Rachel Sarah Thurston portrait, events, travel and wedding photography and travel/lifestyle writing

Ecuador Tales V: Mangoes, Limones, and Gloria Gaynor


January 30th, 2010
Vilcabamba, Ecuador
(close to the Peruvian border)

As our trip comes to a sleepy close, we're trying to soak up as much of the South's calm as we can before heading back to our respective homes. By design, the last ten days of our trip together since Steve arrived have consisted of long, restful days, peaceful walks, strolling through artesan mercados, and diving into expat culture.

Around a week ago, we flew to the southern colonial city of Cuenca, situated like Quito...among the Andes. I could tell immediately that Cuenca was going to become one of my favorite Latin American towns. A bit reminiscent of Oaxaca City and San Miguel de Allende, Cuenca's well-preserved old city has been declared a World Heritage Site because of its rich architecture. Wide streets paved with foot wide hand cut stone blocks and framed by two-story high colonial architecture...balconies, wooden shuttered windows, giant arched doorways and facades in muted turquoise, mustard, tangerine, cocoa, and avocado green evoking romantic images of Latin American culture. The main plaza is one of the most immaculately kept I've seen in a while....a foot high iron fence protecting lush gardens and leafy trees. On Sundays, families and gringos come here to visit a local ice cream shop...strolling through the plaza eating scoops of pistacchio, coconut, and chocolate ice cream sprinkled with fresh moras, strawberries, and chopped nuts. Every now and then you can hear the clip clopping of a horse-drawn carriage carrying young couples along the streets. Along the West side of the plaza is a row of archways where artists from Colombia, Guatemala, and Ecuador spread out their meticulously hand-made necklaces and earrings made from albaca (a lower grade silver) wrapped around semi-precious stones like crisacola, quartz, and turquoise...macramed earrings and necklaces in the shapes of butterflies and lizards, bracelets woven from horsehair, and loads of jewelry fashioned from hand-dyed and carved tagua (known as vegetable ivory) nuts in bright lime, orange, lemon meringue, and cherry. On weekend nights, buskers play folk music on accordions and guitars for street audiences and a group of Colombians dance with flags, ride unicycles, and perform to their own folk music played on drums and guitars.

We spent most of our time there strolling the streets and dreaming of our next meal. Out of all the food I've had in Ecuador, ironically, the most inspiring to me were the areipas that we found in a local, tiny, but extremely popular Colombian Restaurant called Cafe Moliendo. Areipas are thick corn pancakes (with lots of butter!) that are lightly fried then topped with a variety of high carb, filling ingredients....my personal favorite was the Areipa Ranchera which was topped with a slightly sweet, spicy ground beef mixture, slow-cooked pinto beans, and some crumbled queso. I can't wait to get home and try making these babies! They reminded me of a Colombian version of a Navajo Fried Taco...a carb-lover's delight! Other areipas are topped with fried eggs, fried plantains, slow cooked pork and beef, and lightly cooked fried vegetables. We also had fresh mora (blackberry) and papaya juice and a great horchada-like drink made of milk and cinnamon called Avena.

From Cuenca, we spent a LONG day of riding local buses (more on that later) to the rather remote destination of Vilcabamba (about fifty miles North of the Peruvian border). A relatively small town of Ecuadoreans and expats from around the world, Vilcabamba is set in a subtropical, lush valley surrounded by verdant hills and a sacred mountain (that reminds Mom and I quite a bit of the mountain overlooking Sedona). Our hospedaje Izhcayluma (pronounced eeshkailooma) has a million dollar view of the valley of Vilcabamba. Our rooms (about $15 per person with breakfast) have private patios and hammocks. Every morning we wake up to the steady chorus of songbirds and a rather unhappy donkey hee-hawing down the road. The stone pathways at Izhcayluma meander past whimsical blends of poppies, lemon yellow trumpet flowers, african violet trees, and luscious stands of palms and tropical trees. The moon has been nearly full this week and casts an other-worldly light over the whole valley.

We've been fortunate enough to socialize quite a bit with expatriates living here thanks to a friend of Steve's who has been living here for a couple of years now. The expatriate community of Americans, Japanese, Swiss, French, Chilean, German seems to be composed of artists, musicians, and truth-seekers who want to experience slower paced lives with more personal freedom and further away from the reaches of their increasingly Draconian governments. The Americans whom we've met here have been incredibly welcoming and highly aware individuals....we spent one night drinking wine, fresh passionfruit screwdrivers, and eating coconut macaroons and fresh pasta salad talking politics, of living abroad, and then ended the night with a raucous jam session of several guitar players, a few drummers, a trumpet player from the East Coast, harmonica, and cowbell...singing to Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Joni Mitchell.

My last inebriated memory was of riding in the back of a pick-up truck trying to remember all the words to Gloria Gaynors Ï Will Survive while one Romanian man--dressed in ä vest and camo hat that made him look eerily like Che Guevarra--belted out his favorite Muppets' Tune.

Ahh, the surreal moments of travel!

One of our favorite discoveries has been finding one of the best Mexican restaurants (El Jardin Escondido) we've recently come across outside of Mexico. Run by a Mexican man and woman, all of their food is made from scratch, many of the ingredients are brought back personally from Mexico. And just in case you're wondering what the big deal is with finding Mexican food in South America, let me just say that tortillas are not a South American food like they are in Central America and it's difficult to find really good beans in Ecuador here like you find in Central America. Mexican food is one of the cuisines I miss the most when I'm traveling (I could live on beans and rice for weeks!). Ecuadorian food is largely composed of chicken, pork, and beef accompanied with potatoes and or rice...a lot of the regional dishes are also based around deeply fried component. El Jardin has homemade mole negro enchiladas made with chocolate and spices, hand rolled corn torillas, perfectly seasoned tortilla soup with fresh lime juice, thick hearty tortilla chips, guacamole, and a perfectly made cold arroz con leche pudding lightly flavored with cinnamon.

So enough about food. We head back to Quito for some last minute shopping before catching our flight back to the U.S. Although it is near the end of our journey here in Ecuador, this wont be my last blog about Ecuador. I still have so much to share and process about our trip thus far so stay tuned for some upcoming stories including a list of bad bus journeys...

much love,
Rachel, Karen, and Steve