Quito

Well, just what we expected: a major plummet in personal comfort--not many hours after we left my parents at the airport, we took a series of not so fun buses rides that shot us off the wave of comfort we had been riding, back down to the dirty depths of backpack travel. Our border crossing went without a hitch, although our sleep was interrupted at almost exactly hour intervals for bag searching and beauracratic formalities. Once daylight hit, we found ourselves staring at marshlands filled with flooded towns and stilted houses. The towns looked like havens for mosquitos and the diseases they transmit and the only rational I could see for living there was the absense of the means or opportunity for relocation. Next in the sequence of landscapes was the vast banana plantations that made me reminiscent of the banana republics of Central America. Like there, Dole Company appeared to be the primary landholder and seemed to bestow the same amount of community uplift that they provide elsewhere--nothing.
After about a full day of ass-numbing bus riding, we arrived in Quito, about 45 minutes shy of ended it all on the bus.
By luck, we found an cheap non-dorm room that will accommodate us until the arrival of Jake and Debbie Schloegel on the 9th. Already sick of the local S.A cuisine and the occassional chain restuarant indulgence, I was jazzed to stumble upon a dirt cheap Middle-Eastern ¨restaurant¨ with $1.25 Shwarmas. Long past caring about trifle matters like hygienic food preparation, the place has served as my dinner spot for the last two nights.
To change things up a bit today, armed with information from a backpacker club we belong to that tries to help foriengers in S.A., I went to the women´s prison in Quito with the intention of visiting a fellow American who was locked up on drug-related charges. Prison tourism is actually not that uncommon in S.A., although in some places the motives are not entirely humanitarian in nature. As in Bolivia, where many of the other backpackers at my hostel went to the notoriously unorthodox La Paz men´s prison (as written about in the book Marching Powder) to buy and use the cocaine that the prisoners actually manufacture in the prison. As one American girl who went explained to me: ¨I did it just to say that I did cocaine in a prison in Bolivia¨--a pretty remarkable story to tell the grandkids I guess...
I would like to think this visit was more good-willed in nature as I was bearing gifts and looking for a potential wife (just kidding Grammy). It is recommended when you visit to bring vital toiletries for the inmates as no such things are provided by the prison. So I did, along with my small backpack expecting a thorough searching and the likely confiscation of some of the items. Just like at the Lima airport, when I unknowingly passed through and flew with a meduim-sized pocket-knife in my carry-on, the security search was mainly for show and I am pretty sure I could have snuck through enough arms to faciliate a full out jail break. Aftering entering the prison, another inmate was kind enough to strong-arm money from me so she would go fetch this American girl. While waiting in one of the many unrestricted corridors in this quasi-prison, I noticed that their seemed to be a lot of non-sanctioned conjugal visiting going on inside. Since a conjugal visit was not on my scheduled itinerary for the day, I spoke with the American girl about her life inside and the circumstances for which she found herself there. Like almost all of the foriegners there it was for drugs, two suitcases in fact that a male friend convinced her to fly out of the country with. She had spent two years there already and still did not have her official sentence, but she was most likely going to spend the better half of a decade getting visits from random strangers such as I. She possessed an naivette that drew some sympathy but not enough to override the disdain I felt for her stupidity. Regardless, according to her, she gets little help from the embassy and relishes any english speaking visitors. The same was true with a South African prisoner who I spoke with. She and her mother had been there for quite some time and seemed to have adjusted well to incarceration as she openly admitted to relationships with guards and visitors alike. Lucky for all, a group of American missionaries had become regular visitors to the prison and provided free hair cuts and goodies for all inmates who had the mental energy to play ¨saved¨ for two hours a day. All in all, the visit was interesting and I even was given the contact info of the girl´s mother, who lived in Venezuala and who the girl said would put me up if I found myself there. After throwing that contact in the trash, I headed back into the city to get myself proper for the arrival of the Schloegels tonight. Fun times are expected ahead as the Schleogels are my favorite people other than my family and my new girlfriend at the prison.

Much to tell soon,

BQ