For mealtimes at restaurants, there are essentially two options: set menu or a la carte dishes.  The set menus, almuerzo at lunch and cena at dinner, are very cheap and are usually offered more at local hole-in-the-wall restaurants as opposed to tourist ones.  In our experience, prices ranged from $1 to $3 for these meals, which include soup, a entree and sometimes a dessert or drink.  You never know what is going to show up with your set menu, usually rice, potatoes  and chicken or grilled beef, but it can also include intestines, stomach lining and even chicken head!

A la carte dishes are always more expensive and are similar to ordering off of a menu other places in the world.  In most instances, the dishes are very similar to the set menus, but you are straying from the big pot that the owner has prepared in the back for everyone else.  A few specialties that we tried that are particularly different than what we have in the US are cuy and ceviche.  Cuy is roasted guinea pig and is a delicacy in Ecuador.  They are cooked in a similar way as rotisserie chickens and are typically served whole (head, claws, everything)  for at least 4 to 6 people to enjoy.  It looks a bit gnarly and it does not make a filling meal, but the meat is quite tender and tastes like less fatty duck.

Ceviche is probably a known entity, but Ecuadorian ceviche is not like that served in the US.  It is served all over the country and consists of a soupy concoction of seafood: squid, octopus, fish, shrimp or mixed.  It is high in salt and lime juice and is very tasty.  It is rumored that it is typically served raw on the coast, but all we saw seemed to be cooked.

For the most part, the drinks in Ecuador seem to be pretty similar to what we see other places.  There is lots of coca cola (sorry Mom, no Pepsi!) and some strange Fanta flavors like apple and neon green.  Many juices are served in restaurants, especially with set menus, but many of these were unknown to us and will probably stay that way.  A popular drink served everywhere is morocho, which is a sweet, white, grain-based drink.  Many spices are used and it is quite delicious most of the time.  Our favorite drink while we were there was colada morada.  This is a drink served only around the time of All Saint´s Day (in November) and consists of blackberry juice warmed and infused with spices like cinnamon and cloves.  It is similar to our apple cider and is quite delicious.

Our favorite part of Ecuadorian cuisine is the snacks.  There are always street vendors selling something and much of it is very, very good.  A common snack is the empenada.  This is much different than an empenada further south in South America.  An Ecuadorian empenada is a pillow of fluffy, deep fried dough that is usually filled with cheese. Another snack we saw often was the platano con queso.  Very simply, this is a grilled sweet banana that is sliced down the middle and topped with a small wedge of Ecuadorian cheese.

Fruit is abundant in Ecuador and much of it is also very tasty.  A very popular snack in Otavalo is the guava.  Different from guava in the US, guava in Ecuador is a mutant pea pod looking fruit.  Upon opening the pea pod, little white fruits greet you, which are very sweet and contain a large black seed in the middle.  Besides guava, street vendors are seen all around Ecuador selling a variety of fruits including mangoes and strawberries…out of wheelbarrows!!

With so much time and so much food in Ecuador, it is hard to summarize it all.  Upon looking back, we are glad to have tried the good and the bad and seen all the different ways things can be prepared and presented.  While we will miss the food of Ecuador, we are certainly glad to be through with chicken and rice almuerzos for the time being!

The perk of joining Simon Bolivar Spanish School is that it offers free cultural courses every evening to students.  One can learn how to dance the salsa or merengue, cook Ecuadorian cuisine, or mix cocktails.  Deenaree and Ben take an evening to learn how to salsa and spend the next few days nursing their sore legs.  Apparently, salsa is also an exercise routine.

In addition to evening courses, Simon Bolivar also schedules ¨field trips¨or outings that students are welcome to.  One such outing involves going to the top of a hill overlooking town and visiting the ceramic studio of a well-known Cuencan artist, Eduardo Vega.  Although from Cuenca, he is recognized all around the world for his ceramic murals.  We were pretty captivated by all the detailed pottery in his studio and wished we could take some home.

A second school outing involves  eating cuy or guinea pig at a local restaurant in town.  Ben is game for this, but Deenaree relents only when she finds out that the restaurant will be serving other food.  When push comes to shove, however, Deenaree does give in to trying cuy and finds that it´s not as bad as it looks.

The Spanish courses themselves are very good.  We are pleased to find that our teacher, Fausto, is the director of the school.  He exercises an incredible amount of patience as we struggle through verb conjugations and sentence structures.  We spend a week’s worth of afternoons plugging away at ser, gustar, tener, estar, and irregular verbs.  Not only do we learn vocabulary and structures, but also we learn about Ecuador.

For one such class, we are reading a cultural note in Spanish about curanderos or “shamans” and discussing herbal medicine.  Fausto asks us if we know about the curanderos that come to Cuenca on Fridays.  We tell him, “No”, and he suggests that we go.  ”Ok,” we say, assuming that he means after class.  But he says, “Ahora (now)”.  We are confused, but we follow him anyway.

Several blocks away from the school, tucked behind a market, we see a dozen older indigenous women meeting with their “patients”.  Fausto explains that these curanderos come to Cuenca every Friday to heal the sick members of the community for only two dollars.  Many of the patients are children and it is believed that the curanderos can heal them of their childhood ills, night terrors, etc.  In fact, when Fausto was young, his  parents took him to these shamans, too.

As part of a process unknown to us, the children are swatted with bouquets of aromatic herbs.  Then, an egg is rubbed all around their bodies to “pick up the bad spirits”.  The egg is cracked into a plastic bag and “read”.  The amount of problem the recipient had is determined by how unclear the egg white is in the bag.  As a final gesture, the herbalists take a swig from a plastic bottle and spit the liquid a few times on their patients.  The reactions of the little ones are mixed.  Some cry and squirm while others smile and giggle.  Deenaree’s reaction is of shock at the spitting, but fascination at the readings.

We observe this healing ritual being performed a few times more before heading back to the school.   It has been an educational afternoon and we are aware that this experience, along with all of the other ones, has made our choice to attend Simon Bolivar a very worthwhile one.