Pilsener Beer & Crabs

Well, my time in the mountains has come to an end for a while. I’m in Santa Elena now (for good) which is located about 120 kilometers to the west of Guayaquil on a small peninsula that forms the westernmost part of the entire continent. I’ve been here since Thursday morning, having taken the Trans Esmeraldas night bus out of Quito at 9:30 P.M. (we’re actually on Central Time in Ecuador too). I wished someone had been able to get a picture of me on that bus. When you purchase your ticket, you get to choose which seat you want on the bus. Our directors continually recommended that you choose one about a third of the way towards the back and on the right side of the bus so that you can watch what’s going on with the luggage whenever the bus stops. So, in line with this recommendation, I chose seat number 16. Unfortunately, Ecuadorian buses aren’t built to exactly the same specifications as buses in the United States—let’s just say there isn’t as much legroom in the Ecuadorian counterparts. I was packed into seat number 16 like a sardine, and, to make matters worse, the mother and father sitting in the seats directly in front of me had reclined their seats to the maximum (I can’t exactly blame them because they had a rather lively young child with them). For my part, I couldn’t recline my seat because when you hold down the lever and push the back support backwards, your knees come forward. And when you’re as tall as I am, your knees can only come so far forward before they’re jammed into the seat in front of you. I was able to improvise, however, and slept as much of the way as I could by leaning forward and using the seat in front of me as a sort of forehead pillow—that was how tight it was. The man sitting beside me was kind of grimy too, and he had a habit of spreading his legs out as far as he could in his sleep.

I find it amazing, though, how well Ecuadorians are able to sleep on these buses. As soon as the lights had gone out and the “in-flight” movie (I can’t even remember what movie it was) was over, I turned back and looked down the length of the bus. Everyone was pressed against a window or had propped a hand to support his or her face.

I arrived in the bus station in La Libertad early on Thursday morning and called up Sara, my new host mother, for instructions. She told me to just hang out in front of the station while she drove to pick me up. I had to fend off the taxistas with about a million no thank yous before Sara pulled up. Before the end of the afternoon, I had organized my room and ate some breakfast.

People in the Sierra and people living on the coast—where they are very different in certain ways—can at least agree upon some things. Jugo, or juice, is one of those things. Juice in Ecuador is fantastic, way better than anything you can buy in a store back home. My personal favorite comes from a regional type of tomato, tomate de árbol. You peel a few of the fruits, throw them in a blender, add some sugar (and you thought people down from down south added a lot of sugar to things!) and strain the mixture.

On the other hand, as far as food is concerned, the people living on the coast disagree with the people living in the mountains in some respects. Potatoes are eaten much more commonly in the Sierra, for instance, where seafood (and you just might be able to figure out why) is eaten much more here. (We drove into Salinas just yesterday and had to slow down as we reached the city’s main stretch. There, a man held out a pair of lobsters, displaying them for sale.) It’s easier to get yucca in the mountains too. Yuca is a type of root that has a bit more flavor than a potato; it’s good, but very filling. I’ve also heard people in the Sierra eat more hamburgers and pizza. The hamburger trend I can confirm, but I really can’t when it comes to pizza. There are little hamburger places all over Quito. Don’t get your hopes up too much though, these hamburgers are nothing like we’re used to. All the hamburgers I’ve had are much smaller, much thinner and don’t come with all the classic hamburger compliments—no bun, no ketchup, no mustard and no cheese. Just straight up fried cow. Kind of boring by comparison, but you take what you can get. Like I said, Ecuador definitely has us trumped when it comes to juices. As for pizza, the only time I ate it with my host family was when I bought a bunch of ingredients and suggested we all make it together (thanks, Steph). I was happy Miguel knew more about yeast than I did, otherwise things would not have turned out well. He ended up spelling an M with the pepperoni, which was supposed to be for Marco Polo, my nickname in Quito.

I’m amazed, however, at the unavailability of Ecuadorian coffee in this country. Ecuador does grow quite a bit of coffee, but keeps very little of it for its own people—it all goes right out the door. All of the coffee I’ve drunk here is of the instant variety, and it invariably comes from Colombia. No one cares about coffee here the way we do in the states. I was explaining to my host family in Quito that every business on State Street is either a bar or a coffee shop. He looked rather surprised. In the overall scheme of things, the Pazmiños definitely prefer tea.

The differences between the costeños and the Sierrans go much deeper than just foods, however. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about these personality differences to prepare myself for what the next ten months are going to be like. Costeños, for instance, tend to be more outgoing, more direct in the way they speak (to the point of being offensive), much friendlier and generally more liberal. They also speak ridiculously quickly compared to Sierrans (which is as fun as you might imagine for someone who has enough trouble picking up just bits and pieces of the conversations he hears). Sierrans tend to be a bit more sheltered and private, but extremely genuine and very kind. I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to that many Ecuadorians from the coast, but I did meet one man, Kleber, who immediately fit all of these stereotypes. He had a lot of very interesting questions about the United States and seemed extremely preoccupied with proving to me how much American history he was familiar with. I’m not sure how I feel about Kleber yet.

Being in La Libertad, (who would have thought I’d live in a city called Liberty outside of the US) I live between where I work and where I’ll play. About 5 kilometers to the east is my school in Santa Elena, and then about 8-9 kilometers to the west is Salinas, which is this really touristy beach city. During the high season, which starts sometime in November and lasts until the end of May, Salinas is crazy. Now, it’s just a pretty average place. Not too many people are out, and not all that many tourists can be found. Santa Elena, on the other hand. is a pretty run-of-the-mill Ecuadorian town. La Libertad is somewhere between (though much closer to Santa Elena than to Salinas) these two extremes. I actually live in the one tourist attraction in La Libertad, el Museo León Ricaurte: it’s both an archaeological and an artistic museum. My host mother’s husband was a pretty incredible artist during his life and their home reflects this. I’m not going to lie, I have it pretty damn good here. The place is gorgeous. I’ll include a couple pictures in a future post (if they decide to load this time… arrgh). I live in what I’d compare to a pool house (where there’s no pool, the Pacific Ocean is only a stone’s throw from the edge of the property) that’s not connected to the main building, but is still very close.

The only crummy thing about my living situation is that Sara is taking off next week to visit her pregnant sister in Mexico for a couple of months. Sara’s sister is scheduled to be having the baby soon and Sara wants to be there for as much of the child’s birth as she can. (For a gift, we picked up a bunch of children’s DVDs yesterday. Who likes Disney movies?) Luckily, Sara’s nephew lives here too, so I’ll be hanging out with him a bunch next week. I only met Pedro for a second, but he’s a really nice guy. He’s letting me use his mountain bike for the year, which might not seem like the best idea right off the bat because I’m so much bigger than everyone else in this country, but Pedro is actually taller than I am, so the bike fits me well. Kind of depressing that Sara won’t be around though….

So I’ve spent the last couple of days acquainting myself with the area. I’ve gone out running the last couple of days, and not a single dog chased me either time. I’m beginning to see that it’s just a matter of never challenging an animal with your eyes. Furthermore, Sara drove me around to a bunch of different places in Santa Elena and Salinas. She showed me all of the different beaches that are within driving distance and where I can go for this or that.

By Friday night Sara’s daughter, Carla, and her husband, Tom, had showed up to stay for the weekend. Carla and Tom are awesome. Tom is actually English and came down here to teach English something like seven or eight years ago. He fell in love with Carla and he’s been living here since. He’s in charge of an English school in Guayaquil, where they live permanently, but he’s actually also in charge of the school where I’ll be teaching. So, in a way, Tom’s my boss (it really doesn’t seem like that, however). Carla works in the tourism industry, so when whale-watching season comes around, guess where I’ll find out about the cool spots to go. Tom’s English is perfect and Carla’s is pretty damn good, but they’re both happy to speak Spanish with me, which I really appreciate. Little by little, I’m getting better at communicating.

Tom had brought along a string of crabs from a market in Guayaquil, which he started to prepare upon his arrival Friday night. In addition, he drove to show me where I can get my family’s Pilsener bottles filled near a local beer distributor. It’s eight dollars for twelve grande beers (which are each 16 oz., I think) served cold out of a couple refrigerators at a local store. You can get your bottles filled across the street from the actual factory for seven dollars, but they give them to you warm as hell.

Once they’d turned a deep red, we hung around Friday night eating crab and talking Ecuadorian politics. It turns out that eating crab is actually more about drinking beer than it is about the seafood because it’s such a time-consuming process to pick a crab apart with nothing but a small wooden hammer and your fingers. The four of us had gone through all of the grandes and probably about 12-15 crabs before we started to argue about the US presidential candidates. The Ecuadorians and English alike are skeptical about an African American and a woman having a realistic shot at the presidential office. They wonder if the American people are ready for that.