Montanita: And another hundred people just got off of the bus

Montanita is a surf town on the Pacific coast of Ecuador that is very definitely on the backpacker circuit.  All of the guidebooks warned that this is a party town and not appropriate for people over the age of 30.  Also, that it was impossible to sleep here because it is so loud.  I thought, how bad could it be?  I never imagined an entire town could be so loud.

I arrived last Saturday and found more life here than in the entire city of Cuenca, parades and all.   Because it is warm here, none of the buildings have front walls, much less doors.  All of the restaurants and clubs are open to the street and all play very loud music.  When you sit in a restaurant, music blares from five directions, and you can't carry on a conversation.  OK, I thought, my cabin is half a mile from town.  I'll be fine.  Well, you can't hear the music at that distance, but you can feel the persistent bass beat.  Last Saturday night was pretty bad and I wondered what I had gotten into.  But Sunday night was much mellower, and it seemed a lot better during the week ... or I had gotten used to the undercurrent of bass beat.

But I'm not complaining.  It is hot, humid, and uncomfortable here - just the way I like it, although some days it is overcast.  I like my hot, humid, and uncomfortable with full sun.  Everyone wears shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops although tops are optional for the men.

Backpackers waiting for the next bus

Backpackers moving on

My cabana

My office

The backpackers are mostly South American with a fair number of Europeans, mostly Swiss and German.  English is the second language in Montanita, but there are not many Americans here.  The language school is considered to be very good so a lot of people stay for a while.  As you can see it is very formal.

The sign says to take off your shoes to go into school.

My classroom

Since this is a outdoor party town, the bars are open air.  The sign says, Welcome to the street of cocktails, and each of the stands is a bar.

Although my class is good, I decided I needed to speak Spanish in a non class setting, so I volunteered to help the English teacher at the local public school.  We are at the end of the school year (it is summer here) so the ninth graders are preparing for graduation.  Like adolescents everywhere, the line of girls walked in perfectly and stood still for ten minutes while the line of boys had to repeat (walking in a straight line, that is, without falling), and at one point had to do push ups.  They are all balancing books or papers on their heads.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but ... the English teacher seems pretty bad to me.  She has no classroom management skills, so she just keeps talking while the kids talk, move around, and just do whatever they want.  For the first few days, she asked me to help some individual kids, so I did, and other kids came and asked me questions, too.  One day, she asked me to read the words, so the kids could hear them without a Spanish accent.

The kids are learning very simple English, way below the level of my Spanish, so I pretty much explain in Spanish.  They are hardly ready for English immersion.   Yesterday when I got there, the teacher asked me to teach that day's lesson which was too and enough.  (This skirt is too tight.  That box is not big enough.)  Seemed pretty easy and I didn't know why she didn't just teach as she'd been doing and I would help, but I said okay, and started teaching.  After ten minutes, she left the classroom and never came back.  I had to wing it after I finished the exercise in the book.  Then class got over and it was time to go to another classroom.  (The kids stay, and the math and English teachers change rooms.)  She never showed back up.  I went to the other classroom, looked at where they were in their book, and came up with a quick lesson plan.  Oh, well.  Sometimes, you get more than you bargained for.  But this has been good for my Spanish.  The kids' language is not very sophisticated so I understand most of it.  They correct my errors or help me when I don't know a word.  One boy laughed at a mistake I made and I said:  you are learning English and I am learning Spanish, but I don't laugh at your mistakes.  No one laughed at me again.  Fortunately, I had recently learned the word for laughing at someone.

When I left the school yesterday, I told the kids I hoped they had a good weekend.  They told me they had school on Saturday.  Sorry, but it is my day off.  I spent the day reading at the beach although after a few hours, I realized that there was no sun at all.  I sure hope it comes out tomorrow because I have another long day of reading planned.

Leaving Cuenca

They do like their parades in Cuenca.  I had a few hours to walk around on my last day in Cuenca and there was another parade.  Once again, the spectators, particularly the children, were as dressed as those in the parade.  This parade was for the Infantil Migrante (traveling baby?).  I never got a good explanation, but it seemed to have something to do with Jesus and immigrants to the US.  Because that makes a lot of sense.  As do the costumes.

This lady seems to be holding THE infant.  People ran up to her, cried, and threw flower petals at the doll.  I don't get it.

And what is a parade without a little dancing in the street?

It was a short parade.  When it was over, sanitation workers immediately swept up the flower petals, the street was reopened, and that was that.  Ten minutes later, you would not know there had been a parade.

Galapagos pictures

There were several good photographers in our group and they agreed to share their photos.  Here are some pretty incredible (mostly) underwater pictures taken by Adam.

There were a lot of fish

A weird fish

Swimming with an eel

Whales and dolphins swimming alongside the boat

A mora ray

Swimming with a sea lion

Ready for my closeup

Sea lion swimming with fish

Swimming upside down

Sting ray

White tipped Galapagos shark

Random sights and smells of Cuenca

First of all, Ecuador is the home of the Panama hat.  There is some confusing story about why the hat is named after Panama, but this is the official home and Cuenca boasts the Panama hat museum.  Also, for reasons that I cannot explain, the hats are traditionally worn here by women, not men.  The hats are woven into a shapeless semicircle out of the leaves of a native palm.  Then the hat is pressed into shape, and later a ribbon is added.

A hat press/shaper

On a walk in the market, I saw a grill with four prongs and couldn't figure out what it was for.  The wooden prongs were too close together for chickens.  Later I walked in the market with my teacher and she explained that the rotisserie is for the Ecuadorian (and Peruvian) specialty cuy - guinea pig.  Duh, of course.  More on cuy later.

Also in the market ... it is really hard to tell from these pictures, but the old women in traditional clothes and Panama hats are shamans.  They sit under an awning and people bring them their children, or themselves, to be "treated."  When we first arrived, the woman in the middle was treating a baby, but I didn't realize what was happening and didn't get my camera out fast enough.  Next, the little girl in the light shirt sat down.  For the treatment, first the shaman shakes some leaves all over the girl's body.  Then she rubs an egg over her body.  Then she breaks the egg into a plastic baggie, but I'm not sure what happens to the egg then.  They take it home and eat it?  I think the shaman "reads" something from the color of the egg.

In the park on Sunday ... the park was full of families picnicking and playing.  In one section, there was a track for children on tricycles or pedal cars.

Back to the market.  There were so many different foods available but I wasn't familiar with a lot of the names so I wasn't sure how to order anything.  So I went back with my teacher and she explained to me what everything was.  Then we sampled the pork roast - meat only for me and a full plate for her, which includes potatoes and motes - a type of corn.

I have not seen homeless people here and I never saw anyone standing with a sign at an intersection asking for money.  But, at some of the intersections with long lights, enterprising young men do an act of some kind, and then solicit payment from the drivers.  A thirty second act every three minutes.  Juggling fire or doing backbends on stilts or just bouncing a soccer ball on one's head.

That reminds me, one more tradition on New Year's Eve was to to hold a rope across the street and not let the cars pass until they pay a few cents.  I was not clear what the money was for ... maybe to buy the manigotes.

Also on my walk I saw what looked like space men in a plaza.

This one took me a while to figure out.  Notice that the figures are as tall as the three story buildings behind them.  Pretty clearly the two tall figures are a man and woman; there is a donkey on the left and a bull or cow on the right.  But the basket in the middle holds something that looks like a grenade.  Huh?  Then I saw a Christmas sign behind the figures and realized that they had haloes on their heads, not space helmets.  So the grenade in the basket was a stylized body and small head with halo.  Feliz navidad from Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.  I still say that Jesus looks like a grenade.

Back to cuy - guinea pig.  I avoided eating it in Peru and fully intended to pass it up in Ecuador, too.  But my school arranged an outing today to a restaurant to try cuy, so I went.

Cuy on a rotisserie behind the restaurant

The feast included potatoes (the plate with the eggs), mote which is some kind of corn (on the left), roasted corn (the small dish), salad, salsa, and the cuy cut into eight pieces.  There are no more than three bites of meat on each piece.  No, it did not taste like chicken; it tasted like pork.  I had one piece with three bites, and mostly had a huge plate of salad.  I was willing to taste cuy, but as they say in Spanish, no vale la pena.  It's not worth the effort.

And that's it.  I leave Cuenca tomorrow.