no clever title (sorry - got a headache)

After our crazy beach adventure we settled back in to life in Quito and with another roommate (Sachiko of course). Jazz had left for NY (for a week to work on an upcoming project) while we were at the beach and Henry was leaving for the same reason on Wednesday night. So, either Tuesday, I went to work at Kallari and then Sachiko and Henry came to meet me so we could go to the v egetarian Taiwanese restaurant. While we were there it started pouring like crazy so we had to take a cab for Henry to stop and get his passport back from his lawyer (this is the street infront of the lawyer's office)



and then for me to go to the cafe and Henry and Sachiko to head off to a meeting.

We all met up later that night back at the apartment (after Henry taught class and Sachiko went with him) to meet up with Henry's friend Elizabeth and her girlfriend Ana at El Pobre Diablo (here is a picture of their sign - same thing is on their menu - which i took for you Jason, I mean a devil and a monkey?!?!? what could be better???)


The place has a cozy fireplace, live music on Thursdays and Fridays, and really good Ecuadorian food:


We had fried yuca with cheese sauce, empanadas de verde (cheese empanadas, but the crust is made from green plaintains - they are super tasty, especially here), and the drink is called canelazo - a warm drink made with aguardiente (a sugar cane alochol that will warm your throat for about 20 minutes and put hair on your chest) with naranjilla juice (a local fruit somehow related to the tomatillo) and cinnamon. It's really nice : )

That night Octavio, our friend the chef/owner from Indochine was also doing this sushi music jam thing at a local club called Agejon (no idea if that's how you spell it), so after dinner (at about midnight), we all headed down to check out the jam band accompanied by Octavio, et al's sushi-rolling jam. We got there pretty late, but the music was good and the one piece of sushi i tasted was too. Finally went home after that and Henry decided that he was just gonna stay up til he had to head to the airport (around 4:30) and would try to get us to stay up as late as possible too. I think I went to bed around 3.

The next day was the big Ecuador - Brasil soccer game (anyone guess my loyalty??). I get to the cafe the next morning to find this:



which I found very amusing so had to take a picture of Franklin and Elsy. So, we worked for the rest of the day and then Sachiko came to meet me so we could lug the laundry home together. Hailed a cab and the crook cabbie tried to charge us double the rate. So I made sure to tell him he was a liar before exiting the cab. Sachiko wasn't feeling well, so she decided not to come to watch the game. I was beyond exhausted (all these late nights are getting awfully difficult!), but couldn't miss the Brasil game. I mean Ecuador - Brasil. Headed out alone to catch a cab to meet the Kallari folks to watch the game- but of course it was pouring so that alone was my first adventure. Finally got a cab and when it dropped me off this cabbie also tried to rip me off (something in the air??) and said the ride was $3 - a dollar more than I've ever paid for the same damn ride. So I asked why? and he immeditately says "okay, $2." What the hell?!!?!?

For anyone who knows soccer I don't have to tell you that Brasil sort of trounced Ecuador - so sad - though will some beautiful shots that even the Ecuador fans had to concede were impressive. After the game, there was some dancing and hanging out and after about an hour, my sorry old ass had to go home (those Kallari kids can stay out all night!). And that I did.

la ruta del sol (the route of the sun) donde no tienen sol (where they don't have sun)

So, a hundred years ago (okay about 2 weeks) I went to the beach in Manabi province. but, to back up a tiny bit:

After I got back from Salinas on Tuesday night, not much happened for the next couple of days : I slept in (YAY!!), and went to meet the chocolate crew at the Kallari apartment (to help, I thought, but there was not much to do and most of them had gone - felt a little bad since they had apparently worked til 2am the night before, but . . .). We just brought some chocolate back to the cafe and they headed off - of course with little opportunity to talk to Carlos other than for him to get a bit worked up about me teaching truffle making - cuz that's what I'm an expert on, especially at +/- 3000 feet above sea level! He kept trying to pin me down on when I might be able to do this teaching and I kept explaining I would obviously have to have at least a practice run. anyway, table that for a bit.

nothing eventful those next couple of days - other than a lot of back and forth emails trying to plan the damn beach endeavor with 3 definites (one of whom - Charles - was to be homeless for the weekend and crashing at Henry's, one maybe, one trying to change the plan, and one friend of a friend of Henry's arriving from Toronto to stay with Henry at about 10pm on Thursday night when we were planning to leave for the beach bright and early the next morning.) Fortunately, Sachiko, the friend of the friend, was super easy going and ready to do whatever we decided. So, after a lot of annoying emails, we finally decided to rent a car and head to an "eco-lodge" called Al Andaluz in Puerto Lopez.

Just hanging at home in the evening on thursday, and Charles, the temporarily homeless friend shows up with a bunch of his stuff. We head out to meet the guy with the rental car on the street corner with my credit card - sound a little shady?? I thought so. And, we were supposed to get a small SVU and were told that for some unexplained reason the car was overheating - we could take it, but . . . there was this little hatchback we should take instead. The SVU was supposed to $65/ day. The nice little hatchback, we were told, we could have for $50. I told the guy that there was no way we were paying only $15 less for a car that was essentially half the size. We still didn't even know if there were 4 or 5 people coming. We had a lot of back and forth before I got the guy down to $40/day. Still not the best cuz the car was pretty damn small and Henry and Charles are each more than 6 ft. tall, but, cheap at least.

So I head back up, Charles goes to get Henry from class and they never come back. After a certain amount of time i figure they've gone to get Sachiko from the aiport. Eventually around 10:30 they show up. Sachiko and I cook dinner (I had actually started part of it while I was waiting),



Jazz comes home. we all stay up ridiculously late, and at 3:20 we finally head to bed with alarms set for 5:30 am (the ride is supposed to take 8hrs and Henry wants to stop in at least one of the villages where he volunteered in high school).

After a refreshing 2 hours of sleep, we all pile bleary eyed into the car and head off.

the view from the car heading south out of Quito.

the view from the car of the guy with dead chickens in his basket

the view from the car as we were stopped for road construction (a novel concept as you will know if you've been reading my blog up til now)

We were finally allowed to pass - I think that delay may have only been like 20 minutes - amazing. We passed through lots of little towns, bought some amazing pan de yuca (yuca bread - with cheese inside, which is rare) in El Carmen (which is actually one of the towns Henry volunteered in too, but he didn't recognize anything there - I mean, what the hell, it had only been 20 years after all - so we only stopped at the a.t.m. there).

We kept having to ask for directions (here "directions" means a list of the town that you drive through - which of course assumes that you can find the towns with no other information and zipping through tons of roundabouts with crazy drivers and no time to read any signs). So, the ride went on and on. We kept debating stopping for food and finally, after a few false stops we hit a town called Chone for lunch. Stopped at a chicken spot where I got a hamburger, without the hamburger (and with an egg and cheese, and of course the ubiquitous papas fritas [fries]). Then we headed on out again. I believe at this point (about 5 - 6 hours in) we were told it should be about 3 more hours.

At some point here we pass through Junin, one of the towns henry volunteered in. We drive through the no-longer dirt road town, that now even has stop lights, to the house where Henry ate lunch every day. we found a guy sitting there who told us the whole family that Henry had been with was in the States, but left a message with him for the family.

About two hours later we stopped to buy some fruit on the side of the road - where we learned we were of course heading in the wrong direction - though thankfully that had only been for about 10 minutes.

Some time after that we passed through the honey town (can't remember the name, but there were dozens of little wooden stands on the side of the road selling home grown honey). then there was the pan de yuca town, where every little wooden stand (imagine at least a dozen on each side of the street) had a special little oven and a person waving you in with a little red flag - okay probably a napkin, but whatever).

A couple hours later (is anyone doing the math here?) we passed these amazing trees (acacia maybe) sorry that you can't see the awesome cotton ball "flowers" on them.

another 40 minutes or so later we crossed over some invisible boundary into the rainforest microclimate (up to this point it had been sunny and sometimes very warm, others a bit cooler). we were all a little slap-happy at this point anyway, so the fact that it was now cold and rainy as we were supposedly getting closer and closer to the beach was suddenly very amusing to all of us.

Finally we can see the ocean!! It's now about 5:10 and we left the apartment at 6am this morning, so we all starting feeling the pressure to get there before 6pm and make it in under the 12 hours mark.

ARRIVING - at 5:53PM!! (Henry was on the phone as we were setting up the shot, so . . .)

Here's what Al Andaluz looks like. Pretty cool, huh? But note the obvious lack of sun - of course it is 6pm now, so we ask if it is alway like this, at all hours of the day and are pretty much told - YES, in this season it always rains. Anyone remember the name of this area? Ruta del Sol?!? We decide we need to go to the beach anyway. I mean we did just drive 12 damn hours to get to this rainy beach, right???

So here's what we see . . .

an entire beach covered with these incredible rocks. all different shapes, sizes, colors, component parts. it was crazy. (and i got a little obsessive about the rocks, well, actually all of us except charles did)

So after playing on the beach we head to the restaurant for dinner. As we are walking in Henry says to me. "jessica, is that eva?" and sure enough, in the middle of freaking nowhere, after driving 12 hours, we find eva, the other kallari volunteer at the beach in our same hotel. apparently the road had been blocked for a protest and they couldn't go any further (she was with some friends from Cuenca) so they stopped at Al Andaluz.

We all had dinner and then the party moved to the common area. There was lots of drinking and some dancing. Some rain and some ping pong. Henry got a call somewhere along the way from each of the two younger brothers from the Junin family, who, it turns out, still live in Junin.

There was this group of international students who were on a weekend off from their semester at sea - though it wasn't the semester at sea program it was a conflict resolution program called the "scholar ship" - clever huh? we wind up meeting a czech kid (eva is slovakian) who spoke mandarin (henry is taiwanese), a german kid, and a bunch of others. it was another typically random, but fun night here in ecuador. we also wound up meeting a bunch of the guys who worked at the hotel, well really henry did, and he found out like 6 of them were from Junin.

Spent loads of time in the common area (sorry, those pics are on henry's camera and i've alreasdy gotten at least one not-so-subtle hint - steve - that it's been too long since my last post, so, am going forward without them . . . .); some time back in the cabin and a bunch of people were back out on the beach. overall, another fun and random ecuadorian night.







Next morning got up and had this awesome breakfast of fruit, yogurt,and granola (the granola here is really nice, it doesn't have all the clusters like we do, so it goes really well on top of things like super fresh papaya, pineapple and watermelon : ) ) and eggs (i think i may turn into an egg prety soon, i've been eating so many)

Surprise, surprise it was raining and gross and we were all pretty tired (very late night) so we wer sort of sticking close to home. We decided we had to go to the beach though since, well, we'd driven 12 hours to get to the beach right?

Henry a.ka. Popeye

So, we played on the beach, gathered lots of rocks, eventually decided we were hungry again (that happens a lot in this crowd) and headed off the beach to El Delphin Magico (that would be the Magic Dolphin of course) in the next town - which is the famous institution everyone tells you to go to.

So, I drove us to the next town over Salango and we arrived here:

Again, the really good pictures from here are on henry's camera : ( (but i will add them later). We had this awesome lunch of lobster, and fish in peanut sauce, and shrimp ceviche, and this crazy crustaceon the name of which i am forgetting, but wait till you see the pictures (but not the spiny red oyster, which is a local endangered delicacay). We bought some great backed goods at a little place about 3 doors away (roscas, they're in a picture a little bit down, and pan de sal - sal bread, not super salty, but delicious); walked on the beach; and eventually headed back to the hotel.

Honestly, I have no memory of what we did when we got back, but it wasn't much. Eva and those guys moved on, I think we just hung out til dinner (remember what i said about the food thing). later that night we had the roscas with coffee and hot chocolate (the standard way to eat them) out by the fireplace.



Turned out that night was October 12 and there was a big Columbus Day party at the next town. So, Francisco (one of the Junin guys) came back to get us to go to the party (that was after Sachiko and I each took a nice little nap here on the couches near the fire).

We walked down the street in the rain and came to the next town where there was big concrete slab with basically tent poles and fabric covering it - sort of like a tent so you could dance and be somewhat dry in the rain. There was a d.j.; loads of salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and who knows what else, food stands; drink stands; and tons of people. I was thrown at a group of 18 year old(ish) guys and before I knew it spent most of the night dancing. It was a blast. (also, will put those pics up later - i don't carry my camera often at night since it doesn't seem safe, but henry can get away with it). Stayed til about 1:30 in the morning and headed back.

Next morning we headed to b'fast stopping to get presents from this nice man and his daughter (they have a little stand at the hotel). She makes most of the jewelry they sell - she's 11.




Henry bought these cool basketss



This is Francisco (who was so nice and gave me and Sachiko each a spiny red oyster shell-I know

Headed out to find out way back to Quito and passed this hotel, so i had to take a picture (mostly for my brother)

Eventually decided on the route that would take us past Junin (after some debate and timing concerns) so called henry's host brothers to tell them we were coming. here they are 20 years ago:

and now:


So Leo met us at the house where we'd looked for him before and we piled in the back of his pick up and he took us out to see his chicken farm (apparently, in addition to the shrimp farm which they had 20 years ago) he and his brother now also raise chicken for eggs)



Henry told Leo what I was doing in Ecuador and Leo asked if i had tried cacao and i said so far i hadn't so he had one of his workers pick a cacao and open it for us. Actually we got two. And, it was amazing. Had only had juice before, but they don't make the juice here.

Then we headed off to meet Danilo at his place. We piled in the back of Danilo's truck to go see all their property. Danilo drove us up this crazy mountain path (and i mean it was barely bigger than the truck - at one point we all squeezed into the cabin cuz we were getting beaten by the tree limbs). Then after we got to the top, Danilo had to turn the damn truck around to go back down!! Did I mention there was a drop off on one side and an embankment on the other?!?!? Here are some (blurry I know) shots to give you an idea . . .

We got back down the mountain and went to town for dinner where the concept of a vegetarian meal (just the regular meal without the meat!) was too much for the restaurant guy to get. after two or three tries i got dinner. we all ate and leo and danilo convinced us to stick around and that they would get us a driver to take us back over the andes and through all the construction (it was getting late and we were getting worried) apparently, this is not an uncommon thing around here.

So we spent the next 2 hours in the back of the truck drinking beer, looking for a driver, checking out the town and waking up some poor little old lady to buy aguardiente - the local, basically moonshine - her family raises sugar cane and makes the drink so danilo busted out the garden hose syphon and filled up a gallon jug. Crazy!!!

Finally after a few false starts and a few yes then no answers we got a driver, said our goodbyes and piled in the car with Carlos our driver, who proceded to drive for the next 7 hours over the freakin andes with the window wide open!! Sachiko and I were freezing our butts off, Henry fell right to sleep and never even noticed and who knows what Charles was thinking. Got back to Quito about 5 am and piled into bed.

So, I know that still leaves me about 2 weeks behind, but . . . . sooner or later I'll get there.

Mom and Matt are arriving today, so not sure when I'll be back, but from now on shorter posts so I can actually get through them : )

perros mas que pueblos (more dogs than people)

more salinas shots

I know there aren't many dogs in this picture (and i didn't take any others, but trust me, there were tons of dogs everywhere you looked - lots of really cute puppies too - and all the dogs were pretty small like most of the people : ) )


My Salinas postcard shot





These women are making what's called fritada (not sure if that's how you spell it). A few hours earlier there was an entire pig laying across that table, but i didn't get a chance to take its picture in that form . . .


well, the rest of salinas seems like a blur by now. (sorry, i know, it's been so long and each day here seems like about 3 - i don't mean that in a bad way, just that there is so much going on). so, i will try to recap the best i can.

i think the next thing i went on to do was to make chocolate paste. for this you put those roasted, broken, theoretically casing-free cacao beans into something that looks like a sausage maker.



out comes a semi-wet cacao paste. it's kind of what the consistency of natural peanut butter would be if you didn't mix in the oil. (though one of the presses made a much drier paste, which it hurled around the room until we fixed a plastic wrap contraption over the part where the paste comes from). after the paste emerges we put it into this big machine that heats the paste while two large rollers mix it.






it stays in the machine for a number of hours (it was overnight the two times we used it). the next morning we emptied the machine into plastic-lined boxes to cool and harden.



I asked about using the liquid "paste" to make chocolate since essentially it was a liquid that solidified and then gets melted again. i was told that the solidifying part was just a timing issue and you can use the liquid "paste" as well.

there was also actual chocolate being made throughout the time there. unfortunately, i didn't get to see the whole of that process in order, but i got the main parts of it (though slightly out of order). essentially it goes like this:
they break up the cacao paste,


broken cocoa butter and cacao paste

weigh it

and put it into this machine with a large tub that heats the cacao while its being aggitated by ball bearings and a center rod with a number of smaller rods coming off the center rod (kind of like a very sparse bottle brush maybe?);




break up the cocoa butter, weigh the cocoa butter, melt it, and add it to the machine;

Manuel adding the melted cocoa butter
add the sugar; add the vanilla. of course there are recipes/formulas they follow to make each of the different chocolates (there is a 70%, a 75%, and an 85% percent version).

so, i have no idea where we are, but am pretty sure this gets us to monday. monday, of course, was a real work day for the fabrica (factory). and, as i think i explained before, the way kallari gets to make chocolate is essentially using the fabrica when Salineritos (the company that actually owns it) is not using the equipment. So, we headed down to the fabrica after breakfast to finish packing the rest of the paste in boxes. While that was happening I actually got into a really interesting conversation with Pancho about indigenous issues in Ecuador, the current situation in the US with Indian tribes, eco-tourism and other economic development, land rights, and environmental protection. it was really cool, both substantively and because i was able to have the conversation in spanish!! : ) Carlos also got in on the end of it and i felt really good about that because of the substance as well, but also because apparently Judy had told him i had a lot of experience in that area and he seemed duly impressed with my knowledge (for once i knew what i was talking about here!!)

After that we went up to lunch and then had nothing to do for a while because the factory was in use. We went to the store so i could buy some famous Salinas cheese for Henry and Jazz and for my mom. Then, someone went to buy a soccer ball and a they started up a pick-up soccer game with a bunch of local kids.




It was pretty funny and really fun, until i turned my ankle a bit (i was wearing danskos that day, not the best option for running around a plaza). anyway, after a while the kids got bored and the guys finished out the game on their own. then, we still had more time to kill so we headed back to the rocking disco. was closed, but someone convinced them to open so there were a few hours of karaoke, pool, beer, and cigarettes.

the actual bar at the bar

there was also a lot of rain. we went back to grab some chocolates from the fabrica to wrap and then went to dinner. after dinner we headed back down to finish up. made some more chocolate, wrapped some more, and cleaned some more.

of course the most interesting part of the evening was the constant practical joking, especially since some of the people were falling asleep here and there - that meant you were free game. hell, if you were wide awake and not watching your back you were too. people getting taped to their chairs, signs stuck on people's backs, here carlos is taping a stapler to hiram's back

chino started to fall asleep in this pile up



and they cut his hair (that sort ot sideburn area). so, here they are evening out the other side!

pancho even went to hide back in the storage area to sleep because he was being harrassed so badly.


the "good"? thing was that they started messing around with me too. i caught carlos trying to stick something on my back, someone snuck up and blasted the fan on me. i think i have been accepted : )

then, they all decided we had to go back to the bar for the last night.


By this time i felt like crap - sore throat, headache and only went along, well, because they pressured me since it was the night. so i went for a bit, but i wasn't singing karaoke, wasn't playing pool, two super drunk guys tried to talk to me, and it was really smokey. so after about an hour henrique walked me back. i took a nice hot shower and went to bed.

the next morning we just went to get the rest of the chocolate, which unfortunately (and nobody knew why) had all these crazy white swirls in it. it was really pretty looking (and makes a nice picture),



but not so good if it's what you get when you open your fancy, high-priced chocolate. so, most of that is going to have to go for food prep here in the cafe and taste sampling.

anyway, got the stuff. went back to the apartment to pack up everything. walked back up through the market (tuesday is market day in salinas) in the rain.













those guys got some meat in the street (clever huh?) and then we went for lunch because carlos had special requested from the owner an encebollada. actually we'd gone looking for it for breakfast - really appetizing since it is a fish soup made with tons of onions [cebolla] not quite my idea of breakfast - though neither is the chicken stew they all had every morning with their eggs and rice - however, i guess in reality it's not that different from a bagel with whitefish salad and onion, hmmm, just thought of that. all about perspective, huh? so encebollada for lunch, which was really good, but very rich, lots of fish in it.

then a little more wandering through the market, a trip to the soccerball factory


where apparently carlos buys each of his employees a ball at the end of a salinas stint (there was of course a whole thing about me picking out a ball, and i couldn't figure out if they wanted me to buy one or to buy one for me, so in the end i passed) and a pile up of all the stuff and 3 of the guys in the back of another extended cab pick-up taxi.
me, amanda, carlos, pancho, henrique, and manuel piled in to discover one last practical joke when henrique told manuel to open his backpack and he discovered a little present - the dustpan from the lodging house . . .


chino, cristian, and hiram got to ride in back under the tarp. did i mention it was pouring all morning??

though you can't tell, this is chino, hiram, and cristian


made it about 30 minutes down the hill to get the bus. waited in the rain about 20 minutes to hail a speeding bus, dump our stuff in the luggage compartment, and jump on before it started moving again.

5 1/2 hours later we pulled in to quito and i couldn't have been happier. splitting headache, no bathroom for 6 1/2 hours, lots of people crammed on a bus. told carlos i had to go back to henry's apartment because my head was hurting so bad i couldn't do any more (felt a little bad since he said they were still going back to work that night.)

took a cab back to henry and jazz's and apparently, despite feeling like garbage, i was very proficient in my conversation as i managed to wow my driver so much he wanted to marry me and come back to the states, or, at the very least, show me the night life in quito. got to henry and jazz's and we ordered an awesome pizza full of tons of fresh green veggies and a great salad. it was so nice to be back with them and to eat some truly veggie food! we talked for a while and went to bed. so nice.