I'd heard guinea pig was a typical Ecuadorian delicacy, but I never ate it, saw it, or even read it on a menu. Soup was served daily-- potato soup, celery soup, tripe soup, quinoa soup, pigs' feet soup, fish soup, simple soups, complex soups, some soups so full of ingredients they're hard to describe. Ecuador is a country of outstanding soups. There were other excellent foods as well-- humitas (a sweet corn tamale), empanadas filled with green plantains, llapingachos (potato pancakes), fritadas-- but the soup was an everyday event.
Not every dish was to everyone's taste. After a day driving through mountains and valleys, we stopped at a simple restaurant in Guayllabamba. My stepson grew irritated as the menu was translated for him: potato soup with pig skin, blood sausage, fried pork skin . . . "Why does everything need to be made out of the grossest parts of the dead animal?" He eventually settled on the soup without skin. It was superb, served with fresh avocado and toasted corn. No one ordered the fried pig skin, but later we saw some impressive displays of it. These weren't the little pork rinds you find in the US, but entire sides of a hog, flayed and fried into a big crispy mat. They filled the doorways of several restaurants in Latacunga.
I'm sure guinea pig really is an everyday dish somewhere in Ecuador. It's a small country but tremendously varied. Quito, the capitol, is high in the Andes. Volcanoes, many capped with snow, make it a beautiful place. Yet a short drive from the city leads to tropical cloud forest, a Tarzan-like jungle turned on its side. Tree ferns grow on steep mountainsides. Vines hang from dense foliage. A different route from Quito leads to the paramo, a kind of Andean high plains with its own harsh beauty. And this is only a small part of the central corridor.
To the East is the Oriente, true rainforest draining to the Amazon basin. To the West are the lowlands with rice paddies, mangrove swamps, and Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city and the country's major port on the Pacific Ocean. Farther west, far enough to be in a separate time zone, are the Galapagos Islands.
We arrive in Quito at night. The city lights look like reflections of the stars. The airplane loops through the long valley crossing the length of the city twice at slow speed. It gives a great view but doesn't inspire confidence in the ease of landing. The city is high and surrounded by mountains. The plane is fully loaded and pushing the weight limits.
In Miami, American Airlines asked passengers to wait for a later flight so the plane wouldn't be overweight. We'd volunteered to wait the previous day, in exchange for a hefty flight voucher. Now we were a day late, tired, and wearing dirty clothes. Our luggage had traveled before us, while we spent a day in Miami. The plane screeched to a halt and we were in Quito.
We waited in line for Immigration and then went looking for our baggage. The "secure" area for luggage that we'd been assured of in Miami turned out to be the floor of the airport surrounding a sleepy employee. There was no customs check, so we wheeled our cart of luggage out the door. Roberto's entire family was there to meet us with a flurry of kisses, hugs, and handshakes. They took us to the appropriately named Edificio Panorama, an apartment building on the hills above the city with gorgeous views from every window.
It took us a couple of days to get acclimated. Quito's altitude is nearly twice that of Denver and gives that breathless feeling. I got to spend quite a bit of time at various American Airlines offices reporting the items missing from our luggage. The "secure" area at the airport seemed to mean only small things would be stolen. The locks on all our bags had been forced and everything had been rifled. Even sealed boxes of medicine and tampons had been opened. The thieves took a strange combination of things. We hadn't packed anything particularly valuable but lots of functional things were missing-- windbreakers, a fleece jacket, a mini-maglight, a compass, and so forth. They also had a more frivolous side stealing fancy baby shoes, a nightgown and a spice jar. We didn't lose anything irreplaceable but the theft did make us more concerned about safety.
Yet we had a wonderful time in Quito. The old city is full of churches, narrow streets, and whitewashed colonial buildings with interior courtyards. The new city is growing into the hills. Skyscrapers crowd homes with walled gardens. Vendors offer geometrically patterned wool sweaters. Old indian women sell candy at streetlights. The indian women aren't as aged as they look. A wrinkled face beneath a worn felt hat looks 60, but the infant feeding at her breast tells a different story. It can be a harsh life.
We took several
day trips from the capitol. La Mitad del Mundo is a tourist classic--
"the middle of the world"-- a bright red line painted along the
equator topped with a big stone monument. Every visitor stands with
one foot in the Northern hemisphere and one in the Southern hemisphere,
straddling the red line while their photo is snapped. The monument
is several stories high and contains nice museum displays on the wide variety
of indigenous cultures found in Ecuador.
Cotopaxi is one of the snow capped volcanoes visible from
many parts of Quito. The mountain itself, the world's highest active
volcano, rises impressively from flower strewn meadows. Wild horses
graze its slopes. Roberto and I took a hike through freezing rain
while everyone else snacked in the cars. It was amazing to see brilliant
wildflowers growing in such an inhospitable place.
We planned a short visit to the rainforest of the Oriente
but none of the rental car agencies had a 4-wheel drive vehicle available,
so we went to the high altitude cloud forest instead.
The
road from Quito clung to the mountainside. As we dropped in elevation
the forest became more and more jungle. Mist hung in the steep
valleys. The vegetation grew everywhere. Trees were full of
ferns and bromeliads. Everything got greener and lusher and wetter.
We arrived at a farm that runs tours as a sideline. We started our walk through land cleared for cattle. The vistas were beautiful. Eventually we reached a trail going through old growth forest and the walk changed considerably. We plunged down a muddy hillside in the deep shade of tall trees with trailing vines. The views were gone since the vegetation was right in our face. A stream ran through a rocky bed at the base of the hill. A tarantula, frightened by all the people, had jumped into the stream. We rescued the big hairy spider and released it. We jumped from rock to rock along the stream but eventually most of us gave up and splashed through the stream itself. It was quite an adventure, particularly with a baby and camera gear in tow. We crawled uphill with giant leaves and vines clinging to us. We arrived back at the clearing muddy, sweaty but happy. Then it was a twilight hike back to the farmhouse for a refreshing Inca Kola and a more refreshing Pilsener.
The cloudforest is full of wildlife-- spectacled bears and tapirs for instance-- but we didn't see anything except the tarantula. As the sun set we could hear birds everywhere, but they were hidden in the thick foliage. To really see wildlife we needed to go somewhere more barren. And a few days later we were in a really stark environment with animals at our feet, the Galapagos Islands.
It's a two hour flight from Quito to the Galapagos and everyone was eager to see some of its famous wildlife. People were pulling out binoculars to look at a grasshopper while they waited in line outside the airport. I passed on the bug but it was pretty neat to watch a big land iguana cross the road while waiting to pay my airport fee.
The wildlife was truly fantastic. We had to step over a sea lion on the landing at the first island. The islands are harsh volcanic lava, some eroded into strange shapes and different colors, others raw and black. Big red crabs scurried along the shore they shared with pelicans, sea lions and penguins. (Yes, penguins at the equator.)
We were on the biggest boat cruising the islands, the Ambasador I. It could carry 200 passengers but was legally restricted to 90 by park rules. We'd visit one island in the morning and a nearby island in the afternoon. Then while we slept on-board we'd travel to a new destination. From the dining room we saw porpoises surfing the ship's wake. On afternoon I saw a shark fin cutting the water as big fish burst into the air to escape the predator.
The ambiance of the various island was surprisingly different. Some were dry and desert-like, others moister and more hospitable. Shorelines varied from beaches (with red, brown, or black sand) to solid lava to mangrove thickets. Every island seemed to have cactus, but they too were wildly different, from foot-high lava cactus to 30 foot prickly-pears. Of course the animal life varied as well. Some islands were piled with marine iguanas. Others featured flamingos, or flightless cormorants. Seabirds were everywhere: blue-footed boobies, magnificent frigatebirds, herons, egrets and more. The one animal we didn't see in the wild was the most famous, the giant turtle. They were too far in the highlands. We did see the turtles at the Charles Darwin Foundation research station, where they breed and raise turtles for restoration.
We went snorkeling on several occasons. The sealife was as amazing, too. Big colorful parrot-fish swam near schools of white-banded anglefish. Sea anemones and pencil-spined urchins clung to rocks. Shimmering schools of minnows scattered at any movement. I was face-down in the water watching the marine life when a sea lion zoomed within inches of my face. "Holy shit," was my instant reaction. Unfortunately I was still underwater when I said it. I surfaced sputtering and spitting seawater. Perhaps I'll avoid that next time.
Chuck
August 1997
The Charles Darwin Reseach Center works to protect and preserve wildlife in the Galapagos.
Some Galapagos Information from the WWF.
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