Eating out

We've still not eaten breakfast "out," (we've stayed at hostels with breakfast included, or else have fixed our own) but here's a bit on lunch and dinner -- some of you have asked. 

Lunch is a fairly standardized meal here, a working Ecuadorean's lunch.  Called almuerzo, it's a "set" lunch, usually consisting of a glass of fresh squeezed juice (e.g. orange, pineapple, or mora -- their blackberry), soup, a main dish of rice, lentils or beans and small salad, a serving of chicken, pork, beef, or a whole small fish, and sometimes a cookie.  For $2-3, served 12-3PM.  Here's what it can look like. 

Soup, cilantro on top. 

Steve's bowl had a surprise -- a chicken's foot!

With lupin beans, tomato based with dill. 

Main courses with almuerzo (set) lunches:

Fish main course, usually it's tilapia, grown around here.  And lentils, rice, salad.

Chicken main course. 

Another fish version - tilapia steamed in a banana leaf with steamed yucca, yummy.

This pricier almuerzo's main course was a little fancier.

And lunches ordered in a fast food restaurant:

Coconut juice, rice, eggs, fries, avacado, beef with peppers and onions, $3.75.

Coconut juice, hot dog (mayo and catsup), fries (mayo and catsup).  $2.50

We seldom take our cameras out for dinner but had one along for this dinner in an Argentine restaurant.

Grilled herbed vege platter, $5.75.

And the flan dessert at the Argentine restaurant. Yum. 

Argentine flan. $2.75.

On your mark.  Swiss chocolate sundae in Banos , $2.50. 

And a common snack around here, salted toasted corn, as an appetizer or just to keep a beer company.

Crunchy toasted, salted corn kernels.

The main Ecuadorean beer, Pilsener, comes in giant bottles, enough for two, for $1.25-$1.50, 4% alcohol content,  refreshing, but hardly tastes or feels like a beer.

As a note -  we are usually eating almuerzos with Ecuadorians (a workday lunch) while dinners out tend to be with a more mixed, foreign crowd (Ecuadorians are probably eating dinner with their families).  Weekend patterns differ.

Steve just had his underwater photos processed, so he'll will be posting some underwater Galapagos magic soon. 

View from an 8 hour transport

We are now in Cuenca, south central Ecuador, still in the Andes.  We're in a furnished apartment here for a month -- of Spanish lessons, organizing, hanging out.  It's a delight to be here and unpacked.  And it's a great little city (albeit with 500,000 people).

Our ride down included a 1.5 hour taxi through the ash-fallout zone from the occasionally erupting Volcano Tungurahua.  I wrote yesterday that it does no damage -- and was only partly right. No humans harmed. The ash fallout zone SE of town is pretty impressive.  Ash fallout happened last week with the constant minor eruptions, and the road (some might not call it that) was cleared for passage very quickly.  Correa's pretty amazing in his focus on roads and transport -- Ecuadoreans seem to love him, I can see why.   Anyway, a few photos of the road we traveled through the ash zone. 

Road cleared within feet of this view.  These rocks are taller than I am.

 

Playing with the ash, taxi driver explaining stuff.

Our road, cleared/cut (again) through the ash field a few days ago.

Not sure what this is, but something was there before. 

 Wash of ash that crossed the road.

Ash is kind of unstable, and great fields of it can collapse.

The long-distance buses here are good, cheap, mostly clean, with assigned seats and safe, ticketed suitcase storage below.  One must hold on to carry-ons, though, for safety of valuables, as opportunists await.  We've got it figured out, paranoically perhap, but we've "lost" something only once.  This sign was at the front of the bus.

"Please don't insist that the driver go faster than 90 km/h legal limit" - these are winding mountain roads.

Don't know the significance of this one, but most towns have at least one big sculpture decorating a central spot. 

The central sierras are productive farm land.  We're here just as the drier season is ending, harvesting pretty well over, and plowing and planting's going on.  Scenes from the road.

One small area had lots of haystacks.  This one was near a swampy area with lots of reeds.

One long stretch of the farmland along the highway was planted up the hills, instead of terracing, which is more the norm.

Quinoa awaiting harvest.

Something, just planted.

Do these photos really work for you readers?  They seem so small and ineffective in communicating the grandeur, the beauty, the fullness of the views -- always a drawback of photos  . . . ? 

Boom! and more tortoises for Genevieve

We spent Wednesday at the zoo in Banos.  We arrived, started up the zoo stairs when we felt, then heard a boom!  We thought it was a construction incident, but then saw the ash cloud - so cool.  Tungurahua, the local volcano, is a type of volcano known as stromboli, which erupts not infrequently, seldom causing anything more problematic than a bit of ash fallout.  And tourist panic.  There were a few other "eruptions" over the day, nothing much.

Vulcan Tungurahua, erupting.

The zoo had moderately well cared for Ecuadorean critters -- condors, jungle birds, tapirs, monkeys, a few sad medium-sized cats, and some turtles and tortoises.  The small tortoise pen included Tortuga Mordedora, labeled a "fierce turtle".  Its a snapping turtle, which can be fierce. 

As the sign says, it "eats the dead".

The tailed one is the fierce one -- behaving companionably while we watched.

The next day we took a little trip out of Banos and the Andes into the "jungle" including an indigenous Quichua village.  For me, these tourist things are always uncomfortable, although I understand helpful and necessary, income generating, educational and awareness generating.  It's hard to be the rich observer, hard to see their poverty and need, hard to be the voyeur, to step into their lives and back out.  We blew their poison darts, held their birds, met their shaman, bought some of their stuff (required?), and watched their tortoises (best part!).  

Steve, talking with the parrots.

The tortoises loved these lotus leaves!

Trust they're fed other than while they're being watched.

The tortoise wrangler.  

On the walk back to town, we passed this diskoteck sign:  Skalibur, complete with a drawing of the sword still in the stone.  I love the occasional Spanglish.

We travel to Cuenca  tomorrow and start our month-long apartment rental there.  Finally, what we'd been planning to do all this time -- hanging, living in a community -- we'll be doing it!   Home, sort of.

Cats, dogs and a weird game

While we've seen lots of dogs in Ecuador, there've been only a few cats.  And we saw an odd game being played in Quito.

The dogs are of all sizes and shapes, and levels of freedom.  Many are put to work as guard dogs, roof dogs we've come to call them, because they're often on the open roofs of homes, and are especially good as early alarms.  Lots of dogs are carried in arms, almost like babies, too.  Some are just free to do as they please, especially in small towns, chasing cars, in and out of restaurants, playing with each other.  Except for guard dogs, they're very friendly, deferring to humans.  

Roof dogs, at work.

More roof dogs.

The cats were almost always behind gates, on doorsteps, seemingly protected. 

Protected, although he clearly didn't need it.  

Lucia, here, helped the bird feeder lady in a park. Sweet job for a cat.  She was white-tipped completely tail to whiskers. 

And while we were walking through a park in Quito, Steve noticed a group of about 15-20 men at a ball and racquet game along a court about 20x100 feet.  We watched for about 30 minutes, never did get the game, although it required a serve, hitting back and forth, lots of conversation, frequent smoking breaks, and a couple of youngish ringers with the generally older men.  Would love someone to identify this for us, please!  Sorry, some of the photos are dark. 

Awaiting the serve.

The ball was about 6 inches in diameter, the size of a Chicago style softball, but bouncy like a racquetball.

Special mitt-type racquet.  He was good.

The hitting side of the racquet was fairly standard.

They decorated their racquets.

Unlike a tennis or badminton racquet, these racquets make a good seat. 

At Eduardo's, with Ecuadoreans

Thursday ranks high on my Ecuadorean experiences so far.  We had five hours to play while our laundry was being done, so spent the afternoon at Eduardo's, an indoor spa on the edge of Banos. We were curious -- had noticed weird big dinosaurs and an airplane perched on the mountainside above it, and that it had a gym included in the $5 admission (turns out the gym excluded women : \ ).  

Note the plane, tail section barely visible, above the light post to the right. 

We took swimsuits, books, cards.  Pretty complete, it had a cold swimming pool, a hot tub, a medium temp pool, a sauna and an aromatic steam room (Turkish bath with eucalyptus branches).  Closed, but probably awaiting a busier day were a solarium, a cold pool, another Turkish bath and another three hot tubs.  And a place to buy beer, snacks, sodas, etc.  No other westerners but us and many Ecuadorean families -- playful, gentle, friendly folks, so nice to be around.

Choclo, the national snack dish -- lupine beans, toasted salted corn kernels, a salsa of onions, tomatoes, lime juice, 60 cents.  Delicious.

The main room.

Looking at the primary swimming pool, comfortably cool water.

Looking across to what's behind the arches: the tepid pool on the right, a hot tub with jets on the left.

The upstairs solarium, not working while we were there.  No photos of the auromatic Turkish bath, sauna or hot tub downstairs.

I hung out in the aromatic steam room, lamely but enjoyably making conversation with a few Ecuadorean ladies.  The kids played ball with us in the water, a guy came over and watched our card game (gin), picked it up very quickly and played cards with us.  

And we walked up the mountainside to see the dinosaurs and the plane, rather awesome in their kitschy way. 

The Ecological Adventure begins!

Notice the eggs under the apatosaurus lady, and the menacing pterosaur behind. 

Steve with a rubber apatosaurus guy.

No explanation for the plane.  At all. 

 
After a delightful rain while we were playing cards with Mario (oh, the sound of heavy rain on the plastic corrugated roof!), we exited to a beautiful sunset.