Happy Birthday Cor & Feliz Cumpleaños Cuenca!

The first weekend of November was nothing short of a non-stop, rip-roaring, gut-busting, foot-loosing party.

To begin with, it was Cor´s 23rd birthday, which deserved a weekend´s worth of fiestas on its own, and then there was this little sedated celebration of Cuenca´s Independence Day...and by sedated I mean blatantly outrageous.

If you´ve ever met an Ecuadorian, you´ll know that they carry a lot of pride for their country. They will claim that they have the best dancers (likely), the best food (arguable), and the highest quality rum (absolutely false). Within Ecuador, city-to-city pride reigns even higher, and Cuencaños are no exception.

No one is spared in the festivities. At night, the streets are electric with live music, and citizens showing off latin dance moves (and pulling along semi-humiliated gringos along with them...ahem). During the day, the markets are flooded with people selling Colada Morada (a thick, purplish drink made mostly of tapioca starch, fruit cider, cinnamon, and chunks of pineapple, grapes, and berries) and these weird baby-shaped breads with coloured icing designs. When you bite their heads off, it kinda makes you feel like a cannibal...Helloooo Clarriiiisssse...

To top it off, the parks are filled wth artisans from all over South America selling jewelry, embroidered clothing, paintings, and more! Good thing it was pay day for us teachers that week...

Although I fully partook in the market-perusing and day activities, we only did one real night of partying hard. Not because we didn´t want more, but because it was all we could handle...

It was Friday night, and our neighbours and I had planned a surprise potluck dinner for Cor, with the intention of hitting the town after to dance. The surprise worked beautifully; Cor was completely clueless about our genius plan and was very touched by it. The food was fantastic, and the wine (which comes at $2/box) was of course thoroughly indulged in. By the time we left our apartment to go downtown, some of us were nearly blind, some of us were slurring beyond translation, and others of us were just severely uncoordinated. If you put us all together, we probably had all the five senses covered, but separated, we were pretty sad cases...

Our destination was San Sebastián square, which was where we had been told would be the best place to dance, and we weren´t disappointed. The open air party had a live salsa band playing, and was packed with locals dancing, singing, and passing around shots of this foul (and perhaps slightly poisonous)

cheap rum they have here called Zhumir. Being the gringo bunch we were, all the girls were snatched up immediately with eager dance partners. Not to worry, the guys Cor and I were dancing with were incredibly sweet and friendly...but given that Cor and I were about a foot taller than all of them, they didn´t have much of an option to step out of line.

Unfortunately, none of the pictures from the night capture Cor and I´s sheer giantness compared to our partner´s frames. In fact, I´m pretty sure that right before each picture was taken, the boys would jump on two-foot risers so as not to be dwarfed on film.

After several hours of dancing, Cor and I got a bag of plantain chips from a street vendor, and made the wobbly, giggly walk home. Much to our delight, on the way back, I happened upon a pile of 7-8 foot long sugar cane trunks, just lying on the street. In my state, I obviously thought these were precious treasures that we simply could not leave behind. So, without argument, Cor and I hoisted the branches onto our shoulders and made the last 10 minutes of or trip home looking undeniably ridiculous and absurd...an image we apparently love to cultivate...

The next morning was painful and hazy beyond comprehension, but the memories from the night before were priceless. Serving as memoirs for that weekend, we now have three sugar cane shoots standing proudly at our front door, and one roll of mildly incriminating photos...

The Weekend Forever Known As: "Remember the time we almost died?!"

It was one of those things that it was better not to know anything about before I left. Had I known what to expect from our tour through Podocarpus National Park just outside of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, I probably would have hidden under my bed.

Vilcabamba, known by Ecudorians as “the Valley of Eternal Youth” was the destination of our first real trip outside of Cuenca. Looking for a some peace and fresh air outside of Cuenca, Vilcabamba seemed like the perfect choice to do some relaxing hikes and swing in a hammock under papaya trees. Being a perfect stereotype of a South American busride, the trip was bumpy, crowded, and lively with reggaeton music blaring the whole way. And of course, our bus broke down about 45 minutes away from Vilcabamba and we were crammed on the next bus that came along. Hannah (another teacher with CEDEI) actually managed to get a seat part way there, but Cor rode sitting on the dashboard of the bus, and I found a box to sit on near the front, my face in variety of people´s armpits the entire way.

We quickly forgot about our travel woes when we got to our hostal, Cabinas de Yambala, which is just outside the city, inside the national park. Our little loft-style cabin-on-stilts was exactly the type of place you want to be in to recharge, and after making some dinner, we all tucked in to bed shortly after nightfall. Other than the gang of junebugs dive-bombing our heads, it was a very peaceful sleep.

Cabinas de Yambala offers three tour options (you can think of them as mild, medium, and burn-your-ass-off spicy). We followed the old adage “go big or go home” and chose the longest, most challenging one that included a six-hour horseback ride and a four-hour hike. The last time I rode a horse was when I was seven or so, and it was at my cousin´s farm with my uncle holding my hand. Nevertheless, out of Hannah, Cor, and myself, I was the most experienced rider. Our tour guide, Criquet, did nothing to soothe our nerves and laughed at our jitters telling us there was nothing to worry about. When I asked him my horse´s name, Criquet told me it was Speedy. I felt I had something to worry about.

The journey started off tranquil enough, and our fears began to melt away as our butts got used to the horses´ gait, and we sucked in the beautiful views. Then it got exciting. About half an hour into the ride, we came to a ditch that had a horrible smell preceding an even more horrible view. A cow, likely falling from the top of an Andean ridge, had met its end a few days earlier, and because of the methane build up in its belly, had blown up grotesquely and looked more like a blimp than an animal. Upon seeing this, my horse looked very uneasy, and then all of a sudden bolted in the opposite direction. The run probably didn´t last more than a few seconds until I remembered to pull the reigns and say “whooooaaaa”, but it got my heart beating. Eventually, our guide caught up with me and a spooked Speedy, and hand-led us past the bloated bovine until it was several meters out of sight.

Thinking that would be the most exciting part of the ride, we relaxed a bit again, until we caught sight of what our trail would look like for the next two plus hours. Basically, picture a view of nothing but immense mountains stretching into the clouds, with a teeny tiny trail, usually no wider than a foot, snaking along the ridges, sometimes at very step inclines, sometime at very striking declines, but always right on the edge of dusty, rocky, unsteady terrain. For the duration of the entire ride, we fluctuated by being completely flabbergasted and in awe of the scenery, and being assaulted with attacks of panic and vertigo.

When we got to the end of the first horseback portion, we tied up our horses and hike on foot to a refuge, we were able to use a very primitive toilet and have a snack. After that, we continued our hike through the cloud forest (again rather treacherous and scary, as it is often hard to tell what is the ground and what is just the top of a tree, overgrown into the earth, and our feet went through more than once). We made a stop to do a zipline and cross a suspension bridge, during which I had to overcome a fear of heights I didn´t realize I had until I was halfway across the wobbly rope bridge. To psych myself up to make the last few meters across, I had to tell myself that my ancestors at some point in time were monkeys, and they used to do this all the time. I regretted evolving out of having a tail. I could´ve used the balance.

One of the highlights of the trip came near the end of our hike when we came to a clearing that framed the Las Palmas waterfalls. It started to rain at this point, but it didn´t take away from the humbling experience of being at the foot of such an amazing feat of nature. It´s hard to describe the depth of it- the mist coats your face and clothes within seconds, and the sound of the water roars so much that it makes your insides vibrate.

With one more stop at the refuge to wait until the now downpouring rain abated, we made our way back to our horses to make the three hour horse trek home, which was now even scarier than before, because now the trail was wet and slippery. I was worried the horses would be mad at us for leaving them with nothing to do for so long but eat and poop while we hiked, but their only retaliation was an even greater quantity of sonorous farts than on the way there (which was a LOT). Once Criquet taught me the word for ‘fart’ in Spanish, I wanted to change Speedy´s name to “Pedor” (“Farter”). I have several male friends back home that would be well suited to that nick name as well…

In the end, we made it back safe, with our adrenaline completely depleted, but our bravery validated a million times over. Looking back, I don´t know if I could do it again knowing what was in store, but when I think back to that last leg of our horse ride, at the very top of the Andes, the setting sun setting the whole expansive view on fire with an orange glow, I realize that I have never been any closer to Heaven on earth.

I wouldn´t take it back for the world, but if I had to do it again, I might take a tranquilizer…

The Inaugural Blog

Cor and I left for Ecuador on September 24th, 2007. Our passports being held hostage for an agonizing 10 business days for our Visa application at the Ecuadorian consulate in Toronto, we had to make a stop there mere hours before our flight. I can´t say we were relaxed at this point. However, once we had our passports and Visas in hand, things felt a bit less hairy. Our flights went without any major delays, turbulence, or terrorist attacks (maybe I shouldn´t joke about that), and we arrived in coastal Guayaquil, Ecuador just past midnight. The cab ride from the airport to our hostel was a nasty shock to the Spanish part of my confidence. Over the course of the summer, my Spanish had gotten rustier that a badly maintained ´89 Toyota Tercel left out in the rain.

Opting to get to Cuenca ASAP, we didn´t see much of Guayaquil, and basically just slept there. The next morning, we took a mini bus from the port city to Cuenca, with a gaggle of very friendly Ecuadorians who alternated between trying to get us to agree to live with their various families upon our arrival, and getting us to put on more and more clothing as we climbed to higher altitude to Cuenca (roughly 7000 ft) where they assured us it would be much colder than muggy Guayaquil. It was kind of like riding in the company of a busload of grandmas.

We stayed at a place called Hostal Macondo for the next couple of nights in Cuenca while we tried to find an apartment. That part was ridiculously demoralizing at first. So many places we saw at first can be described as nothing other than ¨brokedown palaces¨; places that were likely stunning in their prime, but had long since lost their Colonial glory and surrendered to decay. A lot of apartments looked as if the proverbial wolf would have no problem huffing and puffing and blowing the dams things down. We finally found a great place with two other teachers, Jake and Drea, a newlywed couple from the midwest of the US. It´s in a fantastic apartment complex just outside of the nucleus of the city, so it´s a bit less polluted and busy, and it´s right on the beautiful río (river) Tomebamba!


Cor and I share a room and sleep in bunkbeds. I snagged the top one...just when I thought I was becoming an adult, I regress to climbing a ladder up to my single bed every night...



The other teachers here are truly fantastic, and although the school is a bit disorganized, I am finally getting the hang of lesson planning and teaching (which I love). I teach one beginner children´s class and two intermediate young adult´s class every day from Monday to Thursday. I can´t knock a three day weekend!

Life in Cuenca is very sweet. The city itself is stunning in terms of architecture and colourful in terms of people. The majority of the population is comprised of modern Ecuadorians, but about 30% are made up of Indigenous people who come into the city every day to sell fruits, vegetables, hats, jewelry, and very strange desserts. There are amazing markets tucked in all over the city where you can do all of your weekly grocery shopping for about $10, and in every one of those markets, you have the opportunity to purchase some cuy, a traditional Cuencaño delicacy. What is cuy, you ask? Well, remember that hamster I had in grade five? It´s basically that, but bigger. Cuy is guinea pig. Being the sensitive vegetarian who still misses her hamster Lucky, I doubt I will be trying any of this specialty meat.

Other than that, I am so happy here. During my time in Ecuador, I have only really felt two emotions: complete euphoria and needing to go pee, and the latter is only because unlike in Canada, in Ecuador it is a huge effort to find a decent public washroom. For someone who drinks a lot of tea, this is my biggest life challenge here. Basically, you have to follow the ¨two out of three ain´t bad¨rule. The three being: 1) has toilet paper, 2) has a toilet seat, and 3) has a stall door. If you´ve got two out of those three, you´re in good shape, baby. And on that note, it´s time to flush (haha) my first entry to an end.

I miss you all!

Besos y abrazos,

Alex