One of the things you’ve got to work out when you move to another country is what you are going to do about the things you can’t get there. E.g., certain foods or products, men’s size 12 shoes, etc. (haven’t worked that one out yet).
If you come from somewhere not too far from here, such as the U.S., and can manage to go home every so often, it’s not such a problem. Just bring back a suitcase-full every trip.
But for us Aussies, that’s not such a viable option due to the distance and the cost and the jetlag! So, what to do? Well, when it comes to food items, we’ve concluded we just have to make do on lots of things, although some things you just give up on ever having again while in Ecuador, e.g., decent cheese, ham, fish and chips, etc.
A few months back we started to make our own bread as we just haven’t got used to the bread here, and we now make our own peanut butter, and some other things. You can buy peanut butter here, but we object to paying around $6 for a 500gram (about 1lb) jar, and as it’s not Kraft anyway, it still doesn’t have the taste we are used to. So, for $1.50-$2, now we make our own.
Once we found out how to make our own golden syrup, we could finally make decent Anzac biscuits – the sultanas (raisins for those from the U.S.,) are not traditional, but Brendan is of the belief that most things are improved by the addition of sultanas!
Then I thought, well, if we can make our own peanut butter and various other things, what about Vegemite? (We had brought some with us when we came to Ecuador, and a very thoughtful Canadian couple who stayed with us last year also brought us a jar, courtesy of their family who were then living in Australia, but we’ve been down to the scrapings in the last jar for a few months now.)
Down to the last scrapings
So, I looked on the internet (very useful for finding out how to make things) to see if we could make something approximating Vegemite. But, not having a centrifuge and a vacuum-thingy of some sort and various other non-domestic kitchen items, it just wasn’t possible. I even tried soy sauce, as it is vaguely similar (how desperate can you get?), but that just didn’t cut it either.
[We do have the promise of Vegemite for later this year (the Canadian couple mentioned before – you know who you are! – are coming back to Ecuador late this year to stay for 3 months, and have invited us to visit them in Atuntaqui – in the north of the country – and have bribed us with the promise of Vegemite, so of course we will go!!) ]
So, that’s where Hollie comes in. (Hollie is the Aussie sister in our previous blog about making horchata tea) She was heading back to Australia shortly, and promised to send us Vegemite. Yay!!
Me and Hollie
We hadn’t yet tried out the postal system here (such as it is!), but had heard various not so positive comments from others who had, so we thought it would be interesting to see how the whole process would go. And a couple of people had asked how one goes about posting things to Ecuador etc. Well. Now we know.
If you are the person sending the items to Ecuador, first you go and take out a small mortgage (I’m not sure if Hollie knew she would have to sell the family heirlooms to be able to afford the postage when she promised to send Vegemite!), then you take your package to Australia Post who will give you enough stamps to cover just about every side of the box, then you decide that in future, you will just photograph the Vegemite (or whatever else you mistakenly thought you might send) and send it as an attachment to an email instead!!
Our package with some of the stamps
Our package with the rest of the stamps!!
If you are on the receiving end in Cuenca, you receive a phone call in rapid Spanish which of course you don’t understand, and then after having indicated that you speak very little Spanish, they try again, saying very slowly the Spanish for “package” (paquete) and “mail” (correo), to which you say “whoo-hoo!” (to yourself) and “muchas gracias” (to them).
Ah, an emergency Care Package all the way from Aus!
In Australia, you would get a card in your mail box from the Post Office to say that there is a package for you at a certain post office, and please bring this card when you come to pick it up.
Here, we don’t have mail boxes, or for that matter, mailing addresses. Or even sensible street addresses. Hence the phone call in Spanish. (You need to get the person posting your package to write your phone number on the package along with your address so the Cuenca post office can phone you when it arrives and then you can go pick it up from the post office)
So, we went into the post office in Cuenca and said that there was a package for us, and handed over a copy of our passport for identification. The man pecked away on the computer for a little while and then came back with a package for us, and said that we should go to the cashier and pay $1. (As the recipient, it seems you pay a tax of around 10% of the value of what’s in the package.)
Well, that turned out to be surprisingly easy and painless and now it looks like we are all set in the Vegemite department for a while.
But, if anyone has any goodies that they don’t know what to do with, you know where to send them! Any extra chocolate, Tim Tams etc, that you happen to have laying around ... (although you might want to check first to see if your bank balance can stand the strain!!)
Nah, don’t send roses – they are pretty cheap here - $4 for this lot
