascent to another day. After all, in the 4-5 hours we were outside on Saturday, we were already close to a serious sunburn due to the intense sun. This reminds Carsten of Lanzarote: thick clouds and still sunburn: This should be a lesson for the future.

¡Hasta pronto!

Magda, Carsten & Olaf