Quilotoa

Saturday found Albert and I arising at 6 am to head with Luis and Rosita (INIAP employees) and her daughter Gabby to a lagoon-filled crater south and a bit west of Quito. The journey was long (we spent about 10 hours in the car yesterday) - the road was filled with lots of construction obstacles and a variety of parades celebrating San Pedro's Day, but as they say in Spanish vale la pena. 

The path down to the lagoon took about 30 minutes and was rather sandy and steep; the hike back up took around an hour. There was an option of riding a horse down and back: judging by some of those I passed going down, they were banking on the horse option back up.

The crater was filled with water after an eruption some 800 years ago; the water's blue color is caused by dissolved minerals and is pretty salty. Rosita, Gabby, and I decided to bite on the boat ride they were offering, $2 for half an hour. What I didn't know until after we'd gotten into the boat was that

 a. we had to paddle it ourselves with the guide
 b. Rosita and Gabby had not the faintest idea about paddling a boat
 c. They had no idea how to swim either

Needless to say, we didn't get very far. It was still cool to see the crater from the lagoon though.

A couple of snapshots from the various parades we managed to run into:

Along the trip, we stopped in Salceda, also known as the ice cream town. We drove up to the curb, the lady came out and got our orders, and we were on our way with the most delicious ice cream on a stick I've ever had. If anyone can tell me where coconut ice cream is available in the US, please email me asap, or else I'm going to have serious withdrawals upon my return home.

We stopped at a typical restaurant in Ambato; I had sopa de gallina (essentially chicken soup with a large piece of chicken with potatoes) and an avocado the size of a small child's head- each quarter was the size of a normal avocado. Needless to say, assistance was appreciated in its consumption.

The day was capped off by a cultural enlightenment in the form of our group attendance to what, in Robert's words, was hill-billy of the year awards. It was in the Guarandian suburb (think not of cookie cutter houses and stripmalls, but of colorful concrete block houses and a town square of it's own) of Guanujo, at the town theatre. We arrived late, but just in time to see three girls of about  15 parade out on stage to show off their version of the ballgown entry in American pageants: most indigenous dress. Each performed a little scene of a traditional farm activity and a little dance; the later winner demonstrated proper milking technique complete with fake moving cow.  Before the crowning of Miss Guanujo, there were various performances of traditional dance and the awarding of El Chagra, a man lauded to demonstrate loyalty to land and tradition. This awarding process took somewhere close to an hour, consisting of him donning various ceremonial pieces of dress, a biography read aloud by his adoring wife, and a 30 minute acceptance speech naming endless friends and family members (some of whom he couldn't seem to actually remember their names...) The  audience tolerated this show only by consumption  of pajaro azul, the local liquor. After ten hours of car riding, my final summation of the evening was, "interesting cultural experience, preferably not repeated."

Sunday was gloomy; we rode up to Salinas, a small town 20 km away with cooperatives for making cheese and chocolate. The factories were closed, but we cleaned out the chocolate shop anyway. We have two more days of interviews in the Alumbre, and then we'll be consolidating data and writing our reports and presentations for the rest of the week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for my camera; yesterday I slid down the path with my camera in my hand, and it didn't particularly enjoy the journey down. It came back to life a little while later, let's just hope it makes it another two weeks....