I arrived in Quito on Thursday, July 5 and spent the first two days getting oriented and dusting off my Spanish. I was excited to see an ad for a folk music concert on Friday at 7:00pm. As I didn´t have a good map of Quito, I asked one of the Spanish teachers how to get to there. This turned out to be a bad idea that ended well.
Instead of giving me directions to the concert venue, she gave me directions to Papayanet, which is in the heart of La Mariscal, otherwise known as Gringolandia. This is the area in New Town known for it´s foreigner-friendly restaurants and bars. And it turned out she really didn´t know her city as well as I thought. Papayanet is an Internet cafe and bar, not the information center she imagined it to be. They had no idea what I was asking about when I asked about the concert. By the time I learned this it was too late for the concert.
But that´s where all´s well that ends well. I found a quiet place to have dinner (not an easy thing to do on a Friday night when the Mariscal is filled with a mix of foreigners and locals). As I walked to my seat I noticed a woman I took to be English finishing her dinner. As I was enjoying a glass of excellent Chilean wine she came to my table and asked if I spoke English as she had a question about her bill and couldn´t speak Spanish.
That is how I met Meryl, a South Australia farm wife and mother of four grown children who was leaving the next day for a trip to the Galapagos Island. The primary purpose of her trip was a church project in Honduras. But instead of just going from Australia to Central America, she had made a world tour of it. Though one of her children joined her for part of the trip, most of it was done solo. I was very inspired by her story as she took on physically challenging adventures that I could only dream of. I expected her to say that her physical fitness came from years of hard work on the farm. Nope. She´s a regular at her local gym. I hope to meet up with Meryl again when I visit her part of the world.
That is how I met Meryl, a South Australia farm wife and mother of four grown children who was leaving the next day for a trip to the Galapagos Island. The primary purpose of her trip was a church project in Honduras. But instead of just going from Australia to Central America, she had made a world tour of it. Though one of her children joined her for part of the trip, most of it was done solo. I was very inspired by her story as she took on physically challenging adventures that I could only dream of. I expected her to say that her physical fitness came from years of hard work on the farm. Nope. She´s a regular at her local gym. I hope to meet up with Meryl again when I visit her part of the world.
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