Hostel de Luz

It’s now long past due that I wrote a blog about my hostel. I have a small private room at the Galapagos Natural Life Hostel in la Mariscal, the main tourist district of Quito. Although the combination of iffy location and cheesy name seem the recipe for a gringo trap, this hostel has become almost a homestay. An Ecuadorian family owns it and receives help from relatives now and then. Vivienta is the youngest daughter, in her thirties, and does the majority of the work around the place. But it is Luz, the house matriarch, that imbues the hostel with its character. She ensures that every guest feels “en su casa” and calls everyone “mi joven” or “m’hijo.” The times that I have fallen sick or injured (food poisoning last weekend and a twisted ankle this Sunday), I have been dotingly and frantically attended to in that way only mothers can do. When I hobbled in the door after coming back from hiking, she insisted that I sit down while she fetched an ace bandage and all the remotely relevant medicines. Now, it’s necessary to point out that Luz inches around the building with a walker because she broke her ankle several months ago and still has metal screws in the bone. Regardless of her worse injury, she wouldn’t let me get up.

We spend quite a few evenings together since I’ve started cooking instead of eating out and have thus solidified our friendship. She gives me leftovers and makes me coladas and I open jars and reach high things for her. In my relatively short time living with them I have apparently proved my merit; she wants me to manage the hostel when the family is at her son’s wedding this Saturday evening. Luz told me there is a nephew available for the job, but he is quote, “less known.” Maybe I’ve been spending too much time here…

It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to help out though, because I leave tomorrow morning for Peripa and would have to complete the entire boundary in one day to make it back in time.

The rest of my time is pretty much planned out: I return to Quito sometime on the weekend, work in the office till Wednesday on the Peripa map, return Thursday and Friday with other Yanapuma staff to the communities to present them with the finished product. Then next Sunday, Molly arrives and we take off to tour Ecuador! Squeak!