First things first. Some of you may have wondered if I regret quitting my job and running away to South America. Gaze for a moment upon the photo headlining this article and take a guess.
That picture is of the steaming pool right outside our room at the Termas de Papallacta Hot Springs Spa and Resort, nestled way up in the Andes east of Quito. Even though it sorta blew our budget for the week, Saturday night at the resort was our reward for completing two weeks of Spanish classes (and a birthday present from Lea to me – emoji smiley face).
How did we do? Well, after two weeks of one-on-one conversation with a private tutor, I think Lea’s well on her way to fluency. As for me? I was able to get a haircut all on my own without any help. Granted it turned out to be a really short haircut, since I tried to communicate “a little shorter on top” with hand gestures that didn’t quite came across the way I intended.
Also, when los vendedores walk through the bus, running their nonstop sales pitches, I can now pick out individual words and even make a little sense out of what they’re saying. Which, given how mind-spinningly fast native Spanish speakers talk, is an achievement for as little training as I’ve had.
My lessons were in a more traditional classroom setting, though there was only one other student, the teacher, and me. We learned basic vocabulary, conjugated verbs, conversed, read, and wrote in Spanish. The result? I now have a fighting chance to communicate, as long as I know what the topic is going to be beforehand and can prep myself with the appropriate vocabulary.
In retrospect, I feel that taking Spanish engaged the same part of my brain that I use at board-gaming meetups, where I have to learn the rules to some new game and figure out how to apply them against more experienced players who are going to kick my ass anyway.
But it is soooo nice to be out of class.
And it’s so nice to be in a place with HOT WATER. Let me be honest, up here in the mountains it’s cold and damp. As I’m typing this (in the much more reasonably priced Hostal Coturpa downhill from the resort) it’s been raining and chilly all day. But that doesn’t matter because the springs are so, so nice. I’m not kidding, you should get on a plane and fly here right now.
Because of the thermal springs, the hotels here have actual hot and cold running water. This was not a thing in Quito, nor in some other places we’ve visited. Which means, por ejemplo, cleaning your pots, plates, and cutlery in cold water (a questionable venture at best). It also means that when you take a shower you get to use the Shower Head of Electrical Death.
There’s no way in hell these things would pass any U.S. safety code. Essentially, you have an electrical hot water heater affixed directly to the shower head, with live wiring (that may or may not be exposed, we’ve seen both) just waiting to electrocute you.
These machines are extremely finicky. The first one we ever saw was in Tanzania. Every electrical circuit in the house seemed to have been run through a single breaker, and when anyone used the shower it would blow the breaker several times between turning the water on and rinsing the shampoo out of your hair.
The ones in Central and South America have been a little more stable but they don’t have the capacity to heat very much water. Therefore you can only have a hot (or tepid) shower if you keep the pressure dialed almost all the way down. Not enough water pressure and the Death Heater won’t turn on, but too much pressure and it doesn’t have a chance to heat the water at all.
Please, someone figure out a way to get a few million real hot water heaters imported to this continent before we get much further into our trip.
So, you may ask, besides learning a few useful phrases in Spanish, how else is this time away from the American Wage Slave Work Ethic been going? Well, in terms of personal development I’ve kept my promise to myself to write every day. That’s come in the form of this blog, writing book reviews on Goodreads, and working on my rusty fiction-writing skills. In that department, I’ve already finished a new short story and started shopping it around, while also beginning to outline the first novel I want to write while on this trip.
Speaking of book reviews… Even though I’m no longer librarianing, I’m never going to stop telling people what books to read. One thing I decided to do for this trip was to read a novel about each country we visit written by an author from that country. For Ecuador, my book-of-the-month pick is The Queen of Water by Laura Resau and María Virginia Farinango.
The Queen of Water reads like a YA novel, but it’s really an autobiographical account of Virginia Farinango’s actual childhood, living as an indígena servant to a mestizo family in the mid-1980s.
Check it out!
New Blog Feature: Lea’s Awesome Photo Corner
Lea and I both take photos that I use for this blog, but to tell the truth I use more of hers than of mine. In addition to having a great eye for composition, she’s got a skill for incredible macro-photography. Check these out, from the Jardín Botánico de Quito and the Termas de Papallacta resort:
What did I tell you? Follow her on Instagram.
About those hot water “heaters.” YIKES!!! Look at the connections wrapped in loose electrical tape! As a comparison, in Scotland they don’t even have a light switch in the bathrooms; they are outside the door.
I kid you not, at the last hostel we stayed in the light switch and an outlet were practically inside the shower.