Sunday morning we got up a little bit earlier than we had the day before so that we could drive the truck out to some of the little villages (pueblos) that he wanted to show me.  Took about an hour to get there and it was a beautiful drive all along the way as we climbed and snaked our way up through the Andes mountains.  We would take this same path later and go into the Amazon jungle farther north on the Pan-American highway.  The mountains were huge, beautiful and were covered in a lush patchwork of greens like nature's quilt with what seemed like every square inch a manicured farm area.  We drove by many people working the fields and they did it all by hand.  It was really quite impressive to see the amount of work they did, all by hand.  Especially when you then lifted your head up to see that virtually every square inch of land for miles in every direction were tilled and worked in this manner.  The people were dressed in their native attire with brightly colored wool wraps and layers of clothes, braided pony tails and distinctive hats.

The farther up we drove the more I felt my heart racing.  It was the altitude.  It was really a dramatic feeling but not too scary.  Pablo said the same thing always happens to him too.  I figured he would have been used to it from living there for 27 years before moving to Europe.  A lot of people get altitude sickness when they go to Quito, Riobamba and the Amazon in general due to the altitude.  Usually the symptoms are an accelerated heartbeat, nausea and headache.  I had a headache for a bit on Saturday and a touch on Sunday but after an aspirin I never had any other problems.

We stopped before getting to the first town at a little restaurant—think fancy shack with a bunch of benches and nice people serving your choice of three breakfast items.  This was the first place I encountered cuy (guinea pig).  The woman at the table across from us ordered stew with cuy.  Just looked like regular pieces of meat in there to me but I sure didn't want it.  Instead I got boiled potatoes with some yummy orange sauce and two slabs of yummy cheese on top.  Never figured out exactly what the cheese was but it was soft, mild, a touch salty and tasted fantastic.  Wasn't going to complain, love my cheese! 

Pablo had potatoes but then had fried pig skin instead of the cheese.  When I say pig skin, I'm not referring to some thin crispy pork rind puffy in a Doritos bag I have seen people eat state-side.  I mean take a pig, scrape/shave the hair (I am imagining that they do this since the skin looks supple, if that's a good word for it), cut the skin off in 3 to 4 inch wide strips that are about 1/2 inch thick and then fry them in oil.  They get a lovely golden color but don't get crispy.  Just looks, although I can't say from tasting it, like chewy fat.  It’s very popular there and with Pablo.  Never tried it and don’t plan on it.

After our breakfast stop we went to two little towns that I don't know the name of and drove around.  You really had to know where you were going because there were no signs.  The first town had their big Sunday market happening so there were a lot of little stands set up with all kinds of clothing and trinkets for sale along with practical things.  Was very interesting to drive through.  Pablo said that on the weekends all of the people from the bigger cities come out to the small towns and on the week days it is the other way around with the big city markets.  Made sense. 

In the second town we made it up to close to the top of the town where there was a small church that was the oldest church in Ecuador.  Not a lot to look at but it was significant to the history of the area.  When we went back to the car we noticed that there was a lot of water leaking from the front of the truck. We checked everything but didn't find a problem and it didn't overheat as we continued on.  We were very careful and monitored every sound closely though.  The truck would go into the shop tomorrow to be checked out before our big road trip into the Amazon! 

On the way back we stopped at a little park and took more pictures.  There was also another little church here that looked so sweet and innocent as a typical old church on the outside, but when you stepped inside there was a lovely neon display of godliness.  Seemed cheesy and over-done but the town was quite proud of it so more power to them.  We returned to Riobamba after we finished our pueblo-hopping adventure and met up with Pablo's family so we could take the weekly trip to the cemetery. 

The trip to the cemetery was very interesting.  While the city of Riobamba is fairly large but there is apparently really only one cemetery to be buried in and everyone that has any money has their family buried there.  The graves ranged from small markers, very uncommon, to multilevel tombs and then there was the enormous mausoleum.  Everything was very ornate with tons and tons of flowers.  I would have liked to have photographed the cemetery but that just seemed in poor taste.

Speaking of flowers, I swear that they must spend around a hundred dollars every week buying these huge bouquets of roses, carnations, lilies, and all kinds of flowers and fillers to plant around the grave sites and put in the huge urns that adorn it.  The visit was mostly a giant production of taking out the old dead ones from last week, pull a few weeds, put the new ones in, water them, make the sign of the cross and move on.  The Yaulema Torres family has two graves.  One is a big multilevel, mostly underground one where Pablo’s grandparents and father are buried and the other is a small grave nearby where Margi's baby that didn't make it years ago is buried. 

This process of the weekly visit, flower changing and all was an interesting activity to participate in.  The importance of family and ritual in the community is very strong.  As far as religion goes, 95% of the population of Ecuador reports themselves as Catholic.  Pablo's family is Catholic.  Catholicism to them is a little lighter than what I’ve grown up with.  Other than wearing the occasional rosary (which isn't meant to be jewelry) and making the sign of the cross and kissing their fist when leaving and entering Riobamba they don't do anything particularly Catholic.  But they are very proud to be Catholic.

After the cemetery, Pablo and I drove to a little shop where we got ice-cream clown cones with Superman ice cream.  Lots of fun to look at and eat, although somehow I didn't remember Superman ice cream being bubblegum flavored.  Oh well, took me back to the days when I was little and my papa used to take my brother Jeff, cousin Andrea and myself to the ice cream shop for Superman ice cream and rainbow sherbet.  A bit later we went with Margi, Santi and Stephi to another town nearby to pick up another niece, Evelyn, who was about 5.  Never figured out or met Evelyn’s parents.  But was a sister’s child because Pablo is the only boy out of five children.

We ate some dinner at a cousin’s or family friends’ restaurant until both girls passed out from exhaustion and then headed back to Riobamba.  They were a lot of fun at the restaurant because they tried really hard to talk to me.  But they talked really, really fast!  We practiced counting in Spanish and English (took me the whole night to get them to get up to eleven and twelve), recited lots of fruits and vegetables and a few animals.  When we got back we just hung out the rest of the day at the house and called it an early night so that we would have a full day to get the truck checked (remember that leaking problem?) and head to the Amazon jungle!!  Oh, one other note, this trip was the first time I asked about the giant blue painted hearts on the roads—some big, some small.  Turned out that is how they mark where people died.  Was shocking to see how many hearts there were in some areas.

Monday Pablo took the car in the moment the shop opened at 8am.  I spent the morning reading my book and watching American TV shows.  They didn't finish until after lunch so we got a later start than we’d hoped.  We packed quickly for our trip to the jungle and hit the road.  We drove along the same path as the day before to the little towns but kept going and going.  The views were amazing and I took lots of pictures.  It was amazing the way that people packed into pickup trucks and on top of foliage cleared from the road in big trucks.  No seatbelts, kids hanging out of windows. . . if you could find room on a vehicle you had a ride.

We stopped at The Banos Zoo that was full of beautiful birds and other tropical animals--ones that you were not likely to see very much of unless captured and held captive in this setting.  They all looked healthy though, just bored!  We stopped at a second bird sanctuary type place that was a little sadder in the presentation of the animals, ate Chinese for dinner and went into a town just outside of Banos so I could email my family that I was okay.  My cell phone did not get service anywhere so I just left it at the house.   

Tuesday we got up early and drove around more taking lots of pictures, eating here and there (lots of time in the car), and then we saw this sign that said "Monkeys" and had to stop.  Okay, really it said "Monos" but same thing!  We turned down a road expecting. . . and closely watching. . . to see monkeys in the trees.  The road was a bit treacherous and most cars could not have made it.  Thank god for our big truck with giant wheels.  We considered turning around but didn't.  It was the coolest "jungle"-looking road though. 

After a mile or so and no monkeys we were getting really disappointed until we realized that there was a place at the end of the road that was where the monkeys were.  We walked down a path and started seeing a monkey or two up in the trees.  We got so excited. . . and then there was one on the path in front of us.  As we walked down the path the guy who ran the place (really just his house in the jungle) greeted us and started telling us about the monkeys.  A few seconds later the monkeys started climbing us and getting really friendly.  It was a lot of fun!  There were 17 monkeys there including an adorable 5 month old baby in diapers.    There was also an older baby who would ride the back of a lab as if it were his mother.  Cute and funny. 

After the monkey excursion, one of our stops was to walk down to this amazing waterfall called Pailon del Diablo or El Diablo.  When I looked up this waterfall online afterwards it turns out that it is reported to be one of the top ten most beautiful waterfalls in the world.  And I cannot disagree!  We walked downhill for about 20 minutes on a well-groomed jungle path to a suspension bridge that connected the two sides of a giant river from a gorgeous waterfall.  The view was amazing.  On the far side of the bridge was a bar that looked over the edge and was the neatest tropical little getaway.  We ordered a few beers and watched the waterfall and then walked back over the bridge to the waterfall side. 

On the waterfall side there was a path to walk up and then down to get as close (and wet) as you could get to the waterfall without swimming in it.  The sound was deafening and the ground continually trembled from the force of the water.  There was a bright green and black stick bug that caught my eye.  The few other folks and Pablo didn’t believe me at first that it wasn’t just a twig. . . until I made it move.  The walk, no, the hike back up to where we started was quite the workout.  It helped we were a bit damp from the waterfall but suddenly the 90 degree weather, steep climb and few beers all took their toll.  Well worth the effort though!

After exploring a few more areas by truck we headed back to Riobamba so that we could have dinner with his three sisters, four nieces/nephews, mother and few other folks.  I'll save Wednesday and heading to the Esmeraldas for good beach times for later!  Oh, one other thing.  Everyone is really nice and friendly there and we were frequently picking up folks, families, bikers, etc. in one area of the jungle and dropping them off a few miles away.  Hitchhiking was very easy for them but not something I would have done myself. 

Okay for those crazy fools who have followed my travels so extensively. . . the adventure continued, or at least part of it, as I decided to go to Ecuador to visit Pablo.  He visited his family in his home town of Riobamba, Ecuador for a month when the long process to get a Visa from the US government to visit here never seemed to go anywhere.  As Americans, we can go anywhere we want for the most part, but if you are from another country it is a really hard and long process. 

After finding out he wouldn’t be able to come to Seattle for at least another six months, he decided to take his annual trip to see his family and I decided to go there instead.   He was going to give up that trip to come see me instead if the Visa thing had worked out.  Turned out that for essentially $300 and some airline miles I could make the 12 day trip.  $300 for a trip to Ecuador?  When was I going to ever go down there?  And the perspective of being there living locally. . . couldn’t pass up the chance.  Plus I wanted to see him again. 

Being the proud gentleman that he is and the fact that he has a few houses down there I knew Iwouldn't have to pay for pretty much anything. . . so how could I not go!!  Don't think terribly of me please!  Just as in Madrid, I TRIED to pay for things all of the time and did whenever I got the chance.  But that wasn’t cool for him and let me fill you in that Ecuador is a third-world country.  That means things are pretty darn cheap down there so that didn't add up to a lot of dough. 

So here's the overview of the trip and then I'll dive into some details!  Flew out of Seattle at 6:10pm on Thursday November 15th and got to Los Angeles just after 9pm.  Killed a few hours and made some calls while waiting for my almost 7 hour flight at 1am from LA to Panama City, Panama where I had a one hour layover before hopping on my final 3 hour flight to Quito Ecuador.  I landed in Quito at 1:40pm and saw Pablo looking down at me with a big smile from the floor above as I made my way to the customs section of the airport. 

I was really relieved because there was this tiny little part of me that was afraid I wouldn't recognize him right away.  Thankfully that wasn’t a problem.  He looked exactly the same and there weren’t as many people as I had imagined there could be.  Whew.  After I finished with the customs agent, I got my luggage and walked out to the area where everyone meets there visitors and there he was standing front and center greeting me with the biggest hug.  It was great to see him.  When we got to his car he opened the trunk and revealed a lovely flower arrangement with roses and a balloon.   

We headed out from Quito, the capital, to Riobamba, where he is from.  The trip takes 2.5 to 4 hours depending on what route you take and traffic.  We hit the traffic part so we stopped along the way for dinner at an Italian restaurant his friend owned and eventually made it to his house a bit after dark.  Dinner was some tasty pizza, not quite the traditional Ecuadorian cuisine but that was fine with me after 20 hours of travel and airplane food. 

Riobamba is one of the bigger cities in Ecuador, but is a far cry from the central hub that Quito is.  As we got to Pablo’s house he parked on the side of the street he pointed to a closed up restaurant with big metal doors and said that's my house up there.  I did look up and see windows but thought it really strange when he opened the door to the restaurant for us to go in.  It was dark inside because it was closed.  The restaurant wasn't very big, like a small cafeteria style diner and to the left when you walked in was a stairway that led to more seating upstairs. 

Under the stairs Pablo moved aside a table and bench seat to reveal a small door that we walked through to go into the adjoining garage.  It was really weird and I asked him if this was breaking and entering because that's what it felt like.  He laughed and said that no it was just the way they went in when the restaurant was closed.  We walked up a set of stairs in the garage and that took us to the floors above the restaurant where his family lived.  It was truly a different living experience for me. 

When you walked in the "house" after the entry way to the right was the living and dining rooms (and presumably a closet of some sort but I didn't really ever check it out) and to the left were the kitchen/laundry combo room we never used, bathroom and then Pablo's room on the left side of the hall and on the other side of the hall his sister, Margi, her daughter Stephi's and Santi had rooms.  Stephi was 4 and Santi 21.  Outside if you went up a few more steps and turned or did a dance or something were the room/apartments to other family members including his sister Susanna, his mom, another sister, her husband and their daugher, Evelyn. 

There might have been more people/family living there but it was a lot to keep track of and I kept meeting people so fast I couldn't quite keep up.  Pablo's room was definitely the biggest (since he owned the whole place, according to him) and had a tv, bed, couch and chairs.  He said his whole family rented from him in his two homes and used his cars and shared the costs for them.  Not his whole family of course, as there were like 64 family members and only he and his cousin in Berlin live outside of Riobamba.  Thank goodness I didn't meet all of them. . . only about 23 or so. 

Saturday morning we slept in a bit which was a good thing since I'd been tired from all of that airport/airplane time.  The time difference was only three hours.  Sounds stupid that sitting and doing nothing is tiring but it is.  For breakfast we went downstairs to the restaurant and I met his mom and sister Susanna with at least a nod and a smile.  Nothing says breakfast and good morning like being greeted by large roasted pig heads out on display.  His mom made us plentiful helpings of roast pig, hominy, potatoes with some type of tasty orangish-creamy-ish sauce and a side of salad with pickled vegetables. 

Then she put out a plate of pig heart, liver and intestines.  I was a trooper and tried all three even though Pablo insisted I didn't have to.  They didn't taste like much and were very chewy and rubbery.  Nothing I feel the need to try again.  My only insistence was that I was not going to eat cuy at all (guinea pig for you English speakers).  I'd had two as pets growing up and did not feel the need to get to know them in any other fashion let alone know what they tasted like.

After breakfast we wandered around the neighborhood, pretty much the center of Riobamba.  They lived in the perfect location there.  We went to the nearby train station and the local market festival that was going on there then to another outside Saturday market where there were lots of local blankets, clothes, dolls and other handicrafts for sale.  I saw the building that he went to school at and other little landmarks around.  Crazy me I didn't take any pictures, camera at the house, because I figured I'd have plenty more opportunities.  That didn't end up happening until the last morning but you'll have to wait to the end to hear about that. 

We walked to a place that was sort of a mall but I would compare it more to Pike Place Market on the lower levels with all kinds of produce and a cheap knock-off booth row of all kinds of clothing and stuff upstairs.  Fake designer shoes, jeans, clothes, watches, jewelry and other stuff I just didn't have a need for.  Interesting to look at though.  After our midday adventure we went back to the house to meet up with Margi, Stephi and Santi for lunch at a nearby restaurant.  I quickly learned that they never seem to eat at home unless it is their own restaurant food which was the same every day.  It was a nice lunch and we had some conversation with a bit of effort but it was fun. 

After lunch we took a cab to see if Pablo's truck was ready for a little road trip since he was having oil changed, new brakes and all of that tune up stuff done to it.  It wasn't ready so we hung out for awhile until Pablo could go back and pick it up at the end of the day and then we made it out to a dinner at around 9:30pm with about ten family and friends. 

I talked to Margi during the dinner about the news footage that was on TV covering a political bombing in Riobamba about 4 years ago.  It was really interesting learning about the political instability and the aftermath of all of the women that went into labor unexpectedly and early during the bombing.  Lots of problems and post-traumatic stress issues for the moms and problems with the babies including learning disabilities.  Stephi happened to be born early during that period but it wasn't directly related to the bombings but made getting medical attention a challenge. 

Dinner was interesting because they brought everything out as it was ready so some of us were waiting quite awhile. . . then after awhile it was just me waiting and waiting and waiting.  Then they finally figured out the waitress didn't put my order in.  Was kind of funny, definitely funny to the rest of them.  I was just glad I wasn't too terribly hungry.  My dinner was churrasco which was thin-cut beef cooked in oil with a fried egg on top, cooked in oil, served with french fries, cooked in oil.  I swear they may have dribbled extra oil on top just to make sure it was all shiny.  Everything there, as in many of the places in Europe, is fried and served with french fries.  After a few days this really did a number on my digestive system!  Unfortunately while it all slid down my throat with greasy ease, it did not continue as smoothly through the rest of the system but no more details for you!!

After dinner we decided to go out and try to take on the town to find a little dancing or nightlife.  We drove around, "cruised the strip" like in the 50's if you will, and honked and got honked at by tons of people that Pablo knew.  Was almost creepy that Pablo seemed to know half of the town.  Almost felt like we were local celebrities.  Everybody knows Pablo's truck (kind of like my little red, striped rocket ship!).  We found a little bar that was playing a good and interesting mix of music, current stuff, not salsa sadly for me, and had some beers and ran into a friend of his and his girlfriend.  We stayed for a few hours, danced a few songs and then called it a night.  There weren't any places that were overly busy even for a Saturday. 

I'll save Sunday's activities for the next segment.  But if you are wondering about the weather it was pretty much partly cloudy and in the low to mid-sixties so it was very nice.  Light coat at night and short sleeves and sunglasses during the day. Riobamba is known as the chilly city because it is much colder than it’s neighboring cities do to the elevation.  We’d be in the upper 80’s and 90’s as soon as we went into the Amazon jungle and the beaches.