La Floresta and Guápalo

This morning we took a self-guided walk through La Floresta area of town, adjacent to La Mariscal, along the Isabela la Católica street, which seemed largely to offer international cuisine at inflated prices.

We stumbled on the Hansel y Gretel café, which, akin to the witch's house in the eponymous tale, was replete with many tempting sweet things. However, we were drawn by the offer of the traditional Ecuadorian breakfast food, tigrillo.

Tigrillo

No, not the tiny leopard creature of the same name, but a mix of green plaintain (simply called verde), fresh cheese (queso fresco), eggs, onion and garlic. The hearty breakfast dish was served with bread (crusty!), cappuccino (good!), fresh fruit, and orange juice (freshly squeezed!). It was near to breakfast perfection as there is. The only fly in the ointment was a tiny portion of crispy bacon on the side of the plate, even after enquiring whether the constituents of the tigrillo were suitable for vegetarians. We shrugged and ignored it, chalking it up to another cultural misunderstanding.

Tigrillo

Having fuelled ourselves on a typically large Ecuadorian breakfast, we strode up the hill to Hotel Quito, which looks out over the area known as Guápulo.

Guápulo and church

Guápulo is Quechua for 'big potato', as a plaque at the lookout point informed us, but the sign did not venture an explanation for this strange monicker. We looked down on to the roof of Guápulo's church and monastery, to which we took the steep and winding path. A statue of 'Amazon discoverer' Francisco de Orellana stands in front of the church.

Francisco de Orellana

A farther trek down into the valley led us to Guápulo park, but there was only time to rest our feet for a few minutes before we had to make the return journey to La Mariscal to meet some friends.

Guápulo park

The friends were a couple we first met in San Pedro, Chile, and who have made similar progress along the Gringo trail. We saw them again in Cochabamba, just missed them in Cusco, and finally met them one last time today at Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant aptly named Formosa.

Taiwanese lunch

Having become used to South American spicy food being very far from picante, it was a shock when the provided condiments actually delivered a certain warmth to our buffet fare. After lunch all four of us took a walk through El Ejido park and caught up on respective travel stories. This and, naturally, a break for coffee and cake, filled time until a "noche de tango" advertised to take place in Plaza Borja Yerovi.

We stationed ourselves in the square and waited the requisite one hour for anything to happen in South America. In the meantime, the policemen detailed to oversee the event zoomed about the area on their government-issued Segways, for all appearances about to grace us with a very modern take on tango. To be honest, this would have been a far sight more interesting than the display to which we were eventually subjected. Having anticipated an expert showcase of dance, the long-awaited demonstration turned out to be an opportunity for the local tango club to practice al fresco.

Long-awaited tango

We left fairly quickly and bade farewell to our friends, who will be returning home in a couple of weeks.