Hash House Harriers

Location:
Quito, Ecuador

Hiking

By V!VA user

The Hash House Harriers, a local English-speaking club, open to anybody and everybody who dares to partake, holds bimonthly outings that offer an excellent initiation to some of the strangest cultural attributes of native English speakers. Hashes, as they are called, combine the peculiar Austro-Britanico-Americano love of the outdoors, exercise, beer, fraternity, blatant vulgarity, and outright silliness.

The Hash House Harriers is a worldwide legacy founded three quarters of a century ago by a bunch of homesick expatriates living in Malaysia. Today, in hundreds of cities and countries all over the world, including Quito, Ecuador, groups calling themselves Hash House Harriers gather to participate in a very silly simulation of the old fashioned British Hound Hunt. Basically, two people pretend to be hares and the rest of the people hounds. The hares leave signals with flour and the hounds run around drinking beer and trying to follow the trail. The whole thing is followed by a ceremony presided over by the club’s “religious advisor”, who subjects certain individuals to public humiliation and leads the whole crew in the chanting of songs and drinking of beer.

“Wherever I am, I look for a Hash,” says Ben Hilther, a world traveler recently awarded the prestigious Hash alias Bendover. “It’s one of the best ways for me to get out and actually see the country. I end up running through areas I never would have seen otherwise.” Hilther’s Hash history includes such exotic locations as Panama, Thailand, Egypt, San Francisco, and now, Quito. Quito Hashes can include anywhere from forty to two people, a significant percentage of whom are Ecuadorian. In order to find more information about the next Quito Hash, you can go to www.hhhweb.com/QH3/ or contact the local Grandest of Masters, John Ogden, alias Johnnie Rotten Ogden at 287-0995 or jogden@punto.net.ec.

Travel Tips: Keep in mind that you can participate at your own physical level. You can run the whole 7 km or you can walk a portion of it.

Price Description: $5

Relative price: Very cheap

Open Hours from:every other Saturday

Travel Skills: beginner/easy.

You Need to Bring: Bring a lot of water and a change of warm clothes.