at the duran family house, i found this stack of natl. geo.'s.....and found one of my favorite issues featuring taiwan, 20 yrs. post KMT invasion! they discuss the chiang family in waiting...for the return to the mainland...unfortunately after 4 more decades, this never happened for them.....anyway.....the inside front cover had this ad from AT&T...which i never realized stood for what is says here.......so......times have changed in advertising.......the man on the bottom is collecting dinner after a typhoon, the caption reads.....

i ran some errands this morning with valeria (oh my god, is this how banal blogging can be....so sorry to add more uneccessary ramblings onto the world wide web)......you can see a shopping mall here with TGIF, which i can now appreciate the concept of (not the restaurant, but the whole m-f work week thing)........then we had breakfast at the sheraton, then....it hailed...........i love rain! that giant roof outside our window makes great rain noise - unfortunately, it would have been nicer if there was an in-house masseur also to go along with the sounds.....

anyway...........i also love that cars drive over these types of pathways....with the grass inbetween. i can't wait to live somewhere with a garden....this high-altitude-all-yr.-round-sun-on-the-equator-thing really grows great plants!........

jess takes pics of henry & jazz in guapulo, a great little neighborhood just over the hill from the house......it's literally ten minutes to the top of the ridge...then a windy road down, to the church of guapulo, passing ramshackle homes, the spanish ambassador's residence, some fancier architectural pieces (including one of jazz & ana maria's designs.....) and lots of gringos galore who love to jog, eat, and drink here.......

i had a meeting at CORPEI this morning with edgar & VALERIA! their other meeting was running late, so i sat in the kitchen area and took these pics from above......i have to take more pics from the other side of the bldg!!!!! where there are large city blocks walled off with a tiny house, fields of grass and horses intemixed with the other developments in this modern part of town.....(the north of quito)

emi wants stars for her bday, so we take her to meet octavio at INDOCHINE, and they had a nice chat about cooking and being chefs, etc........indochine is the relatively new and only vietnamese place in town!!!!! octavio is ecuadorian from DC...and started this place with a vietnamese friend.....

i had a chicken pho, pretty good and clean, but nothing like hanoi.....

anyway, then all emi wants is a new tattoo for her bday......stars behind her ears......we all accompany her, and jess & she also connect on the cooking and baking, and we decide to head over to her place later to make dinner (well, i had class, so jazz & i showed up late.......) they made an amazing quinoa risotto & jess made her grandfather's cookies.....with the kallari chocolate!!!!!

(ps. we are in the kitchen of the house jazz & ana maria designed.....amazing kitchen!!!!!)
(all previous activities of the day are in mariscal, the thriving alternative neighborhood)

election day! jazz, jessica, & i decided to leave the city yesterday for papallacta. we figured it would be a bunch of foreigners like us, who would head out the to the mtns. near quito to go to the thermal springs, since everyone else was voting!
on
the way out of the city, there was this shark graffiti in guapulo, there is a big problem with all of us who enjoy shark fin eating....it's a big sustainability issue for the ecosystem, of course, but also here in ecuador politically.....and economically.....local fishermen are now allowed to sell fins if they are caught "accidentally".....but thousands of sharks in the galapagos area are "caught accidentally" daily.....the laws have been fluctuating over the years, but since 2000, about two million sharks have been exported from ecuador. the last time i had shark fin soup was in august when i went to taiwan.....i tried not to have it, but my host said, JUST this one last time....it was soooooo gooood....but.....anyway, not again....i fear.....

anyway, papallacta is on the eastern edge of the city, only 1.5 hrs to get there and 1 hr to get back. it's amazing to think how narrow the mountainous area is around here. as you go up to papallacta, you then realize, just on the other side is the descent to the amazon! it's also amazing, cuz the road is so well made to get to these springs, mainly because this is the road that goes down to get the OIL out of the amazon. the directions, driving there are....take the road to the amazon, then take a left after the oil pipeline...the pic with the railing and pipeline above the road in the upper corner......

as well, here are some bad car pics of the ride up, all the construction, for oil extraction.....otherwise, infrastructure is random, and housing and communities go up on much smaller scales here.....also note the beautiful billboard promoting amazonian oil (and flora & fauna)!

the road is fine, but crazy....marked with crucifixes for victims of bad driving in dense cloud cover & fog, steel barriers that night as well not be there, amazing landscape of a much higher elevation than quito...the bridge here, is of the most "well-constructed" bridge in ecuador!!!!! it well might be, and it is made of steel, but they painted it to look like aluminum????? it definitley sounds like it when crossing.....

anyway! it was great, to get out of the city!!!!! and it's really beautiful there. i was surprised and happy to see how well designed and maintained this place was!!!!! mind you, this is not like bathing in japan, as i have been spoiled by the obsessive cleanliness there concerning public bathing, but this place was alright! and gracias a dios, it is so close to the city......



they are famous for trout, but it is pink, like a light salmon or a guava....is this normal????? i am not a fish expert, but......anyway very good and very fresh! unfortunately, the coffee was nescafe.....again, the problem of a country that exports its best resources (coffee & cacao) and is left with the multinational corporations desire to promote inferior imported products.....but do not fret, things are changing, and there are a few good companies here producing and developing coffee and chocolate and food industries for local consumption!

i have no idea what the name of this dessert was, but it was delicious!!!!! it is fried dough, covered in maple syrup.....well, fake maple syrup.......but nonetheless.....it was good to have it.....i haven't had corn syrup in so long!!! unlike the states, where there iws hardly any real sugar, just gov't subsidized corn products....here they still have real cane sugar as a sweetener for everything!