The weekend

Saturday afternoon I straddled a creatively marked, but incorrectly located equator, sat in the confessional seat of a gilded Jesuit church, crept through traffic in the historical center for two hours and drank canelazo at the foot of the virgin-of-the-small-loaf-of-bread (La Virgen del Panecillo, who happens to be a dragon tamer). Back at Cisco’s house, the extended family had gathered for dinner, Cisco’s family of four, two cousins, two aunts, two uncles and me. Before the turkey and potatoes came out, the cousins traded Chuck Norris jokes (who knew his omnipotent influence spread so far?). I failed miserably at explaining why I couldn’t translate Knock, Knock jokes of the orange variety; “Naranja you glad I didn’t say banana?” just doesn’t make much sense. I was also privy to an interesting debate about the role of General San Martin in Latin American history; being an Argentinean (like one of Cisco’s uncles) his role is downplayed in the liberation of Ecuador, either that or its exaggerated by Argentinean textbooks, I haven’t checked.

El Centro Historico

To rest from such a busy day of driving around, Cisco and I retired to his family’s finca. An hour north of the city they have a small house on a quarter of an acre with avocado, lemon and other fruit trees, some of which they sell to local supermarkets. We spent the afternoon drinking Pilsner (the Ecuadorian’s beer of choice), talking about life and picking green avocados to ripen later. I also tried for the first time a tree-growing variety of tomato (the tamarillo), as well as a cross between a lime and a mandarin orange.

I’m steadily increasing my Ecuadorian slang. Chévere means cools, cheveraso means really cool and man (pronounced mahn) means man, or woman actually (e.g. “Mira ésta man). For more, see the Factbook group, “You know you're Ecuadorian when...”, strangely and fortunately in English.

I’m now at the Hostel Galapagos Natural Life, which was recommended to me by the Yanapuma folks for its proximity to their office, though there are a million other hostels here in the tourist district La Mariscal. I scored a private room for the price of a dorm ($8 a night) because 15 Chilean girls traveling together filled the rest of the hostel. Around dinnertime a woman from the hostel came and knocked on my door to tell me there were empanadas and coffee in the dining room. The 15 Chileans, 2 Germans, 4 Ecuadorians and I shared a large dish of fried empanadas with cheese and fried dough with syrup. I’ve got high hopes for the complementary breakfast since dinner wasn’t even advertised.

To work tomorrow!