It was appealing to stay a little bit longer in Quito in order to see Iron Maiden live.
The show was worth it, in spite of the teargas, the relatively bad performance (Dickinson wasn’t at his best moment, like the rest of the band) and losing my appreciated mexican belt.
One of the interesting things was the hostility: though most of the audience was very calmed, the massive police presence and their arrogancy was annoying. And there’s always someone that gives them the excuse to be agressive.
I forgot to leave my Swiss knife in the hostel, so I had to hide it in my left shoe in order to get in. But I couldn’t predict that they were going to remove my belt (because it had tiny metal parts), and put it on a big pile of belts and other ‘dangerous’ stuff. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get it back, but I expected, at least, to get some other belt at the exit… something that didn’t happen. I felt some attachment to that belt, but makes no sense to have that kind of feelings with material things, even if it was my only belt for 12 years.
The support band was quite terrible. Not strictly in terms of technique, but the genre and predictibility of their music. Now I know that it was a band formed by the daughter of….
Iron Maiden were pretty good at the beginning… but I guess age does not help, and they started showing some signs of weariness in the middle of the concert. Even sometimes, some obvious mistakes (unthinkable in a band with that experience) were detectable.
The riot police kept on showing their arrogancy. The third time they threw teargas was the strongest one, and it was quite (physically and mentally) irritating.
When the show was over, we avoided the mass of people that was returning to the ‘trole’. That was a wise move, as it turned out that the trole wasn’t operating at that time.
We returned in a taxi, after some beers and asking politely to a lot of policeman where I could get back my belt (or any belt). Most of them were a bunch of arrogant pricks. But the last one was different: he gave me some directions, he told me where they sent the seized stuff. Maybe he was lying, as it’s common in Ecuador. But at least he wasn’t a stupid ass like most of his colleagues.