In Quito I’m CouchSurfing with Carlos, an avid World Cup watcher and occasional contract worker for Microsoft and seasoned CouchSurfing host who lives in an apartment I’d expect to find in the American suburbs. It is new and modern and the lobby smelled like pine fragrance. A receptionist sits in the lobby buzzing the residents when visitors come, and the giant glass windows are forever being wiped free of smudges. There’s a French girl staying here too, Fanny, who is about to go off to Machala (southwest Ecuador) for an agroforestry internship. The first night we sit in front of a World Cup game, drinking beers that Carlos and I have bought and Fanny's French tea and bread with a jar of homemade jam that she has gotten from someone at the foundation.
Quito is a long skinny strip of city bound on one side by volcanoes and on the other by forest. At night the edge of Quito is a softly undulating line of city lights, beyond which is darkness. Jets fly low over us and the tallest buildings have red lights on their tops to keep the jets from crashing.
Fanny and I go up to one of the bordering mountains on the TeleferiQo the next day:
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