So it begins

Kewl, I slept on my first night in a new bed. I guess being awake for 30 hours in a possible cure for my road trip insomnia.

Maria Cecilia was at work and called me a ~09h00 in the before noon.... yes in there is a second 9 o'clock and I'm a little mortified. Dragged myself into the resturaunt for desayuno (breakfast). Had a nice huevos con tocino (eggs with bacon), tostada (toast), jugo de papaya (papaya juice) and several cups of a good strong cafe negro (black coffee) ooooh yeah and a plate of fresh cantelope... Scribbled my notes from the previous 48 hours and made my way to the computer that had internet access.


The hotel had a computer in a back atrium, for guests to use for internet access. Oooo was it a mess, but it was free and there. First gotcha was, of course it was XP in Spanish. The hell you say.... I'm in latin america and people speak spanish....duh (note to self more cafe in the before noon when looking at foreign languages.) Logged into MSN let people know I was ok. Installed putty so I could SSH back home and check on things, fired up mutt checked my personal email, second gotcha spanish/international keyboard. Grrrrrrr not enough coffee in blood stream to deal with this. I struggled on where is the *censored* tilde (~) on this *censored* keyboard. The computer was well worn and much of the ink was gone from the keys. Damned if I could find it. I realize that with the need for alternate accented characters, additional punctuation marks and such, things get shifted, or moved, but DAMN where was the tilde, I can't use my email program without it. Now I know what some of my friends feel like when presented a US keyboard. Well atleast it is a QWERTY layout, unlike a german laptop I tired when helping a friend of my little bro's, back when he was in forestry school.

Hooked up with Maria Cecilia for almuerzo (lunch), we just headed back to the taquería, munched on a tastey burrito and sucked down couple bottles of water. Headed back to the hotel, packed up, moved to a nice little hostel just to try something different. Montaña Café-Refugio is owned by a kewl dude Juan Carlos, and some other people Maria Cecilia knows. It's quite cozy and the comunal restroom is not a show stopper. Come on people don't you share the restroom at the office, the gym, what about at home, so what's the issue.

Went for a little walk just to get a lay of the land and saw some nice murals on the buildings. Crossing the streets is an adventure, you must pay attention or SQUISH. The traffic is interesting people keep beeping their horns at each other. It seems that they are trying to let people know where they are, very different from our WFT beeps of rage back home.

Made my way back to montaña, nice view from my room. Had a little siesta, snarfled down another couple of bottles of water. Maria Cecilia, popped by and taught me a new card game. We were playin' cards and chatting and OOOPS, its 22h00. I need some eats. Problem, Quito is kind of funny and many things are closed by 20h00. Managed to find a sports bar that was in the Hotel Suisse. Had a beer and a toasted steak ciabatta, all the food had names in english based on american sports. Flagged Maria Cecilia a cab and legged it back to the hostel in time for curfew. Still fighting dehydration... more water... but no altitude sickness

Buenas Noches...