Carnaval (February 2008)

Hola,
Got a little behind the ball on the email updates…….i guess being too engaged to hang out on the computer is a good thing!!!!!!!!!!!

So i left los cedros after three weeks……

The mule ride down was much shorter, clocking in at only 3 hours!!!!!

Leaving the primary forest, the first signs of humans were the hillsides cleared for pastures, and the gates on the trail, lashed together with the aerial roots of epiphytic philodendrons or clusias.

Arriving in chontal (the nearest pueblito to the reserve) I got my first taste of carnaval!!!!

The basic idea is to get people wet and dirty…….

This is accomplished with water balloons, washtubs, flour, spray foam and assorted other projectiles…….
No one is exempt….little kids and the elderly alike, subject to random attack!!!

On the way back to quito, some passengers on the bus made the mistake of leaving the windows open……..resulting in a very wet ride………..

Decided to take an extended carnival vacation…….
Headed out of town with my friend Rocio

Spent a couple of days with her sister in the high town city of Guaranda, watching parades and dancing…….

The bus ride out there was a bit of a cultural adventure……..we managed to track down the bus from ambato just as it was leaving…….
It was already totally jammed packed, but down here there seems to be no such thing as “no more room”……..so we literally squeezed aboard….with the door barely closing behind us……
Jammed in the corner, balancing on the bottom step, I ask Rocio “is it is far”…..

“2 hours”

It soon becomes apparent that the majority of the passengers on this high mountain route were kichwas…..being used to usually not totally knowing what is going on, it took me a while to realize that it was not spanish that I was hearing as I somehow became the laughing stock of the bus……rocio was little help in interpreting….so I just laughed along…..

After a couple of days rocio and I piled into the back of a truck with her mom and a bunch of campesinos who were on their way to vend a the carnaval festivities in the pueblo where rocios mom lives…….
Between the people, pots, pans, stoves, boxes of food, live chickens, and i´m not sure what else….i could only fit one of my legs in the truck…and rode the full 2 hours half hanging off the bumper……………this did not however prevent us from stopping to pick up more people (and chickens)….like I said… there is no such thing as “no more room”

Arriving in Echeandia which is the lower elevations of the broad coastal plane, was a welcome retreat……..tropical feeling really……

I used the opportunity to gorge myself on fruit of every description……….

The usual fare of mangos, cocos, papayas, and pinas, with a few new (for me) additions:
Sapotes, which are in the bombacaceae (Ceiba family) not the sapotaceae as their common name might suggest…..damn common names!
Babacos which are a close papaya relative, the same genus actually….Carica
My first time eating tuna, the fruit of the prickly pear (opuntia spp), surprised myself that I had never tried something so juicy and delicious…..even better though are the bigger, juicier relatives, the pitahoyas…..still trying to figure out the latin……

A couple of prunus´ that were new to me, fun to meet new genus mates of plums, cherries, peaches, nectarines, almonds and apricots!!!!!!! Capuli, (P.seroina ssp. capuli), a small cherry like fruit, and Claudia, a variety of P. domestica, the species that includes our common plums……….

Nothing like having local friends to guide one´s culinary experience…….
Ate all kinds of stuff that i would not have known how to order in a restaurant…..much of it centered on various versions of steamed corn meal or masa ……..
I still am not totally sure what separates a chuigule from a tamales, or a humido, or a bola, except that the leaves that they are cooked in are very important….corn leaves, banana leaves, canna leaves, no leaves……..

Just about ever part of a pig or chancho that I probably did not want to know what it was exactly……

Helped kill a chicken in the kitchen sink

Lots of yucca, Manihot esculentus, I think the only euphorbiaceae I have ever eaten…..or that is edible for that matter……a family characterized by toxic latex with members like castor bean (ricinis communis) that contains ricin a protein that interferes with the production of dna and the metabolism of proteins in cells……….

And plantains……!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So common in the diet that they are not even called platanos…..but refered to by their state of maturity…..
“Verdes”, “greens,” means unripe plantains…….
“whats in the soup?”
“………. pollo, verdes……”
Same thing with the ripe version, refered to simply as “maduras,” --- “matures.”
As in “postre de madura” cake made with ripe plantains……

Ran into some wild edibles.......culantro del monte.....an edible Erygium, what we know as coyote thistle in the west eugene wetlands.......this one E. foetidum......weedy in the ditches....not a thistle at all, but a member of the cilantro family (Apiaceae), a case where the spanish common name is more accurate than the english....damn common names!

Being put a the awkard social setting of not wanting to not drink the water……I started drinking it……….aahhh the freedom from consuming plastic bottles!!!!!!
So far so good…….

On the way back to quito, passing through endless plantations of bananas, oil palms “palmas africana,” (Elaeis guineensis), and papayas, all bound for somewhere else is a good reminder, after a month of gazing into orchid flowers, that all is not right in the world…….

As an aside….i finished reading one river….great book!!!!
On the Huarani hunting ethic, davis notes…..
“you don´t have to conserve what you don´t have the power to destroy. Harming the forest is an impossible concept for them. The fact that they use every part of the animal has nothing to do with a conservation ethic and everything to do with hunger.”

Some years later, during his own travels, davis discovers that “…..the world that had inspired shultes….no longer exists….”

Harder to find inspiration in the sprawl of monoculture

Started a new book……oaxaca journal by oliver sacks…..a contemporary travelogue rich in natural history…..one thing I learned the other night is that chocolate, according to Mexican legend was a gift of the sun gods……reflected in the generic name Theobroma……..

Lots of chocolate in the low lands…..with beans spread out to dry in every available flat sunny spot, even if it is a median strip in the middle of the road or a high way shoulder……

Ok starting to ramble…….
Back in quito, been working at the herbarium --- trying to get this field guide together

Back out to mindo tomorrow
More soon

Paz
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