It's a Strange, Strange World

Every country is a little weird. Walk a couple of blocks in any American city, and I promise you that something will strike you as odd.

So it’s no surprise that we have been amused by certain sights in Ecuador. Here are a few of our favorites, in no particular order.

-- As I mentioned in previous blogs, the buses in Ecuador are a whole chapter of bizarre, including the people selling everything from potato chips to chicken stew (scooped from a plastic bag into a smaller plastic bag for consumption), and really bad movies that may or may not have made their way into theaters.

-- Every street in Cuenca (and certain places in Quito) seems to offer one particular item and only one particular item. There’s the street with only pharmacies, the one with only shoes and the one with only hats. I have no idea what you do if you need Advil, and you’re on the other side of town. I also have no idea how seven pharmacies can survive next to one another.

Let me know if anyone has been looking
for one of these.

-- There’s a shop in Cuenca that sells only girdles. Based on the previous observation, this isn’t particularly surprising. Even when we saw the man girdle, we just smiled a little. But when we saw the head girdle. Well, then we started asking questions.

-- We stayed at a lovely apartment in Cuenca. It was spacious and had just about everything we could have possibly needed and more. Like many apartments in the town, which is pretty loud, there were no windows to the outside, although there were several frosted skylights to allow natural light. Getting to the apartment, however, was a little odd. It was in an office building. We entered through the atrium, went up a flight of stairs, turned on a light, walked halfway down the hall, turned the first light off and another one on, walked the rest of the way down the hallway, unlocked a door, went down a flight of stairs, unlocked another door to a small hallway that led to a final door that we had to unlock and enter. It took about 2-3 minutes from the front door of the building to the front door of the apartment. There was one night where I got very little sleep because I started wondering whether there was an emergency exit, just in case. I never found one. Glad we didn’t need it.

-- There are A LOT of strays in Ecuador. We have passed 2-3 on almost every street, and there were dozens in the mountains above Latacunga. (For that matter, there was even a stray dachshund on the Salkantay Trail in Peru.) The strays are common place. The thing I find weird is that every dog that has an owner is wearing a sweater or jacket. And they all appear to be pretty nice garments. Even more strange: Fran has looked everywhere for one that she can give Scooby, her parents’ toy poodle, and we haven’t found a single shop that sells them.

-- Walking down a street in Cuenca, we saw a man standing on a corner holding just a car steering wheel, and there was a woman on a sidewalk trying to sell about 30 universal remote controls. While in Quito, the item of choice seemed to be small strainers, resembling tiny sombreros.

   

I couldn't tell if his cell phone was handmade, too.

-- During our jungle tour outside of Puyo, we rode in a canoe that was dug out of a tree. It seemed to be the genuine thing, which was pretty unique (albeit extremely uncomfortable). We floated through rapids and by indigenous villages. It was almost like we had been transplanted to another world, one you read about in books or see in Tarzan movies. Until the indigenous gentleman steering our canoe with a handmade paddle answered his cell phone.

-- In Baños, our rafting and canyoning trips included free photos (which will be posted when we get to a computer that can read them, because this one cannot). After our canyoning trip, we asked if we could also pick up the ones from rafting a few days prior. A bus full of rafters pulled up, and we were told to jump on. It took us in a large loop around the city before one of the guides told us to follow him. “Come in my house. It’s OK,” he told us. With that, we followed him upstairs in an apartment complex before he told us to wait in front of a door. He returned a minute later from the neighbor’s apartment with a large kitchen knife. “Sorry. I don’t have my keys with me.” He then used the knife to pick the lock and enter the apartment, where he spent about five minutes finding and copying our photos onto a CD. We thanked him and left him at the street, at which point the van full of rafters pulled back up and he jumped back in. Apparently, they circled a few blocks while we watched him break into his own apartment and get us photos. Now, that’s service (at least for us).

-- There are a lot of expats in Baños. We hadn’t had American food in a while, and I craved a burger, so we went to the Stray Dog Café, which was billed as a place with good American food and good beer (something that might not be commonplace in Ecuador). I won’t say I agree with either of the reviews, but everything was fine. When we went to pay, we started talking to the owner who is from Chicago (complete with snarky attitude), and the following conversation followed:

Fran: I hear you’re from Chicago. I grew up there.

Owner: What part?

Fran: Northbrook.

Owner: Calling that Chicago is pushing it a little, don’t you think?

-- Most of the bathrooms in Quito seem to be a single room with adjoining stalls marked “Hombres” and one marked “Damas.”

-- During our first cab ride in Quito, we stopped at a red light. A woman in a clown nose, jumped into the crosswalk in front of us and started a flag spinning routine. When the light turned green, every car around us started honking, and the woman looked completely confused about why nobody wanted to give her money following her “entertainment.”

-- You know those guys who dress up like statues and stand in tourist-filled locations around seemingly every city in the world? They stand perfectly still until some unsuspecting person walks by, at which point they scare the hell out of him? We saw one of those guys having what appeared to be a totally normal conversation with three members of the Quito Police Department. From what I could tell, they looked like old friends just catching up.

-- Finally, I have had very good luck using travel books like Lonely Planet and Rough Guide when going to various places around the world. In Ecuador, we have gotten some good ideas of what to visit and where to eat from both of those books, which I have on my Kindle. However, unlike most places, every address in both of these guides seems to be completely wrong. There was a restaurant in Baños that one guide said was among the best in town, and Trip Advisor (throw them in, although they have been a little more accurate with locations) seemed to agree, including reviews that were only a week or two old. We never found it. And I’m pretty sure we covered every street in Baños multiple times. We had lunch today at a place in Quito that we found in both books. It was delicious, but when we went to find it, we walked in the address mentioned in both books. The group of men sitting in a private courtyard did not seem to appreciate our intrusion. Then we found it two doors down. Next time, maybe I’ll knock first.