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10,000 Types of Orchids Plus Guitars

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.

 

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Art Class Completed

Evelyn has just completed a series of art classes taught by renown Santa Fe instructor, Gary Myers, in his home studio in El Centro. Because art materials and studio supplies are scarce in Cuenca, Gary and Arie have developed innovative tools to use. For student easels, he used wooden wedges that were being used as wheel ramps for moving goods from the street up to sidewalk level. Instead of mass-produced artist water containers, he used cut off liter soda bottles, and other found items. The class started with a series of basic concepts, from  how to paint gradations, to demonstrating planes on still life, sketching faces from the society pages, to drawing live models, and ending with a class art show of the completed paintings.

Gary has a gift for bringing out the best with every one of his students. On the last class, Evelyn’s sister Pauline decided to try to draw her first live model, and her drawings show both Gary’s skill as a teacher as well as Pauline’s natural artistic talent.  Evelyn highly recommends Gary’s classes to those wanting to tackle a creative endeavor as well as meeting lots of interesting characters in a fun, non-threatening environment.

Here are Pauline’s first figure drawings:

 

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Spa Day

Pauline on the left, and Evelyn on the right, enjoyed a day at Piedra de Agua in Bano de Cuenca

Today was spa day for Evelyn and her visiting sister. Since I am usually ready to go 15 minutes after arriving at places like this, I opted to stay home and let them enjoy themselves… which they managed quite nicely!

The two of them took the local Blue Bus for 25 cents each to Bano de Cuenca (the hot springs just outside of town).  They decided to visit one of the most upscale spas, one that we had looked in on when we were in Bano a couple weeks ago. Piedra de Aqua is one of the newest spas in town, opening only 4 years ago.  It is beautifully landscaped, has a restaurant, bar, patio and multiple exterior pools.  By buying the premium package for $30, the women were each given a personal assistant to take them through the entire process, and they were also given access to a series of underground cavern pools.

Their assistant directed them to a steam room, rinse, then a dip in the red clay pool.  When they came out of the clay pool, it looked as though they had forgotten sun screen, becoming completely red all over!  A hot shower was encouraged to finish the process, which was then repeated in blue clay — which made them come out looking like zombies. [This is why I stayed home…:) ]

They were then led to the subterranean hot springs down some candle lit steps. The cavern had 2 pools in a romantic setting. They alternated from hot to cold pools – 37c hot (99 F), 14c cold (57 F). Then a steam sauna, swim in the pool, and shower. Pauline described herself as “Gumbie” after all that.

After all that, they felt they had to try the restaurant to see if the food matched up to the spa experience – it did. To curb their hunger the waiter brought some sweet potato and red potato chips. They ordered a sanguchera tea, Cuenca egg soup, and a hot salad consisting of corn, carrots, olives, zucchini in a teriyaki dressing. Once they told the waiter they were celebrating Pauline’s birthday. the waiter also brought a complementary cheesecake. “Yum-oh” was the only description I got. 🙂

Tonight we heard more rockets from the nearest church, so I went over to see if I could improve on last night’s efforts (nope…).  They opened with the same twirling tops in front of the church as before.  These spin rapidly and climb into the sky.  The last one snagged, then went flying horizontally directly at the building across the street, burned on the wall, climbed the wall while spinning, then sat burning on the (fortunately clay) roof…

Next up were more rockets, just as last night.  This time the guy lighting them seemed rushed, putting up four rockets at a time instead of one or two, and setting up new ones seconds after the prior ones launched. There were kids playing on a playset not more than 10 feet from this rapid rocket launch. Safety is not even on the menu at these church fireworks…

Normally the spinners that led off yesterday’s blog would come next.  The guy that had been launching the rockets went over to the pile of them.  He picked up the couple dozen that were on the ground ready to go, picked up his six foot pole, and with two other men went to the street, hailed a taxi and drove off with them.

What the ???  I asked a couple people “donde estan ellos yendo”  (my best attempt at “where are they going?”). They all shrugged or spoke rapid Spanish that I could only understand to say they didn’t know.  A few minutes later the doors of the church closed, and within 10 minutes the square was mostly deserted.  Figuring the show was over, I left.

About 3 hours later, we could see fireworks over the trees of our apartment.  Seems the church resumed with “real fireworks” much later.  They never last long enough for us to grab camera gear and hoof it there, so we also just shrugged and went back inside…

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Fireworks!

There used to be a lot more fireworks in Cuenca, and when we arrived we had expected to be shooting quite a few displays while here.  Fireworks here are some of the most dangerous we have seen anywhere in the world. They are shot up right in the middle of crowded streets, with the flaming remnants falling into the trees, onto the roofs of houses and cars, and even among the audience. One such display caught a major church on fire this past August, and many of the displays were restricted after that.  Since it was a church that caught fire, and almost all these displays are put on by the church parishes of the city, it is not clear to us whether these restrictions are new laws passed by the city, or the church has put its own limits on its own displays. 

Either way though, we have been here five weeks, and didn’t photograph any displays until tonight.  We have seen three others in the distance, but never knew about them until too late.  There does not appear to be any published schedule of where these will be.  Instead, word-of-mouth within each parish lets people know.

Last night we heard rockets firing pretty close, and then saw fireworks over the trees, apparently just a few blocks away.  Rockets were then fired every few minutes all night long.  When I asked Xavier (the apartment manager) this morning, he said it was a local church celebrating its patron saint day.  Oh well, missed another one.

Tonight we started hearing rockets again about 5:00, grabbed our cameras and followed the sound.  It turned out to be the same church.  Apparently this is a multi-day celebration for them.

Most of the fireworks are just rockets that are fired off to explode 100 feet or so in the air.  They make a lot of noise, produce a small amount of smoke, and tumble back to earth.

Kids set up a rocket, light the fuse, then casually walk away while the rocket fires. These spent rockets littered the area, often falling (still burning) through the trees and landing on the car tops or among the audience.

 

San Rogue church was celebrating tonight, and included a band that played periodically through the evening.

 

One man fired off a couple dozen spinners. He held a short pole, lit the fireworks, then ducked his head to avoid being burned by the sparks. This was lit directly under some large trees, and within a few feet of several cars.

 After things had pretty much died down around the church, we went to dinner at Nektar and listened to The Jazz Society again. Tonight, they were joined by several new players that we had not seen before.  There were five dancers this time, plus a couple sax players.

There was also one pair of musicians that were baffling to hear at first.  One alternately played a clarinet and a sax, while the other alternated between a wooden flute (I’m sure there is a more proper name for it…), and a small hand drum (you can tell I am not a musician by all these technical names I bandy about!).  I could have sworn there were several other instruments being played too, with the result sounding like a whale song. Something I had never heard live before.

At one point, I thought he was “cheating” by playing a recorder with a background track.  After awhile it became clear though.  He had a recorder at his feet that would capture his music, then play it back later with him. Thus, the music complexity grew in the first minute or so, until he was playing with multiple copies of himself at once.  Something I would have thought could only be done in a multi-track studio with hours of work — but we were hearing it done live and sounding perfectly natural, if a bit disorienting.

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The Highest Cause of Death in Ecuador

Every couple of days we read about another multiple-death car accident, frequently on the road between Cuenca and Quito or Cuenca and Guayaquil. A couple weeks ago, the local Cuenca English newspaper said that car fatalities are the leading cause of death for adults in Ecuador.  Other sources place it a little lower on the list, but all put it near the top.

Today we had a first-hand experience of why this is true.  Rather than take multiple busses to Guayaquil from Puerto Lopez, we hired a driver — a very good driver as it turned out.  He drove carefully, stayed within the speed limit, passed only when safe, etc.  As we approached Guayaquil, he recommended (in Spanish, since he spoke no English) that we complete the trip to Cuenca by van rather than bus.  Sounded good to us, so he dropped us off at a van shuttle service.  The first was booked, but the one next door said they would take us immediately for $12 per person.  We agreed…

… and took our lives into our hands in the process! This driver was a madman.  We zipped through 30 km/hr zones at 110 — which was only because he had slowed from 120 in the prior 60 km/hr zone.  He passed on blind corners in fog so thick you couldn’t see more than 40 feet ahead.  He tailgated about 3 feet (I am not exaggerating!) while traveling over 100 through town, then passing at full throttle while he honked at pedestrians to get out of the way.  He made the 3-1/2 hour trip in under 2-1/2 hours… 

I am here writing this, so I guess we must still be alive.  I am still checking periodically to see that I am not floating over my body like some sci-fi ghost…

The morning began much more calmly.  I went out to watch and photograph the fishermen coming in for the third day.  I can now begin to see the rhythm of the place, and predict better what will happen next.

The fishing boats come in one at a time. Buyers swarm the boats, filling their plastic tubs with fish from the boat. They carry those bins on their shoulder over to the weighing scale, where an official writes down the boat name, buyer, type of fish in the bin, and weight. The runner then gives his full tub to a person working the back of a truck, grabs an empty bin and repeats the process.

After the bulk buyers have what they want, other buyers go in to buy one or two fish.  Those are taken to the food tables set up near the road, where they are gutted and skinned.  Locals, including those working the fish trucks, either buy the prepared fish to take home, or buy a full fish meal and eat it right there.  The boat then reloads gas and heads back out for another load.

Some boats came in with Dorado, while others (apparently bottom trawlers) were loaded with crab, shrimp, and flounders. The Dorado were too big for birds to carry off, so the runners with tubs of those were safe.  When runners had tubs of shrimp or small fish though, the story was different.  Suddenly the birds would swarm and try to grab the fish from the tub as the man ran as fast as he could.  Sometimes a second man would run alongside and beat off the attacking birds.  Those without an assistant almost always arrived at the scale lighter than when they left the boat.

 

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Fishing Boats and a Deserted Beach

Short post today as we were basically lazy (and not feeling too well) most of the day… 

We started off with another trip to the fishing boat section of the beach at the other end of town from our hotel.  Though there were several buyer’s trucks waiting to purchase fish, we only saw one boat come with a load to sell.  We stayed until almost 10:00AM, and saw some boats just going out at that time.  We never really found out if these later boats were going after a different type of fish, or just why some boats were just going out when we had expected them to all be coming in.

You could tell when a boat was coming in, just by looking where the birds were swarming.  Not circling, but swarming! As the fishermen carried crates of fish off the boat, a second man ran alongside swatting at the birds that attempted to swoop down and steal a free meal off the top.

After a nap, we decided to visit Las Frailes beach. The official Ecuadorian web site lists it as a place not-to-miss, and says this has the best beach in the area.  A $12 round-trip motoTaxi (similar to a Tuk-tuk in Asia) brought us to an almost deserted beach.  The panorama was no match for yesterday’s Isla de la Plata, and though the beach sand was nice, it was no better than right outside our hotel back in Puerto Lopez.

 

As we were walking along the beach, a man waved to us.  We returned the wave, and he walked over.  It turned out he was a park ranger, and was going through the park to assure it was cleared before the 4:00 closing time.  He spoke no English, but we had a broken conversation, whereupon he walked us a short distance over to an obviously make-shift fence of sticks poking into the sand.  He told us (in Spanish) that it was a tortoise nest, and that there were 75 eggs buried in the sand there, that would hatch and head to the sea in June or July of next year.  We were lucky enough to actually see the burying of eggs a few years ago in Costa Rica, but would have walked right by this and not known it was there, had the ranger not stopped to have a chat with gringos that don’t even speak the language.

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Poor Man’s Galapagos

First thing this morning, we walked over to the part of the beach where the fishermen come in with their catch. We had been warned that it might be slow on a Sunday morning, and indeed, we only saw one boat come in, and unload a fairly small load of fish.

We came to Puerto Lopez to see the fishing boats, and also because this is the jumping-off point to visit Isla de la Plata, also known as the Poor Man’s Galapagos.  It is an island that is part of the Parque Mancalilla, about 75 minutes off the coast by boat.

This is an inexpensive way to see some of the same animals on the famed Galapagos Islands.  Our last 10 day trip to the Galapagos cost us roughly $10,000, but the day trip to Isla de la Plata cost $35.  The island mostly had blue-footed boobies, with birds sitting on eggs right on the walking path.  There were also some frigate birds, and a lone red-footed booby too far away to photograph.  Nothing like the bounty of the Galapagos national park, but then for $35, it was a bargain.

After a few hours walking on the island, followed by a short snorkeling swim, we headed back.  The water had gotten a bit more rough, and perhaps we were against the current, because the boat frequently “caught air”, making for a fast, but rough ride.

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Snake Oil Salesmen

We woke up this morning in Salinas, prepared for a lazy morning before catching the bus to Puerto Lopez.  With my brain still a bit fuzzy, I stepped into the shower… and found only a single faucet.  No hot water??  Looking up, I found the infamous self-electrocution device I had read about, but never seen outside Cuba before. Bare wiring in a shower does not give a lot of confidence, but turning the dial did result in a reasonably warm shower.

After surviving the shower, and having a nice included breakfast, we laid around the pool for a few hours.

We then took a taxi down to the bus terminal. The taxi driver was playing a news program on his radio, and I heard President Correo (the president of Ecuador) praising Cuenca for welcoming Americans to the city.  He said that when Americans come, they open new bank accounts and help the economy.  Of course all this was in Spanish, so I was only understanding snippets here and there.

We grabbed an economy bus to Puerto Lopez.  Unlike the executive bus we took into Salinas, this bus made frequent stops.  There was a pretty constant flow of vendors that would come on the bus, give a pitch, maybe sell a few items, then hop off, to catch the next bus coming down the road.  Most sold snacks to eat along the way, but there was one guy who talked at length about the wonders of his miracle product, which he held in a small packet that looked an awful lot like a packet of Tang.  He struck me as a true old-fashioned snake oil salesman…

After a 2 1/2 hour ride, we arrived in Puerto Lopez, with no idea where to go next.  We asked around for a restaurant recommendation, and were directed down to the beach. After lunch we took a small motorcycle taxi that closely resembles the tuk-tuks in Thailand and Cambodia, and arrived at our hotel. 

After settling in, we went out for a walk on the beach. This is a fishing village, and working boats were everywhere.  We found one that was under construction, and many others on the beach.  As the sun set, a construction tractor started dragging some of the boats back from the waterline further up the beach to overnight there.

In Salinas, we had seen plenty of examples of lovers writing in the sand.  Here in Puerto Lopez, there were numerous tracks that look like they are from some worm making their own natural art… and an occasional footprint adding to the motif.

There were plenty of boys playing soccer along the beach, with at least four different games going on at once.  The games were played without goal posts or boundaries, with the apparent goal simply being to keep the ball going and away from the other team. Several were quite good.

As the sun set, I was photographing several families and groups of kids playing in the surf. Suddenly one group of five kids ran out of the surf towards me and started vamping, wanting their pictures taken.  They were all so cute and good at modeling that we couldn’t help spending the next half hour with them.  Though they spoke no English, we managed to get their emails, and I have sent them 22 photos from that set.

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The President Stole Our Van!

We made reservations a few days ago for a shared van at 9:00 this morning to take us from Cuenca to Guayaquil.  From there, we planned on taking a public bus to Salinas.  We arrived early for our van… and found the company closed with nobody around…?  I called the phone number on the business card we had picked up, and proceeded to have a (broken) Spanish conversation with the manager.  He insisted that our trip for was mañana (tomorrow), while I insisted it was today.  He finally just said (in Spanish) “no cars today” and hung up…

There are four van services in a row on this street, so we went to the next one. “Sorry, no cars today. Try tomorrow.”  Huh???

Turns out that the presidents of both Ecuador and Peru flew in this morning for a bi-national summit to discuss border issues. Their entourages rented every van in the city, and all other reservations are ignored.  Not even a phone call to warn us. Oh well, such is life in Latin America.

We took a taxi to the bus terminal and grabbed a public bus instead.  The bus only costs $8 per person, so we saved some money in the process.  While waiting for the bus, we met and talked to a young British man who has spent the last 20 months backpacking around the world.  He said he was just about out of money, and would have to go back home and get a job soon.  What does he do?  He said he is a Natural Physicist.  When I asked what that was, he explained that most people know it as Astronomer.  He specializes in globular star cluster formation, plus the technical design of adaptive optics. It was surprising to hear someone so smart and educated (and fit and good looking), just picking up and taking off alone.  He said he figured that if he didn’t do it now, he would be “an old man of 35” before he got the chance again.  Ouch! 🙂

Pauline’s seat-mate was a grandmotherly type that talked up a storm with Pauline, while Pauline furiously looked up phrases in her Spanish dictionary to understand and respond.  After awhile, Pauline started teaching the woman some English, and she delighted in pointing out the window and saying “cow!”

When we pulled into Guayaquil at 1:00, we decided to get the bus ticket to Salinas first, then use the restrooms and get something to eat.  That was a bit of a mistake, as the ticket they sold us was for a bus leaving in 5 minutes.  We barely made it to the departure gate in time, so the restroom and food had to wait another 3 hours…

As we rolled into Salinas, Pauline asked the driver where we should get off.  The driver spoke good English, and pulled the bus over at the side of the road, telling us that our hotel was just 4 blocks away, directly towards the beach.  Nope. Either he was mistaken, or he thought we were going to a different hotel, since it was nowhere to be found, and nobody we asked knew where it was.  

We stopped in a small restaurant for the long-delayed restroom stop and a small meal. Bad choice on the food part. For all the raves we had heard of Salinas seafood, nothing there was very good.  We then hailed a cab, and he also had no idea where our hotel was, even though we had the address for it.  He radioed in, drove us to the approximate neighborhood, stopped and asked someone sitting on a sidewalk, and finally got us close enough that we could walk the last stretch.

They were painting outside our room when we arrived, so the room smelled enough to give me a headache, and the wi-fi doesn’t reach beyond the first floor.  Salinas was not giving a good first impression so far…

We decided to go for a walk on the beach, and then things began to improve rapidly.


The beach here is every bit as nice as it was reported to be. Not very crowded at all, with a few families out enjoying a walk on the sand, or playing at the water’s edge. The weather was balmy and very pleasant.


We were there just a little before sunset, but there had obviously been others on the beach earlier, since there were quite a few sand-writing examples.


At one point, we saw some men drag a couple of huge swordfish up on the beach.


Around 7:00 (an hour past sundown) we decided to have dinner at one of the restaurants that Evelyn had read about in the guidebooks. We chose Oh Mar, and decided to split a single seafood paella.  It was a good thing we only ordered one, as it was huge, and topped with luscious shellfish.  The guidebooks were right — this was a fabulous meal.

Pauline topped dinner off with an ice cream cone.

After a rough start, Salinas is turning into a nice place to visit for a day or two.

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Luggage, Mercado de Animales & Thanksgiving

This was a pretty full day.  Probably the biggest news for us was the final culmination of The Great Luggage Journey.  We went out to the airport this morning to get Pauline’s luggage… only to be told it still wasn’t here and “will definitely be on the next flight from Quito.”  Since this was our 4th trip to the airport, each time being told the luggage would be there, we stayed around about an hour and harassed the staff until we thought we had a reasonable assurance it would really arrive, then went back to our day’s activities.

We received a phone call just before 2:00 saying the luggage was there, but they were closing at 2:30.  We quickly hailed a taxi… but it had just started to rain and we had to walk about 4 blocks to a place with more taxis.  We got in and raced to the airport.  Well…. raced is such a strong word…  We somehow hailed the only conservative taxi driver in Cuenca. He waited to let cars pass (unheard of!) and actually drove slowly (never happened before!).  As we got to the airport at 2:32, Pauline jumped out of the cab and raced to the office, just in time to catch the last person leaving the office.

Pauline is all smiles as she finally reunites with her luggage

We actually started the day with catching a taxi and going out to the Mercado de Animales in Cuenca.  When we failed to see the one in Canar (see post from last week), Evelyn’s Spanish tutor told her there was one right here.  Not many people seem to know about it, but it is huge, and was a great morning of mucking through the mud and sh** and photographing the people and animals.

The first area we saw was for the buying and selling of pigs.  And I mean thousands of pigs of all sizes, from new piglets up to monsters that I could have ridden.  The air was filled with the constant squeal of pigs complaining about being pulled, prodded, and loaded onto trucks.

The next section was filled with cattle.  These were mostly meat cattle destined for a butcher shop.  We noticed that most of the regulars here were wearing what I think of as “farm galoshes” — the boots I wore as a kid slopping the pigs on a farm in Minnesota.

One truck even had a half dozen tiny goats for sale == presumably for the buyer to raise before milking or slaughtering.

As we have seen repeatedly in Cuenca, people here are extremely friendly.  A couple of men stopped to talk to us, probably partly because we where the only gringos in the area. Dave spoke very little English, but wanted to talk to us. He was selling a medium-large pig and told us it would probably fetch about $100, while the really big pigs would bring $300 or even $400.

George is a rancher on the outskirts of town with 400 acres of Holstein cows for milk, from which he makes cheese abd sells at the market.  He lived in Canada and Europe earlier, and his wife is British, so his English was quite good.

Moving further, we found a small section devoted to horses, then pockets of sheep, and even a pair of donkeys for sale.

Moving on, we came across stalls similar to those found at Mercado de Arenas, but with more variety and in larger numbers.  We found goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, bunnies, dogs, geese, etc.  All kept in tiny cages, crowded to an extent that would probably evoke a PETA protest back home.

We then moved into the lunch area, where we saw where some of those pigs being sold ended up.

We had never seen a pig splayed out and roasted while looking like a blanket before…

The rest of the market was like most others, with lots of fruits, vegetables, then dry goods.  To keep this post from running book-length, I am not going to detail that area, since it was largely a repeat of prior mercados.

After leaving the market, we went to the airport (the morning’s failed attempt to retrieve luggage, as mentioned above), visited the friend’s house where we had a potluck dinner last week, raced back to the airport a second time (success!), then rested back home till dinner.

We had heard several times about the fabulous meals that could be had at Joe’s Secret Garden.  This is a private home that is turned into a restaurant once a week.  They had a thanksgiving dinner tonight, and we had reservations.  It opened with a cocktail hour, to meet other gringos, then a sumptuous turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  I have had many turkey dinners in the past that have disappointed me, but this was one of the best I have ever had.  Definitely recommended restaurant, and we will probably return for another meal before leaving Cuenca.

 

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