Buenas Dias (good morning) friends and family!
It's December 1st - can you believe it. I can't. It feels like it was just Halloween - yesterday. Wow, I guess it is true that the older you get the faster time goes by. I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holiday is not celebrated here in Ecuador, however, since our school recognizes it (since it is an American school) we had celebrations and were given Thursday and Friday off that week, which was nice. The Wednesday night (Thanksgiving Eve) the PTO (parent group) at our school put on a huge feast for staff, students and families. The students and families paid for all of the staff's dinners - which was $16.00 each. Dan and I had our dinners paid for by one of our middle school students (parents) which was very nice and we also received a holiday mug with candy from her. Very nice surprise, certainly not expected at all. We bought Sam a dinner ticket for $9.00 and we all went over to the school where the feast was taking place that evening. There was musical performances by students - singing and instrumental, and then they also hired some people to play some nice live "dinner" music. The dinner was catered and was nice. It was not the traditional "home" Thanksgiving dinner by any means - but it was the Ecuadorian version of it. They served rice, turkey breast, mashed potatoes, ham, salad, a form of sweet potato, a vegetable and a bread. Keep in mind, things are prepared differently here - and some things just look and taste different than home, so although it may sound "Thanksgivingish" it was only close. But, again, it was very nice, and we are thankful we attended and thankful that our student and her parents were kind enough to purchase our tickets. It just made me really appreciate the turkey and the fixings we had back home - and I'm craving that! We sat with a group of teachers and their families and we had wine and had a good time celebrating. It was set up outside on the covered outdoor sports court - and they had a stage and decorations - and all the kids got to run around on the fields and play areas while they waited to eat. It was a great set up. Here are some pictures from the dinner.
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| Dinner Thanksgiving Eve at our school |
The next day we left very early in the morning to a city called Cuenca. It is pronounced Quen-ka. We took a shuttle van service. It was about 3 1/2 hours to get there from Guayaquil. You have to travel up over the mountains (which is a very curvy road) but it was worth it. It's a great city - very popular for U.S. retires - and actually has a large amount of expats living there - although we did not see many. It is said to be in the top 10 places for Americans to retire. It has great weather. They say you never need air conditioning and you never need your heat - the weather is mild year round there. It is in the Andes mountains. Here is some info from Wikipedia that I found about Cuenca: Its historic center was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the year 1999. It's called the Athens of Ecuador for its majestic architecture, its diversity, its contribution to the arts and sciences. It is also the birthplace of many famous people of Ecuadorian society. Handmade hats are a specialty in Ecuador.
We walked all around the historical part of the city - which has many many narrow streets going every with way. They have beautiful churches and cathedrals. We went in the biggest cathedral there and we have never seen anything like it - it was BEAUTIFUL and we were in awe being in there. It was a peaceful feeling and we felt blessed to step foot in such a holy place. Here are some pictures from the city, various buildings, the cathedral and more:
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| View of the large Cathedral from our hostel room. |
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| local street vendor selling oranges / mandarins. We bought some from him. |
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| Our hostel we stayed at. We had the top floor balcony room on the left. |
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| narrow streets - lots of cars and taxis |
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| in the big cathedral |
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| This was absolutely beautiful - take your breath away beautiful. This is the main alter. |
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| Confessions chamber - beautiful wood hand carved. |
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| More of the inside of the cathedral (all these inside pictures are), this one shows the beautiful stained glass. |
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| from the entrance looking forward to the main alter ahead. |
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| Outside the big cathedral - double decker bus touring in the background. Notice the cobble stone streets. |
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| another cathedral - smaller (but still huge) |
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| A river running through town. |
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| street vendors selling coconuts with straws to drink juice, and big slabs of pineapple on sticks |
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| Sam is getting tall... but he is also on his tippy toes! :) |
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| um... we came down these... didn't want to walk up them since the altitude makes it a little difficult. |
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| in one of the many many parks in Cuenca. |
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| outside the big cathedral - this is another view of it. The big blue rounded steeples are on the other side. |
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| One of the doors at the big cathedral |
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| this is an outdoor flower market - smelled wonderful |
We also found a Mercado (which is a shopping area) in Cuenca. This was an eye opener to say the least. They sell everything "food" wise there - from meats to veggies to fruit to lentils to spices - to fish to cooked and already prepared food to eat. Parts of it was like walking into the back room of a butcher shop... (and the smells were not good ones - ewwww). Needless to say, we did not buy any of the meat, chicken or fish there. Too scary for my tummy. But hey, this is how they live and this is normal for them so I can not criticize.
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| in the Mercado - meat section. The two women with the hats and long hair are two Ecuadorian women who dress and live in the old traditional style. There are many many women in Cuenca who look like this they farm for a living. They haul large baskets on their backs up and down hills and mountains. Sometimes carrying large bags of grain and very heavy items like potatoes, etc. |
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| Cows hooves anyone? Check these out! Sam was totally grossed out. |
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Here are two other Ecuadorian women (traditional), the shawls on their
backs are what they use for straps to hold their baskets or good. See below,
the one woman is adjusting the white basket full of stuff. |
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| corn, peas, nuts, lentils for sale. |
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| grains for sale |
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more women hauling stuff. Many of them have large lower bodies (probably all muscle from
hauling stuff up and down mountains and hills). They are not young either! |
After spending 2 days and one night in the historical city we took a cab to an area called Banos which was about 15 minutes outside of Cuenca. It's pronounced Bon-yos. In Spanish Bano means bath, like bathroom. But Banos is an area where they have hot baths - or what we call hot springs. We stayed at a very nice hosteria there called Hosteria Duran which has hot pools. We stayed 2 nights and it was nice and very relaxing!! It was more towards the mountains. Once we were done there - Sunday we caught a ride home with some friends of ours that just happened to be in Cuenca as well. It was a good trip home and we stopped on our way to take some pictures near Cajas, and also to buy some mangoes from a street vendor. Bought 11 nice yummy mangoes for $4.00. She even let us taste her mangoes before we bought so we could be sure they were good.
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| Banos |
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| Hosteria Duran - our hotel |
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| Hosteria Duran - our hotel |
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| View of the Andes right out our shower window of our Hotel room. Nice. |
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| Cajas National Park |
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| Cajas National Park - On the heights of the Western Cordillera of the Andes , west of the city of Cuenca, Cajas National Park is made up primarily of large elevations stored inside lake systems to huge boxes interconnected way, hence its name - Boxes. In the area there is a marked regularity climate, there are frequent frosts and no permanent presence of drizzle (drizzle) and fog. (Wikipedia). |
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| a few of the mangoes we bought on our way home! |
Overall, we had a great trip to Cuena and we will go back for sure! Good people, good food, good sites, and some great coffee and bakeries!
By the way... on the subject of food, I had been saying that I would post some info on some of the differences of food here. Here are some pics about that:
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| Most of the milk comes in liter boxes like this one here. They are about $1.00 a box on average. |
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A bottle of red wine here. Not the best actually (in my opinion). It seemed to have some sort of carbonation.
Didn't finish it. Down the drain it went. Still looking for a good Merlot. |
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a few of the spices we bought here. It's hard to find some of the things we want - because we need to learn
the Spanish name for them. Spices are not cheap here. |
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They don't have much canned soup here - so it's packed soup mixes like this.
If you can find a can of Campbell's soup - it will be about $2.50 for one can here since it is imported. |
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Canned Lentils in sauce is a popular item here and not bad actually. We eat it with rice.
The Mayonnaise is not as good as home, more runny here. Dan really likes this Frutimora jelly which is a combo of strawberry and black berry. |
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This is how the yogurt comes here... in bottles. Almost all yogurt is "pourable" here. People drink it versus eat it.
We use it for smoothies mainly. |
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| Another item we use for smoothies - when we don't have fresh mangoes. Pure mango nectar. |
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A large percentage of snacks come in individual packages here.
I'm not sure of the reason, but I'm thinking it's because of the ants. If people opened up a package of Oreo's here and left them open it would be taken over by ants. So.. having them individually packaged helps that. |
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Our water dispenser in our villa. Our housekeeper orders us a new bottle every Wednesday.
We do not drink the water here. I don't believe anyone does unless they boil it first. |
Also - here are some pictures of our villa:
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| the dining room area looking out towards the enclosed porch area. |
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Near the front entrance. these are our stairs that go up to the bedrooms
and the door to the kitchen is to the left. |
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| Part of the kitchen |
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| another view of the kitchen |
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| sitting area in the outdoor covered open air porch area |
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our front yard courtyard area - it's a small gated/walled area
that is totally enclosed. We have to enter from a gate to get to
this courtyard and then the front door to the villa is below
with another gated entrance - 4 keys later. |
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| courtyard area looking at front door area. |
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These two locked security gates are metal and the big one is for
a car (if we had one) so we never open it - and the little one is the one
we exit out every time we leave our house. When we leave the house
we leave the villa from the front door - then walk across the courtyard
area and exit through this security gate to the sidewalk. |
Well... this blog is pretty darn long. I guess I'm playing catch up. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the information. Stay tuned for more!
We have been busy getting ready for the end of 1st Semester at our school. We have two weeks left. We will be heading back to the states for Christmas break - it will be nice to see family and friends again - AND have some food from the United States. We plan to stock up while we are there and bring back some things that we want here but they don't sell, or they sell for too much money - like peanut butter! Costco here we come.
Will post more later... now time to do some homework and enjoy the weekend. Love and hugs to you all ~
Michelle
