Ecuador : 2 - Argentina : 0

Trip Start Aug 07, 2008

Trip End Dec 10, 2009

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Flag of Ecuador Quito, Ecuador
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Well, i decided now was a good time to return to the farm to pack up my stuff and say farewell (again). The last few days at the farm have been fun... most people were ill so new volunteers were being sent away for at least a week to prevent them catching anything and they�re testing the water (water filter and chlorination machine are arriving soon). I didn�t escape unscathed but am now feeling better...i blame it squarely on the sheer monstrous size of the pie i ate on Damien`s birthday. I was kind of hoping it might have been something more topical like the Salmonella that�s currently plaguing Ecuador or, better yet, Swine Flu. Ahhh well. I will probably pop the anti-parasite pills over the next week - after 8 months in Latin America it is probably high time anyway. Only downside is you can�t drink for 4 days whilst on them...

Am in Quito tonight and heading off soon

Pre-game drinks at the shawarma place

. Went black market browsing with James to find him an iPod and, after being impressed with the prices for new ones ($55 for a 4gb nano), we
realised all the new iPods are fake...They look the same but on (much) closer inspection are obviously fake Chinese shit. And all the used grubby ones, clearly stolen off tourists, are over $100. Haha. Well, i�m now really hoping the Lumix camera that i bought a few months back here wasn�t a fake...i�m hopeful, as the build quality is good, but there are a LOT of Sony Cybershots floating about looking rather too new and too cheap...

UPDATE...

Maybe i�m not heading off so soon. After most of the farm crew arrived yesterday, we decided to go and see the World Cup 2010 qualifier match, Ecuador vs. Argentina. And after Bolivia beat Argentina 6-1, we figured it might not be quiet as predictable a match as one might have expected.

We hit the Shawarama restaurant first, sunk the first of many beers and headed over to the touts to find some tickets. It seemed every local and his grandmother was selling tickets. The General (normally $15) were going for $30 and we needed 15, all in through the same gate, for our group

Raining toilet paper

. Impossible, especially as we wanted them for at least half that. We ended up buying Preferencia tickets (normally $30) for $28. Odd, but still, we had beers to get back to.

Going against Stefan's advice, we went in only 2 hours early and ended up with some shit seats, low down in the stands on a corner. And it began to rain, prompting a flurry of $1 plastic sheet vendors to appear. It REALLY rained, and i was too cheap to buy one - no great loss as they were crap and everyone ended up soaked and shivering anyway.

The game was awesome and Argentina sucked. Ecuador were all over them, from the goalie saving the penalty to the two goals they booted past them and the late crossbar hit. The atmosphere was electric on these 3 occasions, with even the officials and security loosing all professional impartiality, dancing, screaming and jumping about. It was odd that on such a match, so important for Ecuador, that the 15 assorted Gringos seemed to give more of a shit about creating noise and supporting the team than most of the stadium did. Our Austrian, Stefan, rallied more cheers and noise in our sector than he really should have had to, especially in supposedly football-mad Latin America.

That done, it was time to hop onto a night bus for Cuenca. I walked, bags and all, through `dangerous` Old Town at 9pm and i was off 20 minutes later. 10 hours to go...