Day 85 Thursday 15 July – Birthday

Quite a busy day today. Even though I had prepared a lot of food the day before, I still spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Luckily the cake and the lasagne sauce were both ready and waiting. I spent the day making the cake’s frosting, finishing the lasagne, preparing salad, snacks and guacamole. And besides I had to buy beer and other things.

But the food was a success. Made the best lasagne I had ever made and I’m hoping that wasn’t because of the cheese I put in. The cake was very heavy, but good. I’ll post the recipe later. And everybody liked the food.

After preparing everything, I had some minutes to myself before the first guests called for me to open the gate. I had practically invited everyone I know in Quito and some of them brought more guests. So people started to drip in slowly. We started out with the snacks, then out came the presents, among which the T-shirt I’m wearing in the pictures, a lot of chocolate, an alpaca scarf and very warm woolly slippers. For sure I won’t be cold this winter. Then we got a box as a drum and everybody sang songs for me. Some in Kichwa, some in Spanish. I put one on my Facebook.

When everybody had finally arrived, we started on the lasagne and cake. In the meantime we kept drinking wine and beer and afterwards we opened the bottle of tequila, which was very much liked by me and Victor. It was a relatively cheap bottle, but it was good stuff. Next morning we didn’t feel a thing, though the people who drank other stuff had a bit of chuchaqui.

They had warned me before, but I didn’t believe them. The birthday-boy (or girl) gets to be ‘beaten’ with a belt the amount of years. Everybody takes turns. I didn’t feel much of it, it was just a bit weird standing there like that, receiving a ‘beating’. We danced some after that and just past midnight, the booze was gone and it was time to let the neighbours sleep. So the end.

Saturday I will go to Tena, the town where Kallari chocolate is. Again, this moving means I don’t know whether I will have internet on a regular basis. I do, however already have a place to stay. Expensive, but including 3 meals a day.

July 30th, I won’t be reachable at all for 5 days, because then I will spend some time with Mariela in the Amazon. The national park of Cuyabeno to be exact.

Day 84 Wednesday 14 July – Meeting Carlos

I finally met with Carlos today. He was in the café for just a while. I can come on Saturday to Tena and I may get to work with chocolate recipes and packaging designs. Very interesting!

On Ecuadorian typical food

Historically, Ecuador is the land of potatoes, maize, quinoa and turkey, just like most other Andean countries. However, nowadays the most popular plate is rice with chicken in any form. There are some specialities to be found around the country though. You have different kinds of soups, like locro, a soup of potatoes, often with maize and avocado. There is caldo de … and there you fill in whichever kind of meat. Other starters include the empanada, a maize or plantain pastry filled with cheese or meat.

Main courses usually consist of meat, with cuy being something special. We usually keep our cuys in the house as pets or we experiment on them: guinea pigs they are. If the dish doesn’t come with rice, there is also mote, a white, peeled maize variety; canguil, which is just popcorn, this usually goes with soups; or potatoes. In the coastal area you have patacones and bolones, which are plantain specialties. Sometimes they are made with cheese, but not always. Another coastal specialty is the ceviche (though there is a vegetarian variant in the highlands), which resembles a soup made with fish or shrimp, where the seafood is usually raw, marinated in lime juice and chilli. In the Amazon you are more likely to find dishes with yuca (cassava), like fried yuca or yuca cheese cakes. Communities there also eat all sorts of wild meats, including gusano, a type of caterpillar.

A number of snacks include humitas, a yummy mix of ground corn, cheese, butter and sugar wrapped in corn leaf and steamed; bolones; empanadas; quimbolitos; and onion rings. While deserts are usually a pudding of some fruit or morocho de leche, which is rice pudding, but I haven’t seen that anywhere yet. Of course you have ice cream from pingüino (the Dutch Ola) or Hagen Dasz, but there is also a special ice cream called helado de paila: made in special wok-like pans, usually made with juices and the like.

Vegetarian food is easy to get in the bigger cities, where ‘health food’ is growing. Most vegetarian restaurants serve almuerzos (lunch) with a soup, rice, salad, vegetables and a small desert. They are a bit hippy-like on the interior, but you’ll see all kinds of people sitting at the tables. Mostly Ecuadorians, though: most tourists go to the Indian restaurant in the center or to one of the many Chinese restaurants.

The best thing about the food here, though is the large variety of fruits. Often made into fresh juices. Just a short list of fruits you may encounter: Maracuyá (passion fruit), granadilla, tomate de árbol (tree tomato), naranjilla, pineapple, orange, guanábana, chirimoya (custardapple, we saw these in India as well), taxo, mora (blackberry), babaco, different kinds of bananas, melons, strawberries, apples (but imported), papaya, avocado, uvillas (gooseberries), etc. And these are just the fruits that are available in the city and in season. I have yet no idea which fruits I will find in the Amazon.

Day 81 Sunday 11 July – NL vs. ES: 0-1

Determined to watch the final match in the World Cup, I set out with my French housemate to the Dutch Pub on the Corner. Being 15 minutes early would secure a good spot I figured. How wrong I was. The small pub was packed with people. It was worse than the bus I had been on much earlier, hell sardines have more space in a can. People were pressed against the windows or standing outside. Some daredevils even ventured inside, squirming themselves in. And even if Sarah had been a foot taller (because of all the tall Dutch), we probably wouldn’t have wanted to get inside.

We decided to look for another place to watch, and in a fleeting moment I saw my Dutch flight companion, pressed against the glass. He’d been in Quito the entire time, but this is the first time we see each other again. He gives me a thumbs up when I ask him how things are going, and Sarah and I walk on. We’re lucky, the next pub is bigger and has 3 video screens. However, nationalities are mixed. Spanish and Dutch are watching the same game together and Americans and Ecuadorians are dressed in orange or red.

But what a terrible game! 9 yellow cards and a red one for the Dutch game. They wanted it so bad, they almost deserved to lose. Ball possession was almost equal, the Spanish team had just a little more chances to score, but still. Only 4 minutes before the end of overtime, Fábregas scores against the Dutch. The Dutch storm the field when the game ends, claiming that Fábregas was offside, but sorry guys, the video clearly shows he wasn’t. A muffled sound of disappointment sounds around me, while from the next room some loud cheering is clearly audible. For the third time in history, the Dutch football team misses the mark in the finals.

Making a link to an e-mail I got from R.: Though Ecuador didn’t qualify for the World Cup, the excitement was definitely felt here. And not just because I find myself in the most touristic location in the country. Until the final South-American country lost, even the Ecuadorians were fanatic about the World Cup. With our heads down, we leave the pub. The craziness is over and we can go on with our normal lives. Or at least, I can go on with my ‘normal’ Ecuadorian life.

Today I got an e-mail from Judy, giving me more assurance of my upcoming work for the Kallari association. It is almost certain that I will leave Quito for a couple of weeks after celebrating my birthday.

Day 77 Wednesday 7 July – Visa extended

Yuhu! I am finally officially allowed to stay in the country until august 18! That’s the day I leave, I know, so I hope I don’t miss my flight or something else bad happens. Good thing is that I saved $170,- on my visa, because it only got extended for less than 30 days. Now my discount is either because of that, or because I said I’m going to do some volunteer work (for Kallari). No matter, I’m happy and I can take extra chocolate home! I can actually take about 23kg of chocolate home, because I also found out I can take 2 bags of 23kg back in the plane. Who wants to buy some real and delicious Ecuadorian chocolate?!

Day 76 Tuesday 6 July – John Travolta the waiter

In the morning, Mari called me to ask if I could fill in for an hour for her at the café today and 3 other days. She’s doing admission exams for her university and can’t quit her job altogether. This shift she asks me to fill in for is right at the moment of the semi-finals between the Netherlands and Uruguay, but hey, what kind of an excuse is that.

Some Zeezicht feelings actually surfaced while doing my job, washing the dishes, cleaning up tables. It felt good to do something practical for a change. Funny thing is that people didn’t even act surprised to see a tall, blond, Dutch guy waitering.

But I won’t miss the finals on Sunday! In the evening I encountered some people with the Dutch flags painted on their cheeks in a restaurant, so I went ahead and asked them where the Dutchies are watching the game. So Sunday, in the Corner Pub (Amazonas) I’ll be!

On traffic in Ecuador

While I was in Guayaquil (Day 44), I wrote a little bit about the traffic in Ecuador and that it is so terrible.  I promised to write some more about it. But at that moment I was just mostly fed up with the traffic in Guayaquil. 2 Years ago, I wrote a small piece on the traffic in India (in Dutch), which didn’t seem to have any rules but “horn please”. Sure enough, the traffic isn’t as bad here. At least they drive on the right side and the horn isn’t used as much. Mostly just by taxi drivers who pass by, hoping to pick you up, while you are just waiting for a chance to cross the road. There was one particular street in Guayaquil which gave me a lot of trouble on this matter. When taking the bus back from the office, I had to cross a broad street, which was almost impossible. Pedestrians are usually left on their own, traffic lights aren’t set so there is a space open for us to cross. Moreover, on these broad (2-3 lane, one-way) roads the cars are nearly racing. With busses and taxis stopping everywhere they like, this makes the traffic in Guayaquil a pain in the ass.

In most of Quito, things are better. Recently there is a new programme in the centre called “Pico y Placa”, which simply states that on certain days you can’t enter the centre during certain hours if your ‘placa’ (plate number) ends with a certain number. In practice, this means that during certain other hours, the streets are busier. Here’s what a friend writes about the traffic in Quito (in French). Some streets are still difficult to cross, but in the busiest streets, like Amazonas, there are at least traffic lights for pedestrians.

In driving, equally when walking, people can be disrespectful towards you, by cutting across or just not moving aside. Though only in driving, this can provide potentially dangerous situations. Luckily, Quito has a very good bus system. There are 3 lines going in North-South direction, including an Arnhem style ‘Trolebus’. And at night you can take one of the 8800 taxis that drive around here.

Day 73 Saturday 3 July – Small update

So little is happening in Quito right now, that I haven’t written anything in 4 days. I’m just doing my thesis work every day, processing the interviews that I held in Guayaquil, watching a little bit of the world cup in between (Finale NL vs. DE will be a tough game). I’ve been down with a light flu (or a heavy cold) since Monday, but recovering quickly thanks to a lot of herbal tea and lemons and fruit juices. I still haven’t heard anything from Carlos, the board member from Kallari. He said he’d be in Quito this week, but I guess I should call him again.

My new visa has been authorized and I probably can pick it up on Wednesday. I only paid $ 30,- so it could be my visa is only extended until my day of leaving. But we’ll see Wednesday. Meanwhile, without my passport I can’t travel to Tena to meet Carlos, because you can’t enter the Amazonia without it.