Why you should wander

January 18, 2016

In this age of online maps and travel guides, its easy to go somewhere with everything figured out. What top sights to go see, how to get there, and what the best route is.

While sometimes it´s nice to know where you are, I'm a still a strong proponent of wandering and getting lost occasionally. Setting out with a vague idea of where you're going (or sometimes no idea) and a map in your pocket to find your way home.

Then you can stumble on things.

Like this.

I turned a corner a short distance from my hostel in Bogota and found spires rising above the cars and shops.

Well hello church, did I know you were there?

A Plaza and Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes (Our Lady de Lourdes) cathedral, which I didn't know existed.

If I had looked closely at my map before setting out walking to see what was between me and my destination, it wouldn´t have been too hard to know it was there.  But I think it was so much better to be surprised.

I enjoyed it every time I walked past it for the next three days, my little surprise cathedral.

Windows all lit up at dusk

Secrets from the Kitchen

Since you all know I love lists so much, here are some straight-up truths I learned while working in the restaurant.

1. We will eat off your plate. When food hits the dish washing table in the back, it's fair game. This includes picking through your crab and lobster, untouched patacones, and shrimp left in the encocado.

2. Same goes for drinks. If you leave a third of a bottle of soda or pitcher of juice, we'll be finishing it for you.

3. If you're annoying, overly impatient, or straight up rude, I may bring cold patacones, smaller limes, or no straw.

4. I will also not make an effort to clear empty dishes from your table before everyone is done eating.  You can stare at destroyed shrimp shells for a while.

5. That napkin that comes on the fork at some places? Use it to clean your spoon first.  Trust me, things are washed in batches and sometimes it's not quite up to snuff.

6. Keep sending me back for limes, more plates, ketchup, and another soup and I will glare inside. Double if you say extra plates, and then tell me no, bowls to share the soup. You definitely used the word for 'plate'.

7. If you ask for juice with no ice, I just strain out the cubes.  They're already floating in the big bucket of it.  Don't worry, I drink it and I'm not sick yet.

8. If you order something not on the menu, it's gonna take 3 times as long to come. We're not set up to crank out special orders.  I'm going to have to ask for it 5 times before it actually gets prepped, especially on a busy day.

9. Your other order that took a long time to arrive?  Probably it's just because the kitchen had to get everything out fresh to make it.  There is a chance it slipped the mind of the kitchen, or someone else thought it was theirs to take.  If so, I'm fighting for you in the back and using my mind to will the food to cook faster.  I'm on your side, so don't give me dirty looks.  Unless I forgot to order it for you.  (That happened a time or two.)  But I promise I feel bad about it.

10. And finally, the secret to cooking all the food? Butter. Lots of it. Also ketchup. Like actually. It goes in everything.  But it tastes delicious.

And here's a panorama at sunset my last night in Cali.  I´ll get to the actual post shortly.

Here, Fishy Fishy Fishy!

December 22, 2015

I am my father's daughter, meaning while I was living in a little fishing town, I made sure to go out fishing.

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(Side note, I had about 4 other guys tell me 'we'll go fishing! I can take you! I have a boat!' They never did. Usually it was within 15 minutes of meeting them for the first time, and I took none of them seriously, having learned early on that these promises go nowhere. There may be a post devoted to all the things promised that never happened.)

Anyway, Marcelo was better at coming through on things. I also kept bringing it up, I admit.

So we headed out one morning with his cousin.

Up in the bow is my favorite spot, as always

It started with getting to the ocean from the river behind town where all the boats dock.

I got to see close up pelicans for the first time, which I thought was really neat. They have webbed feet and still sit in trees, which I had never really considered before.  You don't often see ducks up in trees.  I don't think...

They also swim but that's not suprising...

Once out to the bay, it was maybe a half hour running out to our fishing spot. Without discernable landmarks or GPS, I'm really not sure how we knew that was the spot, but there we stopped.

The fishing setup was a hook on the end of some wire, and line tied to the wire. line was wrapped around an empty pop bottle or a hunk of styrofoam, I assume to not loose the whole rig if it happened to take a swim.

We stuck little herring (or some other small fish) fillets on the hook. And dumped it overboard. Weights on another line were tied a few feet up to sink the whole thing. There were gulls of some sort all around, and from a previous trip (which I missed) they were all named Christopher.

I was astonished that we never caught any Christophers, after chucking our bait over.  I was sure one of them would nab it with the hook before the whole thing could sink.

Then as always, waiting. I did my best to translate my favorite fishing saying, that it's called 'fishing' not 'catching' for a reason.

His cousin got the first fish. And the second. I think they're called picuña? I never really nailed that one down.

I'm proud to say that even with an unfamiliar method of fishing, I correctly identified my first bite as such and successfully landed the fish.

Having caught at least one fish, my day was a success.  Doesn't matter if I get more, as long as there is one in the boat due to me.

It was rather obvious by the tooth-filled mouth why the wire was needed. Also I made sure to have a good grip on Mr. Fishy before attempting to remove the hook. Wouldn't let no boys help me though.

I got one more that day, Marcelo had one, his cousin 5 total. We stayed maybe 2 hours until the bite totally died.

On the way back in we cruised by the big rock just off the beach, and I got my first close up look at a blue footed booby, while I had glasses to actually see it.

Blue feet and everything!

A wonderful day, the whole lot of it.

PS. I later found out they sold the 8 fish for $3, which gives you an idea why a fishing village is not a rich village.

Ringing in the New Year!

New Years at the beach is one big party.

It started for me at work.  A long day of work.  I think I got out of there at 7:30 or so, and went to find Marcelo and company, who I was scheduled to do the New Years thing with.

We just hung around until almost midnight, when the fun started.

One of the traditions is to burn 'Año Viejo' effigys, burning the old year to let the new one in.  This meant that there were some kind of creepy, scarecrow-esque figures all around town for a day or two in preparation.  In town there were papier mache ones to buy in all sizes and shapes.  I saw everything from Spiderman to Sully from Monsters Inc to, of course, minions.

This was one some friends had at the beach.

Selfie!

At midnight they got doused and lit up.  Also a somewhat morbid sight, looking like pouring lighter fluid on some guy on the ground.

Then there were burning figures all over in the streets.

Up and down the streets.

It's not camera flare, there's at least 4 fires in this picture, looking down the street

Burning selfie with my amigo from before. One heck of a 'before' and 'after'

I think there were fireworks on the beach at Atacames, but we were back in the streets of Sua watching scarecrows burn, so I can't be sure.  I did get to see some that other people were lighting off around, as is the case in the States too.

Sometime later, we headed in a mototaxi to Atacames, and joined in the beach celebration.  I enjoy my sleep these days, so I think I only made it to 4:30 or so before falling asleep on my feet.  Not before dancing in the sand and the obligitory bottle of some sort of alcohol stuffed in the sand happened.

All the lights of town were on in full swing

And the press of people on the beach too.  Lots in white, I hear in other places the entire beach is all dressed in white, which sounds like a pretty cool sight.

And that concluded my holiday season, different from any every before.

I found it was interesting to see the different traditions of a different country, but I still found myself longing for the comforting ones of home.  There truly is no place like it.

The next day I discovered that New Years Day is the Black Friday of Ecuadorean restaurants.  But that's another story that's not really a story.  It was just a long, hard day serving.

More stories soon, and truths from the kitchen.

Feliz Navidad!

Christmas this year was different for me, being in a different country and all.  It hardly felt like it was approaching either, since I was sweating every day with palm trees all around.  The decorations up were sparse and far between, and the little tree in the computer center in Sua just felt like it had been accidently left up until April.  In my journal the days were counting up to 25, but it just didnt feel right.

I decided to take a trip to Latacunga to spend Christmas with my friend Fernando and his family.  We met in a bar during Carnival during my study abroad two years ago, went rock climbing a couple times, and have stayed good friends.  Shay and I visited him on our first trip through Ecuador, we went to a pretty sweet lake.

Since Latacunga is at 9200 feet of elevation, it was cold.  My first night there we went and walked to all the nearby churches which were lit up with colored lights.

The park under the main church was filled with lights and decorations, my nose was cold, and it finally felt like Christmas.  Not quite the same as walking around the neighborhood where all the houses are decked in lights and statues, but it was wonderful anyway.

Very appropriate with the new Star Wars movie coming out

Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like an erupting volcano...

We went for sandwiches and hot chocolate at a cozy little bar after, which was so packed we had to start outside at a table.  We got scooted inside shortly after the food came, so it was basically just perfect for getting a sweet photo and letting my hot chocolate cool to a drinkable temperature.

The next day was Christmas Eve, and I discovered that it's a much bigger day in Ecuador than in the States. (at least for my family)  We had a giant turkey lunch with his family and his grandparents from down the street.  It was wonderfully moist, and there was a delicious cream cheese frosted cake at the end with ice cream.  Then a bit of time to rest, and at 7:00 we all piled into the car and drove to Quito to an aunt's house for another big party.

There were aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and who knows who else arriving.

There were lights and decorations

And a real Christmas tree!

Someone had brought a packet of the things-on-sticks that photobooths have.  A lot of photo-taking fun was had with those.

Another giant turkey dinner happened around 10:30.  It was also absolutely delicious, with mushroom sauce and a sweet potato sauce, rice with peppers and rasins (actually a pretty good combo), an apple-celery salad, bacon wrapped asparagus and carrot, and some sort of sweet-soaked cake for dessert.  I was stuffed.

The table before everyone sat down was beautiful

Then we stuffed ourselves around the table, and stuffed ourselves

After dinner was a gift exchange, of the variety where everyone sticks their gift in the middle, draw numbers, and open them in order, stealing previous gifts if you like that one better.  I watched since I had brought no gift.  It was entertaining, and I think that the little Strawberry Shortcake mantel dolls were *actually* popular.  Go figure.  After that was gifts for specific people, and they took pictures of the giver and recipient with the unopened gift each time.  I'm not quite sure what merit that has, but sure.  I gave Fernando the crossstitch I had done for him- he's fond of minions.

After all the presents, there was dancing until the wee hours.  I was cracked up by a couple of the elderly aunts, who still had a lot of pep in their step.  My favorite was the antler and glasses wearing gal.

Ignore the terrible photo quality and light flare, and see the antlered-dancing aunt on the left

We got home about 3am after everyone conked out in the car, and all fell into bed.

Christmas morning dawned rather quiet since all the festivities had happened the night before.  I opened the package Mom and Dad sent to Quito for me while listning to a Christmas mix on Youtube.  A headlamp to replace the one I (think) I left on a bus in Colombia, Jiffy pancake mix that I requested (I'm so so so excited for pancakes!) my PADI dive card to go diving in Central America, a bar of Theo chocolate in my favorite flavor, and a giant Peep minion that Mom just 'couldn't resist'.

At 11:00, still in bed, I had a three-way video chat with Dad at home, and Mom and Becca who were with my aunt and uncle in Minnesota.  Thanks to the wonders of technology we were all together on Christmas morning, in three different time zones, laughing together.  It was wonderful to talk to everyone and catch up a little.

The rest of the day I basically did nothing.  Fernando and I realized later we should have gone to see a movie or something.  Christmas meal for me was food court hamburger (it was pretty good though) since one of the dogs got into the leftover turkey they told me.  I worked on another Christmas project for a friend back at the beach, and watched some shows on Netflix.  Bed was early after a snack of cheese filled bread and juice.  It was a pretty nice Christmas for me.

The next day I headed back to the beach, but not before visiting their family hacienda 15 minutes out of town and hanging out with the horses for a bit.

All the nice horsies

Obligitory selfie with Sr. Morante

I rode for a little bit too.  Really it was more sitting on the horse, and if it decided to walk, then I guess I was 'riding'

All in all I had a great holiday, different from all the previous ones, but filled with friends and fun none the less.  New Years was at the beach, and that'll be one of my next posts!  Stay tuned.