The weather was changeable but overall warm and sunny, so we made our way to La Carolina park, where families were hanging out and individuals were making use of the race track - both running and cycling - and outdoor gym equipment. While these health-conscious people engaged in their various fitness regimes, sellers of ice cream forlornly rang their bells nearby - this was not their audience.
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| No custom today |
We stationed ourselves under a tree to people-watch and continued the day's gourmandise with some further pastries from the local pastelería.
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| Strawberry tart |
Despite observing the park's visitors, it turned out that we were being observed as much ourselves. A trio of small children, nervous at first, eventually gained courage to approach and talk to us - but left baffled by the strange white people that couldn't speak Spanish, didn't wear shoes, and drank water from a bottle.
Other interactions came by way of two sets of medical students from the local Libertad institute, who wanted to interview us. Fortunately, the exchange was for their English class, so at least the responses we gave that were immortalised on film were in a language we understand.
In the early evening, we had tickets for a performance by the Paul Taylor dance company at the national Teatro Sucre.
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| Teatro Sucre |
The dance pieces were three works by the north american choreographer, each of which was more ambitious than the last, and required extreme precision, unflagging energy, and a keen sense of cooperation from the dancers. Including an interpreted tango piece, it was quite some of the best dance I have seen.
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| Dance at the Theatre |
For post-theatre dining, we returned to La Cuchara de San Marcos, which was largely empty, owing to its secluded location. However, this meant we had chance to chat to the owner, who is also from the USA. The restaurant is serves very little meat or fish as his mother-in-law is a rare breed of Ecuadorian vegetarian. While his family is therefore in charge of the cooking, serving up vegetarian versions of Ecuadorian meals, he is, in his own words, "in charge of vice", namely brewing the powerfully hopped house beer, and procuring artisanal gin and other spirits for his customers.
We tucked right in to a picada vegetariana - a platter of vegan chorizo, sautéed potatoes, peppers, and cheese, with soyannaise and red pepper salsa.
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| Picada vegetariana |
While K selected the tempting spinach and mushroom fettuccine as her plato fuerte, I continued the Ecuadorian theme with a plato andino - a typical blend of chorizo (prepared two ways, fried and in a dark sauce), fried banana (patacón), mote corn, and fried potato cakes with cheese (llapingachos).
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| Plato andino |
We finished on the fig cheesecake* "Quiteño style". This revealed itself to be more of a warm fig lattice pie, which far surpassed my expectations (even as a lover of traditional cheesecake) and was a perfect accompaniment to the theatre of the Japanese coffee siphon.
* Across South America, cheesecake has been consistently misspelled as "chessecake". What I at first took to be slip of the pen, turned out to be the agreed form of the word on this continent. However, the pedant in me was glad to see the correct spelling on La Cuchara's menu (probably the influence of the North American owner)
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| Fig 'cheesecake' |
Walking home, we were ushered into the open courtyard of Catarnica by a man promising a band playing salsa music. The band, Wanchaka Blue, which was just about to start, fired up the small but almost entirely Ecuadorian crowd with a funky blend of salsa, jazz, and what they call here 'cumbia'. We and the rest of the people danced until late.
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| Wanchaka Blue |
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