Winding down in Ecuador

Ok, I did elaborate further in the previous post (I decided to build on it and explain our fiesta in Puerto Lopez a bit more), but it didn't end up being published, so I can't be bothered spending another hour typing the same thing which should've been posted. You'll all have to wait till I get back (or some other time when I feel like elaborating on it) for details. In a nutshell though, we went to Puerto Lopez to celebrate one of the other volunteers' birthday and we stayed the night there. We went to a bar later in the night, got talking to the owner/manager, and he ended up giving all of us free drinks and taught us how to make mojitos. We all got shots of aguardiente (local liqour made from sugar cane), and we made 7 tall glasses of mojitos. Needless to say, we were quite happy by the end of the night, which is why we only had 3 hours sleep!

Anyway, to the present, I am currently in Quito (for the last time). I'm almost finished stage 1 of my trip. I'm jetting off to Costa Rica on Monday. Overall, the volunteering has been ok. Not exactly what I expected (especially for the Chiriboga part, which consisted of absolutely no reforestation on our part, but quite the opposite instead!), but it was alright. Teaching children was very interesting. You really need a lot of patience for it. It was frustrating at times, but quite satisfying when they've learnt and understood what you've taught them. It was slightly difficult for me (due to the spanish), but we got along fine, and they understood what I was trying to say anyway, which was good. I think my spanish is improving, at least now I can get around and buy stuff without having to look up the dictionary for every second word!

On the food note, I think I've consumed enough rice, potatoes and sugar here to last me a lifetime! Every meal has some kind of rice or potato, and all the juices have lots of sugar in it. Towards the end, they just made us salad all the time, cos we're all pro salad and fruits. Oh, in Jipijapa, they bought papayas, but they are nothing like you've ever seen. They were MASSIVE!! They were about 30-50cm long, probably 15cm diameter. And they were really good too, just sweet enough and soft enough to melt in your mouth. They are nothing like the ones in Brisbane, and are by far the best papayas I have ever eaten. There are also lots of bananas here. I've been eating heaps of them too, both raw and cooked. So far I think I've tried bananas that have been cooked in 3 different ways. I think they were different types of bananas too. Bananas are the ones you eat raw, platanos are ones you have to cook, and plaintains are probably something else altogether, I forget what. Oh, also, here's another way to have orange juice. What we did was peel the skin (just the outer part, leaving the inner part, so you end up with a white orange), cut the top off, and then squeeze and suck the juice straight out of the orange. It's as natural as you can get it, you don't even need a cup! It's awesome, we're quite obssessed with the oranges.

Food!

In line with the food posts, here's some more food pics I have collected. These are sugar coated roasted peanuts. They're good, except too sweet for me. I had to drink a lot of water after eating it. I've also noticed that Ecuadorians really like their sweet stuff. The juices are usually drowned in sugar, especially the juices we have for breakfast. Virginia's mother really likes things sweet.

I've also been trying to go to the vego places for lunch. The other day I went to this place called Medra Terra. The soup was good, for once it didn't have potato in it!! It had lots of assorted vegies instead.
Here's the main course. The thing on the side is some sort of nutty curry with soy meat and potatoes. Alas potatoes. But I liked the soy meat. It tasted very soy!
Today we went to another place, I didn't get the name. They had heaps of soy meat type stuff, and it was really nice. Plus it came with unlimited salad, so I refilled about 3 times! What joy! I don't think the other 2 people who were with me really enjoyed it that much. I felt a bit bad because one girl ordered salad, and when it came, it was really small, and only consisted of avocado, tomato and onion. It came with juice, but it was $1.50! But then she said that salad was the only vego thing she eats, so really it was also her fault. She could've tried the other stuff, it was really good! Being vego doesn't limit you to eating salad!

Oh, the soy meat doesn't really taste like meat, it just tasted like seasoning, and it was a bit salty. The green bit on top is avocado. The meal came with fried potatoes.

One thing I've noticed though, all the vego places I go to offer brown rice! It's so awesome! It's so good to eat brown rice, after eating so much white rice and potatoes. Unfortunately, potatoes are slightly unavoidable here. Just like corn, there are about 27 species of corn, and they've been eating it for centuries. I don't mind corn. I have yet to try quinoa, which I will try to make a point of doing before I leave. I must learn how to cook it too!

Food glorious food

Ecuador has heaps and heaps of different fruits! We have a different fruit juice every morning for breakfast, it´s really cool. In the shops, it´s common to have pineapple, passionfruit, raspberry/blackberry, banana (they have 3 different names for bananas- platan, banana and verde platano) and papaya. I think that´s all the common ones that all the shops have.

I took photos of some fruits that we have. I don´t know what the yellow one is, but the small red ones are called tomate de arbol (literally translated as tomato from the tree). It´s really nice, and apparently has medicinal properties. It doesn´t taste like conventional tomato juice, it´s only got a little bit of a tomato taste, I quite like it. I´ll take more photos of Ecuadorian fruits as I come across them. Apparently, a lot of these fruits only grow in Ecuador, which is pretty cool!

This is the backyard of the house I live in. The tree on the right hand side (just under the yellow plastic bag) is the tree that the tomate de arbol grows on.

Today, I went into downtown Quito to the colonial district, so named due to the architecture of the buildings. Anyway, I shall relate that story later, the point I wanted to make here was that I went to Govindas for lunch! Yes, Quito has Hare Krishnas! It was pretty good, and only cost $1.50! The lunch consisted of popcorn and soup for entree (I´m not sure what, but was just glad it was vego. Ecuadorians always have soup for lunch and dinner), rice with black beans, pickled radish, lettuce & celery, a potato (yes, just one), some curried and salted vegies (tastes a bit like chinese salted mustard (the vegie, not the sauce) and a piece of soy meat. The meal also came with juice (not sure what either. It wasn´t the best, but was drinkable) and some sweet rice pudding. I liked it!

Baños: part 3

Yes, I actually did touristy stuff when I was here. We got there Friday evening about 5.30pm, and walked around the town a little. It doesn´t take long to see all the interesting places. Anyway, on Saturday morning, we went rafting! It was really awesome! I thought it would be a lot rougher than it actually was, but it was good anyway (they were class 3 rapids, I have no idea what that means, but I think they´re beginner rapids). This is the river where we went rafting. It´s not a very good photo, but I obviously couldn´t take any others. This is where we ended up.

On the way there though, we drove past a dam, and beyond the dam lay the saddest and most miserable looking river I had ever seen! I didn´t manage to take a photo of the actual river, but here´s a photo of another river (possibly a different part of the same river?). It serves the purpose to illustrate its misery. I imagined that the river would´ve once been great and mighty (as evidenced by the location of the river banks and markings on the sides of the mountain), but has now been reduced to a trickle (relatively). It looked so depressed! I think the rapids may also have been stronger had the river not been dammed!

There are some thermo-springs in Baños, they´re hot springs naturally heated by the volcano. We went swimming on Saturday night (actually it´s not really swimming, more sitting around in a hot pool). It was really good, they had small cold water pools around as well, so you can dip in and out. It really opens up your pores (especially when switching between hot and cold). I guess it´s like a sauna, but natural.

We went to the pools twice, once on Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon (just before we had to get the bus back to Quito). There was such a big difference in atmosphere and experience between the two! On Saturday night, the pools were full of foreigners, as well as old local men (in their 30s and 40s) trying to pick up young foreign women. And they weren´t at all subtle about it (it was really ewww). I suppose if you´re trying to pick up, you´re not usually subtle about it, but that´s not the point. There were also lots of couples around (generally local), but that´s no problem. It was just the older guys chatting up younger women that was gross! It´s like the ultimate pick-up spot in town! I don´t think they would´ve had that much luck though. Most of the foreign women were in groups, and had no interest in the guys, although they chatted rather amicably (read: politely).

On Sunday when we went, it was totally different. We were the only foreigners there (it was 3.30pm). The whole place was full of families, everyone brought their kids, and there were lots of little children splashing around with floaties. It was ok, not as relaxing as Saturday with all the children around, and the water wasn´t as hot either (I have no idea why). But there were no seedy old men, which was good.

We also went clubbing on Friday night, to see what it was like. It was....interesting. There were about 2 or 3 clubs which had a reasonable amount of people in them, the rest were embarrasingly empty. We walked around the whole town (the touristy part) and in the end, found only 2 that were ok. Of the 2, one was full of foreigners (with a few locals, not as many seedy old men as the baths, which was good), and the other was full of locals (it played only spanish songs). It was alright, I wasn´t particularly interested in the club scene, in fact I was quite bored most of the night. Plus it was really hetero, and like any other straight clubbing experience, I felt a bit like a fish out of water. Or maybe I´m just getting old...

On Sunday, we went hiking up the mountain (I was going to go rock climbing in some place 2 hours away, but I didn´t end up doing it. LONG story which will probably have to wait till I get back. If you can´t wait that long, ask Stacy!). We were hiking to a lookout place called Bellavista, and it was a lot steeper than we thought it would be! Oh my god I´m so unfit! It was a good walk though, and it was nice at the top. The photo I posted in part 1 was taken here. Here I am with the other 2 German volunteers (Christophe and Nele).
Something which urked me, we asked 2 people to take photos for us, and seriously, these people don´t know how to take photos (they were also tourists. You would think tourists would know what kind of photos we would want)! This photo could´ve been way better (views of the mountains and everything). Oh well, it´s alright, considering the first guy we asked just took a full length photo of us, without the view!

Oh, I also bought street food for the first time! And it didn´t make me sick! Yay! It´s roasted corn (the top one. It was crunchy) with some sort of other bean/legume. I asked the vendor what it was, but I´ve forgotten what she said. It was in Spanish. At first I thought it was soy, but I don´t think so now. Ecuador doesn´t have many soy crops (soy milk was USD $3.80 in the supermarket!!). It was pretty good (plus it came with lime, and tomato and onion salad sprinkled on top. You can just see it in the photo). It´s just the right amount too, because my jaw got tired towards the end from having to chew so much. It was only $0.50 (all prices are in USD because Ecuador uses US currency. Very handy)! Oh, they also have lots of sugar cane juice here (jugo de caña in spanish), it´s so awesome! There are heaps of people selling it on the street, both the juice and the stick which you can chew. I bought a glass of juice, it was sooo good. I haven´t had sugar cane juice in so long! How nostalgic (Malaysia has lots of sugar cane juice vendors).

p.s. I´m in the internet cafe and thy have the radio on. The radio is playing the Shakira song (the sexy one about the hips) and it´s in spanish. There are lots of english songs playing here which have been translated into spanish. It´s cool!

Observations...

Wow, people here are really religious! In the middle of the city, there´s a statue of the virgin mary on top of a mountain, and practically every car and shop has some sort of reference to christianity. Either a cross, or jesus, of the fish sign, or all of the above. Below is a photo of jesus displayed in the house i´m staying. It´s rather gory, with all the blood and bruises shown! The vertical bit of the cross is about 80cm long, so it´s pretty big! i´m not really taking much notice of it; not being religious, it´s like another piece of furniture to me. People don´t impose their religion, so it´s good.

Food-wise, I have been eating a lot of white carbs (ie white bread for breakfast and white rice for dinner). Being vegan, it´s REALLY hard to go out and buy stuff to eat in cafes and restaurants, because most things have some sort of meat or eggs in it, which you can´t remove. So I´ve been eating my meals at the house, at least until my spanish is good enough that I can confidently go out and order something and make sure it´s vegan!

Interesting foods I have seen thus far:

• Fig dessert- I don´t know what it´s called, but it´s an Ecuadorian specialty. The fig is marinated overnight in sauce consisting of sugarcane juice, cloves, cinnamon, and another spice (I´m not sure what it is, although it smelt really familiar. Virginia didn´t know the name in english). The longer you marinate it, the sweeter it is. It turns the fig black. It was quite nice. Not something I´d eat everyday (it´s really sweet), but once in a while is ok.

• On the streets, there are people selling these orange balls. They´re made of flour, water, butter, eggs and sugar. It´s sweet and deep fried, so immensely unhealthy. I would try one were it not for my vegan-ness (unfortunately i don´t have a photo of it).
  
• Ecuadorians eat a LOT of rice and beans (and chilli sauce, like tabasco. It´s an Indian trait). One of the meals KFC sells is a plate of rice, beans, and fried chicken!

Ok, time for some vistas.

The photo above is a view of the mountains to the east from my street. As you can see, houses are built all over the mountains. The photo below is the view towards the west. The mountains aren´t really clear, but you can see it´s all been cleared. Most mountains have very little trees, it looks like it´s all been turned to pasture or agricultural land. But you can see the streetscape, is "back home" a fitting description?


Also, pedestrians have no right of way here. There are no designated pedestrian crossings (where you push a button and wait for the little green person to come on), but there are zebra crossings. However, in line with most countries in the world, zebra crossings are really meaningless. To cross the road (especially a main road), you have to know how to pick the right time to run across. Cars will slow down, but do so quite reluctantly and blaring their horns in the process. It´s rather amusing! I haven´t had to do too many main road crossings yet (sometimes they have overhead pedestrian bridges for that, which is good).

Oh, and people here are really short! I don´t feel short because most people are my height! In my house, I´m the tallest female, yay! What a nice change! It´s probably because of the altitude. The Ecuadorian highlands range from 1500m to 4500m above sea level. The average height of people living at higher altitudes is shorter than those at sea level, because it´s easier to send oxygen around a shorter body than a tall body.