Ecuador II

"Desayuné jueves con café", I wrote in my notebook.  "I ate Thursday for breakfast with coffee".  Huevos= eggs.  Jueves=Thursday. Oops. Another language learning highlight was when I was eating lunch and a guy asked me what I was drinking.  "Jugo de niña" I replied, smiling.  "Girl juice". He looked awfully confused, then said, "ahhh, hugo de piña".  Pineapple juice.  Double oops.  The salsa lessons aren´t going much better. The only lesson since last week came from a diminutive guy who insisted on dancing with me at one of the beach bars this weekend, poor boy. Luckily i had bare feet so I didn´t injure him. Eventually he gave up on the salsa: "Bailas como quieres," he begged, "Dance however you want."

 

The beach? Yes, the beach.  A 9 hour bus ride down 7000 feet to the Pacific.  10 gringos went to the beach this weekend to celebrate two gringa birthdays.  Unfortunately Emma had to work, so I was a stranger among strangers.  I didn´t know any of them, and it felt like the cast of The OC.  Wow. These girls were prepared! Two days at the beach, and each one had a hiking backpack full of tequila, 14 serongs, 6 cute outfits, jewelry, gigantesque sunglasses, and a complete set of cosmetics. I was fascinated. 

 

Montañita.  It´s a tiny town on the ecuadorian coast north of Guayaquil that has been entirely usurped by surfers who came for a week and never left.  Dude.  To say that the atmosphere is laid back is a gross understatement.  I had a great hummous and eggplant sandwich.

 

In other gastronomical news, I have been slurping down ceviche like it´s my job--it´s seafood marinated in citrus until it´s ´cooked,´ with onions and cilantro... mmmmmm.  Expensive, though, at $5 a pop, give or take.  A lady in my friday night conversation class said she´d teach me how to make it.  And did I mention the avocados.  My god.  They are like butter.  And the ripe plantains... que rico.

 

Last night I was walking home and a tantalizing whiff of street meat caught my nose. I couldn´t resist.  "Am I going to get sick?" I asked Rubén when I got home.  He grinned, "wait two or three days."  I´ll keep you posted.

 

In other news, my other housemate Karen went to Peru and they didn´t let her back into Ecuador because she had used up her 3 month tourist visa plus 3 one-month extensions.  Chuta.

 

So it goes on this side of the equator...

Ecuador

¡¿How are you?! ¡I´m fine! ¡¿Who knew upside-down punctuation was so much fun?!  ¿Can your keyboard do this: ¡!¡!¡!¡!?

Enough.  My one-week update:

I am in Cuenca, a charming, laid-back town in the Andes at a mere 7000 feet.  The mountains rise around the town and play ping-pong with the clouds.  It rains every day, anything from a few gotas to downpour, with sun splashes in between. Unfortunately there´s no daily weather schedule, so at any given time you have to be prepared for everything from chilly driving rain to sun that reminds you that you´re at the world´s waistline. 

Because of the mountains the town is fairly isolated from mass tourism, which is lovely.  I haven´t seen a tourbus yet, but maybe that´s because your conventional tourist doesn´t necessarily plan a trip to Cuenca in the rainy season.

The architecture here is colonial, with neo-classical details painted green, blue, pink, whimsical and charming. And they have a system of numbering addresses that´s really quite ingenious. The city layout is a grid and each address has the number of the block AND the number of the building, so if you´re at 7-13 Mariscal Sucre Street, and you have five minutes to get to 2-13, you know you have 5 blocks to go and are going to be late for your Spanish lesson...

Speaking of which, I´m taking lessons one-on-one with a lovely lady who decided in the middle of class today that we would leave the past participle and have a salsa dancing break.  Frankly, I´m more comfortable with past participles, but I´ll take the cultural lesson, too.  Watch out, Blue Hill, I´m gonna come back all sassy and hip-swinging.

(Speaking of coming back, for those of you who haven´t been updated, my plans have changed and I´ll be home for only 2 weeks before heading off to grad school at Boston University in mid-June. No summer in Maine, but kate and I will carpool for weekend visits!)

As for my living situation, I´m sharing a flat with a beautiful view of the town (which means it´s way uphill from...everything (good for the cardiovascular system) with an Ecuadorian guy named Ruben and a Brit named Karen. He does graphic design and marketing and she teaches English. The rent is 90 bucks a month including cleaning service once a week and internet. Unreal.

 View from my digs

¿What else?

My Spanish is crap still, but I´m learning...

When Paula was still here we went to Cajas National Park on the weekend with Emma, which at 12,000 feet kicked all of our butts. Strange Andean flora and swampy landscape. We hitched a ride back to Cuenca on an empty school bus, and all fell asleep.  When the lady woke us up we were back in Cuenca and mightily confused.  Why are we on this school bus? Why is there a bunch of plantains next to me?

We also visited the jewelry shops of Chordeleg and the market in Gualaceo, where we passed up roasted guinea pig for roasted regular pig, which was delicious.  I suppose some day I´ll try the guinea pig, though I haven´t heard rave reviews...

 

There´s loads more to tell...  but I´ll leave it at that for now.