El Parque La Carolina, Otavalo, Lago Cuicocha, y El Curadero

Did some more walking around el Parque La Carolina last week and actually took some pictures. There are a lot of art sculptures/structures there which is kind of cool. Afterwards, we went to this coffee shop called El Ristretto. My friends, Kelsey and Meghan found it and it has THE best Americano con crema that I have ever had. The crema is almost like frosting in coffee. It’s terrific.

Dirt jumps

Full pipe with some cool graffiti

More of the skatepark

Rock sculpture type thingy

There is KFC (kah efay say) everywhere here. More than any other fast food place I think

Brick structure in park that apparently smelled bad

On Wednesday, we visited the place we’re going to be doing our service learning. It’s called El Asilo Corazón de María (Asylum/Refuge of Mary’s Heart). Basically, it is an old folks home that has over 200 residents that have either been just left their by their families or don’t have families. There are residents that function pretty well on their own and there are others that have physical disabilities or dimensia. Our role will basically be to spend time with them, plan activities, and be there for them because many desire interaction with younger people because either they don’t have family or their family doesn’t visit often or at all. Six will be going every Mondays and Wednesdays from 10-12 and the rest of us (six) will be going on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’ll do a total of 30 hours and we have to keep a journal in Spanish of what we do and at the end we have to write a 10-12 page paper talking about our experience. All this is for one service learning credit.

Last Thursday a bunch of us rented a dance studio for an hour ($6 each) and we had a teacher show us how to dance la salsa. Some of us already knew how or had a pretty good idea of how to dance it but others, such as myself, had no idea what to do and started with no rhythm at all. By the end we all had a pretty good base though, myself included. I was pretty excited because I’m a terrible dancer. We learned some basic steps and how to do a twirly thingy. Definitely made a lot of progress. Pretty sure the plan is to go get lessons for the next three Thursdays so I’m looking forward to that.

The next day, I went walking along La Avenida de Los Shyris which is right next to el Parque La Carolina. There are a bunch of restaurants and stores that sell pirated movies. A lot of the restaurants have funny names like Chick: Pollo y Desayuno (chicken and breakfast) or look funny like Don Cangrejo (Sir Crab) that has a big sculpture of a crab and usually a guy outside dressed up like a crab dancing around. There’s also another restaurant called Grant’s Restaurant and it has a big picture of Ulysses Grant.

Speaking of food, I thought I’d talk about what I’ve been eating while I’ve been here. Every day, I usually have a breakfast of pan con mermelada (bread with marmalade), té (tea, either apple with cinnamon or manzanilla con miel (chamomile with honey)), a fruit (usually a papaya), sometimes a hardboiled egg, and sometimes fresh jugo de maracuya, naranjilla, or tomatillo (passion fruit, orange-like fruit, tree tomato, or others I don’t know the name of), or un batido (milkshake with fruit). Sometimes I’ll have a sandwich with queso (cheese) and jamón (ham). I was under the impression that jamón meant ham but I guess it just means lunchmeat because lately I’ve been having jamón de pollo (chicken ham?). Lunch is usually very hurried for me because mi madre is a teacher at a school down the street and doesn’t get off work until 12:40 and doesn’t return until 12:50 with takeout food that I have to eat by 1:00 so I can catch the bus to school which starts at 1:30 in time. Usually this almuerzo (lunch) consists of sopa, arroz, y carne (soup, rice and some variety of meat). In Ecuador, they eat a TON of soups. Somebody said they have over 365 types. All the ones I have tried so far have been terrific. Some are similar to chicken noodle soup and most have big chunks of potato and either a hunk of meat like a chicken wing. One thing they do is eat aguacate (avocado) with almost everything. Often times I’ll either put half an aguacate en mi sopa or a banana (strange thought). Aguacate is SUPER good in soup though. The whole mix of hot soup and cold avo is so bueno. Para la cena (dinner), it’s different every night. Usually we have rice or papas (potatoes) and she mixes in some chicken with unknown spices. I asked her one time and she said it was hecho con solamente amor (made with only love) so she might not want to share her cooking secrets with me haha. I usually have half an avocado with dinner as well but if not there is usually a tomato/avocado/onion salad. Sometimes I’ll have a fruit afterwards too like a granadilla (weird fruit I’ve never seen before but it pretty tasty).

On Friday, we had a school organized trip to Otavalo at 4pm. We took a chartered bus on a two and a half hour ride to Otavalo, a small town to the northeast of Quito which has probably the most famous Saturday market in all of South America. It’s so popular that it’s also open every other day of the week but isn’t as big on those days. On the way there we stopped at a shop of masapan which are little clay sculptures that were pretty cute. Some were very small like bottle cap and some were bigger and very detailed with pretty colors. We arrived in Otavalo and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. They served us some soup (of course) and vegetables and some sort of meat that everyone was trying to identify. We later learned it was just beef with some cheese stuffed in it. That night we went to a discoteca (club) that played a lot of dance music and we also got to practice our newly learned salsa moves.

Dinner in Otavalo

Mi amiga, Dominika trying some salsa type thing with Elizabeth being disgusted in the background

Lit up church in Otavalo

Some pool before we went out to the discoteca

The next day we started by doing some activities (that might have amused a 4^th grader) our trip supervisor planned which were pretty irritating because we wanted to go to market. We ended up getting 2 hours in the market which probably was enough but I could have used a little more time. For the first time in my life I actually enjoyed shopping! There was a ton of bartering that went on and I found I was only really effective if I really wanted something. If I wasn’t really sure if I wanted it, I didn’t try very hard. I ended up getting some cool gifts for friends/family and a few things for myself like a pretty nice wide-brimmed leather hat ($15 down from 25), an alpaca wool poncho ($18 down from 28), and an alpaca wool chompa (jacket for $14, down from 24). I also bought an almuerzo from a street vendor there for $1.25. This included sopa, rice, beef, salad, and juice. I didn’t eat the salad or juice though because if the vegetables/fruits weren’t washed sufficiently (they usually aren’t) I would probably get sick. For $1.25 it was quite the deal. There were many gringos (white people) in Otavalo so it was pretty evident is was a big tourist spot.

El mercado

El Mercado

Pinturas

Woven goods

Really cool hammock/chair things!

More woven goods

Sopa con chicken wing :)

After Otavalo, we went to el lago Cuicocha (Cuicocha Lake) which was about 10 miles away. This is a crater lake with some islands in the middle that look like cuy (guinea pigs, hence the name). It was pretty cloudy which was unfortunate because it’s supposed to have a good view of the country on clear days. Apparently the water looks really blue on clear days too but since it was cloudy we missed that part. It was still pretty though. We ate lunch at the restaurant on the lake then some took a 40 minute boat ride around one of the islands for $2ish. The rest of us took a little walk down to the water then up above the crater and got a pretty nice view of the lake and the country on the other side. It started raining on us which was nice because I hadn’t been rained on the whole time I’d been in Ecuador until then. It was refreshing and I had my new trusty hat to protect me.

Restaurant at Lago Cuicocha

Then came the rain :)

Danger

Me and my new sombrero

Viwe of country from top of the crater

She stole mi sombrero

After that, we went to a nearby town that trains curaderos (healers) and got to see a slightly modified version of a cleansing ritual that gets rid of evil spirits and bad energy in your body. My friend, Zang volunteered although she had no idea what she was about to experience. The curadero started by getting some aromatic plants and filing up a bottle of some kind of liquor. He lit two candles and put on a necklace that looked like it had teeth on it. He swished around the liquor in the bottle saying some sort of prayer type thing. He then drank some liquor and put a spear to Zang’s forehead and started spitting the liquor all over her. This was the first of many unexpected things. After he was done spitting on Zang, he spat more liquor on the aromatic plants and brushed them all over her body several times saying some incantation. Then he took two eggs, spat liquor on them, brought them over Zang’s head like he was about to smash them, then brushed them all over her like he did with the plants except this time he whistled while he did it. Afterwards, he told us he could hear the contents of the eggs swishing around inside so he knew bad energy was present. This is when it started to get weird. He put a red cloth over Zang’s head, put more liquor in his mouth and grabbed two candles. He then stood about 7 feet away from her and spat the liquor through the candles and blew huge flames at the front of Zang’s body from head to foot. He then said espalda (back) and she turned around and he blew flames at her back as well. The craziness continued. He took a white flower and a red flower and started eating them then put some wine and another fluid in his mouth with the flowers. He put a rock up over Zang’s nose and eyes and then spat the flowers/wine all over Zang’s forehead. Pretty much all of us started some silent giggling. It didn’t stop there though. He got more flowers/wine but this time opened Zang’s shirt and spat them on her chest. More giggles. He did the same on her back and in her hands and told her to rub it all over her body. He then lit up a cigarette and blew smoke in her hair and all over her body saying incantations. At the end, he told us that usually the ceremony involves 12 men and 12 women who are all naked and instead of eggs, he uses a guinea pig to brush all over their bodies. At the end, the guinea pig dies because all of the bad energy and evil spirits it has accumulated.

Cerdo outside la casa del curadero

Zang, about to get fire blown at her

Ready, Aim, Fire!

CHICKENS

That night we got back to Quito and at 11pm we got on ANOTHER bus although this one was a little different. It was called a chiva and it was an open air bus that drove us around colonial Quito and served us canelazo (cinnamon and naranjilla drink) and blasted loud music along the way. It was cool because we got to see all of the lit up churches. We also passed an alley where some young Ecuatorianos were having what looked like a gang fight. Two groups were going at each other with knives. Little scary.

La Chiva

On Sunday, Meghan and I went to el Parque El Ejido which has tons of artists on the weekends who put their art out around the park to sell. Many of the artists had original works but many of them had also copied popular paintings of artists such as Oswaldo Guayasamín and others. Apparently many of the most famous Ecuadorian artists like Guayasamín started selling their artwork in this park. In the interior there was another market similar to the one at Otavalo except it was much smaller. It sold many of the exact same things that I saw in Otavalo. Made me wonder how much of it was woven or made by the actual vendors.

This painting is a view of La Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús from the steps of La Iglesia de San Fanrcisco. In my earlier post about our tour of the city I posted a picture that had this almost exact same view.

Many duplicated paintings

Paited feathers

Etched Leaves

Apparently this train going through the air and the horse carrying a bell is a major theme in Ecuadorian art? I could be wrong about that but there were several different paintings be different artists with these things in them

La Calle de la Ronda

That sums up most of what I’ve done lately. Tomorrow (I’m writing this one Monday but will probably post it Tuesday afternoon)  will be my first day of service work at the old folks’ home so expect to hear about that in the next post. I’ll be going to Baños this weekend as well which is a pretty popular tourist spot that has a lot of hiking and other outdoor activities. Pretty excited for that. ¡Adiós!