In Ecuador, Bus Rides You

My parents decided to come for a visit and this is more or less what happened.

Wherein parents visit their son in the Peace Corps, eat strange fruits and meats, mangle Spanish, ride buses and in the back of pick ups, meet really cool people and fortune telling parakeets, feed chickens, watch roosters spar and other adventures worth of a truly great vacation.

It’s hard to believe we have been home for one week; that our vacation to Ecuador to visit our son Tristan is over. Bummer. Because we really, really liked Ecuador, the people, the food, the scenery, everything. We are already counting the months for our return.

We flew into Guayaquil as it’s a mere 120 miles from Cuenca, the third largest city in Ecuador and close to where Tristan is based. That’s nothing we think; a mere 2 hour car ride in the US. Tristan and a Banos friend (bless him!) pick us up at our Guayaquil hotel Saturday morning. Miraculously we manage to stuff all our bags into his car and off we go. The terrain is flat, hot and tropical at first (vast fields of bananas and rice paddies), but within an hour you start climbing mountains as you head east towards Cuenca. For the next hour you are pretty sure this is where Jurassic Park was filmed and when you think you can’t get any higher, you do. The next thing you know, you are over 14,000 feet and your pathetic, little, sea level, heart struggles to beat fast enough to get oxygen to your big American limbs and head. The scenery loses its jungle look at this elevation and is strewn with lakes as far as you can see and terrific craggy peaks that my imagination goes nuts over. Is that Qaddafi standing next to the Virgin? No, its oxygen deprivation superimposed over the peaks. But the alpacas, horses, cows (even a dead one being skinned by a family), goats and other assorted animals along the road were real.

We finally descend into Cuenca, and are relieved to find its only 8400 ft. It’s a very big city with a very European feel complete with cobble stone streets. Tristan picked a cute hotel on one of Cuenca’s 4 rivers; the hotel is called “Villa Nova”. Our very big room is just perfect for the three of us and at 65 dollars (including breakfast & laundry) the price is right. As the purpose of this trip was to see the town where Tristan works, meet his villagers and friends, Cuenca was a nice centrally located spot. I envisioned our 8 days and 7 nights here to be very relaxing, lots of sitting in cafes watching the world go by. But that isn’t how it turned out. Tristan had us hopping every minute of the day, so much so it took me a week to recover and write this up.

We started off with a big Sunday afternoon dinner with Tristan’s host family (Isabel, her mom, one of her sons, her sister Matilda and others) in the nearby little town of Banos where Tristan lives and works. Although Tristan now lives on his own nearby, he visits them frequently and they still house his 5 chickens and his veggie garden. The dinner was the classic Banos dinner feast of spit roasted cuy ( pronounced COO-EEE and which sounds a lot better than guinea pig), some chicken all on a bed of potatoes and rice. Unfortunately they don’t drink alcohol, as wine always helps my Spanish and perhaps I could have eaten a bite of the cuy. But as it was, I nearly fainted and just couldn’t do it. But since John ate his to the bone and they were amused with my Spanish, I was forgiven (I think). They are a very quiet and nice family, so unlike ours. Tristan was relieved that the dinner went so well.

Hospitality is really something in Ecuador. Two other locals from Tristan’s town insisted we go to the National Park with them. So John and Tristan hopped in the back of the truck and off we went to go hiking to a lake near where a young girl saw the Virgin back in the 80s. It’s a big open air church now and even the Pope came to visit this place once, although I am suspicious the sighting might have had something to do with lack of oxygen. But maybe not, as I lived to tell this tale. Just as we climbed up to top of the mountain, with my heart going at full tilt, it started to hail mightily. We gobbled a few bananas and ran back down. Just for good measure, mother nature threw in some thunder and lightening. What an adventure. But we made it back to the truck where the guys had to ride in the back in the freezing rain. We were treated to a marvelous fried trout lunch, drank the local cane sugar hooch and headed back to Cuenca for a nice hot shower.

A big part of this trip was meeting the other Peace Corps Volunteers that are in the Cuenca area; Julie, her brother Seth, Jamie, Clint, Sonia, to name a few. They are just a terrific bunch of kids, helping locals with a variety of projects, and just getting some of the best experiences you can get in life. Like Tristan, most have been here about a year and their Spanish is terrific. John and I had a blast treating them to drinks and dinner at La Cigale for about 6 dollars a person! The prices were so unbelievably low to us, yet the quality and freshness of the food was impressive. Though 6 dollars wasn’t low to the PCVs who live on about 10 dollar per day! We figured what we live on a day, and its not 10 dollars!

Next up was dinner with the Padre at the beautiful blue Banos church. Now this event had Tristan really worried, but we didn’t let him down. We attended the mass before hand (I loved the dogs just trotting up and down the aisles), then ate dinner with 14 folks all in Spanish. I thought Catholics were big drinkers and I was looking forward to some nice wine with dinner to facilitate my Spanish. But alas, no wine again, just a spot of coke. Dinner was once again the cuy and chicken on an enormous bed of rice and potatoes. But rumors of my not liking cuy had made it to the church and I was mercifully spared. The boys this time were served an entire half of cuy, including head and feet. Tristan and John ate quite a bit. They like the crispy roasted skin, but its pretty clear to me there is no meat on these animals. I hear it tastes like pork.

Speaking of pork, Friday is pork roasting day in Banos and all sorts of folks set up a freshly killed pig and roast it on the spot with a big ass blow torch. They sell it piece by piece to passers by. I think I will try that this Friday in downtown Wayne, PA. Tristan said we had to get there early or it would be all gone. He was right. We got there about 9am, just in time to watch these folks skillfully torch the pig (it was already dead), scrape the skin and do that again. It looked like hard work. Cars started pulling over for a square of the crisp roasted skin, salted on a bed of these weird big corn pieces called Mote. We were back later for the rendered bacon. Omg, was that terrific. That may actually have been the only day I ate fat. For the most part we consumed fruit in massive quantities either fresh or ground up in drinks including a yummy avocado shake. There were the usual fruits; papaya, watermelon, mango, and bananas. But there were also fruits like tomato del arbol which reminds me of a persimmon and is actually a member of the potato family even though it grows on trees (go figure); granadillas which somewhat look like a lime on the outside, but you cut it open and scoop out the sweet brain-like insides; and uvillas also known as gooseberries (my new favorite). They even make a fruit soup here. It’s traditional for November 1, the day of the dead, but good anytime I can attest. I think I will make it for Thanksgiving if I can find any decent fruit that time of year.

Tristan’s Banos friend showed us his fighting roosters. They are beautiful, but when you set them on the ground they take on the nearest living thing. Just like our Jack Russell Daisy. Actually, they stared each other down, jumped over one another, fluffed up etc. But without spurs on, it’s kind of like my dogs fighting. It was all show.

We went with Tristan shopping for stuff for his apartment, including shopping for a used refrigerator. Tristan says you ‘Google Ecuador style’, which means you just ask a bunch of cab drivers where to buy a used refrigerator until you find one that does. Haha I thought, no Craig’s List? What kind of country is this? But with 90 minutes we had located a beauty that was big enough to fit the beer keg we brought him (I kid you not) and had it delivered to his apartment. Beat that Craig’s List. Other shopping adventures included going to the big open air market where you can buy everything (except used refrigerators) and get your fortune told by a parakeet named Lulu. It’s pretty complicated and I am still trying to decipher just exactly what my fortune is.

A visit to Cuenca wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Inca Lounge run by “Mike”. This cute place is conveniently located near our hotel, which may be why Tristan had found it. Inca serves up great food and drink to a mix of ex pats and locals. Oh, but the Ecuadorian government doesn’t allow liqueur to be served or sold on Sundays. What’s that about guys? It doesn’t go over so well with the vacationing set or the locals for that matter. But other than that, the locals I spoke to in my limited Spanish had nothing much to complain about and were rather proud of their country and even their government.

As if Tristan weren’t up to enough, he coaches a local rugby team. Due to most of the men taking night classes, practice often doesn’t start until 10p! But it must be working as they are still basking in the glow of their gold medal finish from last fall! John managed to stay up late enough for one of his practices.

Finally, we saw a lot of evidence that Cuenca really is on the top ten list of ex-US places to retire as reported by the Wall Street Journal. We didn’t meet any tourists, but all the elderly gringos we saw were searching for a place to live here. We can certainly understand. We loved this area of Ecuador, the people, natural beauty, even the crazy insane 25 cent bus rides around town.

Ciao. Until next time!
Patricia and John Schreck