laguna quilotoa + the black sheep inn

the best compliment i received in ecuador? "you're a strong walker," from alfredo, our scrawny 16-year old quichua child-guide (i suspect he was more like 14 or so) from laguna quilotoa to the remote village of chugchilan. laguna quilotoa is radioactively beautiful -- deep green and glowing waters, rimmed at the shore with a line of electric yellow. i'm told that the lake can also be turquoise, cerulean, or a wine-y purplish-red, depending on the minerals prevalent at any given moment. its a dead lake, no fish whatsoever; though i wouldn't be surprised to see a pleiosaur, or nessie herself on holiday from loch ness, pop a prehistoric head out of the lake at any moment. it is also about 2.5 miles above sea level, and no joke to hike around, physical-exertion-wise.

and coming home to the black sheep inn after a grueling hike was such a reward. (as if experiencing the lake itself and the views of stark, windswept andean mountainsides were not reward enough.) black sheep is a phenomenal ecolodge close to chugchilan, complete with wood-burning stoves in the rooms, hot tub/sauna, gourmet meals, yoga and meditation studio, and resident flock of ovajes negros. but its the little touches, not just the grand gestures, that made me fall in love with the place. yeah, wood-burning stoves are great and all, but guess what? the only wood they use is eucalyptus, an invasive species, one that it is almost my civic duty to destroy in the name of personal warmth. the hot tub? totally heated with eucalyptus. the gourmet meals? all vegetarian. (a good thing, given that the meals were inhumanly delicious, and that seconds and thirds were happily provided.) o, and my new favorite dinner-table conversation topic: composting toilets. have you read "the toilet papers" by sim van der ryn? appropriately, this book was the, um, reading material in all of the bathrooms. so there´s this part in the book where the author is speculating as to what future -- as in, 2000 years in the future -- alien archaeologists would think about our urban plumbing systems. and he´s like, they would be like, ¨wow, this civilization was so brilliant, they figured out how to harvest ocean algae and protozoans, process them through a central system to render them more healthful and delicious, and pump free meals into the homes of all urban citizens, to be served in lovely ceramic bowls in beautiful tiled rooms!¨ ha! i literally laughed out loud at that part. seriously, though, i am so inspired by this book and by the unbelievable ease of making our waste work for something positive instead of being a disgusting afterthought. anyone who knows a lot about this, email me or something so we can talk about it. also, some of you might know that my mom is planning to start a bed and breakfast in upstate new york that caters to folk with big dogs (e.g., rottweilers) who want to get away from it all and bring the puppies with ... wouldn´t it be amazing if her place could take a page from the black sheep inn´s book? ... right mom?

so guess which of the pictures below is the view from my cabin, and which is the view from the composting toilet:

the best part is that it doesn´t really matter which is which. if you are in ecuador, come here. and stay here.

canoa stroll

canoa: long, lazy days strolling the playa, writing, reading, letting the sun fill up my body ´til my skin might burst with it, watching tom win (and tastic lose, flamboyantly) the hour of power, watching a million sea snails trace op-art squiggles underneath the wet sand, sharing unas de la grande bestia with fabio at el pais libre, watching myself relax.

canoa: warm. sandy. excellent. and populated by an exclusive club of intrepid gringa hunters, local surf boys sporting creamy bronzed skin, musical talent, buttcrack, dreads, generalized poverty, and a bottomless thirst for olas, chicas y cervezas, not necessarily in that order. observed hunting success rate = considerable. isn´t it funny how surf towns are similar the world over?

i paraglided!!!!! these are totally my feet. and that´s the pacific ocean. i love dangerous activities that require trust, but no actual skill on my part.

the dude flying in the yellow wing (below me, natch) is jason, owner of the surf shak. he is probably stoned. from what i could tell, just about everyone in canoa is at least somewhat stoned most of the time.

and this is what they eat: pescado al aljillo (and the similar camarones al aljillo) at saboreame. delicious, even sober.

quito: saving my soul in old town

found in la iglesia de la compania de jesus, a chain-letter prayer to saint judas, patron saint of lost causes:

patrono del trabajo y de las causas imposibles

cuando te encuentras en una situacion dificil por emfermedad, crisis moral o economica debes saber que san judas tadeo te acompana. esta cadena de la vuelta al mundo por la devocion a san judas tadeo. dedicalo, saca copias y depositales en un tempo catolico, rezu un padre nuestro a san judas tadeo y otro por las almas del purgatorio. esta cadena la envia una de las miles de personas que hay en el mundo, por ningun motivo debes buriarte de ella interrumpiendola, enviala antes de los 13 dias. antecedentes: el presidente de brasil las envio y le dio importancia a los 13 dias se saco la loteria. ezequiel cortez lo tomo a bromo y mando a su secretaria que las hiciera, las envio y a lo 13 dias perdio su empleo. isabel galvan la perdio y estuvo a punto de abortar. debes observar como cambia la suerte luego de los 13 dias.

oracion a san judas tadeo

san judas, amado siervo de dios, por este camino de la vida, tu que sabes de mis alegrias, penas y amarguras que entristecen mi alma, ante ti pongo lo que nos oprime de noche y de dia; haz tuya esta pena. lava mis angustias y dolores, permite que renazcan la paz y la alegria en mi corazon y le pido a dios que le envie a ti en quien tengo puesta mi confianza.

bendito sea el corazon de maria.

bendito sea san judas tadeo por todo el mundo y por toda la eternidad. amen.

saca 81 copias y depositalas en 9 iglesias, pide la gracia y a los 13 dias se te concede por dificil que sea.

ten confianza y fe en dios todo poderoso. amen.

animals of ecuador

the domestics and semi-domestics:

waiting for the bus?

i've seen a donkey stand perfectly still for literally hours. ok, not literally. but close.

chicken a la andes.

the black sheep inn's eponymous ovaje negro. watch out because he might RAM EWE! (their joke, not mine.)

this is the closest thing i've seen to a sheep looking noble.

piglets: 5 weeks old and getting uglier every day.

this baby llama would far rather hang out with the piglets than with his mom.

this little colt tried to follow us on our hike from laguna quilotoa. he was most persistent.

massive pig.

a mellow cow in papallacta. maybe she took a dip in the hot springs -- that sure mellowed me out.

ex-iguana. cafe flor's resident feline huntress beheaded this canoa iguana while we ate our own lunch at the next table. the kitty (not pictured) still accepted scott's offering of fried fish.

the wild ones:

jungle boog.

ditto.

swallowtail moths, feeding from the minerals.

wasp nest.

the scorpion bug is only scary-looking because he has no other defenses. surely we all know someone like this.

swamp snake. what a cutie!!

apparently this tarantula is smart enough to know when a creature (e.g., me) is too big to eat, and consequently would not waste his venom on me. in a pinch he might pee on me. yes, tarantulas have weaponized pee.

not pictured:

grey freshwater dolphins, piranas, wild macaws, birds whose chirps sound like burbling water, prehistoric birds with claws on their wings, peregrine falcons, stray dogs, bats, frigate birds, snake birds, vultures, herons, kingfishers, caimans, various frogs and toads, four species of monkey, fire ants, and many other bugs, including the stowaway cockroach that emerged unexpectedly, from tom's luggage in quito.

someone in canoa knows the truth

encebollados a jorge

delectable seafood stew, available everywhere in ecuador, but not advised anywhere except the coast. i tried several different stands in canoa, and jorge's was my favorite. in my broken spanish (including many thumps to the heart-region to indicate pleasure), i wheedled the recipe from jorge. i can't wait to throw a dinner party with this delicious stuff as the centerpiece!

ingredients

pescado albacora seco

cebolla

cebolla blanca

pimiento

yucca

cilantro

tomate

comino

sabora

aji peruano

aji nomoto

camarones (optional)

good luck figuring this one out. i see much trial-and-error in my future.

survivor: muisne

muisne, enchanted emerald isle of swaying palm trees, expanses of soft white sand, placid cattle in the nearby pastoral fields, and me, reclining gracefully in an ecocabin, organic cuba libre in hand .... scree! [that's the sound of a record scratching.] nope.

muisne in the low season is about 95% deserted, and included in that 5% population figure are me, tom, mama inez (proprietress of the hotel calade, the only visibly abierto establishment on the beach), her son freddy (who would not shake my hand, having just been elbow-deep in the toilet-water supply, attempting to fix the plumbing), our tricycle taxi-driver francisco, and about 40 stray dogs. o, and the cattle, all of which are suitably placid, and roaming the deserted beach. hotel calade has neither power nor water. that's ok, none of muisne has power. i've been told that a restaurant will open in about an hour; in the meantime, we have one fiberbar, nicked from whitney's apartment in quito, that tom will not eat because it is quite dry and we have only approximately 6 oz. of potable water, and no leads as yet on where to find more. sometimes the fear of hunger creates a hunger of its own.

tiny hats for woodland goblins

patrick. likes: sunsets, composting toilets, piglets, his mom. dislikes: bandaids, traffic.

il professore. likes: books, unicycles. dislikes: idiotas.

latacunga: churches + chugchucarres

ok, this post is mostly about pork, so all you pork purists can just skip this first picture. if you don't like pork, please stop here. latacunga, two hours easy bus ride south of quito, is known for having eight gorgeous churches. just kidding. it's known for chugchucarres.

because it was sunday, everything was closed except a pizza place. but chugchucarres are too famous to miss! so guillermo and nieste, our charming host couple, piled us into their truck and cruised the streets until we found rosita.

chugchucarres is uno plato tipico in two acts. the first, above, is a plate of big, creamy-soft kernels of pale hominy, sprinkled with pork cracklins. in your mouth, the salty, fatty porkiness and the hominy's starchy creaminess meld into perfect harmony. go ahead and put some spicy aji on it, if you want another note to the symphony. [a quick note on aji, the bright sauce that accompanies every ecuadorian meal: yum. they are all different, each more delicious than the last. aji is relatively simple to make; its just a question of finding the right ingredients, i.e. tomate de arbol, aji (a type of chile), cilantro, green onion, salt and pepper.]

the second act is mas fuerte. popcorn, tostitas (basically massive ecuadorian cornnuts), plantains, potatoes, tiny fried empanadas made with banana-batter, and chunks of juicy tender pork, slow-cooked and then fried, so that the outside is crispy-salty like the cracklins, and the inside pulls apart to curl sweetly around the tongue.

yes, it's true; don't worry. i will be there ever.

chiva!

chivo = goat.

chiva = open-air party bus, equipped with bumpin' speakers, DJ (plus option to plug in one's own ipod mix), whistles, blinky lights, shot-glasses on necklace-strings, stripper poles, rope-loops attached to the ceiling for tarzaning about, and an endless supply of both canalazo (local liquor, served hot and tasting sort of like mulled apple cider) and general obnoxiousness. a wonderful mix of folk. and o, grinding off the side of the chiva to pretty lights (specifically, hot like sauce), reminds me of the gorgeous sweaty mess of a show in los angeles, lo these many weeks ago. hot and dirty times, uh-huh.

happy birthday whit!! i hope that the events of this coming year make you as happy as you are in these pictures. at least.

why google voice transcripts are not as fabulous as one might hope

what google voice thinks that scott said:

Ohh. I live in services eat about leaving a message for Rebecca. Anyways, that's. Scott sick in a and I'm just calling to say what's up and down at the bar, the E N X 1 door, so give me a buzz. I can get in touch with you were Tom her cellphone. Maybe you're already all in Baja see on it. But anyways, Hey (313) 593-8433 I think.

what scott actually said:

hello? uh, hello, i don't even know, there was just a beep, i hope i'm leaving a message for rebecca. anyways, it's scottastic and i'm just calling to say what's up for the zanzibar reunion in ecuador. so, give me a buzz. i can get in touch with you or tom on your cellphone. maybe you're already all en vacationes. but anyways, hit me up. (312) 593-8433. adios.

quito: el telefuniQo a la puesta del sol

quito: one day, many layers

quito requires a many-layered awareness. of course, there is the standard, heightened awareness of what is normal and lovely and cool about traveling. we cruised through the smaller jorge washington market, which reminded me of nothing so much as a saugus swap meet -- rows and rows of similar products, sprinkled here and there with a gem of something completely different. it was surprisingly uncrowded, only a few stray gringos wandering the aisles, all moving in the same direction, as if pulled on an invisible conveyor belt. murmurs from the vendors as we pass by -- alpaca blanket, handicraft, cinquante centavos [referring to a yoda finger-puppet], alpaca blanket -- while some slurped thin green soup from covered wooden bowls.

me: que es los pelotes verdes?

senora: higos.

whitney: well, they still look like little balls of kryptonite to me. no, i don't want one.

and some of the less-typical interactions that i feel lucky to experience, touching the lives of people who live here. whitney, tom's sister, teaches evening classes in english to quiteno teenagers and adults, and thursday was oral exam day. she set her students up hard: to prepare, she asked them to think about what a hypothetical american visiting quito for the first time should know (teens) and what questions they would like to ask an american if given the chance (adults). then, she gleefully revealed us, in all our hypothetical american glory, and snickered as the collective jaws of the classroom dropped to the floor. some useful things i learned from the kids: make sure to visit st. augustine, la compania, y santo domingo churches; when bargaining for handicrafts, don't lowball (e.g., my counteroffer for a $10 scarf should be $7.50, not $2); i should not take the buses alone (more on this in a bit); the brown stuff next to the fig candy in the picture above is also candy and is made with coconut; and i should get married someday in order to keep my rights and property. some fascinating questions about americans from the adults: are americans racists? what do americans think about war? is it true that two women can marry each other in america? is president obama capable of helping the world? (i hope that my answers adequately represented the opinions of the american people.)

that same night, some of whitney's friends from canoa rolled in for some party, ecua-style.

cesar, on the right, is whitney's little button of joy: surfer, masseur, reiki practitioner, dispenser of native cures (for strong bones, rub the black sands of canoa on your legs ... if a woman has kidney problems, she should have sex with a black man); he also makes a shot that includes cane liquor, scorpions, and fungi that roughly translates as "nails of the beast." michael jackson, on the right, is a master salsa dancer, singer, drummer, ecua-freestyler, capoeiristo, and human being. not pictured: naranjas, who first shared with me the ecuadorian philosophy of compartir -- it is, perhaps, no accident that his hometown canoa is also called la playa -- and jorge, who peers out at the world through wide-set and brilliant black eyes, fringed all around like tidepools, like barnacles, and whose spanish is completely incomprehensible, even to spanish-speakers. four fine ambassadors and a very fine evening of impromptu capoeira on the balcony of finn maccool's ... tom belting out a new "knowshon moreno" operetta to the beat of michael jackson's drums ... my spanish rapidly improves as the night progresses ... and my new favorite name for a dancing establishment: the next level. as in, let's take it to the.

and then there is the other awareness-layer, that part of the brain that constantly chatters: do i trust? i prefer to set that part to "yes," assuming my instincts are not screaming "no, no!" but i have been warned, repeatedly, by almost everyone i've met in quito, that by simply taking it all in, i am opening myself up to unsafety and unsavoriness. the oddest thing is that quito doesn't feel sinister; there is beauty, and folk meet the eye and sometimes respond to smiling. and while i like my stuff and would prefer to keep it, there's nothing it would kill me to lose. but yet ... another english teacher robbed twice in three months, once by a man wielding a machete ... whitney's roommate andrea mugged today by a man who ripped out a chunk of her hair, though she ultimately foiled her attacker with a swift kick to the groin ... whitney sprayed with ketchup and her backpack swooped up ... earrings ripped out of andrea's friend's ears in old town ... maybe its just that folk speak of crime so vividly and with such immediacy -- i mean, these are entertaining stories, and we all like a little sensationalism. but the result is that, even as i smile at the folk passing by, another part of me speculates how i might physically disable a friendly face turned attacker. and every time i come back to whitney's apartment unscathed, i feel victorious.