MY TRANSPORT (MIS) ADVENTURES PART I.

A good deal of my time and energy has spent trying to get myself from one place to another physically and emotionally intact. While this has been relatively easy  since January, September - December was another issue.  But in any case  I was always accruing good stories.  As I think my transport (mis)advntures are a pretty good reflection of my whole Quito/Ecuadorian experience, and they reflect the different places where I lived and also another theme of my life here - telephones-I will tell my transport stories.

TRANSPLANETA

I have had several comments on how my posts often are about hard times - or not exactly good times. And I don't think anything demonstrates "the good, the bad, and the ugly" as much as my Transplaneta experience.  The Transplaneta is the specific  bus I took from my first home to work.  It is part of a private bus company in Quito.  At this point in my Quito experience I did not know Quito, I did not know Spanish, and I was adjusting to the altitude. I LOVED the Transplaneta.  I knew exactly where to catch it, I knew exactly where to get off, and it was safe. It was the constant in my life.  There were some things about it I would have changed ...for example the step up or step down  to get on or off was often very high.  Add to this that the bus drivers generally felt that a FULL stop was a  bit of overkill and so that step up or down was often with a rolling bus. It was while riding the Transplaneta  that I grew to respect Ecuadorian women's total comfort it stiletto heels as I often saw women in very high heels jump up or off a rolling bus with a baby carriage and/or a baby on the hip.

So all was good through orientation and then in October I began to teach and my hours were 4-8. My class location is on a dangerous street so we had been advised to walk quickly to where we needed to go - and get off the street where we taught.  My Transplaneta stop was about 5 blocks away - maybe half a mile.  So the first night of teaching I walked to my stop and I waited and I waited and I waited and my bus never came. By this time I had the taxi app services on my new Ecuadorian phone - cabify and uber- but still had not figured out how to use the Quito taxi app -EasyTaxi  (more on this) later). So after 45 minutes or so of waiting, I decided to walk to the Hilton and call an uber of cabify.  I did not want to be on the street corner alone dealing with an app and waiting for the cab.  On the way to the Hilton I ran into two other World Teach Volunteers who taught in another building but lived very close to me.  They too had been waiting for the Transplaneta and given up and we all caught a cab home together. 

We then found out that the Transplaneta stopped running at 6 so we needed to find another way home.  I took an uber or cabify for a few nights and then my friends said that they had found another bus to take near their building and while it took them a few nights to figure out everything, they now knew how to take the bus from a street just about 4 blocks from my building and then get off a few blocks from our houses.  So I was to let them know what night I wanted to learn this route and they would show me.  For the next few nights, I was just lazy.  I was  just starting teaching, I wasn't able to sleep a full night in my home due to noise, and I was just beginning the few months of really severe stomach problems.  So instead of walking to the bus stop, I just taxied home. (This generally cost $2.00)

After about a week of this around 11 one night Sandra - my host in my house- knocked on my door waking me up and said I had to go upstairs the apartment where my female friend lived.  She kept talking about a gun.  I went upstairs and my friends had been held up at gunpoint as they walked from the bus stop and the woman had been hit in the head with a pistol.  It was necessary to walk past a small park about a block long, no lights, and all the stores were closed.  As they walked past the park, a car pulled over, men with guns got out of the car.  They took everything but somehow when they were trying to open the jacket of my female friend (the other friend was a guy) she let out a noise of some sort. This angered the men so they hit her on the head with a pistol, threw her to the ground, and searched her for valuables.  During this whole time they held my male friend back. Then the men left, and my friends continued the walk home. My friend did have a good size bump on her head but both of them were physically OK, but as you can imagine really traumatized . And this ended any idea that any of us had of taking a bus home and walking by a dark park. (After I moved from this house, I learned that this was not all that unusual in that neighborhood and Byron, part of my new host family, had been carjacked at gunpoint at the same place)

One of my friend's host family had a family friend who was a taxi driver - so they arranged that my friends take a taxi home every night and they  would come to my building and pick me up . While this sounded great in the beginning, the reality of the situation was that the taxi was often late, or didn't come and most nights I was alone on a dangerous street waiting for about 30-40 minutes. After a while arrangements were made for me to wait in a nearby restaurant so I could be safe- but the wait was often 30-45 minutes.  A couple of times I opted to just take myself home but this was during December, and Quito is just one big part in December.  There is Quito independence, which is a week of parties, Cuenca Indepenence Guayaquil Independence and I don't remember what else.  So many nights there were no uber or cabify drivers available and I feared street cabs so my only option was to wait it out.  This all resolved itself when in late December I  moved to a new house with totally different transport issues.

During all of this time I was still taking the Transplaneta TO work in the mornings or afternoons.  One of the first nights my friends and I took our taxi home post attack, I left my phone in the taxi.  It was not stolen -somehow I just left in the cab.  While we did call the taxi immediately, the phone was never found.  So the next day I did not have my phone which meant no way to call a taxi and no google maps, etc.  I took the Transplaneta per usual.  Each bus has two people working on it - a driver and an assistant. As we neared my stop and I was getting ready to go to the door and prepare for my leap off, the driver and assistant started talking a lot and loudly.  This wasn't all that unusual.. and I couldn't understand a word.. so I really didn't pay too much attention.  And then the bus didn't stop at my stop.  This was a total new and unexpected event.  The bus went a block over and down the street so I figured it was going to stop a block away.  Nope.  Then it went to the historic district and I figured it would turn out and go back. Nope.  and then it just went and went and went.  People kept getting off the bus, no one got on.  And here was my thinking -"while I have no idea what is going on and I can not understand anything anyone says... I am safe.  The chances of being killed on the bus are small. Buses HAVE to go back the stops and there is no world where me getting off the bus not knowing where I am, not able to talk to people, and having no phone is a good idea. So just sit back and enjoy the tour"   So I took a very long bus ride and saw parts of Quito slums and Quito neighborhoods I was unlikely  to see any other way.  We came to one stop where ALL passengers got off the bus and got on other buses.  The assistant tried to talk to me again - she really wanted to help - but all I could do is repeat "No hablo espanol" and hold firm to my safe seat on the bus.  So on and on we went with me the only passenger. After about another 30 minutes of driving the bus came to a little place, stopped, and the driver and the assistant got off the bus and I was totally  alone on the bus. It was during this moment that I questioned the logic that every bus HAS to loop around . Then another person came to the bus and changed all the signs on the bus. I feared this might mean my bus was no longer a Transplanta. I didn't even get off to look at the new signs as I was sticking to my plan regardless.  I was just hoping that when they took the bus to the bus headquarters someone could speak English and get me home. After about 15 minutes  the bus driver appeared, carrying a roll of toilet paper, and got on the bus. (I mention the toilet paper as it so added to the surreal feeling of the whole experience)  Then the assistant appeared ...and then the driver turned the bus around and we started backtracking.  And about 1 hr later - I arrived at my bus stop albeit on the OTHER side of the street, got off, walked to work about 2 hrs later then expected ( but still hours before class started) none the worse for the wear..As to why the bus didn't stop at my stop... I have no idea.  I suspect there was a protest blocking the road for a brief period.

ECOVIA QUITO

When I changed host families my relationship with Transplaneta ended - and I began my relationship with EcoVia - the public transport in Quito. I will save my EcoVia stories for Part 2. But from this time forward I always felt safe with my commute and my stories are funny.