When it came to bad service, especially bad was a place called Bodeguita de Cuba, well recommended by Lonely Planet; usually I do not like to criticise operations such as restaurants and hotels (since I do not know how easy or hard it is to run one), but here I and two companions had to wait what seemed like an hour to get any kind of attention – and there were no other customers in the place! And when a group of Cubans walked in, the little attention we got until then grew even more feeble: the maitre d’ seemed more interested in conversing with his compatriots than in seeing if his other customers had any needs. Not to mention that the place is rather grungy looking, with customers’ graffiti and art work all over the walls (“¡Bush terrorista!“, “Mary was here”, etc.).

Speaking of food, Ecuadorean fare is heavily tilted towards steaks, beans, and rice. I also had yams and other kind of local potatoes that were pretty good. Most of the food is not spicy at all, despite the presence of a salsa-like condiment called ajo that can be found everywhere. Potato and chicken soups are also on offer, and I liked them all, although none were as flavoured as, say, Mexican food. I tried a ceviche, a kind of marinated shrimp soup, for $5 a bowl at a food court. It was very delicious – and surprisingly filling.

One evening I end up in Guapulo, which is a small village near Quito (actually: near a ritzy area of Quito called Gonzalez Suarez; the high rises in Gonzalez overlook Guapulo). Getting there was a scary experience – there is only a narrow winding and very steep cobblestone road, which cars and cyclists cruise down fast all the time, and which has very narrow pavements (when they exist at all). It is a very picturesque little trip, though, and the place seems to be a favourite haunt of Western hippies, some of whom I understand live in the area. The houses lining the road have a dreamlike quality that I have never experienced elsewhere.

Walking around Old Quito I come across the San Francisco Church and Museum; this is the largest religious complex in the Americas, according to my travel guide. I found both rather scary (I am not a religious person, and a previous encounter with Andean Catholicism in the guise of a procession venerating the Virgin in Guapulo had me positively spooked – maybe it was the singing, maybe it was the statue of the Virgen, maybe it was the mists of the mountains, maybe it was the poorly lit cobblestone street reminding me of Magritte’s Empire Of Lights, but at that precise moment I wanted to be in a lounge with a martini and listening to electronica; the throwback to a different age and its beliefs was a bit much for my taste). However, it is an interesting experience in Colonial Latin America, and so is the Museo de la Ciudad, also located in Old Quito. The area, apparently, was not recommended a few years ago, but now it seems to be bustling with activity. Well, there still are small children hanging on to you offering to polish your shoes for small change, but unfortunately this is life.

I learn that Ecuador has three distinct areas (four, if the Galapagos are included): the coastal area (where the largest city in the country, Guayaquil, is), the central area where Quito is, and the eastern area (Amazon and mountains). Each has a different culture, and the people in each area are also different. Ecuador shares much culture and customs with other Andean countries such as Peru and Bolivia, although the latter is more mountainous and apparently less rich culturally. Each Latin American country seems to have its very distinctive characteristics, which are a bit of mystery to me: but, apparently, Colombians are the most talkative and fun loving, Argentinians the most uppity in behaviour, and so on. Even so, there is something common, that I recognise from my home culture thousands of miles away: maybe it is the people’s demeanour, or their garrulousness, or something else, but we Romanians and Ecuadoreans are alike in many and unmistakable ways; there indeed is a Latin blood which spans continents. My theory is proven, I think!

One night I find myself driven to the urbanisaciones, gated communities outside of Quito, and I get near what will be the largest mall in South America. It is not completed yet, but it does look gigantic. It does trigger memories of the half-empty Berjaya Mall in Kuala Lumpur, the largest mall in South-East Asia. Modern Quito, like KL, also sports numerous steel and glass office buildings. I notice several banks; other than that, hair salons seem to be the most frequently encountered businesses in town.

Ecuador is influenced by two countries: Spain, the erstwhile colonial power, and the US. Many Ecuadoreans I talk to have either lived in or travelled to one of these two places. Other than the two gentlemen at the British pub, and the Ford and Chevy trucks on the road, however, I see little direct American presence. As far as Spaniards, I meet one at a club one night; I’m amazed at how easy it is to make friends here; just meeting someone briefly and exchanging a few words warrants a kiss on the cheek at the next encounter. I see various groups of tourists at old town hangouts, I think I hear Dutch and German, and not a few British accents.

Texting (sending SMS messages via mobile phone) is a national sport in Ecuador. Everyone seems busy standing at street corners typing messages on tiny keyboards with remarkable speed. I find out why – mobile calls appear prohibitively expensive; my few calls a day from the hotel room resulted in a outrageous $70+ bill, and even if those were inflated hotel prices, mobile usage is clearly rather pricey.

Not knowing what is in store, I go to the TeleferiQue – one of Quito’s top new attractions. It is a ski-lift-like type of contraption that climbs the mountain; it starts quite nicely, with the small cabin hovering at 3-4 metres above the ground, but pretty soon I notice I am above some very tall trees; the view is breathtaking, I can see the whole of Quito in the valley with the mountains around it, but my knees are seriously shaking by the time I get to the top. And, at the top, it is cold. Very cold, in fact. I can see clouds below me.

The way Ecuadoreans talk is something worthy of note. The expressiveness of Ecuadorean TV anchors makes the American talking heads appear wooden and stifled. I am sure I am missing a lot of meaning just by not understanding the subtleties of declaimed Latin American Spanish language: plenty of oohs, tsks, repetitions, and words that seem to speed up mid-sentence.

Some things I did not get to do this time: visit the monument of the Equator (umm, okay, a bit touristy); go to an Indian village (there is one not far from Quito); or go to a traditional cafe to hear peña (Andean) music. I heard some such music on the radio and it was quite beautiful. Also, I wish I knew the name of a band I caught on TV late one night – I think it was an Ecuadorean band, and it was mixing traditional music with rock to great effect. I would also like to visit Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city and best representative of the coastal culture of the country; no less a luminary than Christina Aguilera has roots in Guayaquil.

Along with the sense-awakening exoticism that faraway, palm tree-lined places bring, and a sometimes more welcoming social life (in Latin America there is always time to socialise and party the night away), there is another reason for expatriation among Westerners and that is the real possibility of living well in a developing country off savings accumulated from Western salaries. In Quito, for example, a nice apartment or house is between $40,000 and $80,000, and I see some buildings that must afford a really gorgeous view of the mountains. Knowing that the nearest beach is only four hours away from Quito only makes this town so much more attractive. It is not glamorous or well-known like Rio or Buenos Aires, and even for northern South America, Colombia seems to take the spotlight (its bad seems quite well counterbalanced by its good; a French gentleman I meet one night keeps enthusing about “les filles de Colombie”). But I find this quite refreshing; as a Romanian I have a definite predilection for overlooked places and countries that aren’t continuously preoccupied with their ranking in the world. In Quito, the weather is nice, the food is good, the city is manageable, and the people are genial and laid-back – go there and decide for yourself, and I’ll plan on meeting you for tapas at Q Bar!

Seated as I am in front of a Citibank office, I notice businessmen with slicked back hair and Oakleys mingling with Indians in their native dress; the people are mostly Caucasian or Indian or a mix thereof, with very few blacks.

It takes quite some time getting used to being called caballero, and I do feel a tingle of pride – just like when I was first called sir in an English-speaking country. But caballero sounds so much more dramatic!

I spend one evening at a martini bar, Coffee Tree, in the same area of new Quito as No bar, crammed with local bikers, dreadlocked artists, and all sundry of all night party people. I have interesting conversations in English augmented by my mostly gesture-based Spanish (some people do speak excellent English, but for a long term resident of the city, learning Spanish is a requisite), ranging quite wide, from Hollywood cinema (where I was hopelessly outsmarted), to the music of Marilyn Manson, to machismo, to, er, politics (while Mr Bush isn’t exactly popular, neither is his nemesis Mr Chavez of Venezuela, where apparently the oil wealth has failed to trickle to the population at large or to the infrastructure; Ecuador has elections coming up soon and it is possible that a Chavez-fashioned populist may win here too). Martinis were a very reasonable $2.50 for two. A personal fact: where I grew up, Latin American literature was a luxury reserved to the few glitterati; here, Marques or Llosa are things everyone reads. Quite obvious, I guess, but unusual to me.

Other sights for the day: Libris Mundi, a bookshop with mostly Spanish books; a mall, Quicentro (rather small and crammed by US standards, and selling mostly expensive stuff); TGI Friday’s and Tony Roma’s (both considered expensive). A park, Carolina, where the locals come in droves to play football, tennis, volleyball, and to eat what seemed to be deep-fried bananas. I sampled the local beers, Pilsener and Brahma, and found them both quite light. $1 at a street vendor. Saw a sign advertising English lessons with a profesor británico; the English-teaching profession is alive and well in the Andes.

Of course, Quito is surrounded not only by mountains but also by volcanoes such as Cotopaxi and Pichirincha. Not long ago an eruption of one of the volcanoes covered the city in ash, disturbing the traffic and life in general. And even now, as I type outside, my laptop’s keyboard gets periodically dirtied by an ash-like dust.

And there are risks to walking: even if the temperature is only slightly over 20°C during the day (and in the low 10s at night), I get a sunburn on my face after a few hours in the city.

I go for a glass of wine at the ritzy Q Bar and Lounge, on Mariscal Foche con Reina Victoria (near No Bar and Coffee Tree). A glass of red (copa de rojo) sets me back $4, quite hefty a charge in this city. The local yuppies seem to gather in the area, as there are other nice lounges around the square – such as Foccacia, where I have a rather watered-down gin and tonic. The buildings around the plaza are very nice and modern, and the crowd is positively hip. And the tapas at Q Bar are good, priced at $3 a plate. The chorizo en vino is quite outstanding.

Other than Q Bar and No bar, I go to a dance club called Blues. There is an outrageous (in this city) $10 charge, and the place is dark and smelly; quite typical of techno clubs, I guess. I’m quite surprised when the music changes from, well, techno, to Rage Against The Machine (“Killing In The Name Of”) and Nirvana (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”). A Corona is $2.50. I’m not impressed, although I hear the same music played later that night at Bungalow, another club in the area where the dreadlocked bartenders who were previously gyrating to salsa turn the place into a mosh pit when the music switches to Rabia Contra La Máquina.

A thing peculiar to Quito is how each passing plane causes a thundering roar that drowns every other sound in the city for a few seconds. The airport is only a few miles out, and since the city is surrounded by tall mountains, the echo is deafening.

There is a British pub near my hotel called Buster’s. However, when I go in, there is American football on TV and only two customers, both norteamericanos. I have a Tortuga beer, which I never have had before, and a chicken steak – the prices are reasonable but since I passed on the fish and chips, I have no idea how good is the British fare on the menu. The American guys at the bar casually name-drop items such as ‘Beijing’, ‘Sudan’, and ‘El Oriente’. They are involved in oil or something. I do feel kind of like in a movie, maybe The Tailor of Panama. One of them is an ex-marine, and the other is an older, soft-spoken gentleman in round glasses, who makes me feel he would have no qualms about toppling a foreign government if it crossed him or The Company.

The feeling of being in a Latin America-themed movie such as Down Came A Blackbird or The Kiss Of The Spider-Woman is reinforced days later when I find myself in the middle of a pensioners’ demonstration in Quito Viejo. Police with water cannons and shields loiter about the area; I have seen this scene in way too many places in this world. However, the tropical trees, the Andes in the background, and the traditional dress of some of the passers-by make this much more than a average urban experience. It is also a reminder that for most of the locals, the city is expensive. A $2 latte or a $3 bag of candy is quite dear when the average wage is a few hundred dollars a month or less. And many things here seem more expensive than in the US for example. Locals have told me that one can live a good life on $400 a month, but I doubt this would be adequate for a Western standard of living with nights out and the odd big-screen TV. However, I do think that $1,000 a month would allow for a plentiful life here. Oh, and petrol is a bit over $1 a US gallon.

Right now I don’t know terribly much about the country: only that for a while now, it has had a dollar-based economy; it is increasingly talked about as a retirement destination by North Americans (especially places such as Cuenca and Quito); it is an Andean country, a sometime part of the Inca empire; its capital, Quito, is on the Equator; and somewhat improbably (to me, since I always thought they sort of just hung in the ocean by themselves) the Galapagos Islands belong to it.

I don’t see myself as a typical tourist; when I get to a new place, I am in no rush to see all the sights, but rather I settle into a pattern where I go to the same coffee shop and bookshop every day and try to meet locals and get to know them. It amazes me to see tourists (usually Westerners, of the backpacker sort or not) who “do” all the sights yet have no interaction with the members of the society within which they travel. In every one of my trips I have lived a mini-life, so I can say I am a bit of a Bangkokian, a Cairene, or a Parisian. This time I will be a quiteño. I have always felt that my native Romania is closer temperamentally to Latin America than to its bigger “sister” Latin countries in Europe, so this will be a good time to put my theory to the test.

I arrive in Quito, after a rather gruelling flight; unfortunately I’m arriving at night so I’m missing the sight of the Andes Mountains. As the plane descends, though, I notice it’s foggy, and once on the ground I am surprised at how nippy it is. It’s cold in early September in the tropics. Of course the city’s elevation is the reason, but it is surprising nonetheless.

I’m staying at the Four Points Sheraton, and while it’s not as luxurious as other Sheraton properties around the world, it is still a nice hotel; later I find out the city is full of hostels that offer a cheaper accommodation alternative. Once I’m settled, since I am one who lives for the good times, I won’t let the fact that it’s 1 a.m. and I have not slept in quite a while get in the way of the fun. So I go out to a club called No bar. On the way there (and, by the way: the trip from the airport to the hotel was a mere $5 and it was longer than the same trip in Acapulco that had set me back $25; and in Quito no taxi ride seems to cost more than $3-$4), I get from the taxi driver something like “La zona es peligrosa“. But I ask, in my severely limited Spanish, “¿No pistoles?” “No pistoles,” he replies, so I guess all is good for now.

The place (admission: $4; drinks: $2 for local beer, $3 for Corona – very expensive, according to the locals themselves) is positively packed with a wide assortment of locals and vacationing gringos; easy to tell the difference, the former have something slithery and feline about the way they move to the Latin rhythms (and they dance everywhere, including bar tops), while the latter sort of bob around; I have to say that listening to Shakira is a completely different experience on her home turf.

And, while the music is indeed mostly Latin (salsa, reggaeton, some Colombian music as I am told), the odd song by The Doors or Queen, or a rap number or another, can be heard from time to time, to an equally enthusiastic response from the crowd.

The bar itself is a rather common affair, but it is packed and it feels like a sauna. There seems to be something wholesome about the place; maybe it is the couples dancing together that make it look like a ’50s American high school dance, or maybe it’s the revellers who are very friendly and approachable. Yet I am told there is an ample supply of drugs in the area, so maybe not all is as it seems. Well, I felt safe and cosy myself.

A somewhat incongruous sight was a large group of Chinese mixing Hokkien and Spanish and dancing to the salsa like crazy. Apparently there is a significant Chinese business community in town, operating mainly in the clothing and restaurant businesses – and indeed, I see many chifas (Chinese restaurants) all over Quito.