It has been something of an emotionally draining week. As well as having to have Gravel, our dog, put to sleep on Monday, the day before (Sunday) we ‘d had to wave off Tom and Lucy who were going to Ecuador for a year.
Lucy had delayed her return in order to spend some time in England during the summer and also to attend Max’s wedding. Their departure was delayed a little further by the sale of Tom and Hannah’s flat in Highgate (so Tom could do some painting and tidying when the tenants moved out). As it happened, it sold very quickly, so there was no need to smarten it up and the sale should be complete (fingers crossed) in the next week or two.
Lucy must have been keen to see her family again after more than a year away from home. For Tom, there was the nervousness of flying to the other side of the world, meeting Lucy’s family as her chosen life partner (he’d met her mother once before in Brussels) and spending a year in a country where he didn’t really speak the language.
There are no direct flights to Ecuador from England, so Lucy was flying to Quito via Amsterdam and Tom via Madrid. Their flights were around 6.30am, which means being at the airport by 4.30am (which means setting off at about 2.30am).
On Saturday, Lucy (who has been enjoying cooking English dishes) wanted to make steak & kidney pie followed by sticky toffee pudding. We’d tried sticky toffee pudding at the Queen’s Arms in Pimlico and also at the Rose & Crown in Thorney after I told her that it was the most popular pudding in England. There was a lot of preparation going on so Tom and I went across to the pub late afternoon for a few farewell pints of Barn Ale. The dinner was a triumph, but three pints of ale, a big dinner and an early night meant I still felt full when I woke up at 1.30am.
The journey to Heathrow (terminal 4, followed by terminal 5) was a breeze. There was nothing on the roads and we made very good time, I drove back very steadily, filled up with diesel and was still back at home by 6.30am.
It seems a long way away, so it was nice to get a long e-mail from Tom yesterday, updating us on what it’s like in Quito. This was his message:
Just wanted to check in with a few notes.
I was upgraded on my flight from Madrid to Quito to an extra-legroom seat – this was the only good thing to happen for the next 13 hours. I was sat next to a two-year-old girl who – belying her years – was rather well behaved (all except for two notable blips – one involving vomitus, the other poo). Iberia has a different take on long haul flying compared to the other airlines I've crossed the Atlantic with. I'm not saying Iberia has got it wrong, but I do prefer the polite air hostess/unlimited booze model. I almost managed to finish Winston Churchill's autobiography, I've been hacking through this for most of 2013.
When I got into Quito Lucy's sister Emilia and her father were waiting for me. Unluckily, Lucy had nipped to the toilet so I had to make two minutes of conversation with Carlos. The trouble is “como estas?” is really only five seconds worth of conversation ... and that's if you draw out the vowels. Lucy returned and we piled into the pick-up truck he uses to visit patients in the high Andes. I say piled – it was a squeeze. There was myself and Carlos, then Lucy, then her sisters Emilia, Camilla and Arlen. The airport is about an hour from Lucy's mum's house in Quito, our destination. The road passes over a mountain and snakes precariously, occasionally crossing thousand feet canyons over narrow bridges. It made the M4 to Heathrow look rather tame.
Back at home was something of a welcome party. Nidia (Lucy's mum) had prepared a feast in our honour which included boiled corn, corn cake, toasted corn, corn breads and tuna (which was in my honour). It was quite a gathering and included about five cousins, four uncles and aunts, sisters, Lucy's 98-year-old grandmother, and Lucy's five-year-old cousin who was fast gorging himself on the feast of Lego Batman toys which he had fast eyed and artfully plucked from the suitcase. I wish I could have stayed up longer but I was exhausted and grimy. I'd woken at 1:30am BST and it was now nearly 4am BST the next day and I'd not had a wink of sleep.
Lucy's mum lives on a gated estate with a security man at main entrance so it's very secure. Two days Lucy locked the security man out when he was trying to flag down our taxi. Lucy looked sheepish as she hopped into the cab leaving the guard looking flustered and flummoxed on the wrong side. It's a three-storey house and we're on the top floor with our own bathroom, so it's nice and private. The middle-class creep is pushing the slums further back up the mountain and from my window I can see ramshackle, corrugated-iron huts clinging precariously to the steep hillside. There are street dogs mooching around – they have a habit of howling into the night. The locals deliver a sharp kick to the ribs when the dogs get too close.
Even when the air feels fresh the sun is still so hot and intense when it touches the skin. I think you could frazzle in minutes without sunscreen. I will have to be very careful. The sun rises at six and sets at six, you could set your watch by it. At midday it swallows your shadow whole and bleaches everything it touches.
On the first day we got a taxi into the centre of town – the old colonial centre (which is a UNESCO world heritage site). It's about 30 minutes in a cab, and costs between $3 and $6 depending how much of the talking I do. When we arrived there were hundreds of people gathered outside the Presidential palace. At first we wondered if there was a strike in progress but it was just President Correa waving to his adoring subjects. Then the national flag was raised and we all sang the national anthem – I was humming along foolishly like an allegedly Welsh politician during his respective anthem. To be fair, it's not a bad number; certainly no German or Italian, but you could definitely swing your arms to it which is always the measure of a stirring anthem.
Then we went to see a couple of churches. First was the Church of the Company of Christ. It was a baroque explosion of gold leaf. There was a giant painting showing all the sins that will send you to hell and graphic representations of just what awaits transgressors (mostly it's getting devoured by slightly silly looking serpents or prodded in the arse by trident wielding imps). The sins worthy of eternal damnation included the obvious assasino (murder) but rather more worringly vano (vanity), mumurador (gossip) and even pleasure. The next church was just down the road, called San Francisco. This was from a similar period (1580) and also baroque. It had a slightly sepia feel, or as though it was seen through dusty glass. I liked it the best. Then we looked around the adjoining Franciscan monastery. For an order who take a vow of poverty and asceticism they didn't have a bad life.
After this we went for lunch – where I had corn and eggs in an area called La Ronda, where the artists and prostitutes share space in narrow geranium-infested streets. It's very pretty but I suddenly felt shivery and drowsy so we returned home. I'd only had about six hours sleep the night before, so I figured I was in about 10 hours debt at least. I made up for it and slept from four in the afternoon until six the next morning. I felt much better for it.
Lucy was concerned – despite my protests – that I was still sick. I wasn't. However, I was troubled by a muscle I'd pulled in my chest when I lugged the suitcase a little over-zealously out of the car at Heathrow. It made breathing painful and lying on my side uncomfortable. The altitude too was causing me a few problems – nothing serious, but walking upstairs leaves you slightly short of breath. Due to health concerns Lucy proposed a quieter day which included a visit to the market. This was fun. They have so many strange fruits over here, some are enormous, some are spiky, but – to a man – they all have ridiculous names like granadilla, pitajilla, naranjilla, and babaco (spellings all wrong). Most of these taste a bit like sour apple and contain pulpy innards you have to slurp out like chilled monkey brains. Those you don't slurp are whacked into the blender for a refreshing glass of sour apple juice.
Lucy's sister has a dog called Canella, which is the Spanish word for cinnamon. It's a sort of mongrel and it wears a bone-print hoodie. I'm not sure it likes me very much and gives me a good bark every time we pass on the stairs. I might take it for a walk today and see if I can't break the ice. It's less concerned about food than other dogs I've known and it does a funny dance on its hind legs while shaking its front paws in the air.
That evening we were meeting Lucy's friend Tanya in an area of Quito called Madriscal – where all the bars and nightclubs are. It's lively and the atmosphere is slightly art student, without the Shoreditch pretentiousness. It costs about $1.65 for a bottle of Pilsener or Club (the two local beers). Tanya dragged along her new fiance Christian – who's from the south of Quito (which I'm led to believe is a bit like coming from Peckham or Streatham). Tanya asked Lucy to be her Dama d'Amour (which is chief bridesmaid in real money) so there was a bit of early excitement. Christian likes football, basketball, works in pharmaceuticals, has a 2Pac tattoo on his arm and wants me to go to his stag do. We went to a bar called La Estacion (the Station) where they played Blur's Park Life cover to cover followed by live acoustic jazz.
Quito is full of the different indigenous people of Ecuador. They all wear their particular outfits which is colourful and makes identification easier. I'm starting to learn which and which. My favourites are from the south – the women wear bowler hats, clumpy clogs and ratty ponchos and they all have babies strapped across their backs. There's a lot of contrast between rich and poor. Eight-year-old boys will ask if they can shine your shoes in the street, and Indian women spend all day under the sun walking the lines at traffic lights with strings of tangerines or (more bizarrely) feather dusters which they sell for a dollar a pop. Worse, they have nowhere to keep their children so they sit in the central reservation playing this game where you toss nickels at a target while they bake themselves a ruddy brown.
The most impressive thing about Quito are the mountains. They form a wall around the city and tower to nearly 5,000 metres in places. Despite the height there is no snow, instead they are rich green from the sun and rain. They are nearly always lit by the sun and the shapes and shadows thrown are very impressive. Later this week we plan to take a cable car tothe top of Mount Pichincha – which is 4,800 metres. Everywhere you look in the city you can see a mountain, it really is the highlands up here. The people from the coast think those from the highlands are like stones, that is to say conservative and without emotion. The indigenous people do have a very serious look behind their sun-wrinkled eyes, I can imagine they've had very hard lives.
I've quickly grown very fond of Coca tea. It's very refreshing. A bit like a mild green tea, but it doesn't gnaw at the stomach in the same way. It's supposed to help with the altitude apparently too.
Anyway, I've gone on enough for now. I want to make at least a desultory clean of the kitchen - Gabby the maid arrives in a minute and it's a complete state after breakfast and the mojitos I made last night.
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