As my trip wound down so did I. I hadn’t really planned on doing too much in Quito other than my salsa lessons at this point so I was pretty relaxed and content, not to mention kind of ready to come back home.
As mentioned in the video my salsa lesson was three hours long on the 4th. It pretty much kicked my ass. Afterwards I walked around the neighborhood of the salsa studio to see what was going on in gringolandia, as the neighborhood is called. I was pretty surprised to see a ton of western style restaurants and bars but clearly it has that name, gringolandia, for a reason. This is also where most of the hostels in Quito are. There were a few around The Secret Garden where I was staying but not as many as there were in this particular neighborhood. I got bored pretty quickly walking around here, there were just too many tourists and nothing really to see or do so I started to head back to the hostel where I was just planning on relaxing and reading.
As I was walking home I saw one the craziest things I’d seen on my trip yet. I was crossing a rather large street and looking down another when I saw a mass of people congregating and watching something or other. Well, I’m not one to shy away when something looks interesting and I’m incredibly glad I didn’t. When I approached the scene I saw a bunch of riot gear clad policemen hiding behind walls and a street riddled with the remnants of bricks and a fire in the middle of the street up a ways. Although I couldn’t quite figure out what or why this protest/disturbance was going on it didn’t stop me from taking a bunch of videos. It got pretty crazy when an armored truck rolled and pieces of brick started flying my way but it was incredibly exciting in a disgusting kind of way.
After standing in the same place for a bit I decided to move to another street where it seemed as though more people were congregating. As I walked over there my eyes started tearing up and thats when I realized I was inhaling tear gas. Luckily I had my bandana and was able to cover up but I was certainly choking on the stuff and it was a bit hard to see. The wind blew it away pretty quickly and I resumed taking photos and videos. I also learned that the protest/demonstration was actually started by a group of highschool students who were upset with the government and their education policies/funding (at least that’s what I understood it to be about).
Eventually a small group of the students mothers showed up and went in to talk to the students. They managed to convince them to give up, for the day, and disperse. It was really quite a scene it’s pretty hard to convey here in writing. The students all filed out of the school in which they had locked themselves in and started chanting. Eventually they dispersed further and I can only assume went home as the police retreated further and further away. What was really surprising to me was that the police did not detain anyone. Everyone just calmly walked off in their respective directions as though nothing had passed.
I have to say it was pretty intense even if they were just high school students. There were definitely certain points where bricks were landing not too far from me and the sound of the tear gas canisters being fired was all too close.
After all the excitement I decided it was finally time to retire to the hostel. When I got back I found out that there had actually been other demonstrations in different parts of the city for other reasons and the wind had, at times, actually carried the tear gas all the way to the hostel.
I don’t think I left the hostel again after I returned. For the following day I had more of the same planned, another salsa lesson and some wandering. Like I said I was getting somewhat anxious to get back to SF, a lot of those feelings probably had to due with the fact that I was staying in Quito and not traveling on but at the same time it was nice to be in one place and not moving.
