Just below our hotel was the coolest narrow, windy road lined with colourful houses. It was absolutely amazing. Ross tells us that it's the 'cool' place for artists and embassy functionaries to live and I can see why. We're now driving along a river gorge and it's absolutely gorgeous. We haven't even left Quito yet! In fact, we just left the hotel. I wish I had known about these places before. I would've taken some pictures. My descriptions just don't do them justice. We're now headed towards the Pan American highway. Actually, I think we just merged onto it. Riobamba, here we come!

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The edge of Quito was much as I imagined it. Half built, cinder block buildings, people everywhere, high traffic volume, tiny stores and hole in the wall restaurants. It seemed very dirty and chaotic.

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So many people are just walking along the highway.

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Not anymore. Now, just cars and cows.

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Everywhere you look, there's a volcano. Most are dormant, some for millennia, others for centuries, but there are still plenty of active ones. We have yet to reach Tungarahua, which just erupted a few weeks ago. It's apparently constantly active. We're just now passing Cotopaxi. It's active, but in a minor way. Apparently you'll only see fumaroles if you are climbing it. It last erupted in full in 1897.

***

We've turned off the highway and are now following a winding dirt road towards Cotopaxi. Our destination is a former hacienda and, even further back in time, an Incan way station along the Inca highway. Now it's a pricey hotel. The road passes huge greenhouses where pretty much all the roses available in North America come from.

The hacienda was awesome. There were full, intact, Inca walls and colonial architecture. I absolutely love that I got to touch a wall built by the Inca.

***

I just ate a flaming steak cooked on a hot rock. It was brought out by a procession of waiters, with a certain amount of ceremony. One of them tied a bib around my neck and placed the sizzling meat on a chunk of basalt in front of me. It was great. Ross got pictures.

***

We got into Riobamba around 4:00, met up with José-Luis, Ross' archaeologist friend from Cuenca who will be staying with us and helping out, set ourselves up in the hotel then had beer at a pizza place while we waited for our 6:00 appointment to go see the house we're renting. Ross has rented this house numerous times so it was really just giving to money and getting the keys.

After the viewing of the mansion (which I will describe later), we met up with Elva and Pepe, Ross' friends down the street and had dinner with them. They said I seemed 'bravo,' or angry, but that I'm a nice guy once they got to know me. I'm not sure how I came across as angry, but I'll chalk it up to my super-short hair and the look of intense concentration I likely had due to my attempts to understand what was being said. We're all very tired now and need to sleep. Tomorrow we move Ross' stored furniture and the artifacts into the house. Fun stuff!

***

Tonight shook what little confidence I had in my Spanish. The conversations were fast and animated and constant. Clearly, this was a reuniting of old friends, but I understood very little and participated not at all. I'm sure it will get better as the trip progresses, but I doubt five weeks working with English speakers is going to help much. Jim says he has some instructional tapes. I may borrow them at some point.