Llámame Nacho: August 2015

FOOD BLOG!

In this post I'll break down some of my week 1 food adventures from around the city. I would've included more but I'm not always thinking to photograph my food, especially in the house (also it might not be so appropriate to comment on family food in such a public forum). I'll probably post these sporadically once I have a critical mass of food to show. Ratings are out of 10.

DISH: The main course is a beef stew type thing with carrots, peas and rice. Also featured is a dinner roll, small salad with Italian dressing, and a cup of peach juice.
LOCATION: tame Airlines flight EQ551
COMMENTARY: Beef well above expectations but still not great by any means. Peach juice can hang for sure. Salad was expectedly bland. You will never in your life have a drier, less satisfying piece of bread than this plastic wrapped abomination.
RATING: Admittedly it was on a plane, but there's no excuse for such poor performance of the hard-to-mess-up roll. 2.3

DISH: Ecuadorian Pizza with mystery meats
LOCATION: Some pizza place that delivered to the IES tower for our orientation lunch
COMMENTARY: To be honest I have no idea what I ate here. Maybe some ham on there. Could've been bologna. Could've been lamb intestines.
RATING: Maybe mystery and intrigue contributed to the experience but it really wasn't bad. Truly bad pizza is hard to come by and this doesn't fit that bill. 5.8

DISH: Seco de Pollo (and Fiora-vanti Strawberry Soda)
LOCATION: A rather seedy looking spot on a kind of main street in Cumbayá
COMMENTARY: As we all agreed, paying only $2 to get violently ill is a great deal regardless of the dish. True bang for your buck. Rather miraculously none of us came down with any type of disease or tapeworm but that may only be because I stopped eating the chicken when I noticed a suspicious yellow tubular object protruding from the chicken on a bone which we were supposed to eat with a spoon somehow. The rice was good though. Oh and the strawberry soda was solid as well. Everything's better in a glass bottle for whatever reason.
RATING: Due to tremendous bargain and decent beverage to wash it down with, it comes in at a whopping 1.6.

DISH: Naranjilla and Maracuyá Helado (basically sorbet)
LOCATION: Some ice cream spot my host family took me to in Cumbayá
COMMENTARY: Both of these are fruits native to Ecuador and they are absolutely unreal. Maracuyá is a passion fruit and naranjilla is some other random delicious thing. I can't really describe the flavor adequately. One was a little sweeter, kind of like the ice cream part of a Two-Ball screwball and the other was more sour citrusy. Dynamite combo.
RATING: If only it were bigger 9.6.

DISH: Some kind of maybe split pea soup with popcorn on top
LOCATION: USFQ orientation lunch dining hall
COMMENTARY: I was highly skeptical of the color and the apparent practice of putting popcorn on top of soup like we would with crackers but it was actually not too bad.
RATING: Just an average bowl of soup 5.1.

DISH: A beef type thing with peppers, rice, and maybe a cucumber salad
LOCATION: Same as the soup
COMMENTARY: Beef was in a sweet type of sauce not quite teriyaki but still fire. Mixed well with the rice. Not a huge fan of cucumber salad or whatever it was but so be it. The most exciting part was that these little dishes were glued down with some sort of syrupy type glue. Very high class to be sure.
RATING: A little skimpy but 7.2.

DISH: Chicken with a mushroom cream sauce, rice with red peppers, white corn, green beans, carrots, and cherry tomatoes
LOCATION: A restaurant just off the presidential plaza in the Historic Center of Quito
COMMENTARY: Really dope. White corn is a typical dish here--imagine larger kernels that are chewier but with a little bit of crunch still hanging around. I'm not normally a sweet tomato fan but these were solid.
RATING: This was a top-notch lunch 8.1.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Ecuadorian food relies heavily on rice and potatoes, as well as soups. The main meal here is lunch, so they go all out for that. Once I'm on the coast it'll be mostly seafood and not nearly as Americanized. Quito has very obvious American influences in food, as I have spotted several Dominos, Papa Johns, Subways, Burger Kings, McDonalds, KFCs, no Taco Bells which is a tragedy, and even Quiznos. Hamburgers are pretty popular here, as is pizza. I imagine this will change significantly on the Galapagos. In general, the food here is pretty solid, made from mostly local ingredients of fruits and vegetables.

I'm headed on a week-long class field trip to the coast in the morning and I'm not sure about internet while we're on the road. Apparently Esmeraldas, where we will be spending two days at the end of the trip is somewhat of a high-risk zone for exciting mosquito-borne illnesses like Malaria, Dengue, and the new and exciting Chikunguya virus. I'll be so DEET-ed up that people within a two-mile radius will be able to smell me so I should make it out alive. #prayfornacho

I'll admit I had some serious trepidations about this place on the way in for a variety of reasons. There were supposed threats of local indigenous people trying to close the main access road to Baños as a form of protest. There's still the looming threat of Cotopaxi which is on the way from Quito to Baños and if it were to erupt on our drive or while we were there we would be unable to return. There was the sketchiness of arriving by night in a large-windowed bus filled predominantly with female gringos while men in the street were beckoning us to seedy looking bars. But perhaps above all was that this was to be a weekend dedicated to adventure sports, something I generally lack the experience of and the courage to do so. Instead of hanging back and allowing my nerves to better my determination, I volunteered to go first in basically everything, despite not knowing what to expect. Long story short I had an incredible time with some really cool people doing some really cool things--check it out:

(Pics in no particular order--video at the bottom)

Getting pumped for canopy (what they call ziplining)

Scenic bridge at Tarabita

Behind the spectacular Pailon de Diablo waterfall--I recommend looking up pics, mine didn't come out great

Machismo culture at its finest

You can make out my shadow if you look closely

Looking like Peter Pan and Wendy

Shadows also visible

Bowdoin's finest gets amped for canopy

Swing at the end of the world with the Tungurahua Volcano in the background

Bridge at Pailon de Diablo

Most popular beer in Ecuador at Pailon de Diablo

They call repelling down waterfalls canyoning

One of the guides ran down--such a beast

Made the mistake of looking down (ps sorry Mom)

No worries it turned out all right

It was more like bridge swinging than anything else

The fall was only a split second

For a tiny bit it was awful and then just as I was loving it the fall was over

This bridge was no joke but they didn't let us fall very far

Such a gorgeous place to be swinging

You're only strapped in by three (large) carabiners. When they hooked me up I asked incredulously "esto es todo?" and the crowd of like 40 Ecuadorians all laughed at me