Em and Jeff's Adventures

Some of our Other Adventures--a little out of order

It´s been a little difficult to keep our blog up-to-date with all of our adventures. We´ll try to catch you up with some of our more recent ones.

The weekend before "El Nariz del Diablo vs. Rocky"

We spent this weekend in March with some of our friends in the mountains. We met Gloria when we went on the field trip with Santo Domingo de Guzman high school one of our first weekends here. Gloria teaches at the school and studies at the University at night. She lives around the corner from us and has been incredibly friendly and open. Her family has a house in the mountains about half an hour or forty minutes west of Gualaceo. She invited us to spend the weekend there and we took her up on the offer.

We went up Friday night and spent the evening learning how to play card games in Spanish. My favorite was one called Cuarenta or 40. On Saturday, we went to Gloria´s grandparents´ house for the beginning of our adventure. We "fished" for trout in her grandfather´s trout hatchery. He has several pools with trout of varying sizes. Most of them were caught by net, but Jeff managed to hook one campo (country) fashion. He used a sturdy reed for a fishing poll, a length of thread for a line, and a hook. He and Kyle even dug up some worms for bait. Although the reed broke when he hooked the fish, he quickly reacted and pulled the thread and the fish out of the water. It was a big moment! (especially considering the bad luck we had fishing for salmon in Alaska)


We went home and cooked a fantastic fried trout lunch! It was delicious. After lunch, we walked through the country side accompanied by Negra, Gloria´s amazing German Shepherd and her grandfather, equally amazing. He took us to his bee hives and let us eat some of the honey still attached to the honey comb. This is a popular Ecuadorian snack (at least if you live near the Sierra) and they really tout the health benefits of ingesting pollen. I enjoyed it, but suffered from sneezes and a runny nose afterward. Apparently allergies to pollen also occur when the pollen is ingested. As we walked, Negra teased the sheep tethered near the road by barking at them and the sheep jumped around, doing literal back flips to try to avoid her. We visited a local basket weaver and then circled back to Gloria´s as the sun set. Before we went home, we stopped by her neighbors to greet them (it´s very rude to pass by someone without greeting them...which is sometimes the bane of Jeff´s existence as his American need to run errands without interruption collides with the need to greet and take leave of all of our neighbors between our house and the market). The greeting lasted most of the evening. Kyle drank a bottle of incredible Chilean wine and Jeff had several whiskey and tonic waters as we were wined and dined by Gloria´s neighbors.

Her neighbors lived for several years in Minnesota and Maria´s Minnesotan accent in English far outweighed her Spanish accent. It was like a little piece of home. They fed us delicious soup and carne de res (kind of like beef stew with rice and a salad) and then made plans to take us out for cuy. Cuy, a traditional Andean dish, translates to, believe it or not, guinnea pig. Not kidding.

We met Maria, her husband (whose name escapes me), and their daughter for cuy in Cuenca on Wednesday. Cuy is roasted on a spit covered in garlic and salt. It´s, as they say, muy rico. (very rich) It´s very greasy, a little bit heavy, and a little difficult to eat, as they serve it whole. After dinner, they took us out for ice cream and showed us their cardiology clinic, which is very beautiful. I don´t know how we´re ever going to repay our carmic debt.

The weekend after "El Nariz del Diablo vs. Rocky"

We met some great ladies on the bus on the way home from our trip down the Nariz del Diablo and they came to visit us in Gualaceo for the weekend. It was so nice to have girlfriends again, even if only for a weekend!

Friday night, we had Gloria and Berenia over and we spend the evening teaching them crazy card games in English, one of which Jeff made up completely. I think it was based on an American drinking game, but I had never played it. It was a riot.

Saturday, the girls, Julie and Alison, went to Chordeleg to check out the jewelry the town is famous for while Jeff, Kyle, and I went to lunch with one of Jeff´s student´s families. Dr. Jorge, we like to call him. Dr. Jorge and his two sons, Jose and David, are Jeff´s students and they´ve developed quite a friendship. Dr. Jorge was celebrating 25 years in medical practice, so they had us over for lunch to celebrate. We celebrated with the traditional Ecuadorian dish, you gussed it, cuy! We also ate a delicious cake and spent the afternoon talking, relaxing, and listening to music. It was wonderful! They also have a dalmation named Pongo, who I was quite fond of. He doesn´t bark and he is also terrified of thunderstorms and fireworks. Sound familiar?


After lunch, which lasted most of the afternoon, we went home for dinner and cooked a delicious pasta dish with Julie and Alison. Jeff and Kyle were torn away by a beckoning arm and some loud music from across the street and the girls and I stayed home and baked chocolate chip cookies, which was a welcome treat.

It turns out that Jeff and Kyle were rubbing elbows with none other than the local gang of assains from the International Espionage Cafe!! They were listening to English love ballads and drinking the national Ecuadorian drink (sugar cane liquor and coke). Jeff and Kyle had a great time and now that we´ve been initiated into the assains, we have quite a good time at lunch. Jeff has even been honing his salsa skills with Alejandro, our dancing waiter.

On Sunday, we went to Banos, which is a hot springs fed town on top of an extinct volcano. We spent the day swimming in blissfully warm water and dodging in and out of the sauna. Somehow, we even managed to get sunburned through the heavily clouded sky. Must be something about the altitude or our proximity to the equator. Perhaps we should take more heed of our host country´s name.

This Past Weekend

Friday night, we spent with a local restauranteer and his three boys. Jeff learned how to make chimichuri (don´t quote me on the spelling) sauce for carne asado (grilled meat) and we chatted it up with the little boys, aged 9, 6, and 4. They were a riot. Tuesday, we´re going to teach them how to make hamburgers. I´m really looking forward to it. It´s always nice to converse with the local kiddos.

Jeff and I went in to Cuenca on Saturday night and found an honest to goodness cafe, the second one we´ve seen in Cuenca. This cafe is built on the second floor of an old movie theater and has two pages of coffee drinks, not to mention an espresso machine from Italy. Jeff, to say the least, was in heaven. He ordered a delicious Jamaican shake, which was a coffee paradise of espresso, ice cream, and whipped cream. I orded a canelaso, which is made with the sugar cane alcohol and narajilla, a local fruit. It´s served hot and is delicious, although a little strong. Jeff had to help me finish it.

We wandered around Cuenca during the early evening and had dinner in a great place called Cafe Tranquillo (peaceful cafe), which it was. It turned out to be a great date! We ate delicious food, sat at the bar, and soaked in the ambiance. Jeff even coached the bartended through making him a dirty martini. It was incredible! (not to mention a welcome change from Pilsener, the national beer of Ecuador, Zhumir, the most popular brand of sugar cane alcohol, or the old stand by, Rum and Coke).

After dinner, we went to a bar called Traffic and ran into our friend from CEDEI in Cuenca, Lori. We chatted for a bit, drank some Pilsener (or at least Jeff did--I can´t stand it!), and watched the salsa dancing. Salsa is in quick beats of three and still confounds me. I am definitely going to have to crash the lessons that Jeff is receiving from Alejandro.
Cuenca, as seen from 10,000 feet

Sunday, Kyle came and met us in Cuenca and we went on an all day long hike in the mountains. We climbed from about 7,000 to over 10,000 feet in about three hours, had lunch, and began our hike back down. The decent covered some ground as well as altitude and it took awhile. It was also completed in the rain, which made the paths (I use the term loosley) very muddy and slippery. We went with a local mountaineering club called Club Sangay and met some really wonderful people. We are looking forward to taking other trips with them in the future.


Last Minute News Flash

Jeff finished the most recent draft of his book last week. He´s doing some finishing edits and then plans to send the draft out to some people who have offered to read and edit. He plans to do another edit after receiving feedback and then will shop the book around to different publishers. Just wanted to brag a little bit...Jeff will probably strangle me when he reads this post...but it´s worth it. :)

Pictures to come along with tales of our newest adventures...

posted by Tobias Arthur @ 1:58 PM