So we were told to be at the park where the buses were picking us up at 9:30pm so that the buses could leave town at 10. Well apparently everyone else was told it was leaving at 9 because when we showed up at 9:15 (gringos that we are) everyone was not only there but getting mad that they were still there. But once we got on the bus and Leslie could start falling asleep everything was incredible for the rest of the weekend. If you want a story about being sick and hot and tired and miserable in Quito at a soccer game you're not getting it on my blog I had an awesome weekend. Before I comment on some peculiar and unexpected differences between Latin American culture and US culture I would like to say that we got lucky in that on the bus into Quito everybody sitting around us spoke good English. They of course preferred that we speak Spanish, but it was very welcoming that they were willing to speak English with us. Very, very welcoming.
Okay, so differences between Latin American culture and US culture. The big one I want to comment on is that everybody in Cuenca drinks. Apparently, in 2003 they were named the drunkest city in South America, second in all of Latin America only to Guadalajara, Mexico. But the best part was that as soon as the guys around us realized that we weren't just tourists, and that we were in Ecuador to experience and live the culture and we were on the bus to go cheer and shout and cry with Ecuador and her soccer team, we officially had enough in common that everyone was willing to share their drinks with us. And everybody had drinks. If I ever get to do something like this again, I'm taking at least 6 liters of cuba libre with me for anybody on the bus that wants some.
N.B. Cuba Libre is what the hispanic world calls rum and coke, because the rum comes from Cuba and the Coke comes from the free world.
I ended up drinking a couple canelasos, gin and tonic, whiskey and sparkling water, and something else I don't remember (but not because I was too drunk to remember) and I said no to the “traditional mixing” of wine, beer, rum and aguardiente that somebody had. That was a crazy chuchaqui just waiting to happen.
So eventually we finally left the city, and I stayed alert for a while just to listen to the trash talking and general drunkenness going on on the bus and laugh until people started quieting down a couple hours into the bus ride. Eventually, I started listening to music to try to fall asleep myself. But the ride was too bumpy and it turns out that a “bus de lujo” means a shitty bus on United States terms so it would have been difficult to fall asleep for me even if it weren't so bumpy and turn-y. After a couple hours of listening to music o try to fall asleep, and realizing by ancient i-pod's battery was fading for no reason, I changed strategies. I had bought three big flask size bottles of zhumir, in the sweet less-alcoholic flavors so that they could be taken without a mixer (21% abv), so I downed one in about three minutes (you should know that first I wrote ten, then erased it, then wrote five, then erased it too because I realize now it was that I downed that zhumir way faster than I thought I did). Within thirty minutes I was asleep. Which was incredible, especially considering that my strategy had no side-effects.
And I only woke up once before sunrise (at like 5:30 as always here in Ecuador), and that was because we had changed altitude so much that I was soaking wet with sweat by the time I woke up while when we were leaving Cuenca I had to put on my hoodie to stay in my comfort zone, which is considerably colder than that of most people. No, that doesn't do it justice I love the cold I love playing sports in weather cold enough that you can feel your bones every time you get hit and I can't sleep unless it's cold and love eating cold food so for me it's pretty damn serious if I need a hoodie to stay comfortable. It was an incredibly drastic change in temperature, enough to wake a drunken sleeping traveler from the middle of his deep slumber. It was an incredibly intense change in temperature and air pressure but as soon as we started climbing into the mountains again I was OUT.
I woke up at 5:30 Saturday morning when the sun came up and we were almost in Quito. The view of the landscape and the mountains was incredible but nothing like the bus ride on the way home so you'll get plenty of photos in Vamos 3. As we rolled down the mountain leading into the valley that is Quito I tried waking Leslie up to let her catch a glimpse of the city but it was happening. And there's a picture of Quito from the moutains on the bus in Vamos 3 as well.
At some point, after entering the city, the bus randomly stopped on the side of a main road and nobody had any idea what was going on. Until a film crew goton the bus and explained to us that they had chosen our group to be filmed for a tv special about the people who rode in buses all night to come see their national team play in a World Cup Qualifying match. All of a sudden everybody was awake and crazy excited (except the sick one of course) and there was a great atmosphere on the bus and people were singing their Ecuador fight songs which I thought was cool until we got on the bus after stopping at the hotel when people really got into it and that was where it's at but we're not there yet in our story. So we ended up getting to the hotel some time around 7:45 in the morning, after leaving Cuenca at 10pm, and as soon as we had a key Leslie went straight to the room to sleep and I scoped out the breakfast that was included in our package. It turned out to take too long, though I appreciated the juice, coffee and rolls while I waited for the eggs that never came. I went and got Leslie, who fortunately got a little more sleep though her stomach still wouldn't let her eat. We waited for a few minutes outside the hotel waiting for everybody to get outside so that we could have a mini pep-rally for the cameras before we got back on the bus to go to the stadium. That's when the singing really started.
The mini pep-rally outside the hotel
The reason why these blog posts are called “Vamos Ecuatorianos” is because that's to only song we both learned that was appropriate for putting on a blog. It goes like this: “Vamos Ecuatorianos. Esta tarde, tenemos que ganar.” It's a lot more fun than it looks, especially when everybody you can see, including yourself, is shouting it as loud as they possibly can. On the way to the stadium, there was a camera man on our bus and also one riding around on the back of a pickup following our bus around the city so people were going nuts on the bus the whole way to the game, partying in the aisle and sticking their flags out the windows and getting all the people on the sidewalks and in the cars and buses around us to sing along with us. We had to get out of the bus several blocks away from the stadium, but the camera man stayed with us and did things like have us run to them and sing and shout as loud as we could and everybody else was just eating it all up trying to get on tv. Leslie and I found a guy named Nelson who ended up being way nicer than we ever expected. While everybody else was going ga-ga over the video cameras, we cut over to our side of the stadium with he and his son Nelson (strong tradition here, giving you first-born son your name) to get in line to get better seats than the 5-minutes-of-fame people (they only say 5 here instead of 15).
Nelson (dad) took a picture with us just before the mini pep-rally.
We were firmly positioned in line outside the stadium at 10:00am, waiting for a game that would start at 5:00pm to make sure we got at least half-decent seats.
The lines waiting to get into the stadium, 7 hours before the game started.
Fortunately, my full-size fake Ecuadorian flag was keeping my neck and arms from the crazy hot and bright sun that forced Leslie to make me buy her sunglasses, because she had just recentley lost her (second) pair at school and Nelson and the others laughed at me for paying too much but I said very surely that if Leslie needed sunglasses, she was getting sunglasses and the difference between eleven dollars and eight dollars was worth her feeling better. Then another guy our age in our cuencano group immediately said (in Spanish) “Yeah my girlfriend doesn't want sunglasses” then his girlfriend hit him and laughed with the rest of us. About fifteen minutes into waiting for the stadium to open its doors we got the great news that the doors were going to open at eleven instead of noon. That's great news because Nelson (dad Nelson not son Nelson) had already explained to me that beer and water and food inside Ecuadorian stadiums isn't as ridiculously priced as it is in US stadiums. In fact, the beer and water and food is reasonably pricedinside the staiums; it's cheaper than oustide the stadiums where people walk from line to line trying to rip anybody off that is desperate enough to buy something outside like we were with the sunglasses. At one point, Leslie left the line to go sit in the shade of a building next to the stadium, which ended up being alright because we didn't have a problem geting her back in front of me in line when the doors opened. And entering the stadium will be the beginning of the next blog post, which I will hopefully write in the next couple days.
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