Cuenca!

This is the trip that I took two weekends ago (June 19th- June 21st), but haven´t gotten a chance to blog about because I had final exams last week. This trip included not only the actual city of Cuenca but also Cajas National Park and Ingapirca.

Here´s a picture of Cajas National Park, one of the strangest places on Earth I´ve ever been (as if I´ve been to so many of them). It´s pretty evenly covered in grasses with occasional marshy areas every so often. There are a ton of lakes scattered throughout the park, and the only trees that grow have trunks with bark that flakes off like paper. It takes about a hundred years for these trees to get any taller than the average person. We got the chance to walk through a whole forest of them (a true rarity) during our 3 hour hike. The altitude there is so high that they sky seems to be a deeper blue. Animals there include the spectacle bear (from my understanding, looks like a panda?) tons of llamas (which were described by our guide as having "pillow feet", good for not destroying the mushy swamp ground) and little rodents that you never actually see because they´re just too darned fast.

After our hike, we were off to Cuenca which is a city in the southern part of the Andes and is about 4 or 5 hours (by bus) away from Guayaquil. It´s famous for it´s churches, colonial architecture, and for the assembly of the infamous Panama Hat. It´s a beautiful city; big, but not too big. I think I might try to make a trip back there sometime in July, if time and money allow. Apparently, according to my host stay mother, I missed a lot of the big attractions there while I was taking my tour of the city with the exchange student group.

While we were there, we did see the major basilica in the center of the city, a panama hat assembly place, a fresh food market, and a whole street long display of stalls selling sweet breads and candy for the festival of Corpus Christi (translation: body of Christ). Funny story: the night we arrived we went out to dinner and afterward bought some of the sweets being sold at the stalls. The next day, during our tour, we were walking around the same stalls with the same sweets, except in the daylight the food at the stalls was just covered... I mean, really, covered in bees. Apparently the nuns at one of the convents kept bees to make honey to sell to the public. And the bees, not wanting to travel all the way out of the city to find the stuff of honey, just landed on the candy at the stalls and used that instead. I even saw a man making taffy, pulling it in that big long wad of string, the way they do when it´s handmade, and there was a bee embedded in the taffy. After that, we didn´t buy anymore sweets.

Here´s a picture of one of the streets in Cuenca. It really is a beautiful city.
Typical tourist.

Our final stop was Ingapirca, the most important Incan ruins in Ecuador. The ruins themselves are shaped like a Puma (in this picture, you´re looking at the foot of the Puma... go figure). From my understanding, I believe this used to be kind of a "palace" of sorts for important Incan people. There are aqua ducts that run throughout the ruins and lots of little structures (like the rock in the center of this picture) that line up just exactly right with the setting sun on the summer solstice (which it just happened to be the day I took this picture). The ruins were crowded that day for the festival of the summer solstice. There were vendors selling cotton candy and cuy (guinea pig) and traditional dancers from all around the country. Unfortunately we didn´t have much time to spend here. It was a busy weekend that went by way too quickly.



Some llamas. Chillin´on the ruins.

The Food Post

I´ve been eating well here in Ecuador, but because it is never enough to explain what the food is like with words, I´ve been taking pictures of all the things I´ve been eating for the last week or so. I think my home-stay family is partially weirded out and partially flattered that I´ve been doing this. The food that I´m served in my home-stay house seems to work on a 10 day rotation, so I figured this is a fair representation of my last month of meals. Also, included toward the end are a few dishes that I had while in Cuenca. That is, they represent more of what you might be served in a restaurant and less of what I eat on a day to day basis at home.

Here we have some typical breakfast fare, although it only looks this pretty when my host mom sets it out for me. From left to right, sweet bread, drinkable blackberry yogurt, papaya, and breakfast cereal.





This is a typical lunch (almuerzo). A soup with chicken broth and chunks of potatoe in it. Rice, beans, tuna, and a class of pineapple juice.

Another lunch. This time, the Ecuadorian equivalent of chicken noodle soup (with no chicken and less salt than we´re used to in the U.S.). On the plate, rice (of course), avocado, a fried egg, a yapingacho (think potato cake), some peanut butter sauce (really good when mixed with the rice), and a glass of tomato de arbol (literally "tree tomato") juice. Unfortunately, I don´t have a picture of this really good fruit, but if it helps any (which it probably won´t) it does indeed look like a tomato that would grow on a tree. Also, it´s my favorite juice.


Let´s see, going clock-wise, and starting with the juice, this looks like melon juice, melon pieces, maduro asado (fried banana), crema de zapallo (pumpkin soup) and a tuna salad kind of dish, with a side of rice. On the top left is ceviche, which is considered "a traditional" Ecuadorian dish. It´s made by slightly cooking seafood in lemon juice and then putting it into a lukewarm broth that tastes a little like onions and a little like lime. It´s pretty darned good. On the plate, a warm (ish) vegetable potato salad, rice, and fried fish. And for the soup, shrimp with pieces of squash floating about.
Here´s a "personal pizza"I had in Cuenca.
Here´s some vegetable fried rice and lemonade. Chinese food is pretty popular around here, and if you order the fried rice, you get a whole huge pile of it for a really good price. This one cost no more than $4.
Fried fish, little bitty potatoes, and mixed vegetables with a glass of papaya juice.
A bowl of potatoe soup (locro de papa) with little bits of spiraley grains found in the mountains mixed in. It´s times like these I wish I had written down the names of these things. And last, but certainly not least, the cuy (pronounced "koo-ee", which means guinea pig) that was shared by our group in Ingapirca. The head is on the left, just in case you cared to know. This is an entire pig roasted over a spit, neatly chopped into 6 pieces, and served over maiz and potatoes. It tastes a lot like the dark meat on chicken, except a little more greasy. The skin is the best part (despite the little hairs still attached), it reminded me of a really hard kettle-cooked potato chip but saltier.

Not pictured here, but still important to Ecuadorian cuisine: ají, an onion and pepper-based hot sauce served at all meals. I will surely be bringing some home with me.

Chifles, the Ecuadorian equivalent of a potato chip. They´re made with bananas (the starchy, non-sweet kind) and have lots of salt. A few bags will also be making the treacherous journey back to the states with me.

This concludes the long post on the foods I´ve eaten in Ecuador.

The Picture Post

Iguanas hanging out in trees at a park in the city. They´re the official animal of Guayaquil (mostly because they´re everywhere). It´s also a good idea not to stand under the trees that they are in... for obvious reasons.

A rock covered with birds off the coast of Valdivia (orientation location). The smell was astounding.
Me under a mosquito net giving an awkward thumbs up. Also during orientation in Valdivia.
Women processing paja toquilla (the stuff of panama hats... which are actually made in Ecuador). Let me tell ya, this women knows how to use a machete.

The view from the bus during the drive to Baños. Lovely.

There aren´t many, mostly because it takes a really long time for them to load. I´ll try to keep a representative sample of where I go and put a few up each week.

A weekend in Quito (sort of)

I just got back today from Quito. I went with a handful of other exchange students and the program director to the northern (ish), mountainous region of Ecuador. My conclusions about this place, it is cold and really high.

We left Guayaquil early Friday morning and took a plane to Quito. By bus it takes 8 hours; mountains are apparently difficult to cross by land. Go figure. In the plane, on the other hand, we were in the air for about 15 minutes. Maybe 25. They showed a TV show during the flight that was a language-less candid camera. It made the time go a lot faster.

As soon as we landed, we were off on a tour of the city. It wasn´t until we arrived at the park in front of the presidential palace that I realized the altitude change was getting to me. Quito is 2800 m above sealevel, whereas I´m pretty sure Guayaquil is below sea level. It wasn´t anything serious, I just felt a little tired and like my knees were made of rice pudding. About the same time I was feeling this, my camera ran out of battery. I had over-estimated the battery life and neglected to pack the charger. So after we toured the presidential palace and a couple of churches, the rest of my trip is documented with disposable camera pictures. We´ll see how those turn out.

The presidential palace is crazily unsecure compared to the white house. The building is a hop, skip, and a jump away from a public park. There are no huge gates or lawns surrounding it. Our tour guide showed the guards a card, and they let us go right in. Granted, we didn´t go in very far, just enough to see the inside of the building and some of the people wandering around inside. A lot of the buildings in that area of the country are built in what is called "colonial style." The building is sectioned off into little open areas (courtyards or sitting areas) and surrounding these are areas are rooms.




When I say security wasn´t very tight, I mean from a distance, compared to our presidential mansion, it didn´t seem as secure. But there are men with guns at just about every entrance to the building. And they aren´t neat handguns tucked neatly into a belt. They´re usually feriocious-looking things, longer than my arm that are kept in plain sight. I think it´s more to make a statement than for actual use.

We went into a couple of churches after that. They were huge structures that took hundreds of years to build. One of them, built by the Jesuits, was decked out in artwork from Ecuador in addition to gold-leaf on just about every surface it could be stuck to. It was a little over-whelming.

After our tour of Quito, we headed for Otavalo, easily the most dangerous place in Ecuador. Four or five days a week, the streets of the Otavalo are filled with indigenous vendors from around the area. I say it´s dangerous, because it only takes a few hours to spend a hundred dollars on goods and leave yourself no money to eat for the rest of the weekend, which is just about what I did. In the center of the city there´s is fine silver jewelry, alpaca blankets and scarves, local art, souvenirs, soccer jerseys, tapestries, just about anything you might want. As you move toward the edges of the stalls, the souvenirs turn into food and clothing targeted at a more local market. As we were walking around, it was a strange mix of tourists and local people all shopping together.

Also, while I was in Otavalo, I ran into not one, but TWO separate people that I knew well enough from Cornell to recognize them on a busy street. It was very surreal.

After the shopping madness, we visited a couple of artisans who wove the clothes at the market and handmade instruments (mostly panflutes). The rest of the time was spent eating the local food (which is a post unto itself) and playing Cuarenta, the local card game of choice.

I wish I had more visual-aids with this post, but alas, all my pictures of Otavalo are undeveloped on my disposable camera. We´ll see how they turned out come August.

Missing you all!

Looking out over the city of Quito.

A Second Post... delayed by work

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay. Life is just a little more hectic down here than I originally imagined.

I´ve started my work for my internship. I was originally placed at a foundation for children with nutritional problems, but the work was just a little bit too much like baby-sitting for my liking. I asked to be moved to a free health clinic on the north side of town. Some of the activities I´ve done there so far have included, taking basic information on patients (height, weight, blood pressure), interviewing people living around the clinic to get an idea of household composition, and doing educational programs in the local schools. They also give out a lot of free vaccinations at the clinic, but I have yet to work up the courage to stick a needle into someone´s arm.

I say all this as if I were doing it myself, but that´s far from the case. I´m almost always with a nurse or one of the other people working at the clinic. There are 3 volunteers that go everyday and 2 other people training to be physician´s assistants. Add those numbers to 6 or 7 nurses and doctors, at least 50 patients a day all within a building the size of a small house, and it makes for a crowded work day.

The rest of my day is filled with class and homework. We´re almost halfway through the month, so that means we´re all about to have our mid-semester tests. There are no more than 3 people in both of my classes. Such a small class is nice for asking questions and getting attention from the teacher, but it also puts a lot more pressure on you to answer more questions and constantly be paying attention.

Yesterday, as part of a class exercise, we had to go ask random people on the university campus what certain phrases meant. They were things like "The fruit never falls far from the tree," or "Every cloud has a silver lining." Things that don´t make sense literally, but have some larger meaning. Most of what I learned from the exercise is that people at the university are very friendly. Most of them don´t mind explaining something multiple times to the random foreign exchange student that approaches them. The campus is small, but all of the facilities are more or less new and are kept in good shape. It´s quite a change from the unpaved roads covered in trash that surround the clinic.

This weekend the exchange students are taking a trip to Quito. We´ll leave Friday by plane, and drive back Sunday by bus. Hopefully by then I´ll have figured out a good system for loading the pictures on my camera to the computer and will have some good photos to show from the trip.