Some random thoughts and observations about Ecuador (well, Cuenca, at any rate).

 

Your average pink-skinned Westerner is just never going to blend in in Ecuador. I never realised how pinkish most of us look until we came here (some of us get pinker when we are hot, too). The average Ecuadorean has an olive to dark-olive skin tone. There is some variation – some are lighter skinned, but it seems to be a minority. It really struck me one day when we were sitting waiting and watching the people go by that westerners stand out a mile away, as most of us look rather pale and pastel-coloured in comparison with Ecuadoreans.

For starters, if you don’t have jet-black hair here, you stand out. I think I have yet to see a bald Ecuadorean man, or even one with a receding hair-line. It is very rare for Ecuadorean women to have short hair - the indigenous Indian women wear their hair long and in one or two plaits (along with their shawls and colourful skirts and distinctive hats – see photo of flower market from a blog or two ago) and most other women (particularly young women) wear their hair starting at below-shoulder-length, and generally longer. And there are very few people with grey hair. They seem to go grey a lot later than westerners – maybe not until 60-ish.

And the people are shorter. They don’t make the buses here to fit tall people, and invariably Brendan’s knees are sticking out into the aisle, as he needs an additional 3 or 4 inches of leg room to get his knees in behind the seat in front.

And if you are a female, you have to wear blue jeans. Tight blue jeans (but no hipster jeans, with the accompanying muffin-top effect – thank goodness for that!!), with high heeled, or at least pretty, shoes. Even in Guayaquil, where it’s hot and humid, the rule still applies – people just don’t wear shorts, unless they are tourists. The women rarely wear dresses or skirts even where it’s hot – if they wear work uniforms, they seem to wear slacks, not skirts. Men generally wear jeans too, or slacks, and fortunately the jeans here are not worn around the knees like is common back in Aus.

And there are lots of children. Breast-feeding in public is not uncommon, and why not save time and do so while walking? No-one blinks an eye. Babies and toddlers are not in prams or strollers. Mostly people carry their babies and toddlers in their arms – mums and dads take turns. The indigenous women carry their children on their backs, tied tightly into their shawls (very handy these shawls – they are also good for tying sacks of rice etc onto their backs – these women are tough – some of the loads they carry make your mind boggle!).

Given the state of most of the footpaths we’ve seen, prams (or other wheeled devices) are just not a practical option here. In some areas, footpaths are reasonable, but it seems in most places they are a bit of an obstacle course designed to stop you getting bored while walking! When we were in Devonport (Tas), I used to wonder what possessed the powers-that-be to plant electricity poles right in the middle of the footpath in some areas. Well, here we have: electricity poles in the middle of the path (the path might only be about a metre wide, anyway – although they are a decent width in the old part of town), random bits of metal (such as man-hole handles) sticking up out of the path, which of course you don’t see until you nearly trip over them, sharply bevelled driveways that inconveniently appear out of nowhere (Brendan tripped and fell on one of these, and I nearly twisted my ankle on another one of these). Plus pot-holes and some dog poo. Also on rubbish-collection day, you have to swivel your eyes alternately from down at the path up to the walls or fences of the houses – the racks the rubbish bags are put up on to keep them out of reach of dogs, stick out (they fold back against the wall for non-rubbish days) and generally they are at a level where you can walk into them and smack yourself in the head if you happened to be preoccupied by watching where your feet were going! But the streets and kerbs are very clean – there are always street-sweeping people around. There might be pot-holes, but at least they are clean and tidy pot-holes!

Sometimes it’s just easier to walk on the road …

(click on pictures to enlarge)

The use of seatbelts in cars here is somewhat optional. When I used to see people on TV travelling in cars not wearing seatbelts, I used to think that even if I lived somewhere where you didn’t legally have to wear seatbelts, that I would still do it. But often we don’t! Largely because if you are in a taxi, in the back seat either the seat belts generally are not there, or the strap is, but not the clicky-thing at the bottom to click the belt into. And besides, if you have 4 people in the back of a car, it’s a bit pointless to be worrying about who gets which seatbelt.

The shopping centres/malls and some other buildings have security guards/information men. You could assume that they are just there to help you find things (e.g. toilets, how to work the machine that swaps notes for coins, which government department you need), and they are very helpful and friendly. But the fact that part of their uniform is a bullet-proof vest, makes you wonder!! And some of them carry guns, shotguns and/or truncheons. Hmmm. Haven’t worked that one out yet. But we figure if you don’t give them cheek, you’ll be alright, anyway.

Something that amused me a couple of weeks ago. A while back, we came to the conclusion that “banos” means toilet (we figured this out from signs at shopping centres, etc), and then a couple of weeks ago, we got to the area where we were going to be going witnessing, and there was a traffic sign that indicated a couple of small towns/suburbs nearby. One of which said “Banos”. I just had to ask someone did they seriously name a town after a toilet, coz until then I thought it might be one of those tricky things where the words just sound the same but are spelt differently but here it was exactly the same spelling! But upon clarification it turns out that “banos” means either of “bath”, “baths” (as in warm springs), “basin” etc., depending who you ask (The road sign we saw pointed to a little town where there are warm springs). So we assume that at the shopping centres, “banos” is actually the more polite American usage, meaning “bathroom”, rather than “toilet”, like us Aussies would say.

It has taken us a while to get used to witnessing here (still getting used to it!). Before we came here, we read various experiences and blogs of people witnessing in the Spanish congregations, and having lots of studies and lots of interest etc etc. But because we are in the English-speaking congregation, it’s rather different. Mainly we are trying to locate people who are either native English-speakers (there are lots of ex-pats here – you see them at the main park in the centre of town, or at the American-style supermarkets, or near the visa/passport departments), or who speak very good English, and we leave the Spanish speaking people up to the Ecuadorean brothers (there is no shortage of willing Ecuadorean brothers). But in order to locate the English speakers, we have to call at all the houses, and ask, in Spanish, if there are any English-speaking people there. Within the English congregation (around 40 publishers), we have about half Ecuadoreans, who have chosen to go to the English cong, and the rest are native English-speakers with varying amounts of Spanish. The problem with asking a question in Spanish is that you are likely to get an answer in Spanish!! If they just say “no” (same in both languages), we can handle that. But if someone starts getting chatty, we have problems. So we always make sure we go with someone else who has more Spanish than us – that would be just about anybody!

Outside of our Kingdom Hall – along with two Spanish speaking congregations, and a sign language congregation, the English congregation meets here.

Inside our Kingdom Hall. 

All of the Kingdom Halls in Ecuador have been financed and built by the branch in Ecuador from funds that have been donated worldwide, because the brothers here can’t afford to build them without outside help.

 

We’ve had conversations with different ones in the congregation and asked them about learning Spanish, how they’ve gone about it, how do they think they are going, did they have lessons and if so, what sort, etc. There seems to be endless different answers. Some who are really focused get stuck in straight away (possibly these may be the ones who go straight into a Spanish congregation even without very much Spanish to start off with – from what I can gather, it can be a hard slog, but you will learn the language a lot quicker), whereas others choose to go in “at the shallow end”, and do it more gradually. I guess it comes down to what you feel you are capable of as an individual, and if you have family, what would be best for them too. Also learning styles – what will work for one person may not work for someone else, and one person’s time-scale is not going to work for everybody. Some have said it helped them to soak up some of the culture first and find their way around and get somewhat settled and get a general feel for things, before worrying too much about learning the language. So, from my various conversations, I gathered that you ask lots of people, gather information, have a think about it, and make your own decision as to what you think will work best for you.

Having said that, we really have to work on our numbers (the problem is, so many of them all sound confusingly alike, once you get past “10” – yes, that is a bit pathetic, isn’t it!). We’ve been brave and gone to the local market by ourselves the last couple of weeks. It’s actually really colourful and exciting and interesting and different and so much better than the supermarket, (plus cheaper) but more challenging as well, as there are no tickets with prices for the fruit and veg. And half the time (no, more like most of the time) we don’t know what they are saying, and hope that we give the right answer and don’t end up with 10 kilos of broad beans, or something equally disgusting. We suspect that at times we get “gringoed” (where they see gringos/ westerners coming and know that they won’t have a clue what the prices should be and therefore charge them more), but we figure it’s a learning experience and each time we do it we will get braver and hopefully have a better idea of what’s going on. You can tell that it’s market day, as there are people from all over the neighbourhood carrying bags and baskets and heading in the direction of the market.

A concrete soccer field for most of the week turns into a thriving market on Fridays

Fruit and veg

Anyone for a steak? (Fortunately, there are very few insects at this altitude)

Something smells a bit fishy around here!!

We’ve been told to wash/scrub/soak all fruits and veg really well (there are various solutions and potions people use for this), as foreigners are apparently very susceptible to the local stomach bugs and other nasties – different ones we’ve talked to here have got really sick at times.

We are finding the food here rather different from home. Can’t get used to the bread – there are lots of little bakeries (“panederia” – “pan” is Spanish for bread) around and they do little rolls, rather than large loaves. But they all taste slightly sweet. I’m told that Ecuadoreans like to put sugar in everything, so I’m not sure if the problem is too much sugar in the bread, or just not enough salt. And it has a different texture – almost like a cream bun or doughnut, and it doesn’t squash up when you bite into it, like Aussie bread, which is not a bad thing. But it’s still strange. And it can be hard to cook recipes here that you would cook without thinking twice about, in Aus – you get used to certain brands, (and certain items being easily available) and how sweet or salty or how strong they are. We bought vanilla essence here, and it was quite thick but not sweet. And I bought cocoa and it was way too sweet (I tried to make the choc chip biscuits I always made in Aus – not too bad, but definitely too sweet – and cooking at altitude – 2,500 metres above sea level - does not help either – they came out rather flat). The chilli powder we bought is not very potent at all. The white rice is possibly not as refined as in Aus, or at least processed differently – it has a very slight brown rice taste to it (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it just illustrates that most things range from slightly different to a lot different). Very hard to get a tasty matured cheese, and they cost a lot and are not the same – they do a lot of fresh or soft cheeses here. Sliced meats, e.g. ham, again, very rare, expensive and completely different from Aus - and not in a good way. So, for instance, hard to make pizza like we used to in Aus. Parmesan cheese that actually has some taste to it is difficult to find – the first one was almost tasteless, and we are onto our second brand and shall trial it shortly. Most of us non-Ecuadoreans conclude that you either keep looking and asking until you find a good substitute, or you go without. There’s a fair bit of trial and error goes on. Fortunately, we have enough Vegemite to last us for a while, so we should survive!!

Wanna buy a wheelchair, a stretcher, or a dentist’s chair?  (Dentist’s chair only costs $2,500)

These are available from the same store that we buy our weekly groceries.  This place is massive and  would be the same as combining a Coles supermarket, K-mart, a small Bunnings, an appliance store, a toy shop,  and a few other small shops for good measure.

 

The contrast between the open air markets and the store mentioned above, is quite bizarre, but it seems to work here.

Google Translate – not without its limitations!

 

We are house-sitting for a couple of months, and the landlady (who lives upstairs) speaks about as much English as we do Spanish (always a recipe for disaster). She came downstairs to ask us something about the electricity bill, and after some gesturing, pointing and arm waving, we thought “Aha! Google Translate! That will do the trick”, so got her to type in her message in Spanish and pressed the button to translate it to English, figuring all would become clear. It did seem to help for starters, but after a while we reached a stalemate of misunderstanding.

After numerous attempts of us trying to clarify in English (translated into Spanish) and her trying to clarify in Spanish (translated into English), and then telephoning someone in the congregation who spoke both (which we thought clarified things, but it actually hadn’t), we somehow worked out what needed to be done - after about 45 minutes! Part of the problem which kept occurring, was that the landlady’s message, when translated into English, kept coming up as variations of “ the code (or number) for gift of the house …”, which didn’t make any sense at all in relation to the electricity bill. We figured something had gone wrong somewhere, as the word “gift” kept coming up, and totally confusing us. After she had gone upstairs (to ring her cousin who spoke English and Spanish), we looked up “gift”, and it turns out that in Spanish, the name “Don” translates into English as “gift”. What she had been asking for, was the phone number of the brother who lives here (whose name is Don), so she could ask him about the electricity bill. Easy when you know! So, we have now learnt another useful Spanish word!!

But there are much easier ways of working out what words mean. For instance. When we first got here, we were driving through the city and there were various road signs. One said “una via”, which didn’t mean much to us, other than “one-something”. Then later there was a sign that said “doble via”, and traffic was going both ways, so we had an “aha!” moment, and figured that seeing as the roads that said “una via” the traffic only went one way, “doble via” should mean “double ways” or “both ways”. Context is very effective, and because you have seen the words in their context a few times, they stay in your brain better than if you just saw them written in a book or a dictionary.

Having said that, while some words in Spanish are similar enough to the English, we figured out that the shop with a sign saying “Ferreteria”, near our bus stop, is not actually a place where you buy your ferrets and ferreting needs, but is a hardware/ironmonger store!

We are finding that so far it’s near impossible to understand what people say in Spanish, but if you can see the words written, it is a bit easier. Guessing is good too. Sometimes you are actually right when you guess, particularly if it’s a fairly predictable situation, such as going through a supermarket checkout. Some of the Aussies in the congregation say that it takes a while for the ear to become attuned to hearing Spanish when you are not used to it.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL … AND IGUANAS

On Monday 14th we caught the bus to Guayaquil in another attempt to get our 6-month visas stamped. (In an earlier blog, I mentioned that we attempted to do this when we first landed in Guayaquil, but it didn’t happen.)

We got up at the crack of dawn with the plan to get there early and “get it over and done with” – an expression we will one day learn is inappropriate for use in Ecuador. We had a couple of changes of clothes in our backpack and had booked a hotel for the Monday night (just in case!) as we had been warned by numerous people here that things always take a lot longer than you think, and to be prepared. We had planned to stay in Guayaquil for only one night, but wouldn’t you know it the brothers predictions came true and because of red-tape we ended up needing to stay two nights.

The bus ride itself took about 3 ½ hours, and the road was pretty good – concrete all the way (they seem to do concrete roads here, rather than asphalt) and in good repair. Cuenca is about 2,500 metres above sea-level, and it was cool at around 6 am when we left. The scenery on the way out of Cuenca reminded us a bit of the hills and trees and scattered houses of parts of North-West Tasmania (except the hills were a LOT higher – we are up in the Andes Mountains). After about half an hour, we got into the Cajas National Park, which is even higher and misty. The scenery is very alpine – not much in the ways of trees etc. After a while we started to go down, and got to sea-level. Then heat and humidity took over. It is very flat and tropical, with channels of water, and lots of bananas (and other things I couldn’t identify), growing and rice paddies, etc. The difference in scenery, altitude and climate in just 3 ½ hours of driving was amazing.

On our first attempt to get our visas stamped 3 weeks ago, we went to the address we were given by the Ecuadorean Embassy in Sydney. The chap on the reception desk there told us we were at the wrong place, and eventually we worked out where we were supposed to go, and the next day, dutifully went there. After being shuffled about a bit by staff doing their best to understand our dodgy Spanish and finger-pointing, we were directed to a likely looking young man, who, upon looking at our paperwork, said that we needed to go and get three colour photocopies of certain pages of our passports and bring them back, along with a manilla folder! That floored us, as we had no idea where or how to do that, and we couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just do it himself!

(But now after 3 or 4 weeks here, we are more attuned to how things work – ie, there are little shops which do photocopies and also sell folders, envelopes etc, on every block. And the government departments we have dealt with seem to out-source the photocopying – that is, you get to do it! Saves them money, I guess.)

So, for this attempt, we had photocopies, manilla folders, the works (or so we thought!), and fronted up to find the young man from the previous attempt, only to get there, and find that department closed! We managed to communicate with other staff, and took a number and went and sat somewhere else for a while. Eventually, it came our turn, and after we and the staff member concluded that we couldn’t understand each other, she returned with someone else who spoke English, and eventually we had 3 or 4 people all speaking varying degrees of English, all trying to work out what was going on and what needed to be done. They wrote down on a piece of paper the addresses of the places we had to go and what we had to get there, so off we went again, back to the first place we went to 3 weeks ago. This time, instead of telling us we were at the wrong place, the chap on reception gave us a ticket and pointed to where we should wait. (It’s a bit hard to know if your ticket is called, when it is done in a language you don’t understand, but fortunately the young man next to us gave us a nudge when it was our turn. Or we might still be sitting there!)

We handed over our passports and copies etc, which was all correct, but it turned out that now an additional page of the passport needed copying (but not in triplicate, unlike previously advised). Fortunately, we knew there was a copy shop (actually the outdoor booth with multi-function printer, etc, mentioned in a previous blog) nearby, so Brendan went off to attend to that, and all was well. Until she said that the passports needed to be stamped and we could pick them up on Wednesday (This was still only Monday!) to which Brendan indignantly replied, “but we live in Cuenca!!” So she thought about it and said,”come back Tuesday after 2pm and it should be done”. (Hello, it’s just a stamp!)

So, what to do in Guayaquil (which is way too hot and humid for our liking) for a whole day until our passports are ready? If it had been anywhere else (that was even a half-decent temperature) we would have gone wandering and exploring, but instead we hibernated for the rest of Monday in an air-conditioned shopping centre and in the hotel with the air-con running.

On Tuesday, we went over to the park across the road from our hotel and hung out there in the shade for most of the morning and watched the people go by. (The heat/humidity was making me feel ill, so the options of what to do were limited) Guayaquil is on the coast, and our hotel was just across the road from the park which is next to the sea (which is nothing to write home about, so I won’t). It’s an absolutely lovely park, and runs for quite a distance between the road and the sea, it’s well-designed and maintained with lots of tropical plants and water features and shady areas (there is an army of gardeners and cleaning people there all the time – they really look after the parks and gardens here). It was lovely and cool (well, relatively so!).

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

Park on the left, hotness on the right

The park across the road from our hotel, where we spent lots of time

Our hotel – just to the right of the palm tree

View of a colourful part of Guayaquil – from the park near hotel

So, at 2 pm, we set off once again. Passport was ready, as promised. Then, grab another taxi (they are readily available- it seems every other car is a taxi – we took enough of them!) and off to a department near the bus terminal, where we had to get something else photocopied and an A4 envelope. This time the ladies who ran the copier were allowed to work from inside the building (normally they are outside).

Then, another taxi back to the first department we went to on the Monday (confused? We were, too). Fortunately, the young lady who helped us then was in the reception area (kind of a security/information service, from what we can gather), spotted us and waved us over, and personally escorted us to the right place, and explained to the staff person what the go was etc etc, and it all got sorted! Yay!

It turns out that we had had to jump through hoops not necessary at this point in time. All we needed was the passport stamp. The photocopies and manilla folders etc were to do with an identity document which would happen later down the track. We think the problem began at the very start (when we first arrived in Ecuador) when the chap on reception figured we were after the identity papers/card, rather than just a simple stamp in our passports, and due to language difficulties (not knowing what we were doing or the Ecuadorian system), we just had to trust that the people there knew what was going on (they didn’t). And that’s why we had to go off to various other departments and produce other pieces of paper. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.

And we got to see iguanas. In the flesh. Or scales, or whatever they have.

As we had the rest of Tuesday to fill in before we took the bus back on Wednesday morning, we went and found ourselves another park (which is actually called Iguana Park), and they were everywhere! Very cool. They’re not in a hurry, they just wander around like they know it’s their park, and all the humans are there to be amazed by them, and take photos of them. You can touch them, and they don’t care. I was wondering whether to touch one’s tail (that part being far away from the biting end, just in case), and the locals sitting nearby indicated that I could, so I did. But very quickly, as I still wasn’t convinced.

Iguana

Not quite sure about this

How many iguanas can you fit in one tree?

Check out the iguanas lazing at the base of the statue

We also saw a Guayaquil squirrel. It came scampering down a tree. Brendan looked it up on the internet later, to find out what it was.

Guayaquil squirrel

On the bus on the way to Guayaquil we caught a glimpse of our first alpacas, just wandering along the road.

The alpacas are the tiny blurry things walking along the kerb

In the Caja National Park, in the Andes

So, all up, everything worked out in the end. Came away from Guayaquil this time with a better impression of it than last time (although our views on the climate are unchanged) – largely due to the parks, I think. And having gone there and back on the bus connected the two cities for us geographically, which is something you don’t get by plane.

Some new things we did …

Since last time, we’ve done a few things for the first time.

We are currently in a new location – previously we were south of the city centre (an area called Turi), now we are east of the city centre (Totoracocha) (the airport is also in the east, but we don’t hear it), house-sitting for an Aussie couple for a few months. We seem to be working our way around the points of the compass!

This part of town is a bit more densely populated than where we were for the first couple of weeks, but just about wherever you go in town, the houses are quite tightly packed in together – wall to wall. (We have a little courtyard out the back with pot plants, and outdoor laundry etc. Its quite handy – you can stand at your washing line and hang up your washing while hardly moving!) There are quite a few little grassy parks, some with swings etc., and asphalted soccer/volleyball etc. fields around, which is good, as there is very little outside space for most houses.

A couple of blocks from us is a concreted soccer ground, which on Fridays becomes the local market. The day before, people come in and erect lots of tarpaulins, and the next day, it’s all happening! A brother took us there to show us around and who to buy what from, etc. I actually felt rather lost and somewhat overwhelmed – in your own environment, you don’t have to think about language, communication, culture etc. But suddenly when you are in an unfamiliar environment, with a completely different culture and ways of doing things, and unable to communicate properly, it becomes a big deal. Plus, there was wall-to-wall people, which is not my favourite way to have people.

Most of the fruits and vegies come as either so many pounds (not kilograms, just to add to the confusion) to the dollar, or so many of each fruit or veg to the dollar. So you need to ask the stall-holder, how much per dollar, and then hope you understand what they say! And all the while there are people pushing past you lugging armfuls of bananas or sackful's of rice, etc.

You can also get fresh meat, fish, eggs, etc. It’s a bit confronting to see the meat just sitting there, unrefrigerated. But the bro we were with says if you get there early in the day (we were there at 7 am), it’s all still cold. The meat is killed the night before, so it is fresh. There are no flies, or other nasties buzzing around at the market (in Cuenca we are about 2,500 metres above sea level, so apparently not many bugs; although the earwigs are on the large size!). The chickens generally come with their feet still attached, but you can ask them to cut the head off for you, if you are squeamish and don’t want to do it yourself!!

I think for now, we will stick with the supermarket, and work our way up to the more adventurous ways of getting our supplies! Having said that, a supermarket where everything is written in Spanish is no picnic, either!

We went for a wander around the neighbourhood today to orient ourselves, and to see what’s around us. We were rather struck by the amount of small stores, etc., scattered throughout the neighbourhood. Back in Aus., you’d get the odd corner store here and there, but mostly the shops are all together, and the houses mostly together. Whereas here, on the main thoroughfares you get mostly shops, but always with a house or apartment either at the back of the shop or above the shop. Some of the shops are quite tiny, and there are often little booths where various foods are cooked – the Ecuadorean version of takeaway?

There are a few (maybe 4 or 5?) large-ish shopping malls in Cuenca, each with its own supermarket, which have probably been built in the last five years or so. Which is handy, if you have a car or can afford to take a taxi home with your shopping. But if you can’t, that’s where all these little local stores come in. Coz you can easily walk to get most things. Within a 5 to 10 minute walk from here are at least 5-6 little bakeries, numerous mini-markets, chemists, hardware stores, numerous internet-use places, Laundromat, etc. etc. And that’s your average suburban neighbourhood! Who needs a car?! A lot of the little shops (milk bars in Aus.) are small (seems to be one every 10 houses or so) and are designed so that you can’t go into them. The front of the shop has steel bars with a small opening in it. You walk up to the bars, ask for what you want and pay for it. The owner then passes the item through the opening to you.

This is the park opposite the court we live in – just in this picture, there are two minimart/ corner stores and a hairdresser!

We took our first buses this weekend (they come every 10-15 minutes) – up to now we have either walked or taken taxis. Our bus stop is a gentle 5-minute stroll down hill. You have to allow extra time if you want to get somewhere at a specific time, as if you miss one bus, it could be 10 minutes before the next one. So, you get all very casual, and stop rushing around, as the bus will come when it comes, and you will get there when you get there.

The first bus we took was Friday night, to get to our meeting. That was a really packed bus, as Friday nights are a busy time. We had earlier got bus passes (a rather pretty little plastic disc with leaves printed on it, and a key-chain to go with it – it saves having to have the correct change), and after you leap hastily onto the bus (the bus drivers are on a mission – they don’t wait around) you scan your bus pass into the machine (or put in 25 cents in coins if you have them) which then says “Gracias”, and then you make for a seat asap before you end up on the floor while the bus lurches merrily up the road. That Friday night, so many people got on, that in the end the bus driver didn’t stop to take any more passengers – there was nowhere to put them, anyway!

We concluded that buses are more interesting than taxis (also lots cheaper, and slower – a 20 minute taxi trip is 30 minutes by bus), as you can see outside better, and the people inside are more interesting than just the back of the taxi driver’s head. Example: on the Saturday, after witnessing, we had caught a bus near the Fiera Libre market (a really big market with all sorts of things for sale and notorious for being a pick-pocketer’s paradise), and a couple got on the bus, who had obviously shopped at the market as they had various bags of fruit and veg etc. which they put on the floor, and at one stage the bus driver stopped really suddenly, and the melons the couple had bought went rolling merrily along the floor toward the front of the bus. You also get various unusual people get on the bus who try to sell things. There’s just more interesting things going on in a bus than in your average taxi.

Witnessing on Saturday was rather different from how we do it in Aus. Because we are in the English congregation, we are looking specifically for native English-speakers (there are apparently about 4,000 in Cuenca), as the Ecuadorean brothers will talk to the Spanish-speaking people. So, if somebody is at home, we ask if there are any English-speaking people living there, and if so, we talk to them, if not, we leave it to the Ecuadorean brothers. We have the whole city to cover. (The population of Cuenca is 500,000 as at the last census a couple of years ago.) All the houses here have high fences and locked gates (they are very security-conscious in Cuenca and most cities in Ecuador, from what I can gather), with some having intercoms at the gate. Some don’t have intercoms which makes it difficult to try to attract the attention of anybody inside. We did manage to find a couple of locals who spoke English, but none from elsewhere. It is also hard to keep track of streets and house numbers, as the street names are not as obviously marked as in Aus., and many houses have no numbers. Whenever anyone gives you a direction to their house or place they will give it as the nearest intersection of two roads (eg. Marsical Sucre and Benigno Malo will bring you to Parque Abdon Calderon (park in centre of town). I guess you have to look out for landmarks and hope for the best!!

Sunday after the meeting, a couple of families were going to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, so we went too. We thought it would be interesting to see what an Ecuadorean version of Chinese food would be like. Ecuadorian food generally is fairly plain, not spicy, and the Chinese lunch lived up to that! It’s interesting how there are different versions of how food should be – I believe that Aussie Chinese food is rather different from how people in China would eat, and the Ecuadorean Chinese food is different from how Aussies would eat it. Having said that, we decided we didn’t need to go there again!

We currently are living in the house at the top end of this little court.

A street nearby to show a general idea of the neighbourhood.