Carumba! Some random things…

Last summer in Peru I saw these animals kept as domestic pets, and eaten. Cui, (COO-EE) or guinea pig, is also eaten in Ecuador. I have not tried it, although I thought I would.

However, after seeing these guys being roasted, I am having second thoughts!

Here’s a flower that is blooming all over Quito right now. It looks like a type of hibiscus, but I haven’t ever seen hibiscus plants that are full -sized trees like these!



We have entered ¨Winter¨. There are two seasons in this high altitude, equitorial city of Quito: winter and summer. ¨Winter¨ apparently lasts until somewhere between March-May and is characterized by increased rains and cooler-colder weather.

From my neighborhood, three volcanos are visible, depending on the air quality and weather on a given day. Here is COtopaxi, the most famous of the three.




Provinces are named after their volcanos or mountains. I live in Pinchincha, because the primary volcano is the Pinchincha.
This is a phot taken of Quito from part-way-up the Pinchincha volcano. The was only snow on the mountain... my understanding is that it never snows in the city below. The Andes are the longest mountain chain in the world... aren´t they beautiful!?

Here is a pic of one of my favorite fruits here. It is mostly fun because it has a brittle, hard “shell” and you open it by cracking it.

The inside is full of greenish jelly filled membranes which each contain a seed (Definitely not for those of you have problems with weird textures! And I know there are several of you out there!). The seeds are kind of crunchy and the jellylike parts are sweet, (but not overly so).

So… pretty much it is an alien-fruit! (at least to me!).

Here’s an animal that was being maintained as a pet by the “Colorados” in Santo Domingo de los Colorados. It was trying to fight with a cat, a dog and its owner family! It actually bit a little boy on the ankle! I thought it looked like a cross between a mongoose and a ferret.

It is a …..? probably some type of amazon ferret? If someone knows please tell me!

There is a large public park a close walk from my apartment, “Parque Carolina”, which I was pretty excited about. It has three “zones”: the sports zone, the arobic zone, and the aquatic zone. The sports zone has playing fields and courts of all types: tennis, soccer, volleyball, basketball… a short moter-cross bike circuit along with bikes to rent, horses to rent, a skate/bike park. The arobic zone has a whole maze of exercise stations and the aquatic section has a small lake with paddle boats. You can rent a horse, a motorcross bike, or a boat in this park...

The whole park is surrounded by bike trails and walking trails with marked distances. I was happy to find so many runners at Parque Carolina my first weekend here--- I hope to have amazing lung capacity, after running regularly (still working on this part) at 9 thousand+ feet, when I return to the States!

My new favorite park, however, is the ¨Parque Metropolitano.¨ It is on a mini-mountain (so higher than 9 thousand feet) in the middle of the city! I believe I read somewhere that it is larger than Central Park in NYC!! and it does seem to be! I went running there last weekend... and my run turned into a very long exhausting hike... because I was having such a good time exploring the park! Pics to come, the views from the park are awesome (I didn´t bring my camera on my ¨run¨).