"In the Andes" a Quito Travel Page by Sagespot

Hi! Just a short message to let you know that I知 okay. Am doing a ton every day and taking long restful naps every afternoon. Please excuse the spelling of this email as I知 not sure where the button is for the spell check in Spanish.

I saw a local healer a few days ago to try and cure my cancer. For about an hour she rotated around me counter clockwise and spit all over me and then urinated on the ground. According to the translator, I should be cancer free by the next full moon. You never can tell what just might work. Needless to say, no gringos wanted to sit next to me on the bus back home but all the natives were like "please bless our chickens and pigs, we can see the phlegm in your hair and know that you have been to see a great healer." I blessed about forty chickens and twenty piglets.

Went to a bull fight but was unable to take photos inside the ring. I now know why. It would be bad for Ecuador tourism. It was bizarre and very bloody. Went to matcu petchu in Peru two days ago. It was so spiritual that I took hardly any photos and simply dropped down to my knees amidst the fog and ruins and cried for about two hours. I guess it was the spiritual significance of where I was coupled with what has happened to me over the last half a year. I had the best falafel of my life yesterday at El Arabe restaurant that I think might just be the finest dish this side of Egypt.

Just so you know, when Ecuadorian men want to flirt with you they hiss. This is disconcerting as I am used to hissing being a sort of pagan curse. The first time I hissed back the guy responded with this look like I was a goddess incarnate. He dropped to his knees hissing and kissed my doc martin boots. I shook him off and went about my way wondering at my own goddess nature in this strange culture.

I sat next to an older native gentleman on the bus the other day and he rambled on and on even after I told him that I didn稚 speak Spanish. After about forty five min. of this, the people around me began to give me sympathetic looks. I thought it was because of this guy not shutting up. Nope. I finally realized that they were giving him the sorrowful looks because the gringa sitting next to him was obviously a halfwit and unable to express sympathy at his plight. Upon returning to the hotel and checking my Lonely Planet phrase book I discovered that he was lamenting the death of his lamas and chickens due to a jungle disease. I am such a bad person. By custom, I should have broken down in tears as he spoke of this to me. Which also might explain why over half the bus was crying for about thirty min.

I met this really funny Scot a few days ago at the local British pub. He also had the Lonely Planet phrase book so we proceeded to get tanked on pilsner and practice our Spanish with each other. Let me tell you, Lonely Planet leaves nothing to chance. This book gives you pick up lines, tells you how to decline and accept illegal drugs, etc. So here we are, two gringos sitting at this pub surrounded by the Ecuadorian population that likes brit brew. I figure maybe fifty people as it was during happy hour. So I am so tanked that I proceed to demonstrate my prolific Lonely Planet Spanish by shouting "Me llamo Sage!!!!!!" (My name is Sage.) The pub proceeds to get so quiet that you can hear a pin drop, not unlike in the old west movies when the bad guy walks thorough the door and the piano player stops playing with a few mournful plinks. What breaks the silence is my lovely Scottish friend who belts out a drunken, "bbbbaaaaa hahahahahaha" and proceeds to fall off the stool. I swear to the very Gods that he almost pissed himself laughing. The bar responded with a unison of "hola Sage!" as if this sort of display happened every evening.

Second only to this example from Lonely Planet was when we were practicing the "bar" section of the book. We repeated the phrase "I知 pissed" from the text wondering why this was in the bar section. Unknown to us the bar tender called us a cab. We were unaware that I知 pissed means I知 drunk call me a cab as I知 going to throw up. Sigh. Such language barriers.

I値l check my email again once I get home. I did buy a lighter-keychain for Curry Guy that was swiped from me outside the store by some local kid. I turned right around in disbelief as I had over 100 USD in my backpack. He stole a 60 cent lighter. I turned around went back in the store and bought another one. Jon mentioned that the kid probably went around the corner back into the same store and I bought the same lighter twice.

Yours from where the toilet water turns the other way,
Sage