Car alarms, orchids and Guinea Pigs

Hola ! Buenas tardes !  Nosotros vamos a escribir en espanol, porque ahora nosotros somos fluidos.   LOL  !  We did learn that the website spanishdict.com is very good for translation.  We live at the corner of Juan Jaramillo and Manuel Vega, the Cuenca car repair district.

Sue standing on Manuel Vega in front of restaurant & car seat repair shop (our apartment is behind the shop.)

To give you a sense of our neighborhood, you need to understand that up and down most blocks in “neighborhood” Cuenca (central Cuenca contains modern stores and lots of banks like most cities) there are narrow stores or tiendas, each about eight to ten feet or so wide.  Most are stuffed to the gills with whatever the vendor is selling.  On some streets these wares are specific—several whole blocks of fabric sellers, men’s tailors, women’s clothing, baby items, stationery and even sunglasses— three or four whole tiny stores on one block dedicated to a zillion sunglasses.

 In between are teeny 7-11 type tiendas selling what we would find in gas stations:  cold drinks, snacks, household items you might need spur of the moment. Interspersed, also, are teeny restaurants—often with three tables or so (two or four seaters), two or three huge pots of something cooking in the entryway or front window and a mysterious curtained back area—more cooking and for cleaning-no doubt.

One of these little eating establishments is next door to us (haven’t tried it yet) and they are up before dawn, so we wake to incredible food smells most mornings.   The sound we wake up to is not the trilling of birds, but the trilling of numerous car alarms going off.  We lucked out into getting an apartment smack in the middle of car alarm central along with other automotive supply tiendas.  But the car alarms are the killers—don’t they need to demonstrate before anyone would buy?  Why, of course!

Four car alarm vendors in one block--and only two blocks from us.

Despite the car alarms, we are growing to enjoy our neighborhood--we are just four blocks from the lovely river walk and ten minutes to the center of town. We have menioned before that people do not make eye contact on the street, not with each other and not with "estranjeros"—the best you get is a vendor sitting outside his store saying “adelante”  (urging you to enter). So, we have not engaged anyone living near us, but have read that that comes with time.  We asked an old man directions the other day and he immediately became very friendly trying out his broken English with us, laughing and hugging us as we parted.  It has been one of our most enjoyable exchanges with a local Cuencano.

We open our front door each day to a wall of graffiti—it is growing on us, though the character seemed a little threatening at first.  Just a cartoon!  Walking the cobbled streets and vying with racing cars to cross them is the challenge.  We just read in a guide book that vehicles have the right of way over pedestrians.   If a car blinks its lights or honks as you start to cross, our teacher said it means..."get your you-know-what out of the way, I'm not slowing for you."

Mural/grafitti through bars on front door

Mural without the bars.

Walking around would be more fun if people looked at you, but eh, what can you do?  By taking our language classes, we are communicating with others and feeling more engaged.  We even went to dinner with a couple we met (from Arlington), so are making a few contacts.  Life in Cuenca rolls on, particularly loudly in our neighborhood—an adventure for sure.

This weekend along with a couple of American women we met at language school, Gladys and Karen, we took our first short trip out of Cuenca to visit a smaller city called Gualaceo—about 30 miles and a 45 minute, 60 cents bus ride.  The town according to the guide book has an artisanal market, but we unfortunately never found it but we still had a great time. We located the food market and had fun looking around and trying some of the local culinary offerings—although we declined the spit roasted Guinea Pig (el cuye).  We all particularly liked the roast pork and french fries. 

Roast pork right off the hog.

Spit roasted Guinea Pig--an Ecuadorean delicacy

 Perhaps the highlight of the visit, however, was a wonderful tour of an orchid research center, Ecuagenera, just outside of the town.

Larry with Ecuagenera tourguide, Manuel

 Ecuador is home to more varieties of orchids than any other place in the world.  We didn’t see all 4000 of those different varieties on our hour long guided tour, but we did see an incredible array of all kinds, sizes and shapes.  

Manuel demonstrating why this is called the Monkey Face Orchid

There were so many beautiful orchids, it was hard to choose our favorites to share with you.

 Ecuagenera grows and ships orchids throughout the world, including the States, Europe and Asia. Our guide, Manuel, was very knowledgeable, patient with our Spanish or lack thereof, and answered all of our questions with a smile and an encyclopedic knowledge of orchids and their cultivation.  Even though we will be here but another month, we bought an orchid to bring back to the apartment.

Our new orchid in our garden.