A few things I noticed…

1. Grapefruit/Pomelo flavoured soda is super popular across South America, and it’s awesome. Each corner market has at least 2-3 brands and I’m addicted to all of them. No idea why Canada gets Fresca and nothing else for grapefruit pop but I will miss these.
2. Bureaucracy: You will be asked for your passport or other ID number a LOT, seemingly pointlessly and randomly. Often the ID number they are asking for is something only citizens would have so I would have to just make up random numbers. Lots of ATMs were unusable because I didn’t have whatever random local ID number it wanted. In general a seemingly pointless bureaucracy is ever-present across South America. Maybe it’s something to do with job creation or whatever but it’s nuts. I’ve filled out endless forms and papers and receipts, none of which will even be glanced at again. Most of the time the form I filled out was never even glanced at, I could have written anything. One coffee shop couldn’t even sell me a coffee without my passport number, license number, phone number and email. One museum wouldn’t let me in until they knew my mother’s maiden name and what my father did for a living. For locals it seems even worse, people spend insane amounts of time in line for anything and everything, any service office, the power company, phone company, transit, a notary, a bank, any government office…. ALL will have a huge waiting room and a huge line, getting anything at all done appears to invariably involve extended periods of time in various lines.
3. As my time in Spanish speaking countries grew I found that my explanation that I don’t speak Spanish (“Lo siento, no entiendo Espanol”) carried less and less weight, lol. I certainly do not speak Spanish but it seems like my growing vocabulary and comfort with the Spanish that I do know means that more and more often my insistence that I can’t speak Spanish gets waved away and people just continue on in Spanish with me.
4. An “Auto Service” is not a mechanic, it’s a generic term for a convenience store.
5. A “Drugstore” is not a pharmacy, it’s a generic term for a convenience store, which never carry drugs.
6. Lottery stuff is segregated to its own stores/kiosks, they cannot be sold anywhere else, this is awesome, no waiting behind scratch and win morons at 7-11.
7. Be vulnerable. Whenever I’m interacting with a local, esp with a language barrier, I take the first chance I can to be vulnerable, be silly, to be goofy. It’s a shortcut to fun interactions that almost always helps. People talk about being tough, firm, etc when travelling, I get that but I really feel I get a lot further being soft.
8. Alcohol is sold pretty much anywhere. In some countries like Brazil there appears to be basically no rules around drinking. You can buy a drink on the sidewalk, on the beach, outside the subway station, it’s all good. I also never saw it being a problem a single time.
9. Every single Argentinian restaurant will feature both a salmon filled ravioli and a pumpkin filled ravioli. I swear it must be the law there. In general all restaurants in Argentina that serve Argentinian food share 90% the exact same menu, it’s quite odd.
10. I’ve noticed a complete reversal of people’s preference for fizzy or flat bottled water as I’ve travelled. In Mexico they strongly prefer extremely carbonated water (the most bubbly on Earth, they will proudly inform you) and you’ll get bubbles by default if you ask for a bottle of water. By the time I got to Argentina this completely reversed, fizzy water is lightly carbonated and people will assume you want flat. So much so that I was often served flat water even after ordering bubbles.

I noticed a thing at grocery stores in Latin America months ago that has broke my mind ever since.

For completely unfathomable reasons (to me at least) when you are done unloading your shopping cart at a till you don’t push it through and back to the area you got it from, nope.

Instead, once your cart is empty, you walk the empty cart back through the line and ditch it in the area between the tills and the aisles, so it’s in everyone’s way and everyone doing their shopping has to navigate around the pile of empty carts.

The first time I noticed it was in Paraguay and I just assumed I must be missing something. So I unloaded my items and started walking my cart ten feet forward to the cart storage area…. THE GASPS AND TITTERS! I sheepishly got my cart back, dragged it back through the line of people and their own carts, and left it right where it would be the most inconvenient for everyone in the store.

When in Rome…..

About 120 years ago Coke started being sold in Panama for the first time, the first café to popularize it in Panama City was a then 30 year old lunch counter known as Nueve Puertas (Nine Doors). Within a couple years Nueve Puertas changed their name to The Coca-Cola Café.

So why didn’t Coke jump all over them with a trademark claim? Mostly because the trademark system didn’t really exist at the time. Eventually when trademark agreements were established between the US and Panama the now 50 year old café had already been using the Coca-Cola name for 20 years.

Eventually the café and the Coca-Cola Corporation agreed that the café could use the name in perpetuity, free of charge, so long as they stocked Coca-Cola beverages.

Today the nearly 150 year old restaurant, the oldest in the country, is the only establishment in the world allowed to use the Coca-Cola name.

After a week in Quito I am still struggling with the altitude, it’s hard to breathe, and it’s rainy and cold, and my place is unheated… and doesn’t have hot water. Still, I like the city quite a bit but am tired of feeling half dead so I checked for cheap flights out of Quito this weekend.

Three choices for cheap flights out of Quito: The Galapagos Islands, Mexico City or Panama City.

The Galapagos Islands might be a bit too much nature for me, I’ve already been to Mexico City this trip… so looks like Panama City is up!

(and they have a subway! the only one in Central America!)

My favourite transit related websites assure me that the Panama City Subway’s new extension to the airport is running, despite construction not being quite done and the airport not having any mention of the subway yet.

I landed in Panama City airport’s Terminal 1 around 4:30pm and followed the directions I found online for reaching the train. There is ZERO signage in the airport referencing the subway AT ALL yet. So I was instructed to follow the signs directing towards Terminal 2 until I hit the end of the airport, find some way downstairs, walk through a construction site, find a long and winding concrete sidewalk and eventually in between the terminals I would find the construction area of the subway station. I walked and walked and walked, eventually I asked a worker at the airport about the train, she insisted the new train isn’t in operation yet, hmmmm.

I kept walking until I was outdoors, and was hit with the hottest heat I have ever felt in my life, it was just 35c but with the 100% humidity it was like standing in front of a hair dryer on high, never felt anything like it anywhere in the world.

I kept walking, at one point I turned around and assumed I was lost, two guys working in the construction area saw me and pointed that I should keep going. Ok, I will.

Eventually I found a brand new, and completely empty train station.

I walked into a totally dark and empty train station, bought a ticket from the machine and saw a sign telling me the next train would arrive in 9 minutes. Uh, ok sign, if you say so.

I waited, in the wildest heat I have ever felt, for 9 minutes on the empty platform until an equally empty train crawled into the station. The train…is…. air conditioned!!!

After three trains and a long walk I found my place and basically collapsed from the heat, I’m here but it’s gonna take some thinking about how to deal with the weather.

The current bit of rain coming down and the stock pot of water I poured from my window onto the garbage fire have helped somewhat but my Quito house is still reeking strongly of toxic garbage fire smoke so despite the wet weather I’m spending as much time outside as I can before I try to sleep tonight.

With my poor eyesight and how dark the cloudy nights are, plus my endless gasping for breath at altitude, I move hilariously slow after dark here. I went walking after work and eventually made my way further south than I have this week to where the old city starts changing to the rougher southern barrio.

My lunch today at a cafe near my place was not edible and so I’m starving, I don’t see a lot/any open places but a nearby street corner has a young guy grilling skewers of chunks of beef hearts and chicken gizzards (not uncommon here and in Peru) over a fire fed from torn up wooden pallets. A handful of young people are huddled in a doorway on the steps of the closest building with their offal on a stick, staying out of the light rain.

I get one of each and stand around awkwardly, the kids on the steps shuffle to make room for me and I sit down with them. This is definitely a different part of Quito than I’ve experienced before but they seem better than ambivalent to my presence. The 30 seconds or so I wait for the meat to cool is just long enough for me to exhaust all my conversational Spanish and I eat in silence with the occasional bit of teasing from the young people.

It’s very dark in the stairway so it takes me a bit to notice that one guy is using a sewing needle dipped in ink, taped to a pen to tattoo his buddy’s face, just below the eye. I can only assume he’s adding a line of tears, one for each year since she broke his heart.

As I’m finishing my meat (which I’m not wild about) a very scrawny young white guy with tons of face tattoos walks up with three giant machetes in hand. I’ve seen him around a few times this week, he juggles the knives at red lights for pocket change. He orders skewers and walks over, everyone knows him, he stares at me. I tell him I’ve seen him juggling a few times this week and he’s awesome (he is) and that I’ve yet to contribute. I hand him enough to cover his food and a bit more. He thanks me in American accented English and sits where I was sitting. He’s the first North American I’ve talked to since I got to Ecuador.

The gang send me off with a friendly mix of goodbyes that clashes with their tough appearance and I make my way back home again, feeling really good despite the eternal shortness of breath.

Woke up this morning to eyes burning and tearing and bedroom full of smoke. After some panic I figured out a neighbor is taking care of his garbage…. with fire…. under my bedroom window….which does not really close… yup.