Quito Day 2 - Science rocks!

Our second day in Quito was our natural science day. We headed north to La Carolina Parque to visit the Vivarium (herptiles), the botanic gardens and the Museo de ciencias naturales (museum of natural sciences).

The vivarium was awesome with a lot of great snake and frog specimens that were relatively easy to find and observe. They also had a caiman exhibit near the end, and while these were cool to see, they did creep me out a bit, and helped reinforce that I am not quite ready to take A and N into the Amazon rainforest at this age. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside, so nothing visual to share from that stop.

This rose was the size of A's head - crazy!

Our next stop was the botanic gardens which had some amazing specimens (no surprise) but also had three indoor greenhouses, two were filled with orchids, and one with carnivorous plants. I was in botanical heaven, and really put my camera and families patience to the test with taking pictures. 

There are A LOT of sweet pictures I put on the bottom of this blog post for those that enjoy gorgeous flowers :)

Our last stop was the Museo de ciencias naturales, which before visiting, we were surprised that it wasn’t mentioned in any of the guide books. And after visiting, now we know why as it is similar to what you would see as ‘displays’ in the main lobby of the zoology department of a major university. That being said, there were still some cool taxidermied animals, and a big mastedon skeleton, so for the price ($3) it was a win.

Off to the capital – Quito day 1

We took a 4 day trip down to Quito to visit the city (looking for spices at the supermarket among other things) and see the sights. I had been able to visit some things in Quito when I came down previously with colleagues from work, so it was the first place we have visited that I had a small sense of where we were going, where things were, and what to look out for.

The craziness of a South American city was nothing new to us after visiting Peru, so the cars, the mass transit, and the paying attention were already in play with A and N. This was however, our first time trying to navigate a variety of overlapping bus systems and it was a bit of an adventure carrying duffle bags on crowded busses and making our way to our hotel on foot. Everyone stuck it out and we made it there without incident :)

We stayed at the Nu House hotel, right off the main square of what the Ecuadorians refer to as “gringolandia” in New town. This is the restaurant/party square with a distinctive modern/American/European vibe. I was familiar with where this was, hence, we started there. Our hotel was a contemporary ‘boutique’ hotel with small little rooms overlooking the square. The stairs up to our room were ‘hovering’ concrete – basically a concrete staircase with no supports in between, and no rails on the side, which seem to be the standard in Ecuador. It continues to weird C and I out. The funny part about this particular set of stairs and doorways is they were made to accommodate people up to about 5’8”, so forgetting to duck repeatedly was a constant reminder that we are a couple sizes too big for this hotel.

  

Once our luggage was settled, we headed off to our first place on the agenda, the Teleferico. This is a cable car that starts well above the city, and then carries you up the side of the Pichincha volcano to give you an impressive view of the mountain valley filled with city. 

  

Despite the ride up giving C and N a little case of the heebs, everyone agreed that it was pretty cool :) The kids both wanted pictures 'holding something', so N is holding the city, and A is holding clouds. Enjoy!

Otavalo excursions - #1 – Peguche Falls

After several days of rest, reading and overall laziness, we decided it was time to get up and moving again. So starting with the low hanging fruit, we headed up to Otavalo and took a taxi up to Peguche, which was a small collection of houses, shacks and stone work.

And yes, that is a guy that was bathing in the falls. There were several people we passed on their way up and down, and it didn't seem to be too uncommon of a practice. It did look pretty refreshing, but with the everpresent water = bad = parasites, we were to chicken to make a go of it. You will see a picture below of the old Incan bathing pool, no one was swimming there, it looked like it hadn't been used in quite a while.

The claim to fame for this area is the Peguche falls that were used by and before the Incans. It is a short, easy hike through some humid forest up to a beautiful waterfall. On our way up we saw a detour path to a suspension bridge, and our first snake. It was a good reintroduction to hiking and traveling around after our whirlwind of travel in Peru. Enjoy the pictures :)

Home base

Finally on to posts about Ecuador!

Our home base for this leg of the trip is in the small town of San Pablo de Lago, just south of Otavalo. We are staying on a mini farm that has a variety of livestock (cows, sheep, a goat, rabbits, guinea pigs, and A LOT of chickens including multiple loud roosters), pets (3 dogs, 4 cats, 2 parakeets, 2 bigger birds) and a large garden.
 

Interestingly, the garden has plants in it that produce fruit, but not any of the staples I normally would expect in a garden. This one has raspberries, uvilla (cape gooseberry) and tree tomatoes for juice (tomate de arbol). Similarly, the livestock walk around and eat, but no milk, limited eggs, and a lot of noise (the goat is particularly entertaining). So, maybe  I am missing something in their reason for being present, but regardless, they are funny to see as they run around the grounds.

Our house is just right. Two bedrooms, nice kitchen, tons of windows and sunlight, and a pool with jacuzzi. When we arrived there were roses everywhere (I counted 153 actual roses, plus there are multiple baskets of rose petals), it was awesome to wake up each morning and see them bloom. They have since died and were replaced with bamboo sprigs, it is a nice touch all around.

 

 

Now on to the surprising/learning curve aspects.

Surprising #1 - One of the main reasons we decided to rent this particular house was for the pool. We thought it would be great exercise and fun for the kids on a daily basis. We got in the first week and discovered that it is freezing - I am talking Lake Dillion at Memorial Day kind of freezing. The kids were blue lipped and shivering, so the pool quickly lost its appeal :( The jacuzzi is nice, but it self drains, so when ever we want to use it, we have to have the caretakers fill it up. One thing we didn't take into account is that we are in their 'winter' so the temps are slightly lower than they will be later in the year, but I don't think this would make a huge dent in the ice pool :)

Surprising #2 -  There are more windows than walls in most of the rooms, and there is not a single blind or curtain in the entire house. I mean entire house - not the bathrooms, not the showers, no where. This has been interesting all around including privacy, sunlight (particularly sunrise!) and how absolutely black it is when there is no moon. It is what I would imagine living in a glass house would be like. On the other side, it does make you almost feel like you are 'camping' in that you wake up seeing everything outside, and can see nature, and the weather, and the animals, all day no matter what you are doing. I do love the sunlight, I do not like trying to find a corner of the house to get dressed in :)

Learning curve #1 - Food. This was a big one, that I think no matter how long we stay here, it would be tough to get used to. First, it isn't convenience in terms of access that is an issue, which was honestly at least some of what I expected. We have small shops and panadarias (bakeries that also sell various items like cheese and milk) within a few blocks of the house in San Pablo. It turns out that the main issues are variety and flavor. The options for meals based on what C and I are familiar with in terms of cooking are chicken, beef, rice, beans, pasta (no sauce - this will be a post all in of itself) and some veggies (onions, tomatoes, green peppers, giant corn). I did leave out the chicken heads and feet, and cow tounges and feet, which we just weren't ready to tackle, but fascinated A and N as they looked in the meat case at the market.

The staples above aren't bad to deal with, if you have spices or sauces, or whatever we normally would through in to keep variety on the table. We have found that the particularly tough part here, is that spices are very limited. We have salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic and achiote, and that is it. No chili powder, no parsley, rosemary, thyme (if you are old enough, you can hum the tune to the song here). There are some fresh herbs available up in Otavalo, and we did try some fresh cilantro, but it is just been too hard to soak and 'de-parasite' and keep it in good enough shape to use.

It has been a rude awakening to see how blatantly spoiled we are in the US with having any veggie, meat cut, grain type, seasoning, etc. when ever we want it, and it quickly became clear that we were at a loss without our spice cabinet in terms of making a months worth of various dishes from our few available staples. There will be a few more posts on our adventures surrounding the shopping and cooking at our house as we continue on, so stay tuned :)

Last night in Peru

For our last night in Peru, we decided to hit up a fancier restaurant. We chose the  Uchu Peruvian
Steakhouse (http://www.cuzcodining.com/uchu.htm) which is a steakhouse restaurant that is run by a chef that also teaches cooking classes (we thought about it, but passed on the high price tag for the classes).

We ordered drinks first. As it was evening, the kids and I all got Manzanilla (South American chamomile) and C got a Corona. The tea was super fancy, and we found it a large helping in the bottom of honey. Que the lighting up faces of A and N. You can see an action sequence of them drinking the liquid sugar below. Not to be outdone, next entertainment for the evening was when C was working on his Corona/lime combo, and ended up exploding the beer all over the table, lamp, ceiling, and nearby wall. If you are going to get crazy trying to mix your lime and beer, you might as well go all out. N and A thought it was hysterical, and we were discussing if the wall splatter would remain permanently (it was gone when we left for the night - just for the record).

 
 So on to the solid part of dinner. We all ordered various meat cuts (I got alpaca, it was grub!), and when we asked for it to be 'well done,' the waiter looked at us and explained something to the effect of it doesn't matter, you will do that. Hmmmm... ok :) The waiter brought out a platter for each of us with the various parts of the meal in individual compartments, little dishes with various sauces, and with a hot rock in the center with our raw meat on it. Cool for C and I, iffy for A and N. I did have flash backs of N's food poisoning last time we tried the kids at the Melting Pot Fondue Restaurant.

It took a bit of finagling, but we did get all of the meat cooked and it was fantastic. The owner also came by to tell us specifically that the salads were safe for us to eat, and that we didn't need to worry in his restaurant. We took his word for it, and it was so great to have some salad after avoiding it all week.

Of course, you have to end with something yummy, and preferably chocolate, so we did. It was a great last night, before we head to Ecuador in the morning.