February 5, 2012 South America

Jim and I arrived safely in Quito, Equador on February 2nd. Immediately I remembered why I LOVE South America; the people, the smells, the Euopean buildings with balconies and flowers and crumbling details. The first morning, we found the local market, and I had corn tortillas which here are fat pancakes topped with eggs and served with sweet coffee for 75 cents. I immediately started taking photos of rows of colourful sausages and the ever present dead chickens. Later in the day we had a two hour spanish class with Jackelina and she¨s another delightful teacher like our Nuri from home. Unfortunately although I know a few words and phrases such as ¿Puedo tomarle una foto por favor?, I am still a Spanish dud. I do love to try Equadorian foods though. Yesterday I had a delicious sweet green drink made with naranjillas and a potatoe and avacador soup and today I tried a cuppa of guanabano (a huge green fruit that is green on the outside and white and sweet on the inside) as well as a psecado (fish) with yuca. I also tried Jim´s drink called maltes; a malt beer with raw eggs, sugar and milk, sounds awful tasted great. We did a day trip yesterday to Otavalo, a famous market town. Unfortunately the market was mediocre, a tourist market, not the real thing (no dead chickens), and the day was a tour and we had to stop and see the lama on a rope and stop and see the caged condor and eagles and owls. Two highlights from the day, I did buy a guaba which looked like a giant 2 to 3 foot long pea pod. It is either brown or green. The seller snapped it over her knee for me. Inside was a row of 1 inch black seeds covered in a stringy, slimy, sweet mass. Jim and I each ate this slime from around one seed and then you should have seen the eyes on the small boy when I gave him and armful of guaba! Just as it got dark we stopped in a park with a large area filled with huge clay hummingbirds, each one decorated by a different artist. I didn´t like the painted lobsters that Halifax had a few years ago, but the shape of these hummingbirds was pleasing and there was a power in the shear numbers of them and in the painting on them.