the storm perfecto

adventure crew, in much smaller form, came out today to do the good deed: adventure!

this is how it went down. yesterday, today and tomorrow there is this quitofest going on in a park a pretty good hike uphill with many musicians from all over south america and mexico. it's kind of a big deal. thousands of people go.

a friend, josue cafe and i live close to each other and decided to take the bus over to quitofest and check out the music. we got there around three and we both were impressed by the location the kinds of people and the music playing.

well, after five minutes, really not more than five, it started to rain. no biggy, i brought a paraguas. we both take cover under it while talking to several ecuatorians about punk music. ok well then the lightning and thunder came. and it began to really rain. we ran with the umbrella to this big red bull (it gives you wings!) tent along with probably a couple dozen newly wet souls.

and then it started to hail. the painful kind of hail. it almost completely covered the trampled grass with perfectly round miniture ice cubes. the tent selling ceviche to our right unhinged itself from the ground and uncovered 3 people with quite surprised looks on their faces. our tent began to look vulnerable and some people were making a dash to the crystal house, a public building made of glass that was already filled with people avoiding this little episode of rain.

we realized it wasn't going to get any better so, josue with my umbrella in hand and i started the 200 meter dash to the glass house with people staring out at us. the umbrella betrayed us and flipped its curvature out in the opposite direction, like in the movies.

the door is closed! there's at least hundreds of people inside this building, watching us and the pending storm and no one is letting us in. so we stand right against the glass walls on a bit of a ledge and under a bit of the roof so that we aren't really getting rained on. we talk to some teenagers in spanish while they talk to us in english.

we get inside and start trading slang words and customs from our homelands. for an hour. it keeps raining, but no more hail, for an hour. it won't get any better any time soon so we decide to begin the journey home with five minutes of live music under our belt and over an hour of seriously complete soaking wetness attached to us in the form of our clothing. so we walk down the 265 stairs (with the fixed umbrella) and make it to pollo campero, our favorite fried chicken fast food place here.

it took 12 minutes to make popcorn chicken.

we walked to a bus stop, got on a bus and realized it had stopped raining when we got off, a half hour later.

viva ecuador!