We are house-sitting for a couple of months, and the landlady (who lives upstairs) speaks about as much English as we do Spanish (always a recipe for disaster). She came downstairs to ask us something about the electricity bill, and after some gesturing, pointing and arm waving, we thought “Aha! Google Translate! That will do the trick”, so got her to type in her message in Spanish and pressed the button to translate it to English, figuring all would become clear. It did seem to help for starters, but after a while we reached a stalemate of misunderstanding.
After numerous attempts of us trying to clarify in English (translated into Spanish) and her trying to clarify in Spanish (translated into English), and then telephoning someone in the congregation who spoke both (which we thought clarified things, but it actually hadn’t), we somehow worked out what needed to be done - after about 45 minutes! Part of the problem which kept occurring, was that the landlady’s message, when translated into English, kept coming up as variations of “ the code (or number) for gift of the house …”, which didn’t make any sense at all in relation to the electricity bill. We figured something had gone wrong somewhere, as the word “gift” kept coming up, and totally confusing us. After she had gone upstairs (to ring her cousin who spoke English and Spanish), we looked up “gift”, and it turns out that in Spanish, the name “Don” translates into English as “gift”. What she had been asking for, was the phone number of the brother who lives here (whose name is Don), so she could ask him about the electricity bill. Easy when you know! So, we have now learnt another useful Spanish word!!
But there are much easier ways of working out what words mean. For instance. When we first got here, we were driving through the city and there were various road signs. One said “una via”, which didn’t mean much to us, other than “one-something”. Then later there was a sign that said “doble via”, and traffic was going both ways, so we had an “aha!” moment, and figured that seeing as the roads that said “una via” the traffic only went one way, “doble via” should mean “double ways” or “both ways”. Context is very effective, and because you have seen the words in their context a few times, they stay in your brain better than if you just saw them written in a book or a dictionary.
Having said that, while some words in Spanish are similar enough to the English, we figured out that the shop with a sign saying “Ferreteria”, near our bus stop, is not actually a place where you buy your ferrets and ferreting needs, but is a hardware/ironmonger store!
We are finding that so far it’s near impossible to understand what people say in Spanish, but if you can see the words written, it is a bit easier. Guessing is good too. Sometimes you are actually right when you guess, particularly if it’s a fairly predictable situation, such as going through a supermarket checkout. Some of the Aussies in the congregation say that it takes a while for the ear to become attuned to hearing Spanish when you are not used to it.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL … AND IGUANAS
On Monday 14th we caught the bus to Guayaquil in another attempt to get our 6-month visas stamped. (In an earlier blog, I mentioned that we attempted to do this when we first landed in Guayaquil, but it didn’t happen.)
We got up at the crack of dawn with the plan to get there early and “get it over and done with” – an expression we will one day learn is inappropriate for use in Ecuador. We had a couple of changes of clothes in our backpack and had booked a hotel for the Monday night (just in case!) as we had been warned by numerous people here that things always take a lot longer than you think, and to be prepared. We had planned to stay in Guayaquil for only one night, but wouldn’t you know it the brothers predictions came true and because of red-tape we ended up needing to stay two nights.
The bus ride itself took about 3 ½ hours, and the road was pretty good – concrete all the way (they seem to do concrete roads here, rather than asphalt) and in good repair. Cuenca is about 2,500 metres above sea-level, and it was cool at around 6 am when we left. The scenery on the way out of Cuenca reminded us a bit of the hills and trees and scattered houses of parts of North-West Tasmania (except the hills were a LOT higher – we are up in the Andes Mountains). After about half an hour, we got into the Cajas National Park, which is even higher and misty. The scenery is very alpine – not much in the ways of trees etc. After a while we started to go down, and got to sea-level. Then heat and humidity took over. It is very flat and tropical, with channels of water, and lots of bananas (and other things I couldn’t identify), growing and rice paddies, etc. The difference in scenery, altitude and climate in just 3 ½ hours of driving was amazing.
On our first attempt to get our visas stamped 3 weeks ago, we went to the address we were given by the Ecuadorean Embassy in Sydney. The chap on the reception desk there told us we were at the wrong place, and eventually we worked out where we were supposed to go, and the next day, dutifully went there. After being shuffled about a bit by staff doing their best to understand our dodgy Spanish and finger-pointing, we were directed to a likely looking young man, who, upon looking at our paperwork, said that we needed to go and get three colour photocopies of certain pages of our passports and bring them back, along with a manilla folder! That floored us, as we had no idea where or how to do that, and we couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just do it himself!
(But now after 3 or 4 weeks here, we are more attuned to how things work – ie, there are little shops which do photocopies and also sell folders, envelopes etc, on every block. And the government departments we have dealt with seem to out-source the photocopying – that is, you get to do it! Saves them money, I guess.)
So, for this attempt, we had photocopies, manilla folders, the works (or so we thought!), and fronted up to find the young man from the previous attempt, only to get there, and find that department closed! We managed to communicate with other staff, and took a number and went and sat somewhere else for a while. Eventually, it came our turn, and after we and the staff member concluded that we couldn’t understand each other, she returned with someone else who spoke English, and eventually we had 3 or 4 people all speaking varying degrees of English, all trying to work out what was going on and what needed to be done. They wrote down on a piece of paper the addresses of the places we had to go and what we had to get there, so off we went again, back to the first place we went to 3 weeks ago. This time, instead of telling us we were at the wrong place, the chap on reception gave us a ticket and pointed to where we should wait. (It’s a bit hard to know if your ticket is called, when it is done in a language you don’t understand, but fortunately the young man next to us gave us a nudge when it was our turn. Or we might still be sitting there!)
We handed over our passports and copies etc, which was all correct, but it turned out that now an additional page of the passport needed copying (but not in triplicate, unlike previously advised). Fortunately, we knew there was a copy shop (actually the outdoor booth with multi-function printer, etc, mentioned in a previous blog) nearby, so Brendan went off to attend to that, and all was well. Until she said that the passports needed to be stamped and we could pick them up on Wednesday (This was still only Monday!) to which Brendan indignantly replied, “but we live in Cuenca!!” So she thought about it and said,”come back Tuesday after 2pm and it should be done”. (Hello, it’s just a stamp!)
So, what to do in Guayaquil (which is way too hot and humid for our liking) for a whole day until our passports are ready? If it had been anywhere else (that was even a half-decent temperature) we would have gone wandering and exploring, but instead we hibernated for the rest of Monday in an air-conditioned shopping centre and in the hotel with the air-con running.
On Tuesday, we went over to the park across the road from our hotel and hung out there in the shade for most of the morning and watched the people go by. (The heat/humidity was making me feel ill, so the options of what to do were limited) Guayaquil is on the coast, and our hotel was just across the road from the park which is next to the sea (which is nothing to write home about, so I won’t). It’s an absolutely lovely park, and runs for quite a distance between the road and the sea, it’s well-designed and maintained with lots of tropical plants and water features and shady areas (there is an army of gardeners and cleaning people there all the time – they really look after the parks and gardens here). It was lovely and cool (well, relatively so!).
(click on the pictures to enlarge)
Park on the left, hotness on the right
The park across the road from our hotel, where we spent lots of time
Our hotel – just to the right of the palm tree
View of a colourful part of Guayaquil – from the park near hotel
So, at 2 pm, we set off once again. Passport was ready, as promised. Then, grab another taxi (they are readily available- it seems every other car is a taxi – we took enough of them!) and off to a department near the bus terminal, where we had to get something else photocopied and an A4 envelope. This time the ladies who ran the copier were allowed to work from inside the building (normally they are outside).
Then, another taxi back to the first department we went to on the Monday (confused? We were, too). Fortunately, the young lady who helped us then was in the reception area (kind of a security/information service, from what we can gather), spotted us and waved us over, and personally escorted us to the right place, and explained to the staff person what the go was etc etc, and it all got sorted! Yay!
It turns out that we had had to jump through hoops not necessary at this point in time. All we needed was the passport stamp. The photocopies and manilla folders etc were to do with an identity document which would happen later down the track. We think the problem began at the very start (when we first arrived in Ecuador) when the chap on reception figured we were after the identity papers/card, rather than just a simple stamp in our passports, and due to language difficulties (not knowing what we were doing or the Ecuadorian system), we just had to trust that the people there knew what was going on (they didn’t). And that’s why we had to go off to various other departments and produce other pieces of paper. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.
And we got to see iguanas. In the flesh. Or scales, or whatever they have.
As we had the rest of Tuesday to fill in before we took the bus back on Wednesday morning, we went and found ourselves another park (which is actually called Iguana Park), and they were everywhere! Very cool. They’re not in a hurry, they just wander around like they know it’s their park, and all the humans are there to be amazed by them, and take photos of them. You can touch them, and they don’t care. I was wondering whether to touch one’s tail (that part being far away from the biting end, just in case), and the locals sitting nearby indicated that I could, so I did. But very quickly, as I still wasn’t convinced.
Iguana
Not quite sure about this
How many iguanas can you fit in one tree?
Check out the iguanas lazing at the base of the statue
We also saw a Guayaquil squirrel. It came scampering down a tree. Brendan looked it up on the internet later, to find out what it was.
Guayaquil squirrel
On the bus on the way to Guayaquil we caught a glimpse of our first alpacas, just wandering along the road.
The alpacas are the tiny blurry things walking along the kerb
In the Caja National Park, in the Andes
So, all up, everything worked out in the end. Came away from Guayaquil this time with a better impression of it than last time (although our views on the climate are unchanged) – largely due to the parks, I think. And having gone there and back on the bus connected the two cities for us geographically, which is something you don’t get by plane.
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