Gonna be a rather long post tonight, as this was a busy day with lots of stuff happening. I have attempted to add subtitles tonight, to let you tune in where desired, or skip areas you are not interested in.
Driver Recommendation
We had three different people recommend Angel Panchez (phone: 0985899643, email: anhelp_68@yahoo.com) as a driver / guide, so we decided to try him today, and had him drive us to some of the cities surrounding Cuenca. His English is excellent (he worked in New York for 8 years), and he is the first truly courteous driver I have experienced in Ecuador… Rather than run down pedestrians as most drivers do, he actually stops and waves them to cross. He never passes cars unless it is safe, choosing instead to follow a slow car rather that zip around blind curves, like most other drivers seem to do. Towards the end of the day, his phone rang. To my amazement, he pulled over to the side of the road before answering it! I know quite a few drivers back home that could take lessons from Angel…
Additionally, he was very knowledgeable about the areas we wanted to visit, both knowing where to go and how to get in, and being able to add background (sometimes by acting as a translator to the local people). Needless to say, we heartily recommend Angel, and will be using him again ourselves.
Orchids
When we were here in February, we were told the orchids were not in bloom, so we did not go to the orchid farm. Today they were definitely in bloom, and we had a fascinating tour of the Ecuagenera Orquideas del Ecuador. We were told that there 10,000 different orchids grown by this company in various facilities throughout Ecuador, with 5,000 at this site alone. The orchids included the types we easily recognize and have at home. There are also orchids smaller than a fingernail, and others that I would not have even recognized as orchids. There are even orchids that act like Venus flytraps, and eat insects for nourishment. The range is phenomenal.
We were given a tour of the facility. The plants start in a nursery inside a tiny bottle. Roughly 120 plants share that small bottle for 6 month to a year. They are tightly sealed and sterilized to avoid any fungus infections. They are then transferred to a nursery pack of the type we would see for seedlings at Home Depot. After another 6 months to a year, they are transferred again to individual pots, where they will then mature until they are large enough to sell.
The nursery includes non-orchid varieties that are designed to keep the humidity high.
Guitars
We were here last time in February, during Carnaval, and were told the guitar makers were closed. We took the opportunity today to visit the two most famous guitar makers in the area, in San Bartolome.
After watching the construction of the guitar, Pauline tries one out.
We visited two brothers with separate, competing guitar making businesses. The first was a lone man who makes 6 to 8 guitars per month. He sells them to stores in Cuenca for $250-and-up, though he will sell it to a retail visitor at the same price. Good deal if we were in the market for a guitar, but alas we were not.
This lone man gives exquisite craftsmanship to each guitar, doing the entire process end-to-end, in a room roughly 10ft X 12ft. I had imagined a much larger and busier shop. This was an interesting and eye-opening stop.
We then drove a short ways along a dirt road needing a 4-wheel drive until we came to the other brother’s shop.
This one was a family business, with the father and son (pictured above right) leading much of the work. The wife and daughter were also helping out with making specific parts. The sound hole is decorated with tiny slices of colored wood, inlaid carefully by hand.
Another son carefully waxes the face of an otherwise finished guitar.
Lunch, Weaving & Jewelry
We also visited a weaver in Gualaceo. This was the same weaver we met in February, so apparently she is a standard stop for all suburb tours. Pauline had not seen this before, so it was interesting for her. They demonstrated the traditional ways of weaving they use, along with the all-natural dyes (mostly from berries and insects) used. Pauline avoided the temptation to buy anything, so we escaped with only a $5 tip left in their box on the way out…
We stopped by a small cafe for a delicious lunch of Trucha Frita (fried trout), caught locally in the nearby national Parque Caja. Then on to Chordeleg, where there is not much to see other than the numerous silver and gold jewelry stores. Pauline had the same reaction we did last February — 15 minutes of browsing was enough to cap the town and the tour, so we headed home.
Dinner at Tiestros
Tonight had a glorious sunset while we walked to dinner at Tiestro’s
Tomorrow is Pauline’s last night in Cuenca. We wanted to end on a high note, but Tiestro’s is closed on Sunday, so we went there tonight. This was our third visit there. While it is easily the most expensive restaurant we have visited in town ($80 for three of us, with no bottle of wine tonight), it also undoubtedly has the best food in town. Something for special occasions… like when Pauline is getting ready to return home!
The meal always starts off with an array of six exotic spices brought to the table with the bread. We asked Juan Carlos (the owner and chef) to come up with something for the three of us. He presented us with a shrimp soup for the first course, with 8 huge shrimp (yeah, an oxymoron…) in a tasty broth. He followed that by chicken breast in a cheese sauce, plus lomo fina in a mushroom cream sauce. Each item was world-class and fabulous.
We were watching Juan Carlos painting something on a counter near us, and could not figure out what it was at first. When he carried by a desert plate and showed us before delivering it to another table, we figured it out — he was painting the plates with raspberry and chocolate!
We had to try a desert after that!.. Again, we allowed him to select the desert for us (after I told him that I didn’t like coffee). He brought a chocolate cake with passion fruit ice cream, on a painted plate. Yes, that plate in the photo is actually plain white and all the decorations are painted by Juan.