Don't Tell Mom About Quito

There are certain blogs that won’t see the light of day until after we are free and clear. That’s mostly because I prefer when my mother doesn’t begin worrying unnecessarily. That’s the reason I’m setting this blog to publish tomorrow, when we’re in the air heading away from the Ecuadorian mainland.

We are on our fifth night in Quito, where we are staying in a B&B right in the middle of Plaza Foch, an overpriced and overly loud bar district that seems to be popular with 18-20 year olds. It’s fairly similar to Lodo in Denver, Westport in Kansas City or whatever the popular downtown district might be in your given city. I’ve yet to get the history of the name, but you can probably figure out how they use the name Foch as a not-too-creative play on words.

If someone can come up with rationale
about why you would name a restaurant
"G Spot," I would love to hear it.

It’s pretty clear that many of the bars want to sound American, and therefore they choose American-sounding names. Unfortunately, they don’t have anyone doing due diligence. That’s why one place is called Tijuana (I’m assuming that’s where you go if you’re looking to blackout and wake up minus a spleen), another called the G-Spot Bar & Grill (which would be a lot better if it was tricky to find), and the Dirty Sanchez (unless you’re my mother – or anyone’s mother for that matter – feel free to look that up on Urban Dictionary, if you want to make a scrunched up face and say, “Awwooo” or something along those lines).

The B&B is a pretty good deal. For both of us, we pay $38 per night and we’re within easy walking distance of hundreds of restaurants.

This place also gives us the freedom to make choices. For example, when showering, we can have either hot water or water pressure. It can be kind of a fun game in that “which form of torture would you choose if you had to” sort of way. When we booked, we thought each room had private baths, but we were mistaken. There are three bathrooms for the seven guest rooms, which has not been a huge issue. I heard that the upstairs shower has hot water, but it’s a tub and you have to have cold water splashing out of the spigot and onto your feet. Sounds fun, but I have yet to try it.

They keep the entire B&B remarkably clean, the rooms are large, and the owner is exceptionally friendly and helpful. He even acted as guide on a tour to a few towns north of Quito, an all-day excursion that was fun and included many places we never would have known about otherwise.

And, as I mentioned, it’s located right in the heart of the action.

If the mood strikes us, every other door leads to a karaoke bar, including one directly below our window, so we’ve got that going for us. You can’t help but hear them as you walk by, and I can tell you with complete sincerity that no one who is singing in those establishments will ever sing anywhere other than those establishments. If you’ve ever heard cats fighting, you’ve heard more tonality.

This guy was outside Red Hot Chili Peppers,
not the Dirty Sanchez. 

Yesterday afternoon, we tried to go to a bar that had the World Cup game between the Netherlands and Spain on their televisions. We got carded. We had been told by many people not to carry our passports and instead to take along a photocopy of it. We produced said photocopies, as well as our Colorado driver’s licenses. They turned us away. Considering everyone in the bar looked about 12 years old and drinking on bad fake IDs, I’m assuming we were too old to drink there. We wandered across the street to a dive bar. It was far better anyway.

Throughout Ecuador and Peru, I’ve noticed a lot of things that simply wouldn’t fly in the States. I’m not saying that the U.S. is right about everything, but I do appreciate that they don’t allow street crews to cut off pipes or rebar a few inches above the sidewalk, leaving them in perfect position to put an enormous hole in the bottom of your foot. You basically have to look down and carefully place each step, or the street might turn into a life-like cheese grater.

The B&B is also convenient to just about anything you need. There are two convenience stores within 50 feet, a couple pharmacies are around the corner, and there are 2-3 guys outside the door at all hours offering different items for sale.

Here’s how one such conversation went today.

Man with a beard and American accent: Hey, are you guys from Denver.

Me, a little surprised until I realized I was wearing a Denver Basketball shirt: Yes.

Man: Denver’s got some crack neighborhoods, doesn’t it?

Me, not sure whether he means “crack neighborhood” as in a hip way of saying “cool neighborhood” that I’d never before heard or “crack neighborhood” as in mucho drug dens (either way the answer would be the same in any city): Yes.

Man: You know this is a crack neighborhood, right?

Me (still thinking the answer is the same regardless of the definition of “crack neighborhood): Yes.

Man: Want any cocaine or marijuana?

Me: Nope. All set.

It was the fourth time we had received that question. Once was literally five seconds before he started talking to us. It happened twice more before we called it a night at 9:30 p.m.

Aside from getting to know the local dealers a little better than we would have preferred, nothing too bad has happened to us. For the most part, the worst we’ve dealt with has been pushy idiots on the sidewalk trying to convince us to go in just about every dance club. Since it’s usually been before 10 p.m., there has never been anyone in there – apparently they thought we were the answer to start getting the crowd in the door. Because nothing draws crowds like the 30-somethings wearing running jackets and sneakers.

Quito has a lot to offer. It’s got some amazing churches, including La Compania which has about as much gold as Fort Knox, and the restaurants have been far better than other places we’ve been in Ecuador (including Achiote, where we ate twice because it’s ridiculously tasty, close to where we’re staying and fairly inexpensive).

Quito also gave us our second viewing of a fistfight during this trip. The first was in Cuenca, when we were on a bus and saw two 20-something guys on the side of the street throwing haymakers at one another. The strange part was actually seeing 15 people around them, none of whom appeared to notice or pay any attention to them at all.

The one today was a little more interesting. We were drinking coffee in the oldest café in Quito, when we noticed a commotion outside. The police were talking to a group, much of which seemed completely confused.

That’s when two 70-something women started shoving each other and preparing to throw punches. A cop stepped in before it escalated, but it did provide us with something else we had never seen prior to that moment.

We leave for the airport and a flight to the Galapagos Islands at 6 a.m. I’m ready to leave Quito, but there are things that I’m sure I’ll miss. Plaza Foch just isn’t one of them.