Life in Bahia and a trip to Canoa

Spending three hours a day with my Spanish tutor and studying a couple of more hours each day means we don’t have a lot of pictures or stories for the blog. Here’s the view from the park bench where Sanhi and I go over prepositions and verb conjugations. Although class is at 3:30, the Yugosi vendor is there shortly after 3, so I arrive early to get my pina-coco Yugosi (the 15 cent yogurt-based icy pop that I first had in Quito in March and blogged about).

Gotta have the food pictures! The food is still great, whether we eat out [as in the $4  grilled pork chop dinner with all the Ecuadorian trimmings: potato with a cream cheese topping, salad and the second plate containing rice and menestra (lentils)] or whether I cook, like this shrimp and pasta dish with a cheese sauce.

Every weekday morning, the same fish vendor walks down the street, yelling “pescado! camarones!” (fish!, shrimp!). He knows where to stand so we can see him and wave from our balcony. If we wave and disappear off the balcony, we are heading down to see what he has. If we wave and stand there, he knows we aren’t buying that day. He’s a nice guy who speaks a very little bit of English. Last Sunday, we saw him with his daughter at the free vaccination clinic they had downtown and he called us over and introduced us to his wife. If we want something that he doesn’t have that day, he leaves the fish he does have with us and pedals like crazy to the market on the other side of town to get it. We could probably get the fish cheaper at the market (or maybe not), but he delivers it right to the door of our building, and it has always been fresh and tasty. Phillip took this picture looking down over the balcony as our buddy sliced off a chunk of swordfish for me.

About half the time, Bahia is cloudy during the day as the sea breezes carry a lot of moisture. On the sunny days, the water in the bay is a beautiful blue, such a wonderful view from our balcony.

Probably, if we were on the Pacific side of the peninsula, we could take really good sunset shots that include more of the reflection on the water, but I like the view on this side better… mountains in the background across the bay, not just water.

Today, we traveled to Canoa, a beach town about 30 minutes up the coast from us. Instead of beach umbrellas, These tents were used for sunshade. I think Phillip needs to make me one for the pond at the ranch. The wind blows thru and the sides anchor the top and keep the sun from sneaking in the sides.  Pretty nifty and the best design for beach (or pond?) cabanas that I’ve seen.

While walking along the beach, we came across this half-buried log. “Get your paws off me, you dirty, stinking ape!”  Every time I see half-buried driftwood logs sticking out of the sand, I look for Charlton Heston. Yes, I know there was a remake of Planet of the Apes, but the original is better. And I know that Charlton Heston is dead, but still….

The sand on the beach at Canoa is a whiter, finer sand than the sand in Bahia. The beach also had more vendors, making Canoa seem more like a play area than Bahia. The town itself, however, made San Vincente across the bay from Bahia seem like a metropolis. We had taken a taxi from Bahia to Canoa ($8), but after we walked around and ate lunch, we couldn’t find a taxi in Canoa to take us back to Bahia. We saw plenty of them parked, but they were full of towels and clothes because they were being used by the driver to bring his family to the beach and they weren’t for hire.  I flagged down the only moving taxi and the driver told me that there weren’t any taxis for hire in Canoa. So, we walked three blocks to the main road for the bus. No wait, as the bus was there. On our ride back, the bus passed a carnival ride on wheels. I stuck my camera out the window to get this picture as we overtook the long bug-mobile. We got off the bus in San Vincente and took the ferry across the bay, back to Bahia.

We’ve booked a tour of Isla Corazon for Monday morning, so I’ll probably be making another post on Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

$2 lunches, 3 cent bananas, and $5 lobsters

Food is an integral part of our adventures. Phillip and I love trying the food in the countries we visit. I always include food photos and stories in the postings during our travels. This posting is dedicated to a few of our recent food adventures.

Since we are renting a condo, we have a kitchen. However, it is still cheaper (and easier on the cook and dishwasher, i.e., me and Phillip) to eat lunch at a local restaurant. We’ve found this restaurant, about 6 blocks away in a residential area, where the almuerzos are always delicious… and cost $2 each. The word almuerzo means “lunch” in Spanish, but in these small restaurants, an almuerzo is a set lunch, it’s what the cook fixed in quantities that day. An almuerzo consists of a glass of fruit  juice (the kind of fruit varies, but the fruit is juiced on premises), a big bowl of soup (actually, the soup is hearty and sufficient to be the meal by itself), and then a plate of meat, rice, and usually fried banana or plantain slices. The banana is slightly green, so when fried it is vaguely sweet, but also starchy like a fried potato slice. Sometimes the meat is beef stew, sometimes a helping of menestra (seasoned lentils) is included with the meat and rice…. just depends on what the cook fixed. We haven’t gone wrong yet by ordering the almuerzo at Dona Luca’s restaurant.

We generally cook dinner in the condo. I am finished with Spanish tutoring at 6:30 pm, about the time it gets dark here. It’s safe to walk after dark here, but it just seems so late to me…. and we always have fish or shrimp in the refrigerator! The vegetable prices at the market for fresh produce seem so cheap to these gringos from the Estados Unidos (United States). As we frequent the same vendors, the price we pay keeps going down. And I thought the prices were good during our first week!  For example, our last haul from the mercado included a bunch of 15 bananas for 50 cents. Big bananas, not the fingerling ones I ate in Thailand. That works out to 3 cents a banana. Those limes… they are the size of American oranges. Our first week, we paid $2 for twenty. This week, same vendor, $1 for 20. I asked the lady who sold us the limes to give me 25 cents worth of cilantro. Even at Fiesta (the Fort Worth Mexican grocery), I would have paid $1 for that much cilantro.

Yesterday, while I was in the grocery store getting milk, Phillip stopped at the bakery across the street from the store and got pigs in a blanket. Back at the condo, he heated them in the microwave and served them…. pigs in a blanket? They were more like hogs in a comforter…. Full sized hot dogs wrapped in a small loaf of bread. You can see the size in relation to a full-sized paper towel. Mostaza is mustard, sold in a container that reminds me of the CapriSun juice containers.

And now for our most delicious adventure, today’s lobsters. Bob and Susan, Americans who are renting the penthouse above us, arranged with one of the fisherman to deliver lobsters. At about 10 am, Bob knocked on our door to tell us the lobsters had arrived, three for us. $15 for the three, fresh off the boat. Pacific lobsters, so they don’t have big claws like the Atlantic lobsters we brought back from Boston a few years ago.

Dona Luca didn’t get a visit from us today. I had to use three pans, because the condo didn’t have a pan big enough to hold more than one of our lobsters. Five minutes in boiling water. Cool down for a few minutes so Phillip could take care of getting the tail meat.

I noticed that their skinny little arms did contain meat, so I cracked their arms (legs?) with my teeth, as our kitchen didn’t have a tool to use, and got six more bites of lobster meat.

These lobster tails were tender and flavorful, more so even than the tails of the Boston lobsters.

Delicious to the last bite, which you see me eating in the last picture!

Community theatre, Ecuadorian style, and a short trip

Phillip and I have settled into a nice routine during the week. Nothing exciting, so no posts until today. Phillip continues his vigil of the construction of the condo in the next block. Our 6th floor balcony gives him a great view of the progress and the workers. Here, they are putting in plastic-wrapped spacer blocks before they pour the concrete floor for the 3rd story of the building. The plumbers came this afternoon and worked. Soon, Phillip will get to see the concrete poured for this floor. Exciting times in Bahia!

My Spanish class is going well. I understand more and more each day. I have noticed that learning a language isn’t quite as easy for me as it was when I took college Spanish for one semester in…. 1975. Ancient history, right? Back then, students used antique instruments called paper and a pencil.

Back to the present… my instructor, Sunhe (pronounced Sun-nay), is, in addition to being an elementary school teacher and a mother of three, active in the local community theatre. She invited Phillip and me to their performance last night. Comedy is universal. Phillip barely understood a word they said, but the comedy skits had him laughing. This production, held in the university auditorium, consisted of six one-act sketches, two comedies and four dramas. I could follow all of them except for one of the dramas, when the microphones the actors were using malfunctioned. Unfortunately, that was a two-actor play and Sunhe was one of the two actors. She was in the two comedies, so we did get to see and hear her act. The picture is from one of the comedies, set on a bus full of characters. If you look carefully, you can see the chicken!

Today, we rode the ferry to the town across the bay, San Vicente. The ferry, which costs $.30, holds twenty passengers for the ten minute ride. The operators hand out life vests as you board the boat. Our boat didn’t sink, but as you can see in the picture, it rides very low in the water.

Once in San Vicente, Phillip and I walked around the town. I got a picture of Phillip, sitting on the seawall, with Bahia in the background across the bay. San Vicente is much smaller than Bahia, so our walk didn’t take long. We ate lunch in a restaurant there, then rode the ferry back to Bahia. The whole excursion, from leaving the condo to returning to the condo, took about two hours. I said San Vicente wasn’t very big!

I looked for something to take a picture of there, but the most interesting and colorful thing in the town was the ferry dock! We will probably make the ferry ride again next Saturday, as the buses and taxis to another town we want to visit, Canoa, depart from San Vicente, not from Bahia. Today’s trip did make us appreciate Bahia even more, its cleanliness, the care that the Bahians take with maintenance of their parks and streets, and the activity and people who are here versus there across the bay.

School for Pat, construction watching for Phillip

I started Spanish school yesterday. Actually, a more accurate representation would be Spanish tutoring. I met my teacher at 3:30 yesterday at the school, which is just three blocks over and two blocks down from the condo. In this picture, taken from our balcony, the school building is the three story building (brick along the lowest floor, white walls with windows on the upper two) that is just to the left of the rounded white roof of a church. A small water tower obscures the view of the corner of the school.

My teacher’s name is Sunny, a 36 year-old mother of three who teaches elementary kids during the day. She speaks very little English, but that’s good, forcing me to listen and understand Spanish. We didn’t stay at the school building for our lessons, but walked to a nearby park and sat on the bench. I’ve got a workbook that we are going thru. In the parts I already know, we go fast. (numbers, for example) I forgot about the difference between this, that, these, and those (4 words in English, 8 words in Spanish because of the masculine/feminine issue), so we slowed down. Today, we are taking our lessons on the road, as she wants to make sure I can communicate at the store. This wouldn’t work if I knew no Spanish, but I think it will work great for my level of espanol.

Phillip hasn’t approached any fishermen yet. He is too enthralled with the construction he can see from our balcony. I must admit, it is interesting to watch.  As is most construction here, the walls and floors are concrete, totally different from what Phillip knows about. OSHA would have a fit about their procedures, but these guys know what they are doing. Most of them wear hardhats, but there are no safety harnesses. The scaffolding would scare me to stand on it, but they scamper up and down it without hesitation. Except for just after dawn, a breeze always blows here, at times more of a wind than a gentle sea breeze. The wind was blowing when Phillip took this picture, and we noticed that the workers were swaying on their perch, which was just a bent piece of rebar hooked to the upright rebar. Not on your life would I ever take on this job!

For now, Phillip is content watching the construction (and going to the store for milk… those bebidas con leche use up our milk pretty fast when we both have two a day).

I gotta put a nature picture in. Sunday night, after dark, we noticed a fisherman with a throw net on the beach. We walked down to watch him, and came across this guy(about 6” long), whom the fisherman had just discarded, not throwing him back in the water like he did the small edible fish. Phillip thought it was a porcupine fish, so I came back and checked it out on the internet. These guys contain a toxin and are not edible. They are cousins to puffer fish, whose skin is even toxic. So, we can understand why the fisherman didn’t want him. You can see the spikes on his back that give him his name.

Last night (July 4), we actually saw fireworks! Our assumption is that some Americans here set them off. It was a brief show, about 6 bursts, but colorful. We did not expect to see 4th of July fireworks here! Their Independence Day is August 10.

Right now, Phillip is cleaning some more shrimp. We noticed the street fish vendor yesterday morning. When he came by this morning, Phillip met him on the street and bought a kilo of shrimp – as good and as inexpensive as the market, and we don’t have to carry it. So, I need to finish up this posting and devein the shrimp…. cerviche for me for dinner, boiled shrimp with a cocktail sauce made without horseradish (let’s see how it tastes with hot sauce in it instead!) for Phillip.

Rogue suitcase captured, everything intact

Our suitcase, with the ketchup and peanut butter, finally arrived in Bahia yesterday. Apparently, the airline or transportation people had to do the equivalent of handcuffs (or maybe a straitjacket?) to keep it from escaping again. Although the suitcase itself was a little bit crushed, everything I packed was still in it, including the ketchup.
I wish I had packed a jar of horseradish, though, to make the cocktail sauce for the shrimp. We can’t find that in the stores. The Spanish dictionary said the word was rabano, but that is apparently the word for radish, not horseradish. I asked for rabano at the vegetable market, and people tried to sell me red radishes. Even rabano mas picante (radish more hot) didn’t work. I figured if I found the horseradish root, I’d grind it myself, but no luck. I’ll probably just substitute hot sauce for the horseradish. And we do have shrimp! Our first purchases at the market included shrimp (with the heads still on, a Walmart sack full), a chunk of fresh tuna the size of a chuck roast, the sweetest papaya (over 4 pounds for one dollar) I’ve ever tasted, a ripe pineapple, and limes. We cleaned the shrimp as soon as we got back to the condo. Phillip pinched the heads off and peeled it and I deveined it. That was our lunch today. We did find real butter and fresh garlic…. We actually didn't need the cocktail sauce for this round of shrimp!
Yesterday, we ate lunch at a restaurant since we were out walking at lunchtime (still looking for the butter and horseradish then). The Ecuadorians can do wonderful things with chicken… Phillip’s lunch was fried chicken, the two sides of a chicken breast, seasoned but not really breaded or battered, and fried. It was tender, moist, and delicious. Me? cerviche. I went for the fish cerviche because I knew I had shrimp and lime juice at the condo and could make shrimp cerviche later. For $3.50, I got a soup bowl full of tangy, delicious fish cerviche, with the side of fried plantain chips. And yes, that is a bottle of cerveza grande next to my bowl.
When we first arrived at the condo on Thursday, it didn’t have a working air conditioner, the cable TV wasn’t hooked up, there was no internet service, and my suitcase was missing. All of those things have been fixed or found now, so we are all set to enjoy ourselves! Regarding the A/C, the living room/kitchen doesn’t need it, as the breeze blows thru that area from the window to the patio. However, the bedroom, which is where the window A/C unit is, was more comfortable last night with the unit going. The A/C also apparently drowned out the noise of the neighborhood dog who barked at 12:30 am each of the previous nights. A couple of the views from our patio, which is where you will find us when we are not walking the town. Kids frequently swim from off the dock, and every morning, people are in boats in the bay, catching fish. We think they are using nets.
We walked around the peninsula again this afternoon and found families enjoying their Sunday at the beach. The beach area widens just a bit farther out the peninsula from our condo, the side we can't see from our balcony. A quiet Sunday afternoon for us, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and just chilling out, drinking mocha frappiccinos and banana bebida con leches. I start Spanish school tomorrow afternoon, so Phillip will have free time to wander loose in the streets of Bahia.

Arrived in Bahia, but the ketchup didn’t… yet

We’ve got Internet! Now, for the story of our travel here… and how soon we expect the ketchup. Ernest and Grace took us to the airport. Here’s our obligatory departure photo. The flight to Miami took off on time, arriving on time. We had a four hour layover in Miami and changed planes.

This was apparently where one of our suitcases decided it didn’t want to travel anymore. Perhaps it sensed it was in the same state as Disney World and wanted to go there instead. Or, perhaps the Miami airport employees are incompetent (Miami is where we crossed paths with a surly rebooking lady on the last Ecuador trip).

When we landed in Quito, only one of our suitcases landed with us. The man at the counter checked in the computer and said the bag was still in Miami, but it would arrive in Quito at 7 pm the next day. However, we were flying to Manta at 1 pm the next day, with travel on from there to Bahia. So, he agreed that American Airlines would get it to Bahia. This suitcase contained the extras I mentioned in the first post, the ketchup, ziplock bags, etc. Most of our clothes and our toothbrushes were in the suitcase that arrived. (FYI, the missing suitcase was supposed to be here this morning…. it’s not here yet.)

Our hotel in Quito was quite nice with a comfortable bed and friendly staff. The scrambled egg, toast, and juice breakfast we remembered from our last trip. The juice was blackberry juice, not something we drink in the US, but so good. We should drink it. If my blackberries ever stay alive, I will make it.

It feels odd to us to walk out of the terminal and up the stairs to board our plane. Phillip and I are so used to the jetways at DFW that there’s a real sense that we are in a foreign place when we do this. This, even more than the language difference, tells us we aren’t in Kansas anymore. Wait, make that Texas. We aren’t in Texas anymore.

We took a taxi from the airport in Manta to Bahia de Caraquez. The driver didn’t speak English, but there were some universal language exchanges. Like when we drove past the fish processing plants…. all three of us went “Ough” at the same time. And when he tried to pass a parade of slow moving pick-ups loaded with people, and had to jockey for position with the buses, his frustration was evident. 

We made it safely to Bahia, and the driver found our condo easily. Diane, our leasing agent who lives part-time in Maryland and part-time in Ecuador, met us at the condo. Sixth floor, with an elevator (Robin, be jealous… an elevator!) The condo is airy and bright as you can see, looking into the living room from the balcony.

Looking from the living room to Phillip’s favorite spot on the balcony, and the view of the bay beyond. In the distance, you can see the new bridge built and opened a few months ago, the longest bridge in Ecuador. It joins Bahia to the town across the bay, San Vincente. I’m sure we’ll visit San Vincente before we leave. We are happy right now walking around Bahia. It’s a very quiet town, although we’ll see what the weekend holds. Vendors are setting up along the Malecon (remember, that means “boardwalk”). No bebida con leche yet, as we just learned where the morning market is to get fruit. We did have a grande cerveza last night with our fish dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Monday, I start class. I expect as we walk around town this weekend, I’ll have pictures and stories to tell… and time to do a few blog postings. After all, I’m sure you are worried about our ketchup!

Return to Ecuador!

Phillip and I are returning to Ecuador for another five weeks. This time, except for the initial and final nights, we will stay in one place, Bahia de Caraquez. I’m glad we saw the Ecuadorian countryside on our previous visit; however, this time our goal isn’t sightseeing – it is learning Spanish.

The map shows where Bahia de Caraquez is, on the Pacific coast. The lines show our route: fly into Quito, spend the night, fly to Manta, then a taxi to Bahia and the condo where we will spend our five weeks. I’m sure we will do some sightseeing – it is whale season – on the weekends, mainly. I’ve got to have adventures and take pictures to put on this blog!

During the weekdays in July, I will attend one-on-one Spanish class for three hours a day. Although a coastal town, Bahia doesn’t seem to be very touristy, which means I will have plenty of practice for my Spanish as we go about the town. I’ll be teaching Phillip what I learn. I figure that I will be a more patient teacher for him than anyone else would be. And he couldn’t sit still for three hours of class. I have no doubt that Phillip will find things to occupy his time while I am in class. He wants to meet local fishermen and go out as free labor with them on their boats. If they want to pay him, they can always pay him in fish!

We’re actually taking two suitcases this time. One packed just like we did before and the other with things we know we can’t get in Ecuador or can’t get easily: a jar of peanut butter (none in Ecuador), a bottle of Heinz ketchup (they sell ketchup, but it is a pale imitation of USA ketchup), a big bottle of shampoo (outrageously expensive compared to USA prices), books in English for me to read, zip-lock food storage bags (for the leftover fish!), a jar of Cabella’s pecan honey seasoning (for the fish!) and Phillip’s Magic Bullet blender (to make our own “bebido con leche” drinks). Sounds like Phillip had better catch some fish!

I won’t try to post to this blog every day, but I will post when I have pictures to show and stories to tell. So… until Ecuador, adios.