Ingapirca

Up the road a piece from here (well up the road, over some mountains, around a roadblock, through some mud, around a town that was having a road race through the middle of it, back out over a mountain - did I mention that driving around Ecuador can pose some obstacles?) lies the best kept Incan ruins in Ecuador, called Ingapirca.  With our trusty guides and friends, Marielena and Henry, two gringo families set off for a weekend adventure and some camping.  We saw an interesting slice of life in "el campo" and more than just a pile of old rocks at Ingapirca.  

Marielena and Henry were our tour guides on this weekend camping adventure.  Our family was joined by Jeannine, Emily and Felix (sans Dad, Eric). The first day February 7 was a beautiful Saturday and we stopped near the capital of the Canar province, Azogues, less than an hour from Cuenca.  We stopped at a stone cutter's workshop to learn about how they cut stone for columns, animal sculptures, and fountains.  We then moved on to San Miguel to learn about the making of traditional ceramic pots.  This turned out to take up much of the day because the artisans had puppies and the children wanted to spend lots of time with them.  We had lunch, a nice hike, and a somewhat accidental first taste of Zhumir (sugar liquor) for Julian.  He claims to hate the stuff.  

Late in the afternoon we moved on to a beautiful lake to set up camp.  It cooled down at night and there wasn't much firewood to be had, so we worked the fire with the charcoal that was brought on the trip.  The view was beautiful and the night was clear enough to see the full moon.  It was so bright that you didn't need a flashlight for those middle of the night trips to the bushes.  The police decided to check on us a few times, first to make sure we weren't thugs of some sort, and then to make sure we were safe.  Again, safety did not seem like a factor until somebody brought it up.

The next day we had too leisurely of a breakfast and a some short walks.  This made our trip to Ingapirca, the Incan ruins, take longer than it should have.  Apparently, a road race can shut down whole towns and paths through it for many hours.  We finally made it too the ruins and were treated to a lovely lunch.  The tour of the ruins was very interesting, especially when the whole thing was translated into English by our wordsmith son for the German couple who joined our tour.  According to our tour guide, the Incans and Canari lived side by side peacefully for many years until the Spanish Conquest.  It has inspired me to find a good book on the subject.

Next post, Carnaval in Banos!

Weekend in Guayaquil

Guayaquil:

January 23 – January 25, 2009

Recent Headlines / News Blurbs from Ecuador:

CONAIE (Indigenous Political Movement in Ecuador) wants to have President Rafael Correa declared “persona non grata” by the World Socialist Forum meeting recently in Brazil.

Ecuador considers joining the regional group ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas) a group consisting of Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Venezuela in contrast to the other regional group ALCA (Area de Libre Comercio de las Americas) an initiative of the USA

Intelligent Email will now be able to intuit mailing destinations even without a formal address.

Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame declares that the British Royal Family symbolizes all that is bad in Great Britain

La Copa Libertador (South American Club Championships) begins. Deportiva Cuenca qualifies as the equivalent of a “Wild Card” and so must win a home-away series to get into the formal championship. In the first game (away) against Anzoategui (Venezuela) they lose 2-0. In order to qualify they need to win by three goals at home. Result? A 3-0 victory. Favorites to win the Cup (celebrating its 50th Anniversary): Pachuca (Mexico), Boca Juniors (Argentina), Liga de Quito (Ecuador), Sao Paulo (Brazil)

In the wake of Super Bowl XLIII Norm Roessler brings a lawsuit against the NFL in which he claims: 1a) cruel and unusual punishment of having to suffer through the decidedly non-super games of the 1970s and 1b) cruel and unusual punishment of having to hear how every game since the abyss of the 70s is the “greatest game ever." 2) Erasing history by acting as if the NFL did not really exist before 1966; 3) Forcing a hero or MVP upon us, and hence claiming that the individual makes a difference in the world, when football is the living symbol of an arbitrary universe; 4) being a better propaganda unit than Goebbels & Co. (There’s the real crime).

We recently took a trip to the big city – Guayaquil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayaquil) about 3.5 hours by bus and located near the Pacific Coast. We took a van service to Guayaquil this time instead of the usual passenger bus. It cost a few bucks extra, but everyone seemed to prefer the comfort as well as the reduced motion sickness issues upon navigation through the Cajas Mountains. We arrived in Guayaquil on Friday evening and were met by our friends – the Kreis Family. We immediately went to a Steakhouse owned by a famous soccer goalie from Uruguay and were treated to a heapin’ helpin’ of meat – steak, chicken, sausage – and some tasty tripe (well, I liked it). During our stay we came to find the cuisine in Guayaquil to be quite good. Along with the meat, we had a lot of good seafood – ceviche pulpo (octopus) is quite a nice dish. We are starting to think that Cuenca might be a kind of black hole for cuisine in Ecuador as we have not had many great eating experiences there.

After settling in at our friends’ spacious residence outside the city, we spent Saturday walking the Malecón and Las Peñas. The Malecón (breakwater) is the name given to the riverside promenade or boardwalk, which includes lots of gardens and recreational activities. After years of waiting for Philadelphia to develop its riverfront, it was quite refreshing to actually see an urban success.



Las Peñas is at the end of the Malecón and is a renovated neighborhood that one scales with a 444 step walk. Lots of history with terrorists, or I mean pirates (love the whitewash of Western political imagination. (God Bless Captain Jack, Michael Corleone, and Robin Hood) and quite an interesting vista of the city. We finished up our afternoon at Parque Bolivar, also known as Parque Iguana. Yep, that’s right hundreds of iguanas just roaming around, grubbing for handouts, climbing trees, and trying to crap on the heads of humans. What a life!


In the evening we took a ride on a tall ship on the river and got some good views of Las Peñas at night.

On the following day, Julian and Norm threw the baseball around (equipment courtesy of our guest) and then we spent a leisurely, if not decadent, day at the Guayaquil Country Club seeing how the other half in Ecuador lives. All in all a good time in a town that doesn’t always have the best reputation.

We returned to Cuenca on the night van and were somehow survived a near death experience through the Cajas Mountains. With visibility sometimes as little as 2 feet, our driver barely slowed down through the whole mountain trek. When we got to Cuenca we discovered that a massive rain storm had passed through. The End.