AWOL! Em and Chris in South America

I can’t believe it is 2007 already. I was just thinking about some of the things that have changed over time and I can’t believe it has been 10 years since I moved from South Africa to Grass Valley. That’s a sad thing. But, it also means I’ve known Chris for 10 years now, and that’s kind of exciting. Now here we are in a whole new continent celebrating a whole new year together.

We decided to go to the coast for new years with Gretel, Karen and her friend Paul who came to visit from England. We stayed in a little surf town called Montanita. It is a fun and funky place with all kinds of interesting people. The little down town strip looks like a tropical island with buildings made or decorated with bamboo and the roofs covered with palm fronds. There are hammocks everywhere and at night a lot of hippies come out with their jembe drums and drum circles and dancing start up in the middle of the street. It wasn’t too hot even though we were just south of the equator and the waves were perfect for swimming and surfing in.

Our last attempt at surfing in Mexico was such a dismal failure it never even crossed my mind to try again, but it looked like it would be a lot easier here because the waves break so much closer to shore that the learner wouldn’t exhaust themselves by just trying to paddle out and they could actually attempt to catch a few waves. I still didn’t think I could do it, but Chris seemed to want to try again. The lessons were pretty cheap, so I convinced him to give it a go. And I was right. He was actually able to catch a few waves when he tried close to shore. He didn’t stay up for long because the waves didn’t last long, but it was a great second try. If we ever go back, I might even give it another try.

New Years Eve itself was a little crazy. I think ¼ of Ecuador was sitting on the beach with us. One of the Ecuadorian traditions is to burn effigies that represent the old year and all the bad things that happened. People apparently get really creative and spend a lot of time working on them. I knew all this, but I was really surprised to see a group of people light a giant yellow Sponge Bob on fire. I’m not sure what they had against him, but as he went up in flames all the fire crackers they put inside started going off and causing a whole lot of noise and a little danger for the ones that went off in random directions. Poor Thandi was terrified by all the commotion.

Other than the actual NY eve event, she had a blast. Thandi got to play Frisbee on the beach for hours every day. She was quite the highlight. Whenever she caught a disc the other sunbathers would cheer and clap. If the Frisbee landed by someone they would often pick it up and throw it for her. She was in dog heaven.

Well, I hope you all had a great New Years Eve and were able to burn your own personal “Sponge Bobs” and move on to have a wonderful 2007.

More parade and Christmas pictures: click me!

This Christmas season has been an interesting one. We missed seeing many of you over the holidays, but we enjoyed being here.

We both love real Christmas trees. They make your whole house smell christmasy and wonderful. I thought we might have to break down and get a fake tree this year because they don’t sell pine trees here. I had seen some little fake ones before Thanksgiving, but when we went back to the store, they only had really big trees or small sparkley blue and silver ones. Both of our families have had some pretty “Charley Brown” style trees in the past, but a tree made of neon blue tinsel was a little too much for me. So, I asked around and was told they sold little Christmas trees at the flower market down town. We arrived to an abundance of roses and all kinds of tropical plants and shrubs, but nothing looked particularly like a Christmas tree except one little tree.

Could this have been what he meant? And yes, once I asked, that was the tree the lady pointed to. While it didn’t exactly have the pine aroma, it was certainly better than a fake one or even a tropical palm frond which was my second choice.

We brought it home and invited Karen (from England) and Gretel (from Australia)over to help decorate the tree and make sugar cookies. They are both teachers at the language school I work at. We all showed up the same week and have become pretty good friends. We had a great time making the cookies and giving them away. It was a perfect excuse to go over and spend time visiting some people we have met here in Cuenca. Sugar cookies are not a common treat here though, so most everyone was a little confused how to eat them. They were especially concerned with what to drink with them, coffee, tea…?

The ninth day of December celebrates the end of nine days of prayer. Our little neighborhood had a block party to commemorate the event. We live in a nice neighborhood. They had a priest come over and hold a mass in our neighbors driveway. After the mass the police marching band showed up. I think it was probably organized by the mayor who lives in the same cul de sac as us. But, all of us marched all around the neighborhood after the tubas and trumpets. People from the other houses came out to see what was going on.

After we got back we had a delicious Ecuadorian meal of chancho (a whole pig roasted over coals), rice and mote (hominy), salads and a flan type dessert. Then Papa Noel (Santa Clause) came and gave all the little kids (and some big ones – me) bags of candy and cookies. It was quite a do. We enjoyed meeting some of the neighbors we hadn’t met yet, practicing our Spanish, and teaching the neighbor kids to play Frisbee with Thandi.

In the States everywhere you go it looks, sounds and smells like Christmas. Here, they do a little bit, but not nearly so much. They don’t deck every single store out with Christmas decorations, and the most obvious difference is the lack of Christmas songs playing over and over every where we go. So, I was pretty excited when we got invited to sing Christmas carols. Linda knew me when I was a baby. She was friends with my parents. Then we moved to South Africa and she moved to Ecuador and we haven’t seen her very much since then, but she has been really great about helping us get settled here. They had many of their friends come over and practice singing Christmas carols a couple Fridays in a row and then on the 23^rd we all went to a couple of hospitals and recovery centers to sing carols to the patients there.

The whole thing was quite the cultural experience for many reasons. One problem is that no one shows up on time. So we started practicing, but then someone new would show up and we would start over again. I guess it was good for me because all the carols were in Spanish, so even if they had the same tune, the words were completely new to us. I think Chris missed his family a lot because only he and the leader of this project, Li, were able to really sing in parts. Li is Linda’s house mate. She is a therapist and runs a hot line from their home. In the middle of our practice the phone rang, so she went to answer it. She talked for a while and then came back and told us that she was just speaking with a woman named Sophia who lives alone and is suffering from severe depression and is considering suicide. Li asked where the woman lived and discovered they were in the same neighborhood. So, Li, and another man who works with her, went to Sophia’s house, picked her up and brought her back over to their house to sing Christmas carols with us. I thought, well, that would never happen in the States! I’m sure it was a struggle for her to be there and a little awkward, but at the same time the house was filled with very nice people, and singing, and dogs chasing cats and skidding down the stairs, and children beating off tempo on the drum, and brownies. Afterwards, I think her and Li had more of a chance to talk and I hope Sophia is able to start the long process of healing.

The day we actually sang was again very typical. People showing up late, going to one place and then being sent somewhere else. There were eventually about 20 of us standing in the hallway at the hospital. I felt like we were probably in the way there, but the nurses were really nice and just tried to walk around us. It was fun, but Chris and I had to leave before they were finished to go to our host families house for dinner.

In Ecuador, Christmas Eve (Buena Noche) is more important than the 25^th. They have a really big Christmas dinner that starts late in the night (around 10-11) and continues to about 2 or 3 am. The family we lived with back in September had a modified version of that on the 23^rd in Cuenca before they left to go to other places to visit other family members the next day. We were invited over to share the early Buena Noche with them. Our mama de Cuenca is an excellent cook and everything was delicious. Nothing was too unusual. The food was very similar to our Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners. They tend have a more international perspective, so I’m not sure what interesting foods might find their way to the table in a more traditionally Ecuadorian setting.

People from all over Ecuador and even the world come to Cuenca for the Pase del Nino. It is a 6 hour long Christmas parade. The highlight is a statue of baby Jesus that has been blessed by the pope and has traveled to the Holy Land. But, there are all kinds of floats and processions of local organizations and children dressed up in a variety of costumes and cultural attire.

Click here to see pictures of the parade

The culmination of our Christmas season was hosting our first Christmas dinner. We invited over all of the teachers from the school I work at who weren’t off traveling else where and a few of their Ecuadorian significant others. About 15 people came. Chris is loving that he has more time to cook here and has been experimenting and making a lot of delicious things from scratch. Everyone pitched in and brought over or helped cook their favorite side dish, so we had quite a spread. We also made stained glass cookies as per Chris’ family tradition. No one had ever made them before, but a couple people were pretty creative.

So, now we are left with some great memories and a pile of dishes in the sink.

I hope all of you had a great Christmas and that you will have a great New Years!

This has been our first post in a while, so we haven’t really told you about life in Cuenca, so after New Years I will back track a little and explain what we are doing here and how things are going other than Christmas

 

Go to the Ruta del Sol Photo Album – Pictures of whales, la Isla and wildlife

We said goodbye to our host family and to our teachers at Estudio Sampere. My Spanish teacher told me (Chris) that if we returned to Cuenca he would happily trade Spanish lessons for English lessons. Our host family said they hoped to see us again as well, and we feel the same. I don’t know how it is for them because they have people rolling through all the time, but I really enjoyed the time with our host family and it seemed that (despite language barriers) the feeling was mutual. I wish that I was learning more Spanish as we traveled, but I actually feel a bit like I’m regressing. We’re getting quite good at booking hotel rooms and figuring out where buses are going etc, but actual conversational Spanish…we are certainly not using that as much as we were with our host family.

So, yeah. Back to our travels. After a long tearful farewell (hah), we headed down to Vilcabamba, a small town in the “Valley of Longevity”. Apparently, the people in the valley have historically lived much longer than average, with many of them exceeding 100 years in age. Earlier in the week one of the oldest women in the valley had just died at the age of 126. As for the town itself, well……if you aren’t going on a horse ride the place is kind of boring. That’s the thing to do in Vilcabamba, ride horses. Unfortunately the minimum ride is two hours. The last ride Em and I did was about that long and we were both hurting for days after. So, we just lazed around the town instead. There were a group of Swiss folks from Sampere that we were meeting up with, so we hung out with them as well when they got back from their ride. They returned quite sore.

We were in Vilcabamba for two nights, the Swiss had left to go back to school so we changed hostals for the second night and stayed at this sort of hippyish hotel called “Madre Tierra”, relaxed in their jacuzzi and finally made up for the massage I missed in Cost Rica when I was sick. The place is eclectic with funky rooms and waterfalls. Pretty cool. Except I think I confirmed that I am just not a massage person. I thought maybe a professional massage would change my mind……but no. It was nice, I guess, and waaaay cheaper than in the states but I just don’t know what all the fuss is about. Call me crazy.

Anyway, after our relaxing little weekend, we headed up to the coast. We took the scenic bus route which follows the coast all the way up to Puerto Lopez, our main destination. Any Ecuadorian that we talked to said that the coast is just amazing and very beautiful. Right now it is nearing the end of the dry season, so I’m not sure if it is a seasonal thing or if we have just been spoiled by the beautiful Californian and South African coasts, but we weren’t exactly blown away. It’s the ocean and the ocean is always beautiful, but a lot of the coast was dry and a bit drab looking. Once we hit the Puerto Lopez area, things started becoming a little greener, but nothing like Costa Rica’s coast. I think the rainy season may change the landscape drastically, so if we return to Ecuador, we’ll have to hit the coast at the end of the rainy season to see the difference. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Ecuadorian coast, but perhaps my expectations got in the way a bit. Also, it was completely overcast the entire time that we were there, so instead of sun (sol) we saw many clouds (nubes), and then many more clouds after that, hence the title of the post.

The whales, however, were incredible. We were afraid that we might not get lucky since we were coming in at the tale end of the migration season, but instead we got an amazing show. We took a tour that goes whale watching in the morning, visits Isla de la Plata at midday and then goes snorkeling. It was a pretty good package to start with and we definitely got our money’s worth and then some. After about twenty minutes on the boat, we spotted the first humpback. We followed it for some time and it would surface, spout some, and it dove down once and we saw it’s fluke. So that was pretty exciting. After it dove down, however we didn’t see anything for a while. Then suddenly everyone (except for Em) saw a whale come clean out of the water. Of course everybody freaks out. We had come across a small pod of whales and they kept breaching and waving their fins and everything. It was amazing. The best one was when two of the whales breached at once going in opposite directions. Unforgettable.

The rest of the day was cool too. We went to Isla de la Plata (also called the poor man’s Galapagos) where we saw blue footed boobies, a baby albatross, and a few other species of birds. It is really fascinating how little fear the wildlife has. The boobies just sit there in the path and you can walk within a few feet (or even closer) of them and they just watch you go on by. Oh, and on the island, we actually saw some sun! And I got a little burnt despite the fact that I was wearing sunscreen…hrrmf. The snorkeling was nice too, the water was a little chilly but there were a couple nice large schools of pretty fishys. I don’t think we saw anything that we hadn’t seen before, but it was beautiful all the same.

I liked Puerto Lopez. It is still very much a fishing town, so it doesn’t have a lot of the glitz and polish that some of your touristy beach towns have. At the same time it IS a tourist place because of the whales and Isla de la Plata, so it does have various quality restaurants. The hostel (Mandala) we stayed at was really nice too. It was very artistic with nice touches everywhere that you went. It also had a full percussion section above the restaurant, which is pretty awesome. I played with the marimba and jimbes a little, but nobody else really used it while we were there….pity.

And that was about it for Ecuador! After a few days in Puerto Lopez, we went to Guayaquil with only a couple bucks left in our wallets (again! we’ve really got to stop that nonsense), caught our plane to Peru and that’s where we are now. We’ll post more on that when we get the chance….I think right now though, we have to go buy more Peruvian stuff.