Tomacco or Quito - Blogabond

The journey between glaciers was only 30 minutes, so it was still torrential rain when we arrived at Fox Glacier. The kitchen at this hostel wasn't very good and the attached bar was shut due to lack of customers, but the owner was very nice and sold us a couple of beers to take up to our room. We made a short dash through the rain to the neighbouring bar for one more, but it was a bit too expensive for us really. The food smelled good though. We were exhausted from two nights in YHA dorms so just had an early night.

Next morning it was still raining heavily. Then it hailed. We made a dash to the supermarket for a couple of beers since we couldn't afford the bar and there was nothing to do but drink, blog, and read. At the supermarket boredom made me buy a tomarillo, which I had never before heard of, probably out of some hope it was related to the tomacco from The Simpsons. It looked a bit like a tomato, but inside it looked a bit like a granadilla. Guess what! It tasted like a cross between a tomato and a granadilla, which isn't all that pleasant a combination. After the pear crossed with aubergine in China, I should have learned that things that look like A crossed with B, usually taste like A crossed with B. Probably because they are A crossed with B.

Tomarillo

Another glacier, another waste of time. The next morning we were woken early by really heavy rain and soon after there was a huge rumbling noise which didn't quite sound like thunder to me. Was it giant chunks of ice crumbling off the invisible glacier? Later, the manager said no, it was thunder. Before the bus arrived, we called BA to re-route our ticket: Joanne would fly home from Quito on the 19th November and I would fly from from Bogotá on the 9th December, the very last day of the ticket. They were not able to confirm anything and would have to phone us back. We weren't sure if we could get all the way to Glasgow or if we only had enough stages to get us to London; we weren't sure if there was a flight on the days we had requested; we weren't sure if I was allowed to land on the 10th or if I had to land before the ticket expired; but they couldn't tell us any of this, and more importantly they couldn't tell us how much it would cost. Changes of schedule are (usually) free, but re-routing costs something. In fact they were so useless that they didn't seem to have heard of Quito or Bogotá.

When the bus picked us up at 11am I was regretting not having gone for the camper van option after all; just up the road, there were better views, although the weather was still awful there. The point is, we would have been able to move around at will, looking for the nicer weather and spots. Instead we were doomed to waiting around in one place, hoping that the weather would clear enough to justify spending money on a trek or tour.

written by

The Happy Couple on August 27, 2009 from Fox Glacier, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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