The Big Bad Chugchucara

This past Saturday Johnny and I took a 1.5 hour bus ride ($1.50) from Quito to a town in the south called Latacunga. Normally we just pass though this town on the Panamerican Highway on our way to different places even farther south. I will give you one guess as to why we ventured to this small town along the highway. Yup, you probably guessed it... there was an interesting food dish there that we decided we HAD to try. The dish is called Chugchucara (pronounced Choo-Choo-Car-Ah). There were many places in town that offered this and we eventually settled on a nice small place called Chugchucara Emanuel a bit south of the downtown. The dish isn't exactly made up of food you can only get in Latacunga, but Latacunga is the only place that you can get all of it together at the same time.  The dish cost $6 and included: mote with chincharron (hominony with fried pork bits), tostadas (fried corn kernals), papas (potatoes), empenadas (sweet ones with cheese), popcorn, fritada (fried pork chunks), cuero (fried pork skin) and maduras (ripe, fried plantains).

John with the whole dish and some Ají

Everything was super good and we finished it in about 10 minutes. (Note: this plate can be shared but I am sure that John could have eaten two on his own... which is why I love him). I know that my favorite part was the empenadas. We ended up ordering 5 more at the end of the meal for $1. Yum. We ate them while we walked around enjoying the city. After a few moments John spotted the highest point in the city and asked if we could walk up to it. After all, it would not be a trip with John without having to climb something. When we got to the mirador (lookout) we discovered that we could not climb up it. Darn. We did get a really good view of the city from where we were at though.

                 

Before catching the bus back to Quito we went on the hunt for some ice cream. We wanted to get the ice cream of a town near by called Salcedo but we couldn't find any. We settled on a new type of Topsy ice cream. John got coconut and I got chocolate. He liked the chocolate better so we ended up switching halfway through. The bus ride back was uneventful and we were back home before dark.

Interesting fact: Quito has always had a speed limit but it has never been enforced. Everyone just sped and drove wherever they wanted. It was kind of scary at times to be on the road... especially in a bus when the driver took turns at close to 90 MPH. Now the cops are doing something about the limit and they are serious about it. The limits are: 50km Urban and 90km Highway. If you violate this you get fined. A minor violation is: $87.63 fine and 6 points on your license. A major fine (which I believe is only going 10 km over) is 3 DAYS IN JAIL, $292 in fines (equal to one month pay of a minimum wage worker) and 10 points on your license. Can you imagine if they put people in jail for three days if they sped in the states... Ha.

Volcanoes and Chocolate

Two weekends ago we were on the trolley headed to the food market, and our co-worker Esteban calls and asks if we want to go with him and his wife to the refuge on Cotopaxi volcano.  We've been wanting to go there, so we say yes and try to get our shopping done as quickly as possible.  We meet up and start toward the mountains.  We take the more scenic route, which also means the road is really rough.  We passed by two other extinct volcanoes Sincholagua and Rumiñahui and then arrive to Cotopaxi National Park.  Amber and I get ready to pay the $10 entrance fee and Esteban comes back and tells us that the president of Ecuador has removed national park fees in the country except for Galapagos.  A pleasant surprise.  We then start the drive up the mountain.  The parking lot to the refuge in about 15,088 feet above sea level.  From there, it's another 656 feet up a sandy slope to the refuge.  The refuge is where people wanting to climb to the summit stay, and it also has food for day tourists too.  While we were there, we had good views of the nearby glaciers and we also saw a fox/wolf type animal that was hanging around trying to get scraps from the refuge.  On our way down, we saw several people with large backpacks heading up to the refuge to attempt a climb to the top the next day.  Some day I hope to be one of them.  Famished, we returned to Quito and stopped at a Hornado restaurant.  Hornado is a popular dish which is meat from a whole roasted pig, some of the skin fried like a pork rind, rice and an avocado.  Amber got mote (hominy) con chicharron (pork scraps).  I ate the chicharron.

Chimborazo from the ride

This past weekend was a three-day weekend because of an Independence Day holiday on Friday.  Amber and I have a goal of trying to do something in all 24 provinces of Ecuador.  Some provinces have very little to offer tourist wise, so we might just go to the largest city and eat lunch there.  Anyway, we originally wanted to go to the beach in Esmeraldas province, but our co-worker told us that's where everybody from Quito goes during vacations and so we may have a hard time getting a place to stay and finding a place to stand on the beach.  Not sounding like something we'd like, we changed our plans to trying to visit two different new provinces.  We decided on Los Rios province and Bolivar.  Los Rios has little to offer, but we decided to stay in Babahoyo for a night and then go to Bolivar and stay in Salinas de Guaranda.  All of the descriptions of Babahoyo sound like it's a nothing city other than being hot and dangerous.  When we got to the bus station in Quito, the line to the beach was at least 200 ft long.  Dodged that bullet.  We try to get tickets to Babahoyo only to find that the bus has switched its routes to go only to the beach to accommodate for the number of people wanting to go there.  We had to change our plans at the station.  We decided to just stay in Guaranda, the city near Salinas.  The drive to Guaranda was about 4 1/2 hours and the last hour or so was really pretty.  It goes through Chimborazo National Park and passes within 5 km of Chimborazo volcano.  The city of Guaranda is fairly boring.  We got a hostel room in Guaranda and had a terrible night's sleep because of bright lights and loud people.

Standing in the salt mine with Salinas in the background

Chocolate making room

 Saturday morning, we headed out to the town of Salinas de Guaranda in a pick-up truck/taxi.  The town of Salinas was once very poor, but about 40 years ago a local priest turned the town around by organizing a cheese making co-op.  This became prosperous, so many other co-ops were created, such as chocolate making, soccer balls, dried mushrooms, textiles, salami, oils, and more.  We got there pretty early and nothing was open, so we wandered down the the salt mines which consisted of open pools of salty water on the side of the hill.  After that, we went back to the town and saw the chocolate making building and then the cheese building.  Outside of the cheese co-op, an old man in a wheel chair asked if I could push him down to the bread store about 200 feet away.  I said yes.  The whole time we were there, I kept looking at these towering cliffs that stood above the town.  Amber wasn't feeling that great at the time but she said I could go up without her to look at them.  I ran up the trail and found that the cliffs were the sides of a beautiful valley.  I ran down the valley a bit and found a cave in the side of the cliff.  I ran back to Amber to tell her that it was worth the walk up, so she came back with me and we hiked a bit in the valley and cave.  We climbed up to a cross that overlooked the town and then hiked back down.

Valley near Salinas

 Having accomplished everything we could in Salinas, we headed back to Guaranda and then Quito.  The trip back to Guaranda was in the back of a covered pick-up truck with a dog tied to the bed and we picked up people up along the way.  

Interesting fact:  The road between Ambato and Guaranda is the highest paved road in Ecuador.  It reaches more than 4000 meters or 13,125 feet.  The area here is treeless and looks like a grassy desert.  There is life here though, including vicuñas (small llama-like animals) and even people living in small grass huts.