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.

Pass the Guinea Pig (or It Definitely Doesn't Taste Like Chicken)

The kitchen is in the back parking lot.

There’s nothing like traveling to foreign countries to test your culinary limits.

Fran is an adventurous eater and has even been on the show Bizarre Foods. She once told me that she tried coconut covered caterpillar, but she didn’t like it because of the coconut.

When I was growing up, my grandfather once gave me $100 for Christmas, and I spent it all on pizza deliveries when I didn’t like what my mom made for dinner. That was fairly often. I was pretty picky.

Tonight, I thought back to my childhood and playing with my best friend David Butcher. He got a pet guinea pig when he was about five years old. I was pretty jealous. I had a pet dog, Trouble, but he died when I was three. I spent the rest of my youth without a pet.

Butcher loved that guinea pig, which was kind of a weird fur ball that didn’t seem to do much. I tried to like it, too, but I’m not sure I ever got the joy out of playing with it that Butcher did (for the record, I’ve always referred to him by his last name, and I always will).

Pretty sure he's cozy. I know he's toasty.

That’s good. The reason I was thinking about Butcher tonight was that Fran made me eat cuy. It’s a delicacy in Ecuador. But in American English, it translates to roasted guinea pig.

We had to stop into the restaurant this afternoon to let them know we were coming, because it takes at least an hour to prepare.

After we sat down, the waiter approached the table and asked if we wanted to see how our dinner was prepared. Of course, we said yes.

He led us out a side door and to the parking lot in back. In the open-air kitchen, there were 6-7 guinea pigs roasting on rotisseries over hot coals. It was an amazing sight.

Our dinner arrived on one plate with the entre sliced into five parts. The hind quarters and front quarters were split in two with the kidneys and ribs still attached. And staring at me, mouth gaping open, was the head.

PLEASE stop staring at me, Mr. Guinea Pig.

I tried. I really did.

Fran told me that I should pretend it was chicken. We often buy rotisserie chickens at the grocery store, and I slice them up for a delicious dinner.

“I can’t pretend it’s chicken when I’m holding it by the paw,” I replied.

Then I turned the plate so the head was staring at Fran. I just couldn’t take it, thinking about eating Butcher’s pet guinea pig (yes, I understand there’s irony with the name).

There were delicious potatoes and corn dishes served with the cuy, and I made sure I monopolized the bottle of wine we bought.

Fran kept offering to buy me ice cream. I’m pretty sure it was meant to get the gamey taste out of my mouth, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was her way of apologizing for making me eat something that should have been in a child’s bedroom. Would it have been worse to eat a roasted Teddy Bear? I’m not sure.

Just in case you're in Cuenca and want cuy.

A friend asked me if it tasted like chicken. It absolutely did not. It tasted like rodent. I’ve never eaten rodent before, but it tasted exactly what I imagine it would taste like.

I do not regret trying something new. But please don’t ever serve it to me again.

Does This Bus Stop on 82nd Street?

“Are you going to Quito?” a man asked in Spanish as we entered the bus station.

We told him we were not.

“Macas? Guayaquil?” There were others, too, but his rapid-fire Spanish was too much for me to follow.

We told him, “No, gracias,” and moved past him to the ticket window, which was unusually quiet. It was 7:25 a.m., and the bus we wanted was scheduled to leave for Ambato at 8 a.m.

Finally a woman came back on duty, only to tell us that there was no 8 a.m. bus today. There was one at 9:15 a.m., or another bus company had one leaving at 8:30 a.m.

One of many super awesome statues
we saw from our bus windows.

We figured we would check the other company, but on the way, another man started in on the same spiel as the other. Neither of us thought we were really interested in a guy hawking a bus company, but then he heard us say Ambato, and he got very excited.

“Ambato? Es qui,” he said, pointing past the turnstile and into the parking lot.

Our American instincts said that we were about to get duped. Or mugged. Or something. But others joined the man in telling us to hurry, so we shrugged and headed toward the bus they were all pointing at.

A man grabbed our bags and threw them in the storage compartment. I asked the driver if the bus was going to Ambato. He rolled his eyes, said yes and pointed impatiently to the seats.

We got on and settled in. No tickets? No problem. They’d collect our $8 each about an hour into the ride.

This is how the Ecuadorian buses work, or so we were learning quickly. But there was so much more to it. And almost all of it is entertaining.

Fran and I got an indoctrination into Ecuador pretty quickly after arriving on a flight from Lima to Guayaquil a few days earlier.

It was clear that we were closer to the equator, when the hot air hit us in the face as we left the plane. Customs was possibly the easiest I’ve seen anywhere in the world, and we jumped in a taxi to the bus station/shopping mall complex about a mile from the airport.

We could have flown from Lima to Cuenca, but it would have meant changing planes in Guayaquil and Quito, which would have tripled our travel costs. The key is that buses in Ecuador are dirt cheap.

I checked just about all of the 90-plus ticket windows in the bus station before finding the one for Cuenca. It would be a 4-5 hour ride through a national park, and it cost $8 each.

We loaded the bus, which provided about twice the amount of legroom as a standard U.S. airline (and 12 times the room of a Peruvian airline), although there was no air conditioning.

A fast-speaking guy in a black leather vest (did I mention it was about 90 degrees on the bus?) was walking up and down the aisle. It took a minute to figure out what he was doing, when we realized he was asking trivia questions and passing out pieces of candy for the correct answers. If this kept up, it was going to be a VERY long trip.

He then dropped package of cookies on each of our laps, just like peanuts on a Southwest Airline flight, except he immediately walked back down the aisle collecting a dollar from anyone who wanted to keep them (making it more like Frontier Airline). Almost everyone handed them back.

It seemed strange at first, but soon we realized that something similar was likely to happen at every stop. People got on trying to sell us everything from potato chips to candy bars to toilet paper. Some of them gave a polite but impassioned speech, while others acted just like the vendors at a baseball game, saying whatever it was they had to offer.

After a few minutes, the vendors would grab a seat until the next stop, where they would jump off and wait for the next bus to roll through.

So far, we’ve been on four buses, ranging from very low end to the kind of buses that athletic teams use on road trips.

Three of our buses had movies playing. I’m pretty sure they bought the DVDs at a truck stop’s bargain bin. They’ve all been American but played in Spanish.

I’ve now seen a “film” with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in which they are trying to escape from prison. Twice.

There was also something with Kevin James, Salma Hayack and Henry Winkler. James was an MMA fighter, and he won the big fight at the end to win the love of the girl.

Or something like that. I’m not good enough with Spanish to really understand the movies. But something tells me that they’re better that way.

Has anyone in North America seen this
movie? I've now seen it three times.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s something on with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Christian Slater, who’s playing a priest. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be lousy in any language, but I just can’t keep my eyes off it.

Great news: I nodded off during the movie, but they kept the movie on repeat, so we got to see it three times before reaching Ambato. Nice of the bus company to make sure we didn’t miss a suspenseful moment.

We had to get off and catch another bus in Ambato (the one we were on was going north, and we had to continue east). Most cities I have been to in the world seem to have main bus and train stations.

Ambato, it seems, does, too. But that’s not where you catch the bus to Baños. The bus driver rambled something in Spanish, of which I caught “Ambato” and got off.

We wandered across the street to catch a bus in the other direction. There were two really nice buses sitting at the stop when we arrived. Unfortunately, they took off as we were crossing the street.

It wasn’t long before another bus pulled up. It wasn’t quite as nice, but the bus company worker assured us that it would drop us off in Baños.

I should explain something about buses in this country. Unlike in the U.S., where you hand the driver some money on the way in, Ecuadorian buses have a driver and a driver’s helper. The helper loads the bags, collects the money and cues up really bad movies on the DVD player. I should also mention that they wait a really long time before collecting money. I’m pretty sure they wait just long enough for the majority of the passengers to fall asleep. I think they really like rustling people awake.

Try watching Schwartzeneger act
with Spanish dubbing sometime. 

The bus we got on was already crowded, so Fran and I sat about seven rows from each other. More and more people were piling on, including a woman literally holding up her daughter who appeared to have a debilitating disease that prevented her from taking care of herself.

Fran was horrified that nobody was offering them a seat. I would have, but I instead pointed them to the empty seat directly across from me (the girl who was lying across both seats sat up to surrender one).

A few rows back, Fran was seated next to a man who was napping. And taking up most of two seats (even though Fran was in one of them). At one point during the ride, the sleeping man put his hand on Fran’s leg. Fran was not amused.

Another woman, realizing there were no empty seats, reached for a stool so she could sit in the aisle. Seeing that Fran was in the perfect position on the bus, the woman stuck her rump directly in Fran’s face as she reached for the stool. Then she proceeded to sit right next to Fran, literally hovering over her and into her personal space. Fran was not amused.

This trip was only an hour, and I believe that Fran may have disembarked via the window in order to get off as quickly as possible.

Regardless, we made it to Baños (please bring on all the jokes about how appropriate it is that I made a pilgrimage to a place called “Banos”). It only took eight hours and cost us a whopping $23, including two buses and a pair of cab rides.

So, that’s pretty much what South American travel is like. Anyone want to join us for the remainder of our trip?