With great interest I checked out the Times 53 Places To Go In 2008. Cool there is Buenos Aires, which is fun but not the best city in Argentina. There is Easter Island which I lie about going to with the help of my travel buddies. Oh look there’s Quito…. Quito?!

While Quito has a couple interesting sights, it’s a polluted, dangerous shithole. The most robbery stories coming out of South America are from Quito and Rio. The NY Times wants to get you robbed.

Quito, the colonial capital perched 9,200 feet up in the Andes, is no longer just a whistle stop. The city’s crumbling historic center, one of Latin America’s least altered, has been reborn after a seven-year, $200 million renovation. And a crop of upscale hotels has arrived, including a JW Marriott, making Quito a glorious new center in the so-called Middle of the World.

“glorious”

JW Marriott or not, go there if you want to see abject poverty with 5-year-olds covered in soot asking to shine your shoes.

I talked to a girl who showed me a stack of napkins with notes written in Spanish by Ecuadorian men, mostly waiters. She couldn’t understand them so I translated. They were all along these lines:

It was nice to meet you. You are very pretty. I hope I can see you again.

juan@lovesgringas.com
Juan

My napkins have no words of affection, just email addresses, mostly of European men. Girls who travel don’t realize their experience is very different than a guy’s. Unless the girl is busted, which unfortunately happens, she is getting ten times more attention than me. I know some of that is bad attention, but you only see a smile on a gringa’s face when she’s being spun around on the salsa dancefloor. And disappointment on the native’s face when she doesn’t want to make out.

(Side note: girls who don’t get much love back in the States are treated like queens by South American man. It’s very common to see an American 5 walking arm-in-arm with a decent looking guy. Many of these girls end up staying for much longer than they had planned.)

When crossing Ecuador’s border into Peru, I was a little confused on where to get my Peru entry stamp. I walked towards an Ecuadorian border agent to ask him, but before I could open my mouth he shooed me down the road with a hand-sweep motion. When I returned with my stamp an American girl was having the same problem. This time the same guy waited for her to come to him, let her ask her question in bad Spanish, and then very politely talked to her, smiled, and pointed down the road. Multiple this by a dozen interactions a day and I imagine the overall experience would be quite different.

Expectedly, girls here refuse to admit that they are getting different treatment than me. (They remind me of the girls back home who think they will physically peak past 30.) Next time a girl asks me why I don’t think South Americans are “wonderful” and the nicest people in the world, I’m going to point to her vagina.

There is a British girl who I keep running into (Lonely Planet = seeing the same people again and again and again). She’s very cute but I concluded early on that she is not serious about sex; she never has more than one drink, she always goes home early, she has low social intelligence, and she only leaves her hand on my crotch for two seconds.

I went to a disappointing ladies night at Cafe Eucalyptus last Wednesday night in Cuenca and of course she was there, with her two latest suitors. Salsa music was playing and one of the suitors, a 21-year-old German bearded fellow, asked her to dance. Denied. He was persistent and immediately tried once more. Denied again.

He then stands in the corner, alone, dancing with his arms out holding an imaginary partner, practicing his moves. Then he starts stretching his back, swinging left and right to get each vertebrae. It was hard to watch.

For one hour he analyzes, stews, and deconstructs about giving it one final attempt. Even though most guys would have gotten the hint a long time ago, you can see on his face he has come up with a blockbuster that is sure to work.

He comes up to her, grabs her hand, and says, “I just want to try something!”

She shrieks “No!” then turns to me and says, “He’s creeping me out!” Denied three times.

It gets worse. You see, earlier in the night the German was getting on my case for being “quiet,” that something is “wrong.” I just didn’t want to talk to him. But because he annoyed me I decided to finish him off. He was a horse who broke his leg on the race track, and a ruthless killer was needed—one without mercy.

“You should give him a chance,” I told the British girl, like he’s a charity case in need of a lucky break.

“Well good job, you ruined his night,” I added, like his happiness is something she owns.

Go to sleep young man, it’s time for bed.

I’ve been getting requests for pictures of girls, so I did you one better and got you some partial nudity of a full-figured woman.

I took this one day before my camera fell and broke in an ill-fated hand off.

What I liked about Baños is that all the bars are within two blocks of each other. I was at one of them on Saturday night when I found myself talking to a skinny 22-year-old Canadian girl. My mouth was a bit dry after a couple beers, I think, because I sprayed it instead of saying it—right on her face. I could see a bubble of my saliva resting on her left cheek. I wanted to pretend nothing happened and let evaporation do its work, but the bubble was mocking me.

My brain calculated the best mode of action out of millions of possible outcomes. Ten seconds later, I wiped the bubble with my thumb without saying anything. Maybe she thought it was an eyelash.

Joe T, prolific commenter and traveler, is starting his own travel site called Volette. Right now the blog is up, of which you will find my first contribution about Quito:

Mitad del Mundo is the built-for-tourists attraction about an hour and a half bus ride from the center of Quito. Even though the equator goes through several countries of the world, it goes through just one country whose name in the Spanish language is “equator.” Plus it’s also the only place where you can take your picture next to an old sign held in place by concrete blocks that proves to all your friends and family that you touched both the North and South hemispheres at the same time.

The whole thing, with pictures, can be read here.

Tena is the whitewater capital of Ecuador. Before I bent over some Class IV rapids on the Jondachi River with my monstrous rowing stroke, I studied the townspeople by watching them from a park bench in the central square.

Within half an hour, two random girls sat on my bench even though all the others were empty. The alpha of the pair sat next to me and kept “accidentally” touching my leg and whipping her hair back and forth in dramatic motions. The giveaway was that it was 1PM and they were dressed like they were going to the club.

A bourgeoisie Frenchman I met told me he doesn’t get involved with locals from countries that are not equal to his own (i.e. Westernized); otherwise the girls are just seeing dollar signs and there is a good chance of getting drugged and / or robbed. I do agree with him, and it’s not a big deal in Ecuador because the girls here are extremely ugly, but it would be a shame if you travel through Brazil or Argentina and resign yourself to only sleeping with other tourists.

Roosh Travel Sex Rule: Do not pursue a girl who approaches you first. It’s okay if she gives you eye contact and a small smile to encourage you, but if she walks up to you and starts flirting immediately, things are not what they seem. It’s a rule I follow at home too because if a girl is really into me from the start then chances are I can do a lot better.

Even though 98% of the girls in Ecuador are unattractive by Western standards, I am getting a kick out of the attention, mostly in the form of very extended eye contact and “Where you from?” line of questioning. I think it’s my beard and height because Ecuadorian men are unable to grow lush facial hair and I’m taller than all of them, past, present, and future.

In an unrelated request, can someone please order me 1,000 extra wide and extra long condoms and ship them to me via express airmail? I’ve been constructing my own condoms using cow intestines from the butcher shop, which is actually the living room of someone’s house.

Actually, I’m lying—my initial stock is still… uh… plentiful.

Side view, no joke:

Most of the ride was on pavement, but I could have done without the one hour long skidding on mud at the edge of a cliff thing.

We all know that ladies night promotions are a scam by club owners to attract more men into a bar. The reason, of course, is because men drink a lot more than women. I’ve never been to a ladies night that wasn’t a sausage fest, but there is ladies night here in Quito which is true to its name.

On Wednesdays from 7-10PM at a club in New Town, ladies get in free and drink for free. Yeah, a three hour open bar. Men are not allowed in the bar until 10PM after paying a $3 cover. The line of dudes by 10PM goes around the block. So if you’re a guy the plan is to stand in line by 9PM, be the first to get in, and enjoy about one hour of quality time with a bunch of drunk, horny girls. So you want to know what it’s like?

I do too.

I got a nasty cold on Tuesday and haven’t been out since.

On my third day.

August 10 is Quito’s Independence Day, but the celebration started the night before. I was observing a staged reenactment in Plaza Grande until I got bored and decided to walk back to my hostel. One particular street crossing was very crowded and there was a lot of unnecessary pushing and shoving by teenagers. Two thoughts went through my head:

1. This feels like a mosh pit.
2. This is how people get their pockets picked.

I went back to the hostel and noticed my wallet was not in my front pocket. I went through three minutes of panic looking for it everywhere, even in places I knew it couldn’t be at—but it was gone. I always thought I’d feel a pick pocket, but I guess their business is making sure you don’t.

The damage was $80 and two expired credit cards I was using as mugger bait to distract the respectable stash hidden in a pouch next to my crotch. My innocence as a traveler has been lost for all eternity.

Many will leave disappointed.

Alternate caption: Picture I took five minutes before I got robbed.