Ecuador Photos

Random photos from Riobamba

2012-03-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

Hornado for sale

You have to like pork to eat in this place. The only item for sale is hornado, which is whole roast pig. Each place has their own whole pig, front and center. When you order it, they tear off some of the meat, which is served with "cueros" or "cueros reventados" (crispy pork rinds, really bad for you and unbelievably delicious), "mote" (a type of bland corn that goes really well with meat dishes), "papas" (potatoes), and maybe another item or two, according to the vendor. You can also get a bottle of cold pop. Hornado is available in all Ecuadorian cities, but you rarely see a whole market dedicated to hornado.

Juan Galo de Lavalle

Juan Galo de Lavalle was an Argentinian general who fought alongside Ecuadorian forces in both Quito and Riobamba during the Ecuadorian battle for liberation from the Spanish.

Ecuador considers itself to be the first country in South America to declare independence from Spain, although not everybody agrees that Ecuador was the first country to do this. The key date was August 10, 1809, when a group of Quiteños deposed a representative of the Spanish government and formed a provisional government in Quito. This is known in Ecuador as "el primer grito de independencia" (the first cry of freedom) and is celebrated with a national holiday.

In Riobamba they say that everything started in Riobamba and not Quito, in a battle fought at the "Loma de Quito" (Quito Ridge or Quito Hill). That is where this statue stands. I'm not clear on the particulars of this, and would like to look into it further when I return to Ecuador.

Church visible from Loma de Quito

This beautiful church is visible from Loma de Quito. The view is roughly north or northeast.

Caro makes a friend in the street

Flor and I are cat people. We took to this cat when we saw it on the street in Riobamba.

Street cats have a rough life in Ecuador. Not nearly as many people keep cats as pets in Ecuador as do in the U.S., although those people who do have cats care for them very well. Street cats do not have a long life expectancy. Flor lost a cat once when somebody poisoned it, not uncommon for outdoor cats.

This cat belonged to an indigenous woman who was seated on the sidewalk around the corner, selling food. The cat was well-cared for.

Odds and ends from Ambato

2012-03-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

Parque Cevallos in Ambato. The statue is of the park's namesake, Pedro Fermin Cevallos.

A storefront not far away from the park.

Flor's and my breakfast. We had bread, eggs, juice, and coffee, which is fairly typical. Eggs are easy to order in restaurants, but I have seen them served less frequently in Ecuadorian homes for breakfast. The fruit juice at Ecuadorian meals is almost always sweetened, which is something to be aware of if you watch your sugar intake.

I bought the leather backpack 13 (or 14?) years ago in Cotocachi, and it is still going strong. The only place where it has started to give is where the straps attach to the bag. To be honest, I didn't buy it to use as a backpack. I thought it would make a good carry-on bag to fly with. But over the years it has received a lot of use as a backpack and has come through really well.

Ernesto Albán

2012-03-01T07:00:00.001-08:00

When we reached a statue of Ernesto Albán, a deceased Ecuadorian actor, everybody wanted to pose with him. Flor says that Ernesto Albán was a comedian who made a lot of political commentaries that other people couldn't get away with. Apparently he is much beloved by Ecuadorians, or Quiteños at least. The statue stands across a small plaza from Teatro Sucre, off Guayaquil street.

Flor en la calle de siete cruces

A couple strolling in front of a church

Flor with Ernesto Albán

Pablo takes a turn...

...and Paulina

Crazy Horse

2012-02-29T05:12:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention that the horse in yesterday's post was crazy.

Shortly after I took the picture below, the horse turned around and bit Flor on the shoulder. Luckily the horse mostly got a mouthful of Flor's wool jacket, which probably didn't taste too good. The horse let her go after just a couple of seconds. After the initial shock wore off, Flor and I were able to smile, although we were a little shaken, because the situation could have turned out to be serious.

All smiles here!

Yellow Flor

Yellow horse

Back to work

Remembering Quito

2012-02-28T05:01:00.001-08:00

Flor and I were looking at these photos last night and reminiscing about Quito. We can't wait to return. We'll be there in early June. Quito looks more beautiful to us by night than it does by day. All of the night photos from the past couple of days were taken on the same night, and it was just an ordinary night, nothing special. There are people walking around like this all the time. There was a concert that night, but that is nothing unusual for Quito. After all, Quito is the capital of Ecuador, with a population of 3,000,000 people, embassies from every nation in the world, several theaters and art centers, and lots of tourists. It is pretty easy to find cultural events during the week.

This was around 8:00 P.M. Some people say that the center of Quito is a place to avoid at night. That has not been my experience. Then again, I don't push the envelope too much. I don't stay out much past 8:00 P.M. unless there is a concert or something, and even then I go right home afterwards. It also helps to walk in groups. Still, I have never felt the heebie-jeebies in the center of Quito at night, which is not true of everywhere I've been in Ecuador. I guess I'll cross my fingers and hope that my good luck continues. It might not be luck, either. I believe there is something to the idea that we find what we are looking for.

Flor on a colorful street

Church window

A busy street

This horse was pulling a carriage around for hire.

Here is the carriage.

Night walk in Quito III

2012-02-27T04:39:00.000-08:00

Flor and Pablo

Flor and Pablo in front of a church (El Carmen Bajo?)

A street

Carondelet, East side of Plaza de Independencia, Virgen de Quito visible on El Panecillo

North side of Plaza de Independencia

Night walk in Quito continued

2012-02-26T08:10:00.000-08:00

Flor and Pablo

A street

A meeting place

Pablo and friends. Flor took this shot.

Night walk in Quito

2012-02-25T06:35:00.001-08:00

This statue is on the west (uphill) side of la Basílica

A corner of La Basílica

Flor and her brother Pablo

The view east from La Basílica, down Carchi Street

Stopping at a store

Skies over Quito

2012-02-24T07:14:00.002-08:00

Here is a nice picture of color in the Quito sky a little bit before sunset. This is looking up Avenida Universitaria from Avenida America. (I think!)

Quito doesn't often have colorful sunsets. The sun is still high above the horizon when it goes down behind Mount Pichincha to the west of Quito, so the sunlight hasn't had a chance to separate into colors. Often too, the sky around Mount Pichincha is completely filled with clouds from the afternoon thunderstorms. I used to complain that I missed nice sunsets in Quito, so when Flor saw this photo she made sure that I blogged it. Once in a while the sky can be colorful in Quito.

For those who haven't lived on the equator, the sunrises and sunsets are very regular. The sun comes up more or less at 6:00 A.M. every day, and sets at more or less 6:00 P.M. every night. It is not perfect. There are maybe 5-20 minutes of variation in the times, depending on the time of year. But the variation is much smaller than it is at more northern and southern latitudes. I got used to judging the time pretty accurately from where the sun was in the sky.

Pintag

2012-02-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

These pictures are of Pintag, a small town east of Quito. I have been through Pintag a couple of times, to get into the mountains near Antisana, a large extinct volcano that is visible from Quito.

I wish now that I had taken more photos of Pintag when I was there. The architecture is nothing special, but the surrounding scenery is very green and beautiful. Maybe the background in this first picture gives a sense of that. If you right click on the picture and open it in a new tab, there is a little more resolution.

The church in Pintag.

More from El Centro de Quito

2012-02-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

I have been blogging photos from the center of Quito for a few days now. All of the photos were taken on the same day. Here are the last few photos I want to share from that day. Then I'm going to move on to something different for while.

There are a lot of loose dogs in Quito, at least there were the last time I was there. Pet ownership has gone up quite a bit in the past ten years in Ecuador, and there is now a need for some sort of animal control, whereas there was not in the past. This guy is just hanging out, but sometimes you see small packs of dogs, and there is nobody to call to take care of them. Usually nothing happens, but I have seen news of attacks on the television. I am used to being around animals, but there has been a time or two when I was intimidated on the street in Quito by dogs. Probably here in the center of the city loose animals never get to be a huge problem, because it is such an important area of the city, with the government, that they would do something about the dogs before it got to that point. But in neighborhoods away from the center of the city, you can be startled by a group of loose dogs running towards you in the street.

I love the clouds in this picture. Quito is gray a lot of the time. I enjoy the chance to wear long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. Quito can also be very hot and sunny. It depends on the day and the time of year.

I'm not sure what this building is--maybe the old library? This is a typical street scene in the center of Quito. Lots of people, lots of activity.

Almost all of the buildings in the center of Quito have balconies. It is the colonial Spanish style of architecture. I love this guy walking down the street, just thinking to himself. I've spent a lot of time doing the same thing in the center of Quito.

I blogged a house in Ambato where Flor's family had an apartment when she was a child. Here is another place they lived, in the center of Quito. The building to the right of the church is apartments. Flor's family had the doorway closest to the church. The apartment was interior. They couldn't see the street.

El Panecillo

2012-02-21T07:09:00.000-08:00

Here is El Panecillo, Quito's most distinctive landmark. This is the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower of Quito.

The Virgin of Quito is the landmark, but El Panecillo, which means bread roll in Spanish, is what everybody calls it. El Panecillo is the name of the hill, which is small and round like a roll.

This was the beginning of the heavy metal concert that I mentioned in an earlier post. This is the Plaza of San Francisco. The concert doesn't look like much, but it was loud. This is about as close as I wanted to get. The bands were local. Interestingly, a number of hard rock bands put Quito on their tours, and there is a kind of scene here. AeroSmith was the last band through.

Here is a close up of the Virgin of Quito. What surprised me about this statue when I finally made it up there was its size. It is much bigger than it looks like from below. The ring below her feet is actually an observation deck that you can climb up to. There are some people near the base of the statue to use for reference.

Avenida José de Sucre

2012-02-20T04:30:00.000-08:00

I took this picture standing next to Compañía de Jesús (in yesterday's post) looking east down Avenida José de Sucre.

There was a loud outdoor heavy metal concert that day a few blocks away. These might have been fans on their way to the show.

Flor is waiting for me to stop taking pictures.

This is no longer Sucre Avenue. I think it is Calle Guayaquil. At any rate, the view is south towards El Panecillo.

Street of the Seven Crosses

2012-02-19T08:04:00.004-08:00

These pictures are from the Calle de Siete Cruces, or Street of Seven Crosses. The real name of the street is Gabriel Garcia Moreno, after a two-term President of Ecuador in the 1800s.

Gabriel Garcia Moreno forms the western border of La Plaza de Independencia. The pictures in today's post were taken just south of the plaza.

The first picture is of La Compañia de Jesús, a very famous church. The next three are street scenes. You can see crosses in a few of the pictures.

Plaza de Independencia

2012-02-18T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of the Plaza de Independencia. This area is the center of activity for Quito's historic center, although there are several other important plazas in Quito's historic center. Ecuador's presidential estate, Carondelet, overlooks Plaza de Independencia. An important church, Catedral Metropolitano, is located here, and the Catholic Church in Quito also has its headquarters on the plaza.

But apart from the important buildings, which are everywhere around the plaza as well as in the plaza itself, it is people that give life to Plaza de Independencia. I took these pictures on a particularly busy day, but there are always a lot of people here. People rush through in a hurry to get somewhere, or buy an ice cream cone and sit on the benches.

This view of the plaza is from the front of Catedral Metropolitano, looking out.

Carondelet, the presidential palace.

A view across the plaza in front of Carondelet. A group of dancers is doing the ribbon dance, a traditional dance that you can see if you catch one of Ecuador's International Ballet companies. I didn't notice the dance when I took the picture, but I can see the ribbons here, tied to a pole in the background on the right.

To the left of the dancers up a hill is Ipiales, a market with a little bit of everything, which used to spill out onto the street and was a very colorful area. The vendors have been moved indoors now.

I took this shot of Catedral Metropolitano at a funny angle. Plaza de Independencia is flat, not inclined as it appears here.

Towards Plaza de Independencia

2012-02-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of the area between La Basílica (which I've been blogging the past couple of days) and Plaza de Independencia (which I will blog tomorrow).

I really like this section of Quito, for the architecture and the quiet. Plaza de Independencia is not quiet, but these streets just to the north are.

Just a building on a street.

A high school in front of La Basílica.

Another view towards Plaza de Independencia, with El Panecillo a little bit closer than in yesterday's picture. Check out the details in the yellow building.

I've asked Flor if people live in these buildings. She says that some people do, but that many of the buildings have been converted to office space.

Blue Building near La Basílica

2012-02-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

This blue building was next to La Basílica, the church I blogged about yesterday. Here are a few views that all have this blue building in common.

The streets around La Basílica are usually quiet like this. Other areas in Quito's historic center are crowded and noisy. I will blog more photos of Quito's historic center later in the week.

In the distance on the bottommost photo you can see the Virgen de Quito on El Panecillo, Quito's most famous landmark.

La Basílica by Day

2012-02-15T03:16:00.000-08:00

These pictures are of La Basílica, one of the churches in Quito's historic center. I blogged a picture a few months ago of La Basílica at night.

I will have more pictures of Quito's historic center over the next couple of days.

Instituto Geográfico Militar

2012-02-14T06:30:00.001-08:00

Here is Flor with a small piece of Quito in the background, and Mount Pichincha.

Behind the photographer (me) is the Instituto Geográfico Militar, which is the only place in Ecuador that I know of to buy topographical maps. It is at the top of the hill Flor is standing on.

I didn't take a picture of the Institute itself, but I'm not sure I should have, since it is a military institution. You have to leave your ID with them at the gate to get in. Inside there are big tables with sample maps spread out. After perusing the maps, you order the ones you want at a window. Then you go back to pick them up later. They print them to order.

The clouds behind Flor built themselves up into a strong hailstorm about an hour after the picture was taken, which is not uncommon in Quito. Many days in Quito start out sunny, then you see clouds building up near Mount Pichincha, small, fluffy, non-threatening clouds, then at some point the clouds get that look, and you go, "Uh-oh." This was one of those days.

A llama from El Cajas, outside Cuenca

2012-02-13T04:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture from El Cajas, outside Cuenca. It's from 1999. That was the year that Flor and I were married. In this picture we are engaged. We were married a couple of months later.

Just so that you can understand how completely oblivious I am at times, I did not see the llama in this picture until after the film was developed. We were hiking with some friends and they said, "Let's take some pictures here." I figured the reason we were stopping was that the scenery was so beautiful.

Once we got past the fields, this hike followed the course of a small creek up into the mountains.

Cementerio de El Batán, Quito

2012-02-12T07:49:00.000-08:00

This is Cementerio de El Batán in Quito, where Flor's mother is at rest. The forest in the background is one edge of Parque Metropolitano, which I blogged about a few days ago, and which has extensive hiking and biking trails.

I don't know what this building is. I thought the little courtyard inside the gate looked pretty.

There are lots of flower vendors outside the cemetery.

Many Ecuadorians are laid to rest in "nichos", or niches, like this.

Flor has her eyes closed here, but if I limited myself to pictures where she has her eyes open, I wouldn't have anything left to blog with! This is the view west from an undeveloped corner of the cemetery, towards the northern half of Quito lying under Mount Pichincha.

Last pictures of Trip to El Pailón del Diablo

2012-02-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

I have some odds and ends pictures here to share. This woman is selling juice from sugar cane in Baños. She grinds the sugar cane up to order. The juice is really sweet and refreshing. A lot of sugar cane is grown around Baños. You even see it as an ornamental in some people's yards. There are many other vendors selling sugar cane juice along this wall. You can see them in the background.

Alba, Irina, Flor, and Jacinto at El Pailón del Diablo.

You know, sometimes the most ordinary pictures turn out to be the best ones. This is a snapshot of a gas station in Latacunga that we stopped at on the way to Baños. I like the bus. In the background is a huge mill that overlooks the river and the mountains begin behind the mill. This is south of the center of Latacunga and the view is roughly southeast.

This flower was cultivated, in the flower garden in Rio Verde that was attended by a gringo.

I took this quick snapshot at the door of the church in Baños, before I realized that I probably shouldn't be taking pictures. The church has all kinds of interesting entreaties and prayers of thanks written on the walls to the Virgen of Baños, which unfortunately I wasn't able to photograph.

Rio Verde

2012-02-10T03:35:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures from the town of Rio Verde.

Flor is showing off this string of beads from a jewelry seller at the head of the trail that leads down to El Pailón del Diablo.

Here are Irina and Flor, in front of the river itself (although you can't see the water).

The next three pictures are of flowers that were in a garden in Rio Verde. We paid $1 each to tour the garden. We thought the tour was worth it. There were some pretty neat flowers. The guy accepting money was a gringo. It wasn't his garden, he just worked there.

Somewhere in my collection of photos I have another picture or two of Rio Verde, including the church, but I can't find those pictures right now. I will post them when I do.

More flowers from trail to El Pailón del Diablo

2012-02-09T04:17:00.000-08:00

Jacinto and Flor. Jacinto really likes this picture. I do too.

I saw this flower off the trail up a little hill. I had to bushwhack to get this picture.

This shade of yellow is beautiful against the dark green of the forest.

This butterfly posed for a while on a rock right in the middle of the trail.

I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what this is. It is some part of a plant, that's all I know. All of the plants in this post were growing wild along the short trail to El Pailón del Diablo.

Here is a closer look at the previous picture.

This color seems extraordinary to me. I don't know how faithful the photograph is to real life. But the green in the picture looks right, so I assume the white balance isn't too far off. The flowers were probably close to this color in real life.

Trail to El Pailón del Diablo

2012-02-08T05:26:00.000-08:00

These pictures are from the trail down to El Pailón del Diablo. It is through a beautiful forest, which is almost completely unspoiled. Some of my favorite forests in Ecuador are on the eastern and western slopes of the Andes.

The trail is not long, but it is worth taking time to enjoy. Many people walk fast (or even run!) down the trail, because they are in a hurry to get to El Pailón del Diablo.

This little spill of water is typical of what you see as you drop down from the Andes into the rainforest anywhere in Ecuador. There are little rills and creeks and splashes and sprays of water everywhere. They seem to come out of nowhere, and disappear into nothing. If you like to look at little waterfalls, you will be very happy in this part of Ecuador. Flor is washing her hands here.

The next few pictures are of wildflowers in the forest, at least I think they are wildflowers. Since this was along a trail, there is always a possibility that somebody planted something. However, some of these flowers we spotted off the trail and I had to jump or hike a little bit to get to them, so I'm pretty sure they're wildflowers. I have more pictures like this coming up tomorrow.

I like the color of this flower. Rainforests and cloudforests are really green. Every now and then you see something with brilliant color, like the wild macaws in eastern Ecuador, but for the most part you are looking at green. Anything colorful really catches your attention.

The amazing thing about this plant was how it was hanging down out of thin air, a few feet off the ground, from a single tendril. I didn't do a great job capturing that with this picture.

At the waters edge

2012-02-07T04:24:00.000-08:00

These pictures are from El Pailón del Diablo, the subject of yesterday's post. Here are Jacinto and Irina on the observation deck.

Flor enjoying mist from the waterfall.

The observation deck seen from above.

The biggest of several drops in the waterfall.

El Pailón del Diablo

2012-02-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

El Pailón del Diablo

This view will be familiar to many people who have visited Ecuador. It is El Pailón del Diablo (Devil's Cauldron), east of Baños (itself east of Ambato, at the base of Mount Tungurahua). To get to El Pailón del Diablo, most people go to Baños first, then take a small bus down canyon, in the direction of El Puyo, to a tiny town called Rio Verde, named after the crystal-clear river that flows through town and which forms this waterfall. To get to this particular vantage point, you have to walk down a trail from the town of Rio Verde, then cross the river on a suspended bridge.

People overlooking the waterfall

El Pailón del Diablo is probably a lot bigger than what you think you are looking at. This photo is a crop of the first photo. Look back to the first photo and see if you can spot the people. There really is a lot of water coming over this thing.

Rio Verde flows out of Llanganates National Park, and upstream of the town Rio Verde is filled with trout. I have never fished there, but the people in town say that it is about a five hour walk to the little lake where they fish. When it rains a lot, the trout are supposed to wash all the way down into town, and people catch them there. I have seen boys fishing in the river in town.

There are a couple of small places to eat in Rio Verde, and one of the popular menu items is trout. I don't know if the trout in the restaurants are wild or farmed, since there are a lot of farmed trout in Ecuador as well as wild trout. It wouldn't surprise me that the trout were wild, since people are known to poach trout with nets in other sections of Llanganates National Park.

Jacinto and Irina are a lot more comfortable on this bridge than I was!

Here is the bridge that you cross to get to the best vantage point of El Pailón del Diablo. Yes, the bridge shakes and moves, and yes, you are really high up in the air, with nothing but rocks and spray and foam below. I won't hazard a guess as to exactly how high up you are, but take a good look at the waterfall again, and realize that you are some distance downstream from there and that the river has fallen even farther below you than it appears in the photo. I crossed the bridge in the middle, and tried not to look down. Jacinto and Irina stayed on the bridge for a long time, and even peered over the edge and looked down. Uh, no thank you. I was proud of myself just for making it across.

A Few More Pictures from Parque Metropolitano

2012-02-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

Here is our group from that day (minus me), Flor on the left, her brother Jacinto on the right, next to Jacinto is his wife Alba, and next to Flor is Jacinto and Alba's daughter Irina.

Here is a tiny yellow flower that we saw along the trail. There are some quiet fields with flowers in the park. The flowers aren't spectacular, but in some places there are a lot of them, and the fields are nice places to just sit and think, or watch bees.

This rainbow was in a large clearing near the highest part of the park. If you look closely just inside the left arch, you can see where the trail continued through the woods in the distance.

A Few Words about The Park and Quito's Air

The park is a nice place in general to get away from the hustle and bustle in Quito. For those who haven't yet visited Quito, it is a big capital city, with several million people and a lot of activity. It is the place that I know best in Ecuador, and the place that I love the most. The cultural opportunities are unequaled anywhere else in the country. There are free concerts, free movies, beautiful parks, beautiful architecture, traditional food, modern malls, opportunities to travel everywhere in the country, the list goes on and on. The bad things about Quito are pretty much the same points, that it is a big city with a lot of activity, and the air quality, well, let's just say that it isn't always what it could be. Part of this is due to the city's location in a sort of bowl, which impedes air flow, and part of this is due to vehicles with excessive emissions.

Flor really wants to live in Quito again, and I really want to live somewhere with clean air. We have talked about living near Parque Metropolitano as a compromise. When you are in the park, you can feel the difference in the air you breath as compared to being in the developed part of Quito. The trees scrub the air, and the park is higher than most of the rest of Quito, which also helps. Some very nice neighborhoods, such as Batán Alto, abut the park.

Some Pictures from Parque Metropolitano, Quito

2012-02-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures from Quito's Parque Metropolitano, on the east side of town. (Google maps labels it Parque Metropolitano Bellavista, but I've never heard anybody in Quito call it that, so I'm sticking with Parque Metropolitano.) The park sits on a ridge and is quite large. There are extensive hiking and biking trails. There is enough room to tire yourself out hiking and biking, if exercise is your goal. There are a few developed areas in Parque Metropolitano, but this is not a soccer field/playground type of park. It is more of a forest with trails. Here is a view east from the park, towards the valley of Puembo and Cumbaya and Tumbaco, with the Cordillera Orienta (Eastern Range) beyond, hidden in clouds. There are some big mountains in the background when the clouds are not there, including Antisana, one of the highest mountains in Ecuador.

This structure is made of upside down trees. You can pretty clearly see a lightning strike on one of them. Parque Metropolitano sits high on a ridge over town, and thunderstorms in Quito are frequent, sometimes daily. I have heard and seen some enormous lightning strikes in Quito. There is sometimes quite a bit of hail in Quito too, even to a depth of an inch or more, which causes floods in low-lying areas when the hailstones clog up the grates that lead to the sewer. You learn to keep one eye on the clouds in Quito.

This butterfly landed on Caro's brother Jacinto's wife Alba's hat when our group stopped to talk. She didn't notice until I showed her the picture.

Church in Guayllabamba

2012-02-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

Here are Flor and Dina, Flor's brother Vicente's wife, in front of the church in Guayllabamba.

It was raining a little bit that day, which was unusual for Guayllabamba. We were enjoying the raindrops, and the shade from the clouds.

A couple more pictures from Guayllabamba, and Roses

2012-02-02T05:29:00.000-08:00

Here are Flor and her brother Vicente on the terrace of Vicente's house. Flor is always really happy when we are in Ecuador.

Here are some flowers that Vicente and his wife, Dina, had arranged in front of their door when we visited them.

Flowers are relatively inexpensive in Ecuador. There is a large flower industry, centered around Cayambe, north of Quito, which exports flowers to the United States and elsewhere. The vast majority of roses sold in the United States come from Ecuador or Colombia. Flowers which are not of export quality are sold in Ecuador at a lesser price. This is true of other products that are produced in Ecuador for export, like bananas and shrimp--you can find seconds in the local markets.

When Flor and I got married, I bought her two dozen long-stemmed roses every week. No, I was not a big spender. Two dozen long-stemmed roses only cost a dollar back then! You can probably find long-stemmed roses in Ecuador for around that price still, if you look around.

There has been controversy around Ecuador's flower industry. There is heavy use of pesticides and little protection for workers and the environment. The roses grow 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, under lights. The greenhouses are lit up like large light bulbs. You can see them at night flying in to Quito, or on the ground if you are driving around. Some people claim that the lights disturb wildlife nearby, including nesting birds.

The flower industry in Ecuador has been able to flourish in part due to the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA), which allows Ecuadorian roses to enter the U.S. duty free. The idea is to encourage the flower industry as an alternative to possible illicit activity. Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia are beneficiaries of the ATPA. U.S. flower producers do not like the ATPA, which has all but ended the domestic rose industry. The ATPA went into effect in 1991, expired in 2011, and then was renewed until 2013. It appears that people in the area where the rose growing is centered, Cayambe, very much want the ATPA to continue, despite the environmental problems. At least that is what I read in El Comercio, the Quito newspaper.

Several times I have been startled in Ecuador to see rose petals strewn about the floors of churches during ceremonies, in quantities that seem extravagant, so that you are walking among rose petals as you would walk among leaves in autumn. But the economy of flowers in Ecuador is different than it is in the United States. Even people of limited means can afford to carpet the floor of a church with rose petals on special occasions.

Guayllabamba

2012-02-01T03:37:00.000-08:00

This is Guayllabamba, a small town northeast of Quito. I took the photo from the terrace of my brother-in-law Vicente's house. This view is roughly southwest, or back towards Quito. You can see the steeple of the Guayllabamba church in the background, a little to the right of center, in line with a small hill. The church overlooks the town plaza.

The terrain around Guayllabamba is arid, as are a number of small towns just north and east of Quito. A river runs through town and is used to irrigate the many fruit trees that people have planted. Guayllabamba is known for production of chirimoyas, which are a fruit with green leafy scales on the outside and white meat with intermittent very hard seeds on the inside. Chirimoyas are very tasty. They are also known for worms. My Ecuadorian friends always teased me that I was going to find a worm someday in a chirimoya, but I haven't yet.

Guayllabamba has a zoo, which I went to once (more than a decade ago), and thought was pretty good. It is the biggest zoo anywhere close to Quito, and taking the bus out from Quito to the Guayllabamba zoo is a popular day trip.

You can see in this photo how Guayllabamba is broken up into very regular blocks. There is one block, just out of sight on the left side of the photo, that has always fascinated me. It has beautiful trees planted everywhere, but you can only see their crowns; the walls are too high all the way around the block to look at the grounds. It is a secret garden that I hope to get inside the walls to see one day.

Last pictures of the Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-31T03:54:00.000-08:00

A pair of very acrobatic dancers, still with a lot of energy at the end of the parade.

Not quite as much energy left in the next few groups of dancers.

This was late in the day, and these dancers were still enjoying themselves.

All day long I wanted people to look towards the sun, so I could get better pictures of their faces. This couple looked at the sun, but couldn't keep their eyes open. I don't blame them.

This group is probably from El Oriente, the rainforest region in eastern Ecuador...

...as are these two runners, the end of the parade!

Clowns in the Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

This looks like a fun costume to wear. I'm sure that she is enjoying herself.

A born entertainer.

What do we do now?

Serious and a little hot and bothered from the sunshine.

This also looks like it would be a lot of fun to walk around in.

Pelileo in the Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-28T05:42:00.000-08:00

This gentleman is from Pelileo, which I have blogged about before. I believe that the dancers which follow him are also from Pelileo, as I have kept all of these photos in order.

I'm not sure what this man is carrying, but I want one! It looks like it is made of horn.

What a beautiful drum!

All of these photos were taken in front of a school, which decorated their walls with religious-themed messages. The light blue square behind the crowd says, "Have faith in yourself, because God lives in you! That's why believing in ourselves is believing in God. Ahead the road is yours."

My Favorite Group of Marchers, Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-27T03:30:00.000-08:00

This was my favorite group of marchers in the parade. All six pictures are of the same group. I wondered at first if all of the marchers were disabled, but then I realized that some members of the group were there out of solidarity and to care for the others. These photos say a lot about human beings taking care of one other. I wish I knew more of the story of these people. I don't even know where they are from, except that it is probably somewhere in El Oriente. They did not carry a banner to identify themselves like some other groups.

2012-01-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

These first two pictures are marchers in a high school band. They look a little uncomfortable in this clothing. The sun was hot.

I have a couple of pictures of this woman, and she has the ball held over her head this way in each one.

The dress of the marchers in these next two pictures is fantastic. Unfortunately, they were partially shaded, and I couldn't get them to turn towards me.

School Marchers, Puyo Drummer in 2009 Corso Parade, Ambato

2012-01-25T03:41:00.000-08:00

These guys were riding on top of a small bus, or buseta. I believe they call this kind of a bus a chiva on the coast. The banner is for a culinary school. It makes me remember the technical school I used to teach at here in the United States, which had an awesome culinary department.

This drummer is from Puyo, a city in the hot lowlands at the eastern base of the Andes. Notice the anaconda on his drum. I don't know how common anacondas are in El Puyo (I'm sure there are some), but they are certainly common farther east in the jungle. When I was in Yasuni National Park with a college group, the director of the station where we stayed told us that a twenty foot anaconda lived in the lagoon a short walk from our bunks. A few of us went out to look. It was hard to see the lagoon, because the jungle was so dense. I noticed a log that had fallen out over the water and walked out on it. I didn't see the anaconda, but about a hundred bats flew out around my head from underneath the log where they had been roosting. It looked like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

These students and their teacher are from the "Celite" bilingual education center. Bilingual education is big in Ecuador, and many students study another language from the first grade on. The high school that Flor taught at in Ambato was bilingual, and the students received all of their instruction in English.

This young lady was part of a high school marching band.

And here is her partner, in the first line.

Mocha Represents in the Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-24T04:14:00.000-08:00

This sign says, "Municipal government of Mocha, Dance Workshop School".

Mocha is a tiny agricultural town between Ambato and Riobamba on the Pan-American highway. I have a few pictures from Mocha which I will blog on a later date. Ambato and Riobamba are both dry-ish. As you drive up from Ambato towards Mocha (or as you take the bus up, which is what I always did), the scenery gets greener and greener, as you rise in elevation along the flanks of Carihuairazo and Chimborazo, two snow-covered volcanoes. The green is from the rainfall that comes with increased elevation. On the highest part of the drive, the scenery becomes idyllic, like a photo out of Country magazine, with cattle grazing in perfect bright green fields. Then, as you drop off of the shoulder of the mountain into Riobamba, the surroundings become a little drier and a little less green again. You left paradise behind you on the highway.

I'm struggling to remember if Mocha is in the greenest part of the drive, the part that I really like. As I remember, it is just north of the lushest fields, nestled into hills on the east side of Carihuairazo.

These two young people are dancers from the Mocha Dance Workshop School.

As are these three.

These dancers are too old to be students, but they might be adults from Mocha.

Here is a better view of the whole group of adults in the previous picture.

Indigenous dress, El Oriente and the Sierra

2012-01-23T03:54:00.000-08:00

I believe that the first three pictures in today's post were part of the Palora group, because of their position in my photo album. The pictures are numbered by the camera and everything is in order. Palora is in El Oriente, the eastern rainforest lowlands of Ecuador.

This young man and the next are striking the same pose.

This dress is typical of indigenous clothing in the sierra, the mountainous region of Ecuador.

Indigenous Clothing in Corso Parade Ambato 2009

2012-01-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

The first three women in today's photos are all wearing the same type of dress. I published photos showing similar dress yesterday. I didn't catch where this group was from, but it surely is somewhere in the rainforest lowlands east of the Andes, known as El Oriente in Ecuador.

This banner says "Palora", which is a town south of Puyo in El Oriente.

These young people were part of the Palora group.

I've never been to Palora, but I have been to El Puyo, which is very close. Puyo is the first major city (the term is relative) you hit in El Oriente east of Baños.

The countryside around El Puyo is flat, hot, and traced with wide, shallow rivers. Usually the mountains to the west are hidden in clouds, so when you do see them, it is almost a shock. There is a lot of green and it is nice to have forest around you after the fields of the hoyas in the Sierra.

The feel of the populated areas in El Oriente is quite different from the feel of the populated areas in the other two major regions of Ecuador, the sierra and the coast. El Oriente has a different history than the sierra and the coast, with many indigenous people not westernized until the second half of last century, and some not westernized still, although any people that are still not westernized live quite far to the east, away from any populated areas. The towns in El Oriente are sleepier than they are in the sierra, at least by day. The area is quite beautiful though, and appeals to a lot of people.

More Dancers, Indigenous Group from Corso Parade Ambato 2009

2012-01-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

The clothing on these dancers was just beautiful. Flor remembers the dance they did. It was very cool to see in person.

These people are members of an indigenous group from El Oriente. (El Oriente means The East in Spanish, and it is how Ecuadorians refer to the low rainforest jungle in eastern Ecuador.) There were several such groups in the parade. This is the first.

Here is another member of the same group, although he is dressed a little differently.

Stilts Walkers in 2009 Corso Parade, Ambato

2012-01-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

Today all five photos are of stilt walkers.

This boy doesn't look too happy.

These girls don't look too happy either. Their banner says "Bellavista Hardware, A world of tools". Maybe this particular group of stilt-walkers was just earning a paycheck. That would explain why their heart wasn't in the parade as much as the dancers' hearts were.

There's a nice smile!

Not really playing to the crowd. We're out here!

Corso Parade Ambato, Previous Year's Beauty Queen

2012-01-19T03:29:00.000-08:00

Here is another folk dancer. The thing that I like about these pictures is that I can appreciate the beauty of the dancers' clothing. In really life, they passed by us rather quickly. This parade had virtually no slowdowns.

Another couple with beautiful dance clothing.

The sash that this young lady is wearing says "Reina", so I guess she was the reigning Queen of Ambato. A new queen was chosen about a month after this parade.

Here is a wider view of the float that the Queen was riding in. I still didn't get the whole float in this picture. It was built on a flatbed trailer.

Two more coordinated dancers. Their faces look a little flushed. You can see behind them that the sun was really getting to everybody.

The climate in Ecuador's mountain cities changes over the course of a day. Often it is cool in the morning and evening, and very hot for a couple of hours during the day. This parade came during the hottest part of the day. The residents of Quito like to say that they get all four seasons in a single day. Ambato is a little warmer and a little drier than Quito.

Pink panther, Dancers, Pitchforks in Corso Parade

2012-01-18T04:17:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure who this is supposed to be. It looks like he is carrying a pitchfork. I get nervous around pitchforks.

Here is another of the many folk dancing groups that were present this day.

The Shiris of Quito. The drum says "First Army Division, Shiris, Quito".

This can only be the pink panther. I love the expressions in the crowd. Everybody has the same thought, "What the ...?"

What a beautiful couple.

More International Ballet Dancers, Latacunga Municipal Band

2012-01-17T04:51:00.000-08:00

This dancer is wearing a cape with the colors of the Ecuadorian flag.

This dancer is wearing the same cape, but it is mostly behind her in this picture.

This dancer, like the first two, was a member of the international ballet group.

Here is the Latacunga municipal band.

And here is the drummer for the band.

(P.S. I discovered yesterday that setting my screen resolution to 640*480 and setting my browser to full screen mode was a really good way to look at this blog. It must be that blogger is optimized for that resolution. Both of those settings are easy to change on my computer, and then change back. If it is easy to do on your computer, you might want to give it a try. It made a big difference to my eyes.)

International Ballet in Corso Parade, Ambato 2009

2012-01-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

There isn't much to say about today's marchers except to note how beautiful their traditional clothing is.

Well, maybe I can say something about this guy. I hope he didn't ride on the other person's back for the whole parade route.

This "international ballet" group is from Ambato.

I saw an international ballet group perform at Colegio San Gabriel in Quito and I have never forgotten the performance. This might be the same group I saw. It was more than ten years ago; I can't remember if the dancers at Colegio San Gabriel were from Ambato.

"International ballet" performances in Ecuador are not classical ballet. They are folk dances with elaborate costumes and props. The performance I saw in Quito was spectacular. The group was called "international" because the dancers traveled outside of Ecuador to other countries, as sort of dance ambassadors. Judging from the costumes that the children carrying this banner are wearing, I'm sure that this international ballet group does the same kind of folk dancing that I have seen before. If you get a chance to see an international ballet performance in Ecuador, please go. The dances are polished and beautiful.

A beautiful outfit, of the type that you would see in an "international ballet" performance.

And another.

Come to think of it, the dress that the woman in the first of today's pictures is wearing is also surely a costume that is worn during "international ballet" performances.

Sea Creatures from the Corso Parade

2012-01-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

Here's something you don't see every day. A purple lady with an octopus on her head, walking on whatever those things are.

I believe the blue man was a juggler.

Another sea creature, a seahorse I'm guessing.

I believe these marchers were supposed to represent mushrooms (or sea anemones? in keeping with the ocean theme). The woman in the foreground is making melcocha, which is candy. There are many people like her who make melcocha in Baños, which is not too far from Ambato. You get to watch them fold it and knead it, which is part of the appeal.

Here is another dancing couple.

More Corso Parade Pictures from 2009 in Ambato--Dancers, Gargoyle, Black and White Band

2012-01-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of the musicians that I showed yesterday. They are dancing and singing here.

What a beautiful costume and what a beautiful young lady. I love the colors and the way her hair is tied back.

This boy is obviously very proud of his role marching in the parade.

Here is another one of those weird gargoyle things, that looks like it should have come earlier in the parade. There are two sets of ram horns in this mask. One of them is upside down and the marcher has his or her hands on them. This mask reminds me of the embellishments on the outside of the famous church La Basílica in Quito, which are called grotesques. But gargoyle is the word that I have always used.

The picture of this band did not have a lot of color in it, and it was very dark, so I decided to show it in black and white. The boy in the bicycle helmet does not belong with the band.

Llama pants, Chuck Mangione Look-alikes from Corso Parade in Ambato 2009

2012-01-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

Once I saw pants like this man is wearing in real life. Here the pants are adornment, in a parade in Ambato, but once Flor and I were on a bus to El Oriente (the eastern Ecuadorian rainforest), and were passing through the páramo (the high, treeless area of the mountains), when a man got on the bus wearing pants like this. He had obviously been working in them. They were dirty, and were probably the pants that he wore every day. They are made of llama fur.

This singer has the country western look going for him. A lot of people were trying to get close to him. I think that's a picture of him on the door of the pickup truck.

Beautiful costumes, beautiful dancing.

This man was playing the trumpet and the saxophone. He reminded me of a young Chuck Mangione.

More happy musicians. This man also reminded me of a young Chuck Mangione. The male members of this ensemble had a similar look.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers "Feels so good".

After looking at these pictures, I had to look Chuck Mangione up on Wikipedia to see what happened to him. There was a list of his band members on the page, so I guess he must still be playing. After seeing current pictures of Chuck Mangione on the Internet, I decided to use the term "young Chuck Mangione" in this post. Chuck Mangione looks quite a bit different now than he did when he recorded "Feels so Good".

Still more Corso de las Flores y la Alegría Photos, Truck, Clown, Dancers

2012-01-12T04:29:00.000-08:00

Still more photos from the 2009 Corso parade in Ambato. These pictures sound happier themes than in the past couple of days. There are some interesting photos coming up over the next couple of days, so I hope you keep reading.

This truck is painted with the colors of the Ecuadorian flag. The flag itself is worth a look if you get a chance. The coat of arms features a condor and a vista of the mountains.

This is one of the cooler clown costumes I've ever seen.

There was a group of girls dressed like this that were dancing. They moved by me quickly and this was the best picture I got.

Now that's the spirit! This group of women was really enjoying themselves.

And here is another happy dancer.

More Parade Pictures--Caterpillar Train, Shaman, Blues Brothers?

2012-01-11T05:03:00.000-08:00

Here are more pictures from the 2009 Corso de las Flores y la Alegría parade. I have comments on a few of them.

Most of us have ridden on one of these at one time or another, an old fashioned caterpillar train. This train was filled with small children, but they are hard to see in the photo.

All day long I had trouble getting pictures of people looking at our side of the street. The reason is that the sun was behind us and none of the participants in the parade wanted to look into the sun. As you look through the pictures, you will see the spectators on the other side of the street using parasols, newspapers, and other items to shade themselves. We were in shade from the buildings behind us.

This man appears to be a kind of shaman, accompanied by a devil. He was "curing" people along the parade route. Notice the herbs in his hand. You can buy medicinal herbs in many markets in Ecuador. I bet they work (at least in some cases). My understanding is that some 40% of all medicines are derived from research into the chemicals in plants and other natural compounds (penicillin is the most famous story), and that the pharmaceutical industry was one of the only big business entities that lobbied for rainforest protection.

I'm not sure who this man is, but he appears to be carrying a baby. He has kind of a funny stride to be carrying a newborn.

This picture made me laugh when I saw it. It looks like one of the Blues Brothers, accompanied by the devil. And the devil is not very scary either. He looks a little dejected that people are not more frightened of him.

Devil Dancers in Corso de las Flores y la Alegría 2009

2012-01-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

This group of dancers wore costumes that all had a devil theme, or something along those lines. I'm not sure what it was about, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The girl in the first picture was one of about ten girls that were dressed identically. The men that followed wore masks with all kinds of weird horns and tusks and grimaces--well, you can see for yourself.

I apologize for the quality of the pictures. I left the ISO cranked all the way up from the night before, and didn't notice until after the parade was over. All the pictures of this parade were affected (including those posted on previous days and those to come), but today's group had a couple of particularly rough ones. The parade didn't last very long, and I was too busy snapping away to look down at my camera as I went along! The content of the photos is interesting though.

Dancer, Messages, Indigenous Bank, Stilts

2012-01-09T04:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure who this marcher is supposed to represent. I'm guessing that this person must have been the 21rst marcher in the parade. What else would the 21 stand for? I love the socks and the mask.

These students were carrying signs with messages related to road safety. A few examples: "Someone is waiting for you at home. Don't drink." "Mr. Motorcyle-rider, always use a helmet." "Mr. Bus-driver, don't be rude with passengers."

This beautiful float was for a savings and loan institution called Mushuc Runa. Mushuc Runa means "New Person" (I think) in Quechua.

Quechua is one of the indigenous languages of Ecuador. It is still widely spoken in the Ecuadorian sierra (mountains), especially in rural areas. The number of people that speak Quechua in Ecuador is in the millions. Quechua was the language of the Incas. Before the Incas there were a number of languages in the Ecuadorian sierra, but when the Incas came up from Peru and conquered what is today's Ecuador, they made everybody speak Quechua. In Ecuador you can hear radio shows in Quechua, lyrics to songs in Quechua, and you can hear Quechua spoken in daily life in markets and elsewhere. This bank was probably targeting indigenous people as customers, which is a common business strategy in certain parts of Ecuador.

I took a course in Quechua some years ago and did pretty well, but I've forgotten most of it. I never had a chance to speak Quechua outside of class, so what I learned didn't really take. It was more like a survey course than anything.

There are other indigenous languages in Ecuador, mostly in the low rainforest region to the east. Neither the Incas or the Spanish managed to conquer the tribes in the eastern part of Ecuador, supposedly due to the terrain and the forest. So a number of indigenous languages survived there, some of which are still spoken today, although not widely. The tribes in the east are now facing pressures from deforestation, oil development, mining, and other social and environmental factors. Most have become westernized, but a few have not. It is probably more correct to say that a few family units of certain tribes are not westernized, with other divisions of the larger tribes westernized. Some of these non-westernized groups live so remotely that they are considered to be uncontacted, although they come into conflict with other human beings, especially loggers.

Here is another of the many stilt-walkers that I always see in Ecuadorian parades. These stilts seem to be particularly high. I wonder, how did he get up on them, and how is he going to get down?

A number of people wearing ponchos and other indigenous dress were marching with the float for the Mushuc Runa bank.

Corso de las Flores y Alegría--Band, Clown, Girl, Chicken

2012-01-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Mary of South of Zero on her upcoming trip to Ecuador. I'm a little jealous. She is going to Salinas, among other places, which is a destination that Flor has tried to get me to see for years. The beaches in Salinas are supposed to be fantastic. If you haven't read South of Zero yet, you should. Mary compiles a daily guide to the posts on the various Ecuador blogs on the net. I always start with Mary's blog in the morning.

Here are more photos from the Corso de las Flores y Alegría parade in 2009 in Ambato. The photos will get more interesting as I go along, but I don't want to cherry-pick the best photos or jump the gun. Everything in due time. These photos are in the order things came in the parade.

I took the photos of this parade with my point-and-shoot, which means that most things are in focus front to back (no blurry backgrounds). I find that it's fun to do a little people-watching in the crowd with these photos.

Here's the band.

The obligatory clown. There were a few. Note the young man in the crowd trying to provide shade with an umbrella for the elderly woman.

Shameless chicken flirting with a beauty queen. He has a girlfriend of his own right next to him.

Here is the chicken back with his own girlfriend. You can see her legs on the other side of him. Yes, it is a KFC chicken. KFC is all over Ecuador.

This pickup truck was for a road safety education program put on by the National Police for children. Notice the puppet near the top.

I probably don't have to tell anybody living in Ecuador now that drivers in Ecuador are often aggressive. Caro's and my theory is that cars are important status symbols in Ecuador--not too many years ago few people had a car--and people with a car, consciously or subconsciously, feel they have a right to throw their weight around. Probably an oversimplification, but also probably true in many cases. There is a saying that drivers have in Quito, "¡Quitarán de ahí!", which is "You'll get out of the way!" Also probably true in most cases.

On the plus side, in many cities, Quito in particular, there are a lot of pedestrian overpasses, which if you can train yourselves to use them make crossing the street really safe.

This officer is clearly enjoying all the attention he's getting.

Corso de las Flores y la Alegría 2009

2012-01-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

This parade was called ¨Corso de las flores y la Alegría¨. It took place on January 6, 2009 in Ambato, Ecuador. I'm sure about the location. I'm trusting my camera to be right about the date.

This parade was not through the center of Ambato on Avenida Cevallos like the other parades that take place in town. It was up on the hill southeast of town, on Avenida de los Chasquis.

It was a big parade, and as you can see, the day was sunny and hot. I took a lot of pictures. I am going to show them in order over the next several days.

Cotton candy is as popular in Ecuador as it is in the United States. This vendor is anticipating a big day.

Flor and everybody else are waiting for the parade to start.

What kind of a parade would it be without the local fire trucks?

El Heraldo is the Ambato newspaper.

Here is the banner for the opening of the parade. As I mentioned, the pictures are in order, so this banner came in the parade after everything that is before it in this post. This guy is probably just saying Hi to somebody he knows. There was a lot of that going on.

Everything Comes in Twos in Alangasí

2012-01-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

Two people. (Flor and me, except that I'm taking the picture so you can only see Flor.)

Two cats.

Two dogs.

Two chickens.

I took these pictures on the same day in Alangasí, which is a small town in Valle de los Chillos outside Quito. I used my Minolta film camera. I have a lot of film pictures of Ecuador, but I don't have access to them at the moment. They are in my sister-in-law's apartment in Quito, and I am in Florida. These are some of the few that I scanned before I left.

Alangasí is a nice small town. We went there a few times. There isn't much to do except walk around. It was drizzling the day I took these pictures. Caro and I would like to live someday in a small town outside of Quito. That's why we were looking at Alangasí. There are places in Alangasí where you can sort of live in the country, but still be close to everything.

Fruit Salad Break

2012-01-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a break from blogging about parades (three more parades to go), and what better way to take a break than to eat a fruit salad?

Yes, that is a fruit salad, not an ice cream sundae, although they both look pretty much the same in Ambato. Every fruit salad that Flor and I ever ordered in Ambato was topped with ice cream, whipped cream, or both.

I've forgotten exactly where this restaurant is, but if I had to guess, I would say on Calle Martinez, in between Cevallos and Vela, on the south side of the street. They have an ice cream counter at the front of the store. Most people just buy a cone there and leave. In the back they have these tables where it is really nice to rest and get out of the sun. If I'm wrong about the street address, I'm not off by much. It's within a block at most of where I say, so you will find it if you poke around.

Most Ecuadorian ice cream is more along the lines of what we would call sorbet or sherbet here in the United States instead of ice cream, so having a scoop of it on top of a fruit salad is not as bad as it seems. Of course, whipped cream is another matter... I have only found a few ice cream parlors in Ecuador that serve American-style cream-based ice cream. One is on Calle Portugal in Quito, east of Parque Carolina. And lately Baskin & Robbins franchises have been popping up in Ecuador, so you might find one of those if you live in a large enough city.

I like the Ecuadorian-style ice cream, so that's usually what I get.

If you like fruit salads like this, there is a small chain in Quito called Monserrat (there may be more words in the name, but I'm forgetting them, maybe "Frutería Monserrat"?), in the north of the city on and around Avenida America. One of them is near La Universidad Central. You sit in tiny seats, really made for children in elementary school, which is part of the schtick. In addition to fruit salads they also serve traditional Ecuadorian food. Their fruit salads seem to be their most popular item. I don't remember if Monserrat puts ice cream on their fruit salads. But they definitely top them with whipped cream.

Marchers in 2009 Pregón Parade

2012-01-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

The stars of the 2009 Pregón Parade were definitely the kids. Their costumes were fantastic, and they were extremely well rehearsed. I'll comment on that at the end of the post. Look especially at the coordination of movement between the marchers in the first four photos here. This was not one of those deals where the teacher throws something together at the last minute, dresses the kids up and tells them to try to stick together. This was professional.

Stilt-walking is a big deal in Ecuador. In most parades you will see at least a few people walking on stilts. I don't know why that is. There were plenty of people walking on stilts in this parade. I liked this picture the best.

This girl was jumping around a lot. I captured her with her feet off the ground in this picture.

A teacher or a concerned mom.

The parade was professionally done, and it gave me the impression of being sort of an apprentice parade for the main Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade that came later in the week. That's because the students in the main Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade were high school and college-aged, just as they are in the Tournament of Roses parade in the United States, and also very professional, and what better way to prepare them for that experience than to have them march repeated times in this Pregón Parade during their grade school and middle school years? So even if it is not an apprentice parade by design (I don't think it is), it serves that purpose.

People in Ambato take their fiestas and their parades seriously.

In this Pregón Parade there were more than a few stage moms and what looked to be some friendly competition between teachers and coaches of the different groups. Were the kids stressed out? Flor says that it is fun for the kids, and since she went to school in Ambato, I'll have to defer to her. There were a few long faces here and there, but most of the kids appeared to be enjoying all of the attention they were getting after having put so much work into preparation. It was hot too, so I bet some of the kids were just plain tired wearing all of that clothing and dancing in the sun.

More Queen of Ambato Candidates from Pregón Parade

2012-01-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

Here are some more Queen of Ambato candidates from the 2009 Pregón Parade. I had a tough time exposing the pictures, because there was a lot of sun and a lot of black and white in the scenes. A couple of the pictures are also kind of blurry. I was playing around with a manual focus lens and missed focus a couple of times. Sorry about that. At least I got the details of white dress in the picture above.

The driver of this candidate was on the cellphone for the whole time I saw him.

This driver never looked an inch to the right or the left, or changed his posture behind the wheel. Everybody accompanying all of the candidates was very serious.

This candidate was carrying a sort of golden mask.

This is the same candidate whose picture I posted a couple of days ago. All of the candidates were accompanied by a small cadre of well-dressed men, that looked like secret service.

Carrying a Camera in Ecuador

This last section is sort of a rant. You don't have to read it if you don't want!

Notice the man taking a picture of the candidate in the foreground of this last picture. He doesn't seem to be too worried that somebody will take his camera. There's a reason for that. Probably nobody will. Guys like him were circulating everywhere around this parade, and through the crowd were Flor and I were, taking pictures of the parade for local media. Some of them carried very expensive cameras, Nikon DSLRs and the like.

I mention this because I've read some comments on Ecuador travel forums along the lines of, "Just lose the camera while you're in Ecuador. Keep your money in your underwear. Hold your backpack in front of you with two hands everywhere you go in public," and so on. Without wishing to invalidate anyone else's experience who might have been a victim of crime, I find that kind of advice unnecessary and a little disrespectful towards the Ecuadorian people.

Like anywhere else, (New York City, for example) you might not want to carry an expensive camera in a neighborhood known for theft, but like anywhere else, you will quickly discover where those neighborhoods are and avoid them. In most situations, public events like this for example, you are fine carrying a camera and taking pictures. It's not like there are people following you everywhere with their eyes from the shadows, waiting for you to take out your camera so they can snatch it from your hands and dash off. Just use a little good old ordinary common sense (the least common kind of sense, as my wife likes to say) and in most situations you'll be fine.

With that said, you don't want to be overly confident everywhere you go in Ecuador, but I covered that under my common sense statement above. Most people in Ecuador feel the same way that you do about theft. They don't like it, they do what they can to prevent it, and they are embarrassed if it happens in their community. And when people are caught, they are punished, sometimes more severely than they are punished here.

Maybe people have had different experiences in Ecuador and will disagree with me about the risk of carrying a camera. And I'm sure they are right. Their experience is surely different than mine. We are all like the blind men touching the elephant. I only have my own experience to share.

Along those lines, my house here in Melbourne, Florida was broken in to a couple of months ago, and the thieves stole an expensive underwater camera case that I had modified. I was upset, for sure (especially at first, but there's no point in staying upset at stuff like that for too long), but on the other hand, I didn't start to think that my whole neighborhood and all of Melbourne was a den of thieves. It was just an unfortunate incident that could have happened anywhere.

I'll have even more pictures of the Pregón Parade tomorrow. Can you believe this is not even the "good" parade? I'll get to that one eventually. Stay tuned.

Volkswagen Beetles in Pregón Parade

2012-01-02T06:24:00.000-08:00

Who knew that Bugs Bunny and whoever that blue beetle is, and Mickey Mouse and all of the rest of the Volkswagen beetles would show up at the 2009 Pregón Parade in Ambato?

Sylvester.

I'm not sure who this is. (Daisy Mae?)

Yosemite Sam.

Here's another one I'm not sure about. Maybe I'm dating myself...

And another I can't place.

The license plate on this one says "El Escarabajo", which is Beetle.

Homer Simpson. The Simpsons have been overdubbed in Spanish and you can see them on Ecuadorian T.V. Homer's name in Spanish is "Homero". The voices are really cool. Whoever did the overdubbing went to a lot of trouble to make the voices exaggerated and funny, the same as in the original version. I couldn't get a full picture of the Homer beetle because other beetles were blocking it until it was almost by me.

I was curious about where these beetles came from, but I didn't think to ask anybody. There were also one or two more beetles that I didn't get a picture of.

I'll have more pictures of the Pregón Parade tomorrow.

Pregón Parade in Ambato

2012-01-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

Candidate for Queen of Ambato

This young lady was a candidate for the Queen of Ambato in 2009. She and the boy below were marching in the same parade in Ambato.

A couple of months ago I blogged a couple of pictures from the Ambato Festival of Fruits and Flowers. One was of an awesome Mother Nature Float in the main parade from that week. Please take a look at that picture if you haven't already, and don't forget to expand it to full size. It is one of my favorite pictures that I have ever taken in Ecuador.

During the week of the Festival of Fruits and Flowers in Ambato, which coincides with the week of Carnaval elsewhere in Ecuador, there are actually two big parades. The main parade (mother nature float and more), with the name of the festival (Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade), happens twice, but that is not what I mean. There is a separate parade, that takes place before the main parade, with separate participants. This picture is from that first parade, the "Pregón" parade.

As if that isn't confusing enough, there is a third huge parade in Ambato that takes place between the New Year and the two parades of the Festival of Fruits and Flowers, the "Corso de las Flores y Alegría", which I also have pictures from. I will post pictures from that parade eventually. The "Pregón" parade and the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade are going to take a while.

So we have:
1. "Corso de las Flores y Alegría" (first week of new year or so)
2. "Pregón" parade (starts Festival of Fruits and Flowers, during Carnaval)
3. Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade (the big one you don't want to miss, ends the Festival of Fruits and Flowers)

Today's pictures are from #2. The mother nature float was from #3.

People in Ambato take their parades very seriously. It is kind of a mini-industry in town. If you are in Ecuador, it is worth making plans to get to Ambato to see the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade during the week of Carnaval. When Flor and I first moved to the United States, I took her to see the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, and having seen the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade in Ambato, Flor was not overly impressed. To me, the floats in the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade are not as big, elaborate, or impressive as the floats in the Tournament of Roses parade, but they are impressive in their own right. What I liked best about the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade were the marchers. They wear beautiful coordinated costumes, and their movements are also well-coordinated. Many of them are school groups as they are in the United States.

Boy Marching in Pregón Parade

After all that, I have to ask you to wait for pictures of the Festival of Fruits and Flowers parade. (Except for the ones I've already posted.) The pictures today and for the next few days are from the "Pregón" parade, that opened the Festival of Fruits and Flowers and preceded the main parade by about a week. The theme was "Alegría de un Circo". "Pregón" can be translated as "Herald" (it is a tough word to translate literally, pregonar means to announce publically, the thing a town crier would have done in the past)-- this was the opening parade, that heralded the rest of the Festival of Fruit and Flower festivities. "Alegría de un Circo" is "Happiness of a Circus".

Unlike the main parade of the Fiesta de las Frutas and Flores, which has international (including European) participation every year, the "Pregón" parade was entirely by, for, and about Ambatans. I suspect the "Pregón" parade is also something of an apprentice parade for the main parade. I'll explain that idea in a later post. The participants in the "Pregón" parade included all of the candidates for the Queen of Ambato, a number of children's school groups with amazing costumes and coordinated movements, a parade of Volkswagen Beetles decorated to look like cartoon characters, and stilt walkers.

Goodbye to the Old Year!

2011-12-31T05:05:00.000-08:00

These people lit their año viejo on fire a little early, so I got to capture the whole scene. I took this picture from the west side of the bridge across the Ambato River on Montalvo Street in Ambato. The people were below me on Mirabeles Street. I was farther away than it appears.

The group of people on the far right were dancing in a circle to some really loud music on a boom box. If you enlarge the picture you can see that they were all smiling and having a great time.

The men on the left were more serious. They seemed to be in charge of the burning.

Crossing the Montalvo Street bridge on foot always made me nervous--it was some combination of being really high over the river, a low guardrail (just a thigh-high cement barrier), and knowing in the back of my mind that Ambato had suffered several severe earthquakes. I guess I figured that when the next big one came, I was sure to be crossing the bridge and would get shaken off into the river! When Flor and I crossed this bridge a couple of hours after taking this picture, it was worse than usual, because there were so many other people on the bridge, trying to get to the festivities downtown. Flor and I were getting jostled from side to side as we tried to move forward. One teenage girl had a wonderful solution to all the foot traffic. She hopped up on the guardrail and half-hopped half-skipped across the bridge, while all of the people were in a logjam to her left. She was out of sight before I could think to take a picture. It was too dark anyway at that point.

Flor and I hope that everyone had a wonderful 2011, and that 2012 is a peaceful and prosperous year for you.

Silver

2011-12-30T06:50:00.000-08:00

Silver and I didn't know our picture was being taken

Silver, our cat, is everywhere in our Ecuador photo albums. Am I the only one who takes more pictures of their cat than anything else? Silver passed away this year, so this is an appropriate time to remember him.

Silver came to us late in his life, when Flor's Aunt Flor (one of Flor's two Aunt Flors!) died in 2004 in New York. We picked Silver up at her house. He had only been receiving minimal care since her death and was very sick. Flor's surviving relatives told us that they weren't sure how old Silver was, either 12, 14, or 19. We decided that 14 looked about right. He would not eat for the first week that he was with us, and was bleeding from places where he shouldn't have been bleeding. He was also deaf, and was beginning to get cataracts. We tried everything to tempt him to eat, but he just got thinner and sicker. Finally Flor hit upon the idea of grinding up hamburger and rice in a blender and feeding it to him with a syringe. That worked to get him eating and soon he was feeling better, but we still didn't think that he had more than a couple of months to live.

There were other issues. Our cat Merry didn't like Silver. She hissed at him every chance she got. And Flor didn't like Silver trying to sleep on her pillow. She pushed him away, but Silver always returned to her pillow. He probably slept on Aunt Flor's pillow, and just substituted Flor when he moved to our house. Flor eventually adjusted to Silver's advances, but Merry never did.

Our niece, Maria de Lourdes, with Silver

With a lot of care and a lot of love, Silver recuperated and sort of took over our house. He needed so much attention that we were always interacting with him, talking to him (even though he couldn't hear us), and grumbling about the problems that he got into and the work that he caused for us.

in 2008 We took Silver with us to Ecuador. He was a big hit. We wanted to show off Merry, but everybody cooed over Silver. Everybody knew that he had been Aunt Flor's cat, and everybody knew his difficult history and that he was not feeling well. He got lots of attention and stole the show whenever we took him out for visits. He was very friendly and loved to get up into everybody's lap. Flor and I lived for a while in an apartment below Flor's sister Alexandra, so Alexandra and her daughters took care of Silver for us when we were out of town, sometimes for up to a week. Everybody in the family got chances to play with him and to get to know him.

Silver's plates of uneaten food in Quito

While we were in Ecuador, Silver started to get sick again. We knew that it would happen some day. He was really old, 18 by our calculations. He wouldn't eat. Some days he would jump up on my lap and eat bread off the breakfast table. But most days he wouldn't eat at all. We tried everything in the world again to tempt him, cooking bacon, chicken, opening cans of tuna and fresh milk, but he was in too much pain too eat.

Silver and Merry liked to see what was for breakfast

We took him to a veterinarian in Quito, Dr. Billy Bones (this is the name of the business, not the veterinarian, I've forgotten the name of the veterinarian, but he is still in business as Dr. Billy Bones; he used to be off La Gasca in Quito, but I'm told he's moved, he's probably not far away now), who pulled a couple of teeth that were troubling Silver, and Flor fed Silver Pediasure (infant formula sold in Ecuador) with a syringe for a week until he was well enough to eat again. Silver recuperated enough to fly back to the United States with us, but he was still not truly well.

In 2010 Silver refused to eat at all and we had all of his teeth removed, hoping to prolong his life. He had become very important to us by then. What we thought would be a short-term act of charity, taking care of Silver for the last couple months of his life, had turned into 6+ years. We were astounded at Silver's will to live, and maybe we were more surprised at how much we had fallen in love with him.

Silver always snuck up on Flor when she was asleep.

He made it another year, into 2011, and then this spring he really started to go downhill. We knew it was time to let him go, but we went to the vet one last time to see if there was anything that we could do to. We learned that Silver's kidneys were gone, but that sometimes cats could live longer if their fluids were replaced artificially.

So we bought fluids and learned how to administer them to him twice a day through intravenous drip. We were aware at this point that we probably being selfish and might be prolonging his life unnecessarily, so we watched Silver very carefully for signs that he was unhappy or uncomfortable. The fluids really did work for a time. He had interest in life again, and jumped into our laps for attention and up on the bed to sleep. But after about a month it was clear that he was not going to get any better, and that he was no longer enjoying life. We made the decision to put him to sleep.

Flor finally accepted Silver

I don't imagine that I have to tell other pet owners how difficult an experience that was for us. We were exhausted emotionally and physically from our intense efforts to keep Silver alive. Stupidly I went to work the next day, thinking it would get my mind off things, but the stress of the job only made things worse.

With time, I started to look at the bright side of our relationship with Silver. We were able to provide him a nice end-of-life experience. Silver got to see Florida, and Ecuador. How many cats can say that? And he was always loved while he was with us.

Flor says I have to move on, and sharing these memories is part of moving on, I guess. Silver was sort of "my" cat, and I defended him for a time against Flor and Merry, who were both down on him. Flor says now that Silver taught her a very important lesson about persistence and love. Flor rejected Silver again and again, but Silver wouldn't accept her rejections and kept returning to Flor until she finally learned to love him. Of course, all the time that Flor was complaining about Silver in the beginning she was also nursing him back to health. Merry never did learn to love Silver. Silver snuck up on Merry too when she was sleeping, but if Merry saw him she hissed and moved away. Silver learned to judge just how close he could get to Merry without waking her up, and he would lie down at that distance, happy to be at least that close to her.

We had Silver cremated and we are going to wait to put him in the ground until we are sure that we know where we are going to spend the rest of our lives. We want to be sure that nobody will disturb him.

Madagascar, People, and Chuckie on New Year's Eve

2011-12-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

I thought that these años viejos looked pretty cool. The people who made them put a lot of work into them. I am guessing these are the cartoon characters from the Madagascar movies. The giraffe in particular was nicely done.

When people saw that I was taking pictures of años viejos, they were very interested in having me photograph their own particular año viejo. At least a few groups of people waved me over to where their año viejo was, and shooed kids out of the way, that sort of thing, just so that I could get a good picture of their año viejo.

Here is Cevallos Street, the main drag in Ambato, about an hour before it got dark on New Year's Eve. I posted this picture just to give an idea of how many people it is possible to cram into a single street. What amazes me is that cars were still driving down the street. It seemed like they would have had to drive over and through people to go forward, but they didn't. Flor and I ended up walking in the street too, because the sidewalk was impassable.

People were selling everything under the sun on the sidewalk, not just New Year's related items like grapes and yellow panties, but every type of clothing, pots and pans, food--anything you can think of. This happens at pretty much any kind of public get-together of people in Ecuador, large or small, somebody will show up to sell something. The normal markets in Ambato are markets of food and household goods, not artesanal goods like you see in Otovalo or Cotocachi, and I was always fascinated by the systems of distribution for what I ended up seeing in the street or inside the enclosed markets. Who made the stuff? How did it get here? Some of it may be cheap imports from China, but my understanding is that textile imports from China are not as cheap in Ecuador as they are in the U.S., because Ecuadorian customs hits them up for quite a bit to protect the domestic clothing and shoe industries. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about this.) I did explore wholesale markets in Ecuador to some extent, but I'm still not sure I understand very well how the whole system works.

When it got a little darker, this Chuckie doll came out. All of the Chuckie movies have been over-dubbed in Spanish, and are shown not infrequently on late night Ecuadorian T.V. After I had lived in Ecuador for a while, I realized that I had seen every Chuckie movie in Spanish except one, "Bride of Chuckie". So of course I made it my mission to find "Bride of Chuckie" in the video store. It didn't take long. Flor and I lived in Tumbaco, Ecuador at the time, and we walked into this tiny video store off the main plaza, that couldn't have had more than 100 tapes, but among them was "Bride of Chuckie".

The woman who was holding Chuckie in the photo wanted to make sure I saw him as she was driving by. I took a picture and it didn't come out, so I yelled "Wait!" The driver braked the car and the woman let me take another shot, but this time she hid behind Chuckie.

To me it is interesting how we sometimes have a negative view of the mixing together of different cultures, in the case of Chuckie the American and Ecuadorian cultures, which happens more than ever before, given the Internet, other forms of mass media, and worldwide systems of distribution of goods. I don't think it's a bad thing, as long as it is not the result of aggression or war. I remember living in Arizona, and reading about a parrot bone that was found in an Anasazi dwelling. Parrots were not found in Arizona, so the parrot bone was taken as evidence of trade with the Mayans in Mexico, and the mixing of the Mayan and Anasazi cultures. The presence of the parrot bone in an Anasazi dwelling was portrayed in a positive way, or at least it was not cited as evidence of the corruption and decline of the Anasazi culture. But contemporaneously, when the same thing happens, we point fingers and say that cultures are being lost, corrupted, and so on. I guess the problem is that what we are all afraid of turns out to be true sometimes--we all know examples of one culture aggressively dominating and wiping out another, and I think that bothers most of us. But Chuckie on late night T.V. in Ecuador I can live with, the same as I can live with a bottle of Coke in the refrigerator in the corner market in Ambato. Chuckie is not the proverbial camel's nose in the tent, more like a parrot that was traded.

More New Years Eve Traditions

2011-12-28T04:51:00.000-08:00

Some people in Ecuador believe that if a woman wears yellow panties on New Year's Eve, she will get married in the next year. Flor does not remember this tradition from when she was a kid, and thinks it may have started about fifteen to twenty years ago, as a way for clothing manufacturers to sell more goods. Who knows?

I saw some information online that different color panties mean different things in Ecuador, with red meaning love, yellow wealth, and so on. So I checked again with Flor, and she said no, wearing yellow panties on New Year's Eve definitely mean that you are going to get married in the next year. She also said that there was a joker at one of her jobs who always reminded the single women not to wear more than one pair.

There were several people selling yellow panties like this on Cevallos, and a fair amount of interest among passersby.

Another belief in Ecuador is that eating one grape for each month of the year on New Year's Eve will bring you good fortune in the next year. We saw several trucks full of grapes like this on Cevallos Street in Ambato. This is what I call optimism--thinking that you are going to sell a whole truck full of grapes, twelve at a time. Notice the little bullhorn on the front of the truck. In Ecuador trucks like this slowly pass through neighborhoods and call out what they have for sale and the price. You have time to run out the door and buy what you need if you are interested. These trucks not only sell produce, but also milk, gas, eggs, pretty much anything you can think of that is a daily necessity that they think they can sell.

Homemade Años Viejos

2011-12-27T06:11:00.000-08:00

This young lady is choosing a head to put on an año viejo. A lot of the heads sort of look like people that she or any of us might know, so it was probably not too hard for her to find a reasonable match if she had somebody specific in mind. Some of the heads are obviously not of real people, but of monsters and so on.

In this año viejo I think the man on a mule is taking a dig at a rival soccer team. The sign says "I'm a Macaran and the cup is my obsession." The head is one of the prefabricated año viejo heads for sale in the street.

Macará is a soccer club in Ambato. It doesn't look like the person who made this año viejo is a fan of Macará, since there is a circle and a slash through the cup, and the image of the man on the donkey is not very flattering. The poncho the man was wearing says red devil.

There was a contest in Ambato for the best año viejo, and this was one of the entries. There was a cash prize, and a lot of very creative entries.

Soccer is taken very seriously in Ambato, as it is in most Ecuadorian cities. There is a big stadium and the most important games between rival teams draw large and raucous crowds.

These last two años viejos are supposed to be radio personalities. The signs give their names. The sign next to the man boxing says "I'm Rocky Balboa's trainer." These guys are also sporting the prefab heads that you can buy anywhere on the street, but the signs make it very clear who they're supposed to be. It looks like the gray hair on the small man on the right was an add-on after purchase.

These two años viejos and the soccer fan on a mule were made by the same people and were all part of the same picture, but I cut them out separately because in the back of the kiosk a woman was breast-feeding her baby, which I didn't notice until I saw the pictures on the computer. She evidently didn't mind having her picture taken, she looked up and was smiling at the camera (I took two pictures and she was smiling in both), but I didn't think that it was the kind of thing that should go out over the Internet.

Guaguas (pronounced wa-was) are kids in Ecuador, so the name of this business was "Kid's Kiosk". Lalama and Cevallos are cross streets. Stuff like that used to drive me crazy when I first moved to Ecuador, and would look at a sign and only one or two words were in my Spanish dictionary, and the rest seemed to be made up.

Widows of the Old Year

2011-12-26T05:14:00.000-08:00

These three men are viudas, or widows, of the Old Year. What they are doing is hitting up motorists for spare change. This happens only on New Year's Eve, and there are a few different variations of the custom.

The viudas are always men, and they nearly always dress up as women. They stop traffic in a variety of ways. These three guys just walked in front of cars and stopped them. Then they did a dance for the benefit of the drivers, and collected their money. They stopped everybody who came down the street, including motorcycles and even a man on a bicycle.

In other areas viudas string a rope across the street, and only let it down after motorists pay. It would be easy to drive through the rope, but nobody does. If you are out driving on New Year's Eve in Ecuador and there is a rope strung across the street and men approach your car, they are not robbing you. They are viudas looking for coins.

Everybody in Ecuador knows about this custom, and most people expect to deal with it if they want to drive on New Year's Eve. We saw a few motorists at this intersection who didn't want to play along, but only a very few. Most people were laughing and smiling, and clearly enjoying what was going on. There was a contest in Ambato on New Year's Eve, so there was a concentration of people and a concentration of viudas. I have seen viudas in Quito, but not as many as in Ambato. The degree to which it is practiced probably varies by region of Ecuador.

Not all viudas dress up this elaborately. Sometimes the viudas don't dress up at all, but that is rare. There is a sort of pecking order of streets, with the high traffic streets having experienced viudas who have dressed the part and know how to work the traffic as a team, and who make quite a bit of money in the course of the night.

On the side streets without a lot of cars you see a few kids who are not very organized, maybe it is their first New Year's Eve as a viuda, but who are going through the motions anyway and learning.

The viudas seriously affect traffic flow as the evening wears on. A bus ride that normally takes ten minutes can take a half an hour or more, as the driver has to stop and repeatedly give coins to the viudas. Flor and I were relying on public transportation to get home on this particular New Year's Eve, and we had to leave earlier than we would have liked, because we were afraid that we wouldn't be able to make it from the center of Ambato back to our house. We decided that in future years we would just rent a hotel room in the center of town on New Year's Eve, and not have to worry about getting home.

Town Band and Julio Jaramillo

2011-12-25T06:47:00.000-08:00

This band was marching with the Christmas procession near Atocha.

Many small towns in Ecuador have a town band (or "banda del pueblo" in Spanish). You see them playing on holidays, or other special events. This town band is small. I have seen them with up to 30 instruments. This town band is also very serious. On other occasions I have seen town band members much looser and involved with whatever merry-making is going on.

What fascinates me about these town bands are the brass instruments. You don't see brass instruments that often in Ecuador, although they are present in orchestras and large, formal bands. And brass instruments are rarely heard in popular recorded music in Ecuador, as they are in Mexico, for example. But whenever the town band is asked to play, out come a dozen men with brass instruments, able to march and play in time.

I have asked Flor several times why town bands in Ecuador use brass instruments. Her answer is always the same, that it's because brass instruments are band instruments. Ask a silly question...

I'm going to change directions here, to Ecuadorian popular music, the recorded kind. For those who might be interested in Ecuadorian popular music, a good place to start is with Julio Jaramillo. Julio Jaramillo is a sort of demigod in Ecuador, where he is still referred to, more than 30 years after his death, simply as J.J. (pronounced "hota hota" in Spanish). There is no chance of confusing the two initials J.J. with anybody or anything else in Ecuador.

Julio Jaramillo was born in Guayaquil and worked his way up from the bottom of the music business to achieve fame in Ecuador and then internationally. His popularity worldwide would be hard to over-exaggerate. I just looked at some of his songs on YouTube, and one of them had more than 7,000,000 views. Many other songs on the first page of hits that come up for Julio Jaramillo had more than 1,000,000 views. Some of the comments in Spanish on YouTube take pride in Julio Jaramillo as a product of all Latin America, not just Ecuador. This for a singer who has been dead since 1978 (he died at age 42). Many people who listen to his music now were not even born until after Julio Jaramillo died.

When I was in Yasuni National Park in 1998, and the young Ecuadorian men pulled out the inevitable guitars to play songs to impress the girls with, they played Julio Jaramillo songs. I have experienced the same phenomenon a number of times in Quito and elsewhere. Ecuadorians are extremely proud of Julio Jaramillo. I have listened to a lot of Julio Jaramillo's music. His voice is unique; I don't know that I've heard another male voice as beautiful as his anywhere else in popular music. The musical arrangements are tasteful, relying on classical guitar, acoustic bass, and a simple rhythm section. Here is a YouTube video of one of Julio Jaramillo's most famous songs, Nuestro Juramento. I believe this video is taken from a movie and the visual of the singer is an actor, although the voice is definitely Julio Jaramillo. "Nuestro Juramento" means Our Pledge. It is a love song about what each lover pledges to do if the other should die first.

If you are interested in buying some of Julio Jaramillo's music, here is a 30 song .mp3 download that you can put on your ipod. Or if you prefer CDs, this two-CD set has a number of his most famous songs on it.

There are all sorts of stories in Ecuador about how many children Julio Jaramillo fathered (more than 100 by some accounts) and about the manner of his death (he lived a Bohemian lifestyle, and one story I've heard is that he died laughing at a joke).

Christmas Procession and Años Viejos

2011-12-24T05:48:00.000-08:00

This Christmas-themed procession took place on December 31, 2009. Flor and I ran into by accident on our way into Ambato for New Year's Eve. It was across the Juan León Mera bridge from the center of Ambato, and a little bit north, on the road to Izamba. The marchers are probably worshippers either on their way to or leaving a "Misa del Niño", or Mass of the Christ Child. The Catholic church holds these masses all through the holiday season, so that everybody has a chance to go.

There was a small band in this procession, and dancers. If I had to guess, I would say that the procession started in Atocha, a neighborhood that is close to where we saw the marchers. Atocha had a strong sense of identity for a neighborhood (it may have once been a small town and residents may still think of it that way, although it is now more or less joined at the hip to Ambato), and regularly had their own fiestas, parades, beauty contests, etc. apart from what was going on in the center of Ambato.

You have to look closely, but most of the figures that appear to be leaning against the back wall and watching the parade are not people, but dolls. In Ecuador they are called años viejos, or old years, and they are burned on New Year's Eve. These años viejos were for sale, although most people who were planning on burning an año viejo had probably already made their own, so most of these would have ended up getting put back in storage until the next year's New Year's Eve.

Burning años viejos is a kind of catharsis, to purge the old and leave room for the new, and since there are all kinds of things that people want to leave behind them as they move into a new year, there are a tremendous variety of años viejos. Politicians, top players on rival soccer teams, radio hosts, old girlfriends, old boyfriends--all of these are fashioned into años viejos, as you might expect. But there is a pop culture aspect to the custom as well, and años viejos are constructed to resemble cartoon characters, pop singers, characters from fairy tales, and anything else that you can think of under the sun. There was a contest in the center of Ambato for the best año viejo. I took pictures of some of the entries which I will share in coming days. Most of the años viejos that I have seen in Ambato and elsewhere in Ecuador were homemade, although there are always plenty of pre-fabricated ones like in the picture on sale too. Sometimes people make the body of an año viejo at home and buy a head or a mask as a finishing touch.

Where are the años viejos burned? Why, on the sidewalk, of course. Early in the morning of January 1 there were still piles of smoldering sawdust (and whatever else people used to stuff the dolls) as we went about on our morning rounds. This was cleaned up by the city though, fairly early in the day. Most años viejos are burned at midnight. I've seen them burned earlier, even before it gets dark sometimes. Sometimes people dance around the fires.

Getting back to Christmas, this evening, December 24, is the traditional time of Christmas gift exchange in Ecuador, at least that has been my experience. Ecuadorians don't overdo Christmas gifts. Usually it is just one small gift per person, within the family. Some families don't exchange gifts at all.

Your Ecuadorian employer may be more enthusiastic about gifts. I was teaching English in a private high school one year, just a small private school on the outskirts of Quito, nothing fancy, and I was invited to the employees-only school Christmas party. The party lasted all day long, with singing, stories, dancing, etc. At the end of the day everybody got a basket to take home with a whole frozen turkey, a bottle of rum, about eight or ten other delicacies that I've forgotten, and a personal gift, in my case a set of handmade ceramic dinner dishes. Wow! I hadn't planned on staying the whole day, nor on receiving gifts, but there was a lot of pressure not to leave. Flor says that it is not unheard of for somebody to even lock the doors at parties like that so that nobody can get out. There is a saying in Ecuador, "No se gana, pero se goza," which translates to "We don't earn much, but we enjoy ourselves."

Flor and I hope that all is well in your family wherever you are, and whatever you do or don't celebrate at this time of year, and that your home is filled with love and peace.

Statue in Montalvo Park

2011-12-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

This statue is at one of the entrances to Juan Montalvo Park in Ambato. Each side of the park has its own statue. They are similar in style, but each statue is different. I don't know what the statues represent.

This is how I remember Montalvo Park. It is almost always peaceful, with just a few people strolling through it here and there. At certain times of day the benches fill up, but it never feels like there are too many people around.

This view is either south or west, because the view north is towards the Cathedral, and the view east towards the library and Casa de Montal. I can't remember which direction this is though.

On the far left you can see a bush that is sculptured. There is interest in topiary gardening in Ambato, and in the eastern part of Ambato, high above the elevation of Juan Montalvo Park, there is a large park filled with topiary figures.

In the next couple of days I'm going to start posting photographs of the holiday season, but especially New Year's Eve, because there are so many interesting traditions around New Year's Eve in Ecuador. I wanted to wait until after Christmas to start showing New Year's photos, but I don't think I'll be able to squeeze in all of the photos if I do.

Flor and I both hope that you and yours are enjoying a peaceful holiday season.

Another Special House

2011-12-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

Here is another special house. It was Flor's family's house, where Flor lived through eighth grade in school, which is early high school in Ecuador. When Flor lived in this house, it was divided up into apartments. When we took this picture, it had become a hostal. Flor is standing on Miraflores Avenue in Ambato. The house is located on a side street off of Miraflores, but neither of us can remember the name. It looks like it may be Gladiolos Street on Google maps, but I'm not sure.

The line of trees in the background is along the Ambato River, and was part of the area that we walked to look at flowers and trees.

In the far background is the area of Ficoa. Some of the newer construction (very nice houses in some cases) is visible on the hillsides in the distance if you enlarge the picture. As I mentioned in an earlier post though, it is going to take the trees a while to grow back in some of the newer Ficoa neighborhoods.

If you follow Miraflores Avenue south from here, you pass Colegio La Inmaculada (Flor's all-girls high school, it's still there, Flor has some legendary stories about the nuns, and her classmates were apparently quite a handful too, Flor remembers once they were making fun of a young English teacher, causing him to slam his book on the desk in an attempt to restore order, except that the spine of the book was old and the book broke in two, causing the girls to laugh at him even louder, so he walked out the door in the middle of class, never to return), then some nice older houses with beautiful landscaping, some of them hidden behind walls and fences, but you can peek in, and finally where Miraflores ends you run right into the mural of the three Juans that I posted about two days ago.

From there you turn right to cross the river and get into the Ficoa area, or you can turn left to get into some of the more suburban Ambato neighborhoods in the southeastern part of town. If you choose to go to Ficoa, the main drag has some interesting places to eat, including a row of restaurants that serve cuy, and one place that serves a really yummy fruit salad topped by ice cream. All the places to eat in Ficoa are bunched together and hard to miss.

The Cathedral of Ambato

2011-12-21T04:13:00.000-08:00

This building is the Cathedral (la Catedral), a large church in the center of Ambato, next to Juan Montalvo Park. Montalvo Park is where people were feeding pigeons in my post of two weeks ago. They feed them on the side of the park right in front of the Cathedral. I took this picture at a funny angle to get all of the building and the street sign included, and it is hard to tell how tall the spires are. If you enlarge this picture of the center of Ambato you can better see the height of the spires of the Cathedral. They are to the right of Flor's head, in the background.

The street sign says, "Ambato is yours. Take care of her."

This cathedral was built to replace a previous cathedral that was destroyed in the earthquake of 1949. Actually, I don't know if destroyed is the right word. There are pictures of the 1949 earthquake damage in the Ambato library, and if I remember correctly, the pictures show that the previous cathedral was severely damaged by the 1949 earthquake, but did not fall to the ground. It had to be taken down though. Then again, maybe I don't remember correctly (was it the cathedral that I saw left standing, or another building?), so if you're in Ecuador, go to the Ambato library and look at the pictures. The library is right in front of the cathedral, to the left side of the Cathedral if you were standing in front of the Cathedral and facing out, or just out of view on the right side of this picture. The library is housed in a beautiful new building. The pictures go on display during the week of Carnaval in Ecuador.

There are so many other activities going on in Ambato during Carnaval that you will not regret a trip to see the earthquake pictures, especially if you choose a day when one of the parades happens. Another nice bonus of visiting Ambato during Carnaval is that throwing water during Carnaval is prohibited in Ambato. This can get out of hand elsewhere in Ecuador. I've been soaked many times during Carnaval, and once ended up having white flour rubbed into my hair and shaken all over my clothes after being soaked. The flour incident happened with people I knew, and I was willfully playing along, but still, it gives you an idea of what can happen. Every other time I've had water thrown on me during Carnaval, it was by strangers. In some areas of the coast, Carnaval celebrants jump on buses and shoot water at you out of water cannons that they have made out of pipes, so you get wet even if you are just passing through. Some people understandably like to avoid that kind of thing. People in Ambato are very good about observing the no water rule.

I've read online that the Cathedral is one of the principal attractions of Ambato, but I haven't found it to be so, at least in the sense of there being a lot of people milling about and activity around the building. Ambato is such a busy city, with people moving and buying and selling and running around from place to place, that sometimes you want to get out of the mix, and the area in and around the Cathedral always seemed like a quiet backwater to me, a good place to relax. Unless there was a special event going on in front of the church, as happens during the week of Carnaval, there was almost always less activity going on in Montalvo Park and around the Cathedral than there was elsewhere in the downtown area. Montalvo Park directly in front of the Cathedral is the kind of place where you can usually have a park bench to yourself, and sit and think.

[Edit: I have been informed that the earthquake pictures I describe may actually be on display in Casa de Portal, which is a sort of museum right next to the library. I thought they were part of the same complex. At any rate, if you head to the library/Casa de Portal and ask around, I'm sure you will find them.]

Three Juans

2011-12-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a portion of a mural in Ambato. The mural is not painted, but made of something like ceramic tile. The three men depicted are Juan Montalvo, Juan Leon Mera, and Juan Benigno Vela. They were contemporary writers in the mid to late nineteenth century, all from Ambato. Ambato is sometimes called the "City of Three Juans" after them. Their names are everywhere, attached to streets, parks, schools, statues, etc.

I am not qualified to say much about these three men, but I will share what little I know, since it may add some interest to the picture. Please take what I say with a grain of salt.

The female figure in the mural is Cumandá, the protagonist in a novel of the same name by Juan Leon Mera. The novel is well-known in Ecuador and deals with issues of race, class, and indigenous versus westernized society. Most high school students in Ecuador are assigned this book. (Flor says that everyone has to read it, but I don't have enough faith in the organization of either school systems or ideologies to think that everyone actually does.) Think "Huckleberry Finn" if you're an American--not the same themes, but the same stature of the book. Juan Leon Mera also wrote the words to the Ecuadorian national anthem.

Juan Montalvo was a political liberal who was opposed to Mera on many issues of national importance. Two of Montalvo's more famous works were Siete Tratados (Seven Treatises) and Capítulos que se le Olvidaron a Cervantes (Chapters that Cervantes Forgot). The Seven Treatises were On Nobility, On Beauty in Humankind, Reply to a Pseudocatholic Sophist, Of Genius, Heroes of the Emancipation of the HispanoAmerican Race, Banquets of the Philosophers, and The Explanation. Siete Tratados was banned in Ecuador. Montalvo was exiled to Colombia and then to France. Flor told me a story about Montalvo, maybe apocryphal, that when in France near the end of his life Montalvo needed to attend a meeting with dignitaries of some kind, but was very poor and only had one suit, which was torn. On the way in to the meeting a domestic worker or maid saw him and offered to sew his coat. He said, "No, it's better that they think I just didn't notice than that I am poor."

Juan Benigno Vela was also a political liberal. He wrote a famous political discourse in his paper El Espectador (The Spectator) in 1878, part of which reads (assuming I haven't mistranslated), "I command that, with part of my small resources, rise up, in the hall where the Constitutional Congress meets, four statues that represent Wisdom, Justice, Decency, and Liberty, goddesses that were outraged and trampled by the vile people who betrayed the will of Ecuadorians." Vela was imprisoned several times during his lifetime. Interestingly, Vela is depicted here with sight, although he was blind for much of his life.

The mural is located just to the east and uphill of the southernmost bridge across the Ambato River. The mural continues along the wall downhill to the right, towards the river, and shows other important figures in the history of Ambato and Ecuador.

North of Lloa, Guagua Pichincha

2011-12-19T03:12:00.000-08:00

This view is to the north of Lloa.

Jacinto (the man in the hat) is looking at the same angle as yesterday's camera angle of Lloa. I took yesterday's picture from exactly where he is standing.

This valley is just north of Lloa. Guagua Pichincha is in the background. The highest peak is the farthest to the right. Quito is behind the picture taker (me).

The green of Pichincha's flanks and the Lloa region are impressive, but green means that there is a lot of rainfall. Most days start out sunny like this picture though. The rain comes in the afternoon.

People climb Guagua Pichincha. I never have. Jacinto's son David has. He says there is one passage where you have to walk a very narrow knife-edge of rock, or fall to your doom. I am a little afraid of heights, so I don't know if he told me this for effect or if it is really true.

Guagua Pichincha is an active volcano. I was in Quito for one eruption. The cloud of volcanic ash was massive, and pictures were shown on news all over the world. Apart from the cloud, we got a fairly heavy ash fall, but that was it. The television news had been warning of a possible eruption for days. I was hurrying down the sidewalk on my way to work in La Carcélen, a neighborhood in the far north of Quito, when I saw an old man pointing towards Guagua Pichincha. I knew right away there wouldn't be any work that day. The volcano looked like a gargantuan smokestack on a freight train, pumping unbelievable amounts of volcanic ash into the air. The ash started to fall later in the day. It was like tiny splinters of broken glass that stung. The next morning I scooped up some ash and saved it in a bottle, as a momento. I think I still have it. The ash lingered for months in the streets, because it was rock and didn't wash away. It was gray, and when I see material like that in the street now, I know where it came from.

A Secret Town--Lloa

2011-12-18T06:11:00.000-08:00

Here is the tiny town of Lloa, outside Quito. Lloa feels like a secret town to me. Even though it is very close to Quito, I didn't discover it for many years. It isn't on the road to anywhere. You have to want to go to Lloa to end up there.

Lloa is located in a valley at the base of Guagua Pichincha, the volcano that overlooks Quito. Lloa is separated from Quito by a low ridge, so you can't see Quito from Lloa and vice versa. But Lloa is very close to Quito. I have included a Google map at the end of this post that shows the relation of Quito, Lloa, and Guagua Pichincha to each other.

You can get to Lloa by bus or taxi. The bus leaves about a block away from the street Mariscal Sucre in the south of Quito, on a side street that heads west to Lloa. I forget the name of the side street. You can ask around for it. The bus is not really a bus, at least it wasn't the few times that we took it. It was more like a van, and you had to know where it was parked to catch it. The same van waits in an appointed spot in Lloa to take you back to Quito.

Flor and I went to Lloa one day and there wasn't much going on in town. We were curious about what was farther on down the road. If you look at the picture, the road in the foreground winds back up the hill to where this picture was taken from and from there to Quito. In the other direction it skirts the left side of town, and continues down into the hills. That's where we wanted to go. We hired a pickup truck to take us there.

The first thing we noticed was the incredibly beautiful scenery. There are some big landholders left in that valley, and it looked like the days of the haciendas never ended. The fields stretched away into the distance, like some idyllic photo in a country living magazine.

The next thing we saw was a steady stream of heavy machinery coming up the road. It turned out there was a mine of some sort down the road. Eventually we passed it and didn't see any more trucks or frontloaders. We never did find out what the mine was for.

The road went down and down and down, (for the better part of an hour? it was a dirt road, and we couldn't go too fast), and finally we ended up at the last house, which we never saw. There was a gate there. If I remember correctly, the property belonged to some sort of a nature foundation. Our driver told us that past the house was a trail that could be hiked for a day or two along a riverbank to arrive at Mindo. Mindo is a small town on the other side of Guagua Pichincha that is popular with tourists, birders in particular, and has a few people living there who want to get away from it all. I looked at maps afterwards and they do seem to show a trail leading from Lloa to Mindo.

Our driver also told us that high up in the hills, not along the trail to Mindo but around where we were at that moment and along our drive, ranchers raised "ganado bravo", or angry cattle, to be used in bullfights. I'm not sure if the idea was to raise the bulls in an area where they would never see people, so that they would never become accustomed to people and would react to them as a threat in the ring, or if it was just a precaution to cut down on human-bull interactions. At any rate, our driver wanted to impress on us that it probably wasn't a good idea to just go wandering off across a random pasture, and we took his advice.

We were also told that Lloa lay directly in the path of any lava flows that might come off Pichincha; however, in looking at the satellite map on google, it looks like the caldera of Pichincha opens up in a different direction. Still, if there were any activity in Pichincha, and I were in Lloa, I would leave town temporarily.

I have thought about Lloa ever afterwards as maybe being a nice place to live. I really like Quito, there is so much to do there, but I have trouble with the air pollution, and Lloa had really nice, clean air. And Lloa is so close to Quito. The only misgivings I would have would be the climate, and maybe that Lloa is a little too small of a town. I'll bet it rains a lot in Lloa. I always saw clouds over that way from Quito. And the beautiful green pastures are a dead giveaway. As far as the size of the town goes, there is a saying in Spanish, "Pueblo chico, infierno grande", or "Small town, big hell." I think we can all relate to that saying. But a small town can be your own personal heaven too. It all depends on what you're looking for, and the connections that you make. People in Lloa were really nice.

Thank you Mary! and Anniversary

2011-12-17T05:04:00.000-08:00

Thank you very much to Mary of South of Zero for adding my blog to her blog list yesterday. I had a lot of new readers.

In this picture Flor is exiting the Ambato flower garden that I have written about the past week or so. This exit is on the east side of the river, but I don't remember exactly where. It should be easy to find for anybody who pokes around by the Ambato River. Note that the city is high above the river. Flor is already a considerable distance above the river here.

Today is also Flor's and my wedding anniversary. Actually, Flor and I have two wedding anniversaries. We were married in a civil ceremony in Quito on December 17, 1999, then in a religious ceremony in Guapulo on February 26, 2000. We celebrate both dates.

In late 1999 we took classes to prepare for the religious ceremony in the Curia of the Catholic church in Quito. (I would guess that Curia translates as Curate. It is where the church keeps records, has classes, etc.) The Curia is located on Independence Plaza in Quito, near Carondolet, the presidential palace.

There was considerable political pressure on President Jamil Mahuad to step down at the time, and he had surrounded Independence Plaza with tanks and military personnel. Every week Flor and I had to talk our way past the soldiers to get to the Curia. It was a little disconcerting but thankfully not a tense situation from our point of view. One time a soldier gave us a big smile, said, "You're getting married? Go, go!" and waved us in. Behind the tanks Independence Plaza was deserted. I have never seen it that way before or since. It was like being on the set of a movie in a future world with no people.

Our marriage in the civil ceremony took place in an anonymous room in an anonymous hallway in an anonymous gray building filled with anonymous bureaucrats, but it meant a lot to us. We had worked so hard to get a marriage license and see our marriage through. Everyone has to get married in a civil ceremony in Ecuador. The religious ceremony is optional. The church will only marry you if it is your first marriage.

Yucca or Cabuya

2011-12-16T04:01:00.000-08:00

Here is Flor standing beside a yucca which is large enough to throw shade. This was a little ways away from the Ambato River, on the Ficoa side.

I'm probably wrong to call this a yucca plant. I learned that name in Arizona, where people call plants this shape a yucca. Or maybe I just heard them wrong. It might be more correct to call this an agave plant. This plant was much smaller in Arizona, though.

Ecuadorians call this plant cabuya. The leaves are stiff and sharp, like swords. They can hurt you if you run or fall into them.

Yucca to Ecuadorians is the root of the manioc plant, which is edible and served in soups and as a side dish. That kind of yucca is available in supermarkets even here in the United States, and we eat it from time to time.

Uphill from this plant (behind Flor and to her left) is Ficoa. Ficoa is a new neighborhood, or maybe it's old, but most of what you see is new, in the west of Ambato, on the other side of the river from the center of the city. We saw a lot of nice new houses in Ficoa. There were also some older houses, and some small houses, a nice mix. Like new neighborhoods everywhere, the landscaping hasn't matured in the newer parts of Ficoa, and it felt very open to the sun. The other neighborhood with money in this area of Ambato is Miraflores, across the river to Flor's right. MIraflores is filled with beautiful shade trees and flowers, and feels dignified. Flor and I didn't find a single house for rent in Miraflores during the week or so we looked for a place, but there were a number of houses for rent in Ficoa. People have lived in the same homes in Miraflores forever. We probably couldn't have afforded to rent in Miraflores anyway. We were hoping for a guest house. We ended up renting in Izamba.

Tree Across the Ambato River

2011-12-15T02:54:00.000-08:00

This picture turned out nicer than I had a right to expect. I discovered the small spray of pink flowers above Flor's head when I looked at the picture on the computer. The flowers were on the far side of the river. I didn't see them when I was taking the picture.

The log Flor is sitting on is a eucalyptus trunk. The long leaves hanging down to Flor's right (left side of picture) are eucalyptus leaves.

The Ambato River is polluted and dewatered by the time it reaches Ambato. Nevertheless, if it rains a lot upstream, the river really roars through town for a day or two. This picture was taken not far from where the river enters town, across from the old and moneyed Miraflores neighborhood. The water level in the picture is normal, not high and not low. From here the river circles Ambato in the shape of a horseshoe, then runs roughly east to join the Pastaza and eventually drain to the Amazon River.

The headwaters of the river are on the flanks of Carihuairazo, a nevado (snow-covered mountain) just north of Mount Chimborazo, and a high paramo north of Carihuairazo. The river's watershed is agricultural. Cattle trample the watershed and riparian zone of the river in a number of places. Since the artesanal agriculture of Ecuador depends on pesticides, the river must also receive a heavy load of chemicals every time it rains.

I never saw any fish in the river, not even juvenile fish in the shallows or backwaters, and there didn't even seem to be much larval insect life in the water.

The Ambato River is an integral part of the life and folklore of Ambato, but the height of the slopes along the river tends to distance people from the riverbanks. Drivers peer down at the river from the automobile bridges without being able to hear, touch, or smell the water. Flor and I rarely saw other people walking along the riverbanks.

After spending time on the Ambato River, it is a shock to travel east of Baños to Rio Verde, which is both a river (Green River) and a town of the same name. The trip takes about an hour by bus, less in car. Rio Verde spills out of Llanganates National Park and runs crystal clear. It is a trout stream, with wild fish. The best fishing is supposed to be a four or five hour hike upstream, but when it rains the fish wash down into town. There is little agriculture upstream of the town of Rio Verde, mostly a forested watershed. Two rivers, two fates.

Orchid in Ambato Flower Gardens

2011-12-14T04:26:00.000-08:00

Here is an orchid in the Ambato flower gardens.

I have hundreds of pictures from this flower garden, and I will stop posting them soon, I promise, but there are a few like this one in particular that I really like.

This was not one of the more beautiful flowers that we saw, but it was hidden, off the trail, and I had to go into the woods a little bit and work myself into an awkward position to photograph it. So this picture feels like a reward.

Is this really an orchid? Darned if I know. I call any flower that opens upside down like this an orchid, especially if I find it in a warm, humid environment. (Ambato was dry, but the climate along the river had more moisture in the air than elsewhere in town.)

If you like to look at pictures in detail, enlarge this picture and see if you can see the profile of an ant on the tree. I never see anything like that when I'm taking a picture, but I like to look at everything in detail afterwards. My first experience in digital photography was through a microscope in a laboratory, and the goal was to gather data. I still have that mindset to some extent.

Eucalyptus Trunks

2011-12-13T03:04:00.000-08:00

Here is Flor standing on the knee of a eucalyptus tree. Two trunks have fused together here, which makes the whole structure more impressive.

This photo is from a different day from yesterday's picture. You can see that Flor is wearing different clothes. We really loved the Ambato flower gardens, and went back again and again. Only once did we ever see anybody else using the trails.

Flor and I often talk about how Ecuadorians and Americans have different ideas about recreation. In Ecuador, not as many people look for trails to walk along, with the idea that it is an interesting way to spend free time. There are not as many well-developed (and safe) systems of trails in Ecuador as there are in the U.S. Also, many people in Ecuador spend a lot of time walking from place to place anyway, so why would they want to keep walking when they could do something else, like play soccer with a group of friends?

There are exceptions to this rule. We always saw a lot of people walking around Quito's Parque Metropolitano, a park with a large system of well-developed trails in the northeast of Quito.

When Flor and I first moved to the United States after getting married, we lived in Alhambra, a Los Angeles suburb, and Flor was constantly asking, "Where are all the people?" The reason is that we never saw anybody walking on the sidewalks, even in downtown Los Angeles. In Ecuador, the streets are filled with people walking around from place to place.

At any rate, for whatever reason, we loved having the flower gardens in Ambato to ourselves.

Eucalyptus in Ambato Flower Garden

2011-12-12T05:07:00.000-08:00

There were lots of eucalyptus trees in the flower gardens along the Ambato River.

Eucalyptus are not native to Ecuador. They were introduced from Australia. However, now eucalyptus are perhaps the most typical trees of the hoyas, or interandine mountain valleys of Ecuador.

The Andes mountains run north to south through Ecuador along two parallel ranges, the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Oriental. Between the two ranges are the hoyas, the high mountain valleys that have historically been the center of population in Ecuador, even back to the time of the Incas. Through this long human occupation of the hoyas and the effects of deforestation, most of the native trees have disappeared in the hoyas, and the eucalyptus have taken over. Wherever you see trees in the hoyas (which sadly, is not in too many places anymore) there are sure to be eucalyptus in the mix.

At first I didn't like the eucalyptus. Often they are spindly and scraggly, and always they are invasive. But I'm used to the Eucalyptus now, and think they're beautiful. In the Ambato flower gardens some of the Eucalyptus trees were enormous. I took some pictures of Flor standing against the trunks of the biggest trees (California redwood-type shots), but I can't seem to find those pictures on the computer now. I'll keep looking.

The hoyas are not the whole story of Ecuador. To the east the Andes drop down into tropical rainforest, and to the west into a hot coastal plain. Some of the densest forests in Ecuador, with many native species, are on the flanks of the Andes. Those areas receive very high amounts of rainfall and also have steep terrain which makes human habitation and logging difficult (but not impossible). There are also dense forests in the rainforest region, which are increasingly disturbed by logging and other human activity.

In 1998 I visited Yasuni National Park, in the eastern rainforest region, but didn't take a camera with me. I was at a scientific station. One of the people there was from the Smithsonian, and he was counting the number of tree species in a plot of a certain size, one hectare if I remember correctly. He said there were a greater variety of tree species in his plot than there were anywhere else on the face of the earth in a similar-sized plot. Maybe the ideas of scientists have changed slightly since then, but you get the idea.

In the hoyas though, it is eucalyptus, especially along riverbeds and along fencerows, but mostly there are no trees, only cleared fields in which the incredible patchwork agriculture of the Andes mountains takes place.

Odd Flowers and Fruit

2011-12-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Here is one of the more unusual flowers that I saw in the flower gardens along the Ambato River.

Actually, though I thought these were flowers when I first looked at them, most of what is in the picture is fruit, not flowers. There is only one flower, near the bottom of the picture.

These were tiny plants that hugged the ground, and were growing in a mat over rocks and against a wall on the trail. They fascinated me as soon as I saw them. I got down on my hands and knees to photograph them. This was not the best picture I took, but it was the only picture that showed a flower. All of the other flowers were already turned into fruit.

What I found so interesting was that the leaves, stems, and fruits of these plants were covered with tiny bubbles that glistened in the sun. The plants looked like they were made of candy. If you enlarge the photo, you'll get a better idea of what I mean. I haven't seen anything like this plant before or since. This plant was in only one spot along the trail, whereas some of the more conventional flowers were planted in several places.

Purple Flowers in Ambato

2011-12-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

The first thing we noticed in the flower gardens along the Ambato River were (drum roll please...) lots of flowers.

This picture does a good job of showing what the trail looked like. It was cool, shaded, and with an abundance of flowers everywhere. Behind the purple flowers you can see other varieties. There were hundreds of types of flowers, and I have the pictures to prove it. I am not going to post all of them on this blog. Maybe I'll post one or two more pictures of flowers in the next week or so, if they look particularly beautiful or exotic to me.

Ambato Footbridge

2011-12-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

This beautiful footbridge was the start of a long walk through a forest and flower garden along the Ambato River.

The view in this picture is uphill towards the center of Ambato. You can see this footbridge from the heavily used bridge (that serves motor vehicles) where Calle Montalvo crosses the river. From the Ambato side of Calle Montalvo there is a pedestrian walkway that you use to work your way down towards the river. Then you follow the paths that it looks like you should follow to get to this footbridge.

Over the next couple of days I will blog more pictures of the sights along the river trail park that begins here. We were surprised at the beauty and isolation that we found along this trail system in the middle of an urban area.

We were warned by locals to be careful, with the usual caution about ladrones (robbers), but in four or five visits to this park by day the only other people we saw were two policemen on bicycles, which was reassuring. The rest was trees, flowers, fields, and a well-maintained system of footpaths, benches, and bridges. At the far end of the trail from this footpath was a popular outdoor recreational area, with picnic tables and sporting fields, but few people seemed to want to leave the recreational area to explore the trails along the river.

This picture gives a good idea of what the climate is like in Ambato, dry and warm. It rains less in Ambato than it does in Quito and some other cities in the Ecuadorian sierra. Often it clouds over in Ambato, but with no rain at all or only a sprinkle or two. After living here for a while, I found that I longed for a good soaking rain, to wash the dust off the streets and cleanse the air. Once in a while it happened.

Pigeons in Ambato

2011-12-08T03:11:00.000-08:00

Ambatans like to feed the pigeons in Juan Montalvo Park. This is near the entrance to the park that faces la Catedral. We saw people feeding pigeons here every day.

Do you see the man's hand near the ground, on the right? He is waiting for the pigeons to come eat out of his hand. And check out the sunglasses on the boy in the background. (You have to enlarge the photo to do this. Right click and choose "Open link in new tab" or "Open link in new window". That will enlarge the photo a little bit. Now click on it again to enlarge it even further. The same trick works to enlarge every photo on this blog.)

I think the star of this picture was supposed to be the boy that is hunched over in the middle of the picture, but the brown and white pigeon flew in front of him, just as the shutter released.

I've always been told that you can not feed rice to birds. Supposedly rice can swell in birds' stomachs and cause gastro-intestinal problems, and even kill them. But rice is exactly what everybody feeds the pigeons in Ambato.

Flor and I are the kind of people who like to throw bread to ducks for entertainment. And let's not even talk about squirrels. I think that Flor would fill our house with domesticated squirrels, if it were allowed. So we thought it was cool that people took care of the pigeons in Montalvo Park. In so many other cities pigeons are treated as a nuisance.

Center of Ambato

2011-12-07T02:40:00.000-08:00

Here is Flor looking over the center of Ambato.

Ambato is the capital of Tungurahua province. It is a very industrious city. Ambato is known throughout Ecuador for its busy markets and its commerce. The weekly market in Ambato used to be the biggest market in Ecuador, until it was broken up into several smaller markets. There is still a tremendous amount of commercial activity that takes place in Ambato on market days.

Much of this activity originates in surrounding towns such as Quizapincha and Píllaro. Residents of these small towns arrive in Ambato early in the morning on market day, and return home at night.

Ambato has a modern mall, with a movie theater. Flor and I really liked that. Once in a while it's just nice to take a break and go to the movies.

Ambato also has numerous festivities and parades, the most prominent of which is the Festival of Fruits and Flowers, which takes place over a week during Carnaval in Ecuador. I have blogged a few pictures from this festival in the past, and I will blog more in the future.

The food in Ambato is very traditional. One regional specialty is llapingachos, which are tortillas (hamburger-shaped patties) of potatoes, served with eggs, a reddish sausage, and a small salad. All of the central food markets in Ambato serve llapingachos. Another specialty which you see not only in Ambato but also elsewhere in Ecuador, but which is especially popular in Ambato, is morocho, which is a sort of drink made of corn and milk, lightly sweetened and served hot. On Cevallos, which is the main drag in Ambato, there are a couple of places which have huge metal pots (we are talking witch-cauldron sized) of morocho out on the sidewalk as an attraction in the evening. Inside you see people unwinding around dinner time with a glass of morocho and a half sandwich, or maybe a humita, which is ground corn and a couple of raisins made into a dough and steamed inside leaves.

Flor and I lived in Ambato for the better part of a year together. Flor went to grade school in Ambato, so she was able to show me pretty much the whole city. I have more to say about Ambato, but I'll save it for future posts.

Pablo

2011-12-06T02:46:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of my brother-in-law Pablo.

Flor's and my niece Paulina took this picture in Paulina's mother's apartment in Quito, using the first digital camera Flor and I ever owned, a 2 megapixel Kodak that we bought in 2001.

Pablo is an accomplished musician and composer. His style is avant-garde, very modern, although he has classical training. He has done a lot of work traveling and recording the music of different indigenous groups in Ecuador, and produced a few CDs of these recordings, with funding from various sources.

Flor's other brothers also have careers in music. Her oldest brother Jacinto is an accomplished classical guitarist. He performed a song that he wrote for Flor at our wedding. Her middle brother Vicente is also a classical guitarist, who works as a music teacher at the Music Conservatory in Quito. Pablo is the youngest.

Flor grew up listening to classical music, and helps me with the names of songs.

Terminal Terrestre 2, or Where to find the Most Beautiful Women in the World

2011-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Here is another shot of the now defunct terminal terrestre in Quito, this time in color.

The area at the bottom of the stairs is where tickets were sold. The ticket windows were in the wall to the right. Also, there were turnstiles in that wall to head out to the buses.

No shortage of junk food for sale!

I was going to straighten out the lines in the photo, but the terminal really did look like this in real life, like a jumble of blocks that were not quite square with one another. The funny angles always made me feel slightly disoriented.

Terminal terrestre is a generic term for the main bus terminal of a city, and is not unique to Quito's bus terminal. There are plenty of other "terminales terrestres" in Ecuador.

My least favorite bus terminals in Ecuador are those in Guayaquil, Machala, and Chone, unless any of those cities have recently updated their terminal. [Edit: Guayaquil has indeed updated their bus terminal! Please read retired_poppi's comment below.]

My favorite bus terminal is (was? It might be aging now...) Loja. It is new and clean. In fact, I like almost everything about Loja, not only the bus terminal. I'll write more about Loja in future posts.

The new terminals in Quito are supposed to be fantastic, clean and beautiful.

I also like the terminal in Santo Domingo de los Colorados. A whole army of women in blue aprons with white trim approach each bus that pulls into the terminal there at night, trying to sell secos de pollo through the bus windows. Secos de pollo are chicken with rice and a tomato-based sauce. They are delicious.

Along those line, I once made the mistake once of buying and eating a seco de pollo in the Chone bus terminal. I was traveling with a member of my host family, who couldn't believe what I had just eaten. She told and retold the story, "Bob ate seco de pollo in the bus terminal of Chone." She would snort in disgust every time she told the story. Eventually, her brother approached me and explained, "It's not because you're a foreigner. There are some things that not even we eat."

But I lived to tell the tale, and even blog about it.

This same young lady had no problem with the secos de pollo in Santo Domingo de los Colorados. It was the bus terminal of Chone that she didn't like.

If you can get past their bus terminal though, Chone has an interesting secret. The most beautiful women in the world live there. I have not verified this, but I have heard it over and over again in Ecuador. I don't know where the idea started.

When I passed through Chone, I didn't see the best side of the city, much less the most beautiful women in the world. It was 1998, and there was severe flooding from the rains associated with El Niño. Deposits of mud were everywhere, and there was no electricity. I was there with the father and daughter of my host family. We arrived at night and had nowhere to stay. The air was hot, humid, and oppressive. We couldn't see anything as we tried to walk around the mud and debris in the city. There were gunshots in the distance. Finally we found a friend of a friend of a friend, in a storefront illuminated with candles. They knew of an unoccupied apartment, but it was padlocked. Somebody found a hacksaw blade, not the whole saw, just the blade, and we took turns over the next hour sawing through the padlock by candlelight. Our reward was something like an abandoned attic, with no glass in the windows and lots of mosquitoes, lots of spider webs, and lots of other creepy crawlies, but at least it was dry. The next morning we woke up and took the bus to Bahia de Caraquez (where the father of my host family lived, and which had just experienced a severe earthquake) and I didn't see much of Chone on our way out. I have since passed through once or twice, but never really explored the city.

Terminal Terrestre Quito

2011-12-04T06:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a look inside Quito's old bus terminal, or "terminal terrestre". This was the terminal for buses with destinations outside of the metropolitan area. This picture only shows a small part of the building; the entire terminal was much larger than this.

This terminal was still functional in early 2009 when I was last in Ecuador. It closed soon thereafter. Two new terminals have replaced it, one in the north and one in the south of the city.

There are other terminals that serve destinations within metropolitan Quito. There is also an excellent (and crowded) system of trolleys in Quito. The trolley is what ties everything together. It goes to all of the terminals (or passes near them at least) and it is easy to catch from almost anywhere within the city.

I found the old terminal terrestre to be a confusing building. Flor, who is from Quito, says that she never completely knew her way around the terminal terrestre. My system was to head downstairs. That's where most of the tickets were for sale. If I was in the wrong spot, somebody knew where to direct me. Sometimes at night I waited outside the terminal for buses to exit, and then flagged them down. Flagging down a bus used to be the way to catch any kind of bus in Quito, but they changed the laws, and drivers on city routes are not permitted to stop anymore where there is not a bus stop. It may be that long-distance drivers still stop for customers near the terminal though.

If you bought a ticket inside the terminal, you paid a dime to pass through a turnstile to the "andenes", or zone of departures. Many cooperatives (the companies that ran the different bus lines) let customers get on their buses early. I always took advantage of this to get the seat that I wanted. Luggage went underneath the bus.

There were lots of chips/candy/soda type goodies for sale inside the terminal. Vendors also boarded the buses with ice cream and sometimes more substantial food. I was never wild about the food choices at Quito's terminal terrestre. Some of the other bus terminals in Ecuador have better hot food. There were a lot of good places to eat not far away from Quito's bus terminal, though.

In the photo you can see the bottom floor of the terminal, where people are purchasing tickets from the different cooperatives. On the second floor is a restaurant, and you can see some other businesses on the second and third floors of the terminal. I never explored all of the nooks and crannies of the terminal to know where the good places to eat were. I got lost once or twice, and some of the hallways were not well lit and a little spooky. So maybe there was great food at the terminal terrestre that I never found.

The buses dropped customers off upstairs when they arrived from another city. I always worked my way outside right away to a line of taxis, or sometimes I walked to the historic center of Quito, which was not far away.

The comments I've read in online travel forums hint that this terminal was closed for safety reasons, but I would guess that it was more to route the large number of buses that it served away from the center of the city. Quito has long had a problem with air pollution, and the trolley was built to lessen the number of buses operating in the city, which formerly was much, much higher than it is now. Closing this terminal and forcing travelers to take the trolley to the north and south of the city would be another logical step in that direction. Unfortunately, automobile traffic has greatly increased from what it was ten or more years ago, which has offset some of the gains that were made in reducing bus emissions.

It makes me sad to see the old terminal terrestre (and bus travel in general in Ecuador) criticized in online comments. I never had a problem at the terminal terrestre in Quito, and I took many, many trips there, including trips where I had to wait outside at night for buses to Guayaquil. Never once was I assaulted, ripped off, pickpocketed, nor did I ever have a problem with my luggage. I regularly put my luggage underneath the bus and just forgot about it until I arrived at my destination. I also regularly put my small backpack in the luggage rack above me inside the bus or underneath my seat and just forgot about it until I arrived at my destination. Nor have I ever seen anybody else in this terminal or on a bus out of this terminal pickpocketed, have their luggage ransacked, etc. I found the attendants at the terminal and on the buses courteous and professional, without exception. In all my time in Ecuador, which adds up to several years over five or six visits or so, I have seen only one minor robbery on a city bus in Quito, and another on the city trolley. That's it. And I rode the bus or trolley every single day I was in Ecuador.

R.I.P. terminal terrestre, I'll miss you.

Flag Bearer in Riobamba

2011-12-03T05:18:00.000-08:00

Here is the flag bearer who reminded me of the statue of the flag bearer in Latacunga. This is a parade in Riobamba.

The colors in this flag bearer's uniform are different from the colors painted on the statue, but the type of uniform and hat are the same, and of course the flag is unmistakeable.

There was a boy marching in this parade who was dressed even more like the statue of the flag bearer in Latacunga, if I remember correctly, right down to the powder blue uniform.

I wish I knew what the flag symbolized.

I love the big smiles on everybody's faces. This was very much a small town, participatory parade (with some silly antics by the marchers here and there) and the crowd was involved in all of it.

The flag bearer took his job very seriously.

Flag Bearer in Latacunga

2011-12-02T03:08:00.000-08:00

I don't know who the man carrying the colored flag is (I probably should have read the inscription at the base of the statue), but he appears to be important here in Latacunga.

When Flor and I saw a parade in Riobamba, a few hours south of Latacunga on the Pan-American highway, some of the marchers were dressed like this man, flag and all. I suspect they were part of a contingent from Latacunga. I snapped a few pictures. I'll post one tomorrow.

The businesses on the far side of this street include a lawyer, a gas store, a feed store, a bank, and a mobile phone store.

In Ecuador gas for cooking is sold in tanks. You go to the gas store and exchange your old empty tank for a new full one. In some neighborhoods trucks will pass by at a certain time of day, and you flag them down if you are out of gas. Obviously it is not a lot of fun to run out of gas. You can't even make a cup of coffee. The gas tank is heavy when it's full, and as it empties, you heft it each day, trying to judge how much you have left.

The way to beat the system is to have two tanks of gas. That's what we did in Ambato. We had one tank for cooking, and another for our hot water heater. When the cooking tank ran out, we'd just unhook the tank from the hot water heater and cook with it until we had time to go to the gas store, and vice versa.

Latacunga Church

2011-12-01T02:55:00.000-08:00

Here is another beautiful old church in Latacunga.

I like the line of pigeons along the roof to the right.

As a bonus, this post teaches you how to say "stop" in Spanish.

That can be good to know when you're riding in a taxi.

Latacunga River Park

2011-11-30T02:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a park that sits along the river in Latacunga, below the bridge into town from the Pan-American highway.

The park was very clean and well taken care of.

When we visited we ran into the caretaker, and made sure to compliment him on the park's condition.

Other than the caretaker, we didn't see anybody else there. The park was like a secret garden.

It isn't big enough to jog or bicycle in, so it probably gets little use.

That little tiny river in the background is what causes all the trouble in Latacunga when Cotopaxi erupts. The lahares (flows of ash, mud, and water) follow the river's course into town.

Ecuavolley

2011-11-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of a plaza in Latacunga.

I used to take a lot of pictures like this, which are not really pictures of anything at all--there's no subject. Now I try to decide what it is I am taking a picture of before I push the shutter button, but I still end up with a few images like this. You know, old habits.

The men in the foreground are playing and watching a game of Ecuavolley. Ecuavolley is an Ecuadorian variation of volleyball with three players to a side, and the net set a little higher than usual so that spiking is difficult. The players pretty much have to volley until a point is scored.

If you click on the picture and zoom in, you will see two courts. On the right, a ball is about to fall to the ground. On the left, a ball has just been served high into the air, above the top stories of the buildings surrounding the plaza. There is a man in a red jacket in the background looking up at the ball.

Ecuavolley is played everywhere in Ecuador, sometimes seriously, sometimes not so. Often people bet on the outcome. In Quito there would be quite a crowd around some of the games in El Ejido Park on the weekends. There was another court with a lot of hardcore players, and betting, on Mariana de Jesus in Quito near where I lived, but if I am not mistaken they have re-landscaped that court into a more antiseptic arrangment of park benches and flowers.

Once I played Ecuavolley at an event at a school where I worked, but the game got way too serious for me before too long. There was a lot of squabbling about the rules, and people bending the rules--a lot of your ego is at stake in a game of Ecuavolley in Ecuador.

The beautiful church in the background reminds Flor and I of the church at El Quinche, but the domes are a different color. We did not go inside this church.

A Quiet Street

2011-11-28T02:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a quiet street in Latacunga.

The business on the left is a laundromat. The sign says "We wash and dry your laundry."

Most laundromats in Ecuador are like that. You drop your laundry off in the morning, and pick it up in the afternoon.

I know of few coin-operated U.S. style laundromats. There was one in Riobamba that Flor and I used a few times. A friend of a friend started another in Macas a few years ago, we were told. I don't know how it went for him. I'm sure there are others in tourist areas, such as the Amazonas in Quito.

Many Ecuadorian homes have a washing area on the terrace or in a side room, with a corrugated cement washing table. It is a lot of work to wash clothes this way, but they come out very clean, cleaner than from a machine.

I like the diamond-shaped lamps. When I look at other pictures I've taken of Latacungan streets, I see the same lamps.

University Building

2011-11-27T04:06:00.000-08:00

This beautiful building was at the entrance to a university in Latacunga. I don't remember the name of the school. Caro went inside to ask about employment opportunities while I waited on the curb.

The vendor on the left is selling hot dogs. His sign also says choripan, which is a word I've never heard of, but which probably is a contraction of "chorizo" and "pan"--sausage in a bun.

There are a fair number of hot dog vendors on the street in Ecuador. Sometimes they crumble potato chips onto the hot dogs as a topping. Usually they have most of the other toppings that you are used to if you have eaten American hot dogs.

Palm trees are commonly used for landscaping in the Ecuadorian sierra. You even find them in cities like Cuenca, which never seem to get too warm. But cities like Cuenca never get cold enough to freeze either, and that's the key. The palm trees thrive in what is essentially an eternal temperate climate, that also supports apple trees, etc.

The clothing that people are wearing in the photo is a little misleading, especially the jacket and hood on the little girl. It wasn't that cold.

Caro and I often wondered about heavy clothing like this when we lived in Ambato, which is a warm city. Many days were in the 80s F (@ 30C), yet we saw people on the street in Ambato wearing sweaters, jackets, and so on.

Then one day we visited Quizapincha, a small town a few kilometers outside of Ambato that is up in the mountains. It was chilly in Quizapincha, especially early in the morning and in the evening. We realized that many people from these mountain towns commuted by bus down to cities like Ambato during the day, worked, and then commuted home at night. They did need warm clothing at some point during their day, although it looked like a little much when we saw them at midday in the city.

Horseless Carriage

2011-11-26T04:25:00.000-08:00

Caro and I saw this carriage while we were walking down a street in Latacunga.

Caro jumped into the passenger seat. I took a snapshot.

The carriage was sitting in the courtyard of some sort of historic house, or a museum, or maybe a historic house that had been converted into a museum. Neither of us remembers exactly.

After taking the picture, we walked around the grounds. There was a passage that circled the courtyard. Everything was immaculate and beautifully landscaped. But strangely, nobody seemed to be around.

A Street in Latacunga

2011-11-25T04:14:00.000-08:00

Some streets in Latacunga were busy, and some were quiet.

This one was busy.

Drizzle was falling. You can see it on the cars in the foreground. It felt pleasant on our foreheads.

At least two businesses in this photo are advertising Internet. In the business district of a decent-sized city in Ecuador, you are never more than a block or two away from an Internet cafe. The prices are reasonable, something like a dollar an hour.

There are also signs in the photo for copys ("copias") and telephones ("cabinas").

The copies are for students. Sometimes you see two or three copy shops to a block near universities.

The telephones are for long distance calls. Everybody has a cell phone in Ecuador, from providers like Porta and Movistar (<--An anglicism; I'll admit I bought one of these--I've always wanted to be a movie star), but the cell phones generally only work within Ecuador, and the landlines in many houses do not have services outside of the country either. So to call outside of Ecuador most Ecuadorians (and tourists) rent a cabina and use the telephone there. Cabina means telephone booth and that's what you get, an old-fashioned telephone booth. The price depends on the country you are calling. You pay by the minute. For me it was cheaper to use Skype, but the difference was small and I often used the cabinas for convenience. The cabinas are used heavily by Ecuadorians to call family members in the United States and Spain, since many Ecuadorians have emigrated to those two countries.

Latacunga Domes

2011-11-24T04:30:00.000-08:00

Flor and I were walking along a road on the east side of Latacunga, and saw these domes. We were on a hill, at eye level with the domes.

I love the green stained glass in one dome and blue in another.

I don't know what these buildings are, although they look like churches or a monastery.

This view is to the west, towards the Latacunga River and the Pan-American highway which parallels it for a short while. The river and highway both sit below the little hill in the background.

Several times in recorded history Cotopaxi, a large volcano to the north of Latacunga, has erupted and sent lahares (flows of ash, mud, and water) down the Latacunga River. In histories of Ecuador and travel guides there are general statements that each eruption "destroyed" Latacunga, and that each time the city was rebuilt. From the word "destroyed" in these accounts I envisioned Latacunga to have been completely swept away, or buried, by each volcanic eruption, but after walking the hills of Latacunga it occurred to me that some of the city must have remained above the level of the lahares. There is a library in town, and I asked the librarian if the eruptions destroyed all of Latacunga, or just the area along the river, figuring she would be as good an authority as any to answer this question. She said that she thought that just the area along the river was destroyed, but she didn't know for sure. She said I was welcome to stay and use the library to answer my question. Ecuadorian libraries are different than U.S. libraries though; the books are generally sequestered and you have to ask for them one by one, no browsing, which makes research slow, because you are never really sure if you want a book in the first place, and you have to depend on another person to give you what you want when you want it. I didn't have time that day. I told her I would return.

Later I realized that even if the flow of the lahares had destroyed only the part of Latacunga immediately along the Latacunga river, the destroyed area may have been most or all of city at the time, since towns tend to spring up along riverbanks. Or the flow of the lahares could have been much bigger than I imagined, and reached up into the hills a little bit.

Traveling north on the Pan American highway from Latacunga (to the right from this orientation) gets you to the center of Quito after about an hour and a half, passing Mount Cotopaxi en route. Traveling south gets you to Ambato after more or less the same amount of time.