Turn on your sound! Listen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For once in a while the travelers playing music in the hostel actually sounded good. I was glad to fall asleep to this group of Chileans singing outside my room. But many times it’s not quite as enjoyable when crusty backpackers bang on their bongos late at night.

I see it like this. You have the type of guy who plays an instrument at peak time in a hostel to impress people. Then you have the really dedicated person playing something annoying like a drum or harmonica at odd hours because its their passion. Both are equally annoying. But there is a third kind which is a group of people playing music together to be social and have fun. That’s what the video I posted is. I have no problem with this third group. I was lucky this time.

After another massive game of Kings about 5 of us guys were out at the bar and were supposed to meet up with a group of American study abroad girls from the hostel. When they finally showed up we were in the street and all of a sudden a big white pickup truck with a few guys on the back playing music in stopped and invited us for a ride. We all jumped in and were driving and singing for about 20 minutes. People were playing instruments that they had never heard and we were singing songs in Spanish that we didn’t know while driving over potholes until we stopped at big gymnasium in another town.

Inside the gym about 400 people gathered for the town’s post-carnaval celebration. Our driver motioned for us to follow him as he rushed us to the back of the stage. He pushed a few of us out onto the stage and pointed at four girls standing alone on the stage while the guy on the loudspeaker spoke excitingly about something.

I was the first one pushed up on stage so I walked over to the girls and quickly realized they were not actually girls, but really drag queens.  The man on the loudspeaker was replaced with salsa music which meant each of us danced with a drag queen on stage in from of everyone. This is when I wished I had taken those salsa lessons and two men dancing together are even tougher. So I did what I do when struggling and spun him/her around with a big smirk on my face and an entire crowd laughing hysterically at, but not with us.

Second place. My drag queen came in just second place. So close.  What a pity. The first place winner was crowned and right at that moment one of the guys who was dancing with him/her spontaneously climbed on stage and posed for photos.

They had enough of us at this point and a few minutes later our host herded our group back into his truck and dropped us off back in town.

One concept I need to follow more often is not to settle. For the past two days I walked about 10 blocks to the only restaurant I thought was open nearby. So for two days I ate disgusting fried chicken. The kind that is so greasy and fat you just want to vomit it up afterwards.

Naturally on the third day I was more curious and walked a few more blocks to find dozens of better choices open, including restaurant’s overlooking beautiful colonial plazas and also KFC. I settled on a filet minon that day.

I met Carolina on Tuesday night in the new town for some dessert. We drove to a café in Guapalo, a bohemian little section of Quito with cobblestone streets and cafes. It was a strange and terrifying night as some of the street lights and traffic lights were not working. As we drove past broken traffic lights it felt a little like playing Russian roulette. We drove down Guapalo but it was not worth the risk of parking the car in the dark because there is a good chance it will get stolen.

Instead we settled on Crepes Y Waffles, a Colombian restaurant chain I have written about many times. It’s that good. We had a nice time piecing together my birthday night. I learned how great Carolina is to go out with. For example, in the last place when I was dancing with one girl Carolina blocked each guy who wanted to cut in by telling them to back off because it was my birthday. Haha!

On Wednesday afternoon I traveled. I went to a tourist town, Banos,  with an American (Arielle) and a Dutchman (Richard). The Dutchman even had the Richard Von in his name making him really, really Dutch in my mind.  On the way to Banos we passed an overturned truck that spilled bottles of some liquid all over the side of the road.

What do you get for a US$3 haircut? Scissors covered in hair from a previous client and the feeling that the barber might ruin your look at any moment.

I walked into the first barber shop that was open and landed a barber more distracted than the kids with major ADD back in high school. The film, There’s Something About Mary, was playing in the background and while cutting my hair he was fascinated with Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz. He was really watching it. His head was pointed at the TV as he combed my hair to cut, followed by a quick glance back to my head. He cut the strands just as he would move his head back to the TV.

I wanted to yell but on the other hand do I really want to anger the guy responsible for cutting my hair? By the end I was surprised because it turned out really well! This experience was just as exciting for me as a week later when I jumped off a bridge.

My original plan for Monday was to travel. I have not left Quito for the two weeks I have been abroad but Carnaval means my intended destination, Banos, is fully book. Instead of travel I did the next best thing and changed hostels to the Secret Garden at the opposite end of the city. A tip for all travelers is if you find yourself not liking a place then move to a new hotel or hostel for a completely new perspective of a place. Everything changes. I was not immediately impressed with my new hostel. The streets nearby were empty and the hostel was not as nice I had heard. Dinner on the rooftop terrace changed all of this with amazing views of the entire city.

Shots from the roof during the day

The atmosphere completely changed as a few dozen travelers gathered at a big long series of tables for communal dinner. The food was alright but the sparkling city lights and great people made it perfect. This was a wow moment. At dinner I chatted with a few older Americans for a pleasant conversation about Ecuador and life for them back home where they live in the wilderness to make their rafting hobby possible. After dinner I played Texas Hold’em with two Americans and a Dutch guy. The Dutch guy had never played so it turned into a learning experience for all four of us. The most interesting point in the night was someone from the hostel approaching me to say they I looked familiar. Myself and this guy tried to figure out how for a few minutes until we figured it out. The guy, Paul, had been on my 4 day Salar de Uyuni tour in Bolivia last July. While I had finished my trip and gone home for 4 months Paul was still on the road. But for now working at the hostel in exchange for room and board. Paul’s birthday was also that night so by midnight Paul phoned a taxi service to call for a bus.

Paul and I

A school bus that is. The school buses here moonlight as taxis so ten of us (the entire staff and a few of us travelers) rode the school bus to La Mariscal to celebrate. We wound up at an Irish bar and there it was a mini reunion of practically everyone I met in my two short weeks in Quito. I ran into Rafael, the 3^rd culture kid from Italy, Bolivia, and Argentina. Then later on I ran into the American roommate who thanked me for waking the snoring guy one of my first nights. It’s actually not strange I would run into all these people. We as travelers are not as unique as we think and most of the times will go to the same cities, same hostels, and same discos because we hear they are the best. I was not surprised to see people I thought I might never see again for this reason.

On Wednesday my websites worked as usual so I put in a long day of work and then met some travelers for the trice weekly rum and cokes. This is usually the easiest time to meet people. I spoke with people from Israel, Germany, Finland, and the most interesting…a third culture guy. His father is from Argentina, his mother from Bolivia, and he lives in Italy having also lived in those countries for a while. What an upbringing, right?

I enjoyed talking with him the most because his story was different and you know it’s a good conversation when what each person does for a living never comes up in conversation. Likewise, he was not full of clichés like I find with others. For example, he is going to live in an Ecuadorian Jungle town doing some kind work with the people there. But what I like about what he told me is that he’s doing it for himself. For his own experience rather than expecting to “save the world”, which if some of what he does is positive all the better. It’s refreshing to hear this perspective rather than the other in which the person truly believes they will completely improve a town.

I led our group of 4 to a disco around the corner and a bit of fun showing off my intuition. I spotted a group of two girls and approached them with the third culture kid.

“Let me guess…you two are from the United States?
“Yes”

“And you are both here studying abroad”

“Yes”

“At the Universidad de San Francisco”

“Wow, how could you tell all of that?”

I had a good laugh at how easy it is to identify the study abroad students here in Quito. Meanwhile at the disco I did meet an Ecuadorian girl but excused myself after a while and found a German-Asian girl who I taught some salsa (i.e. the basic step). I was interrupted by the pretty German girl we came with who at the time was dancing with the Israeli. In a moment she jumped away from his and then to me. She was pretty but I felt guilty that the Israeli guy had been chatting with her all night. I looked at him with a confused look and he did the same back.

Regardless I danced with her and it was only five minutes later that I realized what a psycho this girl is. Her behavior was really off the wall and I could notice how drunk she had become. I tried to pass her off to the Israeli guy but he had been watching and agreed that she was nuts. So soon enough as I kept trying to get away she spotted the third culture kid with the American girl I had identified before and latched on to him. She followed them around for the next half-hour, literally hanging on to him as he tried to dance with the American girl.