This Can Be You Too... (hint, hint)

Alright, alright... Enough complaining about no blog entry for a while! I’ve received at least five formal complaints, so I figured it was time for me to hanker down and get something online.

A few weeks ago I received my first visitor from the States for a 2 ½ week stay in Ecuador. You all should start planning your visits as well since I know all of you want to relish in the presence of roadside Virgin Mary figurines in every direction, an endless supply of arroz con pollo (rice with chicken), and the satisfaction of feeling tall if you’re 5’6” or more.

Matt, or Mateo as he’s called in our circle of friends (or pain-in-the-ass as he’s called behind his back... just kidding (sort of)), arrived in Quito, the capital of Ecuador a few weeks ago. Like the self-sacrificing person I am, I endured the winding 14-hour overnight bus ride through the Andes to meet him at the airport. We checked into a nice hotel in the old section of the city (which is a United Nations World Heritage Site) and then set out to explore the sites. We passed through a couple of nice plazas complete with 10-year-old shoeshine boys trying to convince you that it’s possible to shine your Nike’s, and checked out a few churches including La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús, which was constructed between 1605 and 1765 and has an insane amount of gold leaf covering just about every surface in the place (supposedly seven tons of gold was used). On the main plaza we randomly bumped into another Peace Corps volunteer and her visiting mother, and then things went downhill. Actually, we were walking uphill a couple of blocks away from the main plaza when Mateo felt a tug at his waist. It took a few seconds to actually process what just happened, but some delinquent (this is the PG version, but feel free to replace delinquent with more “potent” vocabulary) ripped the camera off his belt buckle that was hanging on his side with a carabineer. Mateo shot off after the guy but having just landed at 9400 ft above sea level from about 100 ft above sea level in NY, he was thoroughly out of breath after 4 blocks, and now his camera likely sits in the storefront of some electronics store in Quito. Needless to say, Mateo wasn’t in the best of moods after the incident, but we went to have a beer and some empanadas at a cool (and overpriced) restaurant up on a hill overlooking the city. Alcohol and fried food didn’t seem to make him any happier so we decided to head back to the hotel to relax for a bit before dinner. On the cab ride home we were stopped at a light in a crowded section of the city and we saw some crazy guy wearing eye shadow walking along the sidewalk. Mateo was still on full-alert after the camera incident, and quickly reached over to lock the two back doors in the car. Unfortunately, the front passenger door was still unlocked and guess who decided to get into our cab? Yup. The nut job started waving a $5 bill in the cab driver’s face while the cab driver tried ever more aggressively to get the guy out of the car. Finally the guy got out, the light turned green, and we continued down the road. But wait, what happened to the music that was playing in the car? After a block or two, the driver hit the steering wheel and cussed. Apparently the hijo de puta (look it up) stole the face off the cab driver’s radio while he was distracting the driver with the $5 bill. Unreal. At this point, Mateo’s really loving Quito. So I think to myself, what will make him happy?

Cheese.

Mateo is composed of at least 40% cheese (primarily blue) so I start thinking back to the days when I took the SATs. Italian Food = high percentage of dishes blanketed in cheese. High percentage of dishes blanketed in cheese = Happy Mateo. Therefore, Italian Food = Happy Mateo. And I think after his 6000 calorie 4-cheese and bacon/pool-of-oil pizza he was in a much better state of affairs (even though the pizza probably robbed him of a couple months of life).

The next morning we were both happy to hightail it to the bus station and get out of Quito. In fact, the Peace Corps has made Quito off-limits for all volunteers for the entire month of December because it seems like almost everyone that goes there gets robbed.

So, we walked to the bus station passing the women enthusiastically selling food from miniature storefronts and screaming MOROCHOOOOOO!!!! (a kind of thick, hot drink made from corn, milk, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, and most likely some other items that are probably best left sans identity). From Quito we planned on heading to an eco-lodge high in the Andes at about 13,000 ft above sea level in an area consisting of almost all indigenous people that speak Kichwa in addition to Spanish. The lodge, called the Black Sheep Inn, was recently rated by Outside Magazine as one the top 10 eco-lodges in the world. On the way there, we changed buses in a small city called Latacunga where Mateo experienced his first $1.50 almuerzo (fixed lunch), which consisted of chicken soup (with lovely bits of chicken neck and foot), tree tomato juice (which has nothing to do with regular tomatoes), and a big plate of rice, rotisserie chicken and shredded beets. It was actually one of the better almuerzos I’ve had. From Latacunga, the $2, 4-hour bus ride up to the town of Chugchilan where the lodge is located was an adventure in itself. The bus was probably from about 1960 and was decorated in full Virgin Mary gear complete with pink fuzzy fabric outlining the rear view mirror and faux-mother-of-pearl accents. The contrast between us two gringos and the remainder of the bus dressed in full Andean-indigenous outfits was striking. Some women sat on sacks of rice and corn in the aisle while everyone else squeezed into the miniature seats for the journey. The scenery was spectacular and the road got narrower and bumpier the further along we traveled. At one point while I was silently fighting with the 80-year old woman behind me (I was hot and kept opening the window, while she was cold and kept closing it even though she was wearing thigh-high thick wool stockings and six sweaters), the driver’s helper, or ayudante, had to get out and direct the bus around a large chunk of missing road so we wouldn’t tumble down the cliff to our right. Finally, we got to the lodge and checked into the bunkhouse (which was a big mistake since Mateo snores like a Hoover and kept everyone up all night). We had a nice vegetarian dinner around a big communal table and then relaxed by the wood burning stove for a while. The next day, we headed out with some others at the lodge for a hike around the Quilotoa Crater Lake, a neat lake inside a dormant volcanic crater with eerie green alkaline water. Pregnant women sometimes bathe in the lake, which supposedly has some magical properties. The 5 hour hike was really nice, passing through some small indigenous villages along the way. The lack of oxygen at this elevation probably made everything seem a bit dreamier. Back at the lodge we relaxed with some beer and brownies, got light-headed in the wood-fired sauna with some other guests, enjoyed the panoramic views from the lodge’s composting toilets, and then called it an early night since the only bus out of Chugchilan leaves around 5AM.

The next day we headed to a town called Baños, located at the foot of the active Tungurahua Volcano. The town is quite the tourist trap but nice nonetheless. We had lunch at a place called Café Good (which should be renamed Café Bad), and then decided to go on one of the many hikes around the town. This hike was actually a lot more enjoyable than the hike near Quilotoa since we weren’t freezing our asses off the whole time due to the much lower elevation. Along the way, we passed by the Hotel Luna Runtun (http://www.lunaruntun.com), which is apparently one of the nicest hotels in all of Ecuador (the series of small pools overlooking the surrounding mountains looked amazing), and made our way to an overlook to check out the volcano. Unfortunately we were facing the wrong direction at the overlook and the cloud-shrouded peak we thought was the volcano was actually just another mountain. On the way back to the town we stopped for food at the beautiful glass-enclosed restaurant perched on the side of the mountain at the Hotel Luna Runtun. I had the chocho ceviche (lupine beans in a lemony broth with red onions and tomatoes) and a glass of fresh strawberry juice, and regretted it for the next 36 hours. I don’t actually know if it was the chocho ceviche that gave me the enjoyable diarrhea, fever and chills for the next many hours, but it sounds like a dish that could potentially be tainted, so I'll continue to place all the blame on those little malicious beans. After enduring hell for the entire night I decided to call the Peace Corps nurse in a cry of desperation. She got me started on some antibiotics (which Mateo will proudly point out that he suggested the same thing hours before), and I started feeling a bit better after another 5 or 6 hours.

From Baños, we were intending to do a supposedly spectacular 60 km downhill bike ride to the town of Puyo located in the jungle to the east, but because of my ghastly state of affairs we canceled that idea and hopped on the bus in the same direction. The road between Baños and Puyo is called the Ruta de las Cascadas, or Route of the Waterfalls since there are about a dozen big falls along the way, some of which you can swing past on a cable car over 300 ft above the gorge floor. We met up with another Peace Corps volunteer from Puyo (also Matt) in the town of Rio Verde to check out the massive Pailon del Diablo waterfall, had some empanadas with a bunch of Germans that Mateo met while I was making friends with the toilet seat in Baños, and then headed the rest of the way to Puyo, where I went to sleep in Matt’s apartment at 6PM and didn’t wake up until 8 or 9 in the morning. The next day we checked out the orchid garden just outside of town that Matt’s been helping out, which was very nice, and then headed to the city of Ambato where we were lucky enough to catch a 10-hr overnight bus back to Loja. The windows on the bus didn’t open and it was 500 degrees in the cabin – a truly pleasant experience, especially since we got seats right next to the fragrant bathroom with blue disinfectant liquid sloshing around all night.

After the week and a half of traveling, Loja was nice and relaxing. We had some decent food, checked out the botanical gardens, headed to the town of Vilcabamba for a cheap full-body massage, and spent some time in Loja’s Jipiro Park. This park is considered by some to be one of best in Ecuador, and it’s certainly the most unique, resembling a giant-sized miniature golf course complete with somewhat cheesy replicas of Russia’s St Basil’s Cathedral, a Japanese Pagoda, the Eiffel Tower, and other famous international buildings. Mateo also came along to the orphanage twice and it was nice that I could take a break as human jungle gym for a while!

We were also able to check out the amazing Sunday morning food market here, which has a phenomenal rainbow of hundreds of kinds of fruits and vegetables, fresh eggs brought in by local farmers, and other goodies. I convinced Mateo to try the local horchata as well. Horchata is a tea that’s made from 28 herbs and flowers that grow in the region around Loja with a bright red, almost Kool-Aid-like color. You can make it with just the herbs and flowers, but the real thing can only be found in the local markets. Women squeeze the thick juice out of giant aloe vera leaves and heat it up in a big pot with some sugar. They fill half your glass with the horchata tea and then add a big ladle of the aloe-sugar liquid, which has a striking resemblance to thick, clear mucous. The way they pour it into the glass from about 3 feet up in the air really highlights the mucous-like consistency of the stuff. But, if you can get past the slick texture of the resulting drink, it’s actually really good (and good for you).

When Thanksgiving came along, volunteers started filtering into Loja (almost 40 in all) for a big potluck dinner at my apartment. It was quite the event and my landlord even opened up the private disco for us on the floor above my apartment (containing a light-up robot and star-painted ceiling, of course). There was a ton of food, but luckily a lot of people had a second wind around 11PM and we ended up with surprisingly few leftovers (other than the untouched store-bought Barney cake that someone thought was a good idea to bring!).

And so that concludes Mateo’s two and half week visit. The Friday night after Thanksgiving he rode the night bus back to Quito to catch his flight back to the States on Saturday. Slots are filling up quickly for other Kreiselman Vacations, so book yours now!

Happy Holidays to all and Live Well in 2009!

Enjoy the pics and as usual click a few times to enlarge. Then click "slideshow" to view full screen.