"Safety First" Photo of the week

This is a good one, check out this father / daughter biking home today down a crazy busy road about to cross a huge intersection.

Merry Christmas from Ecuador!!

Guess who played Santa!

  

  

  

We're heading to the beach tomorrow, we will be disconnecting for a week as we will have no internet access and possibly no phone! It's pretty cut off on the coast here. hope to have some great stories and lots of fun photos when we get back. 

So, Merry Christmas from Ecuador!!!!

If you're having a bad day in Ecuador

Spencer's boss, Devin, just installed this little gem in his office at school to help make the rough days a little brighter:

This one's for my Mommacita!

Check out what I found in the park today! Look familiar?

And yes, that is Maia sniffing around. She wanted no part of this.

I love that this park is soooo big that I am still discovering whole new sections four months later.

Happy 12/12/12!!!

Random Photos from this week

Its been a busy week here in Quito with Spencer's birthday, the Fiesta de Quito, we bought a grill, and we bought a car!! Here are some photos.

First, every year Quito celebrates it's founding with a multi-day city wide celebration. Everyone gets time off and there are fireworks, parties and fun little activities happening all over the city including this go kart track set up on the giant hill behind our house on Wednesday afternoon. After we saw someone wipe out HARD on the first race, we decided this was not something we wanted to try.

The festivities include nightly concerts. The concert grounds were extensive and reminded me of music festivals back in the states with food and artisan vendors, a main stage (above) second stages and  tons of people milling about.

Of course, we celebrated Spencer's birthday on Wednesday right in the middle of the chaos of the Fiesta de Quito. We had a great night going out to dinner with some friends and then found our way to an '80s themed nightclub, it was great fun and we danced all night. 

Above is Spencer with Kain, Andrew and Belen.

 

Having a great time! (I was bummed these photos didn't turn out better, but I still love them)

 

Maia and I went for a walk last weekend, of course. I continue to be awed by the beauty of this amazing park right behind our house and in the middle of the city. 

We had the MOST beautiful sunset this week. Amazing. This photo does not capture the intensity of these colors.

We bought a car! It was quite an ordeal to say the least. I hope to post a detailed account of it soon, but in the meantime, check out our sweet new ride - a 1998 Ford Explorer.

Finally, it's never a dull day in Quito, even at the grocery store. I spotted this little gem in the meat case yesterday while shopping for something to cook on our new grill. Yes, that is an entire baby pig shrink wrapped and ready for the spit. Not something you would find in Stop & Shop or Kroeger's.

It was a great week and it isn't over yet! We're taking our new car out of the city today to explore the countryside. 

Brotopaxi

One of Spencer's fellow teachers organized a boys trip last weekend called "Brotopaxi". 9 of the male teachers headed to the craziest party beach town in Ecuador called Montanita. Spencer said it was like Las Vegas on crack.  Wow, can't wait to see that at some point (briefly)!

They had a pretty wild time with much beer, long island iced teas, sketchy food, great people watching, and late nights.

As is typical on a boys weekend, not too many pictures were taken but thankfully he did get a few.

Here is the beach, Spencer said it went on for miles and was wide, flat and awesome. It was overcast all weekend, unfortunately.

Speaking of sketchy food, Spencer got some Ceviche from this guy, which he said was great and cheap, but I'm not so sure I would eat raw seafood off a cart like this!

The main drag of Montanita. It was just one tiny little bar after another right next to the beach. There are no open container laws so they just walked up and down the street grabbing drinks.

Good times.  Good Times.

Happy Birthday Spencer!!!

Wishing a very special Happy Birthday to my fabulous and amazing husband!!! It will be a long day of celebrating the day of his birth!! Hope to have some fun pics to share tomorrow, unless it gets too wild tonight! ;)

Our awesome friend, Kate, made him this delish triple layer super moist chocolate cake from scratch!!

Cash is King in Quito

I think one of my favorite things about our new 'lifestyle' is that we are using only CASH! Cash for groceries, for rent, for eating out, for random government fees, for doctors appointments etc.  I've been using credit cards for nearly 20 years and I don't miss it at all.  I especially don't miss the monthly guessing game I would play with myself before viewing my bill on-line. Somehow I was always wrong about how much I owed and it was never in my favor. Even the debit card became deadly, always wondering if I had enough to cover that dinner or outfit.

It's sort of liberating to live only on cash. I may try and maintain this when we return to the states.

A Great Day

Spencer has been working really hard lately so yesterday he took a much needed personal day. We decided to take the opportunity to visit one of the biggest tourist sites in Quito, the TeleferiQo. It wasn't the best day to head to the top of the mountain as it was a little cloudy, but since it was mid-week we practically had the place to ourselves, so that was great!

The gondola took us to over 12,600 ft at the top and it was beautiful. It is so high that you're literally in the clouds. It was an amazing view of Quito and we took lots of pictures. But, the best part could not be captured on film. Once you start down the trails and get a little ways away from the main building you are enveloped in this incredible quiet. The sounds of the city faded away and it just felt peaceful and serene. We hiked for a while and climbed up one of the ridges and sat and enjoyed this little piece of heaven in the middle of the city.

 

Views from the gondola during the ride up.

Clouds washing over the beginning of the trail.

A random but beautiful church on the top of the mountain.

 

 

A paddock of horses you can rent just hanging out on the edge of the mountain!!

 

Spencer climbed to the top of this peak.

Looking back down at Quito. Its actually quite pretty from up there.

An Impromptu Thanksgiving

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we hadn't planned to do anything for Thanksgiving here in Ecuador, but at the last minute we pulled something together. I'd heard about a take out place on Thursday morning where we could get Thanksgiving style food, so we decided to see what would happen. Our back up plan was Dominoes Pizza and I was fine with that.

While Spencer did have to work in the morning, he was at least given the afternoon off, so we headed out around 1:00 to see what we could find. We made our way to the restaurant I'd heard about and discovered they did indeed have some nice looking roasted turkey breast for sale. We had invited our friends Kain, Emily, and Graham over to enjoy the fruits of our search with us so we bought enough for 5 people, about 1 lb of turkey breast and some gravy (which turned out not to be gravy as we know it). Spencer headed to the register to pay for it only to discover that it was one of the most expensive foods we've bought in Ecuador to date - $27.00!!!  Wow.

Unfortunately, the sides available at the restaurant didn't look very Thanksgiving-y, but Spencer was newly inspired that this could actually work out, so he volunteered to try and make mashed potatoes, stuffing, and some other sides for us. So, off to the store we went for the fixings.

Several hours and 2 football games later, we had a (semi) real Thanksgiving Dinner with turkey, garlic roasted mashed potatoes, yummy stuffing, roasted asparagus, and a delicious improvised gravy. Not too bad overall!

It was a great evening with friends and good food. I am so thankful to be able to have a little bit of home all the way in Ecuador and to have such a great husband who pulled it all together for us.

More Ecuadorian Oddities

Here are some things I'm learning about my new home country:

• That Ecuadorian men, especially taxi drivers, think of the streets as their private urinal and will stop wherever they need to take care of business.
• That Ecuadorian women are fully empowered to breast feed at their whim with no effort towards modesty. I have seen women openly breast feeding while walking down the street, in the grocery store, government offices etc.  Go ladies!  (Just seems odd in such a highly Catholic and conservative country)
• That taxi drivers, stores and vendors probably won't have change... even for your $5 bill!
• That mañana does NOT mean "tomorrow", it means "NOT today".
• That restaurant service here is NOT like in the US. They are not trying to turn over the tables and do not care if you are in a hurry. Also, they do not want to take any portion of your order until you're ready for everything (even drinks).  Plus once the food is served the waiters job is considered finished and will disappear for a long time. Eventually, LONG after you're finished they will reappear and you have to ask them for the check.
• That even though Ecuador is a coffee producing country, all that will be offered to you is NesCafe.  They're just not into good coffee here, hence, I've stopped drinking it regularly and I'm not complaining!
• That Ecuadorian government employees will give you the wrong information, then take no responsibility for it.
• That no matter if someone in the street has no clue where something is, they'll still point you in a random direction, again, and again, and again never admitting that they don't know something.
• That pedestrians NEVER have the right of way and will not slow down for you. In fact, there have been a number of times that we swear they have sped up when they see us crossing.

Despite of, and in some cases, because of these things, I'm loving our new culture!

The holidays are coming?!

I'm used to watching the leaves change and the feeling the chill in the air to let me know that the fall has arrived and the holidays are just around the corner. I have to say, this temperate and consistent weather has really thrown off my seasonal radar. So, I was a little surprised last week to get an invite from our friend Graham to help decorate his Christmas Tree yesterday. What?! It can't be time for that already! Admittedly it was a little early, as Graham is Canadian so he doesn't have the normal Thanksgiving milestone to get past as we do in America. It was great fun, of course, and a nice recalibration for my internal clock - I can't believe November is more than half way done. Here is a photo of our final product:

We also enjoyed some festive (in color only) red and green drinks. Graham was making his signature Bloody Ceaser (one of my all time favorites and something I NEVER thought I'd be able to enjoy in Ecuador) and I brought fixings for what I was calling a Peppermint Patty.  Delicious!

We also realized that Thanksgiving is Thursday!! No acknowledgement of that truly American Holiday here so we will probably be skipping it entirely this year. But, we hope all our wonderful readers have a great Turkey Day on Thursday!!

Living in a Developing Nation

Spencer found this great, if cynical, blog post about the difficulties that come along with living in a developing nation like Ecuador. I'm not a huge fan of the term "third world country" especially in relation to Ecuador, but it does describe some of the difficulties of living here very well. It isn't all adventures and beautiful scenery!

Adventures in the Amazon

We finally made it out to the Amazon Rain Forest last weekend!!!! Check that one off the bucket list. Needless to say, it was BEAUTIFUL!! We stayed in a little jungle lodge called Hakuna Matata just outside a small town named Tena. This was just at the edge of the Amazon so a great starting point for us as we get to know this mostly untouched part of the world. Next time we will go further in. We've heard that there are jungle lodges so deep that you have to take a small 6 seater plane to get there. Next time!

I had to get this shot of Maia sitting with our packed bags as we awaited our ride. She was NOT going to be left behind. Little did she know she would be dropped off at a very nice doggy hotel on the way out of town.
 Roadside lunch break with Kain and Graham (and cervesas)

The sign pointing to our lodge.  

We knew we were in for a great adventure when after several kms of a very rocky and difficult road we had to cross this crazy bridge that led to the really rocky road. The bridge wasn't attached at the ends, it was just suspended there.  Hopefully, you can see how much it moved in this clip:

 

 Our hotel was hammock heaven. On the left was a covered area near the pool where we spent many hours relaxing.  On the right are the hammocks outside our room.  Bliss.

 

The hotel had an AMAZING Palm Tree Shaped pool. One of the nicest pools I've ever been in and it was in the jungles of the Amazon.  Crazy!! The other photo is the view from our room.

  

We went hiking down by the river and crossed this bridge of tires. Spencer grabbed this video of my crossing:

 

 

More hiking photos

Being in the Amazon, we wanted to do a little exploring on the river, so we tried to go on the hotel's tubing adventure. We were all prepared for a relaxing American style tubing excursion floating down a calm river (hopefully with a cocktail in hand) checking out the scenery. Well, when they took us into a small shed to grab our safety gear, we started to suspect this was not going to be a relaxing ride. As is the case with everything in Ecuador, they didn't have anything to fit Spencer, but we made do:

 

After a very brief orientation with little info except that we would be riding face down in the tubes, we set off. I only made it about 30 meters down the river before I'd had enough. Evidently, the Ecuadorian version of tubing is an extreme sport with the tubes roaring down the river at crazy speed as you head face first for rock after rock! So, at the first opportunity, I said "is it like this for the whole hour? Yes? Okay, I'm done!" I left Spencer and our other friends to continue and headed back bushwacking my way to a trail and then to the lodge (barefoot because I lost my shoes shortly after we started of course!). Spencer and our other friends came back as well only a short time later having only made it another 30-40 meters before it got even MORE crazy. We're really lucky that none of us got hurt. Lesson learned, in the Amazon, all sports are extreme!

 

I can stare at these views for hours!

Overall the weekend was wonderful and a great appetizer for what I hope will be many many more adventures in the Amazon very soon!

Maia also had a fine time at her doggy hotel, we grabbed this shot when we went to pick her up.  She had her own plot of grass and a nice indoor area to sleep. All for only $12 per night.  Oh, Ecuador!