We recently had a fiesta, and I never really understood what that means, before I came here.   November 2nd was The Day of the Dead when you visit all your deceased relatives in the graveyard and take floral tributes.  All very well, but that was a Wednesday.  For the rest of th week, banks, schools an government offices were closed while everyone partied.

On the Friday late afternoon there was a big fair up on the hill, here, with many food stalls, selling stalls, everything from dolls to air conditioners, children's rides and competing sound systems blaring out various messages and music in the salsa mode.  There was even a dog show, not to find the best of breed, but a fashion show to see who was the best dressed pooch!



We stuck the noise for a couple of hours and had good, though separate suppers ( mine was a roast pork roll - hot, with salad) and Calvin had goat stew.  Much dancing and pop groups were forecast for later in the evening, and apparently this fair went on the whole weekend.

On the Monday, fondly thinking it was all over, we went into Santa Elena to go to the market.  Fat chance.  We never even managed to cross the road, as there was a procession, withbands, and dancers and floats and marching ( in costume)  Again we watched it for 2 hours and saw no sign that it would end soon (and there were no repeats) Everyone and his grandma's cat was there, from every school, every municipal office, every local political chapter, football supporters' clubs and the bee-keepers, firemen and police.  so you can see, the town just couldn't function that day at all.

Now I understand a little about fiesta as seen from South America.

Ecuadorean houses are nothing like our own. The average plot size is 25m x 10m on which they then put a house which is 18mx8m, so no room for a garden.  two metres of this house will be covered verandah from the supports of which are hammock hooks.  I do not know if there is a law making his obligatory, but I have yet to see a house without them, or the hammock.  I have two myself, one a full size job and the other a hammock chair.

Inside the house, there are no passages.  The living space is open plan with just a counter to divide off the kitchen from the dining and living spaces.  Doors off this area are to bedrooms and bathrooms.  Ecuadorean bathrooms are typically as small as you can ge them, more like those on a ship than anything else.

Our own house is a little different in that it is on a double plot 500sq.m and boasts walk in closets (Ecuadoreans have no built in areas at all)  Also, our ensuite bathroom is good and big and has a jacuzzi with all the bells and whistles, so a gringo house.  We also have a pantry/laundry area in the kitchen.

Now that we have a house, we get callers at the gate.  At the weekend there is the fish and shrimp man, with buckets of really fresh stuff.  We bought a Dorado the other day, had it filleted on clean newspaper in the street, and it fed 5 of us.  With it we had our own limes from the garden.

One day during the week, there is a vegetable man, whom it is useful to use, since you can buy quantities you could hardly carry home.   Today we bought 15 mandarins or $1 and two pineapples for another one.  If you go to the supermarket, they have the really big pineapples, larger than my head, which we really don,t need.

The garbage men drive past every day but Sunday, playing their tune, and we hang a plastic shopping bag of rubbish on a convenient branch of a tree just outside the gate, and it is swept off into the truck, so they hardly even slow down.

The eletricity bill and Internet/phone/TV accounts are shoved into the gate every month, and the other day I had a man selling honey in 500mil bottles for $5.

However, the Jehovah's Witnesses have also found us!

As soon as you get your feet under the table, you discover the depth of your ignorance.  If you are just a visitor, nobody bothers to enlighten you.  It is not worth the trouble but once they realise you are a fixture, you had better learn what is what.  So I have found that there are no bananas in Ecuador!

Those lovely long golden curves which adorn our supermarket shelf, are called guineos.  Their foot long green cousins are plantains and are vegetables not fruit.

This other day I found long golden ones and was told that they were ripe. I could see that but apparently that's their name and they are ripe plantains. - maduros.

The upshot was that I have discovered that I do not like plantains, boiled or baked, but Maduros are delicious fried.  The Ecuadorians like them with fried eggs, but I had them as a relish with stew and rice.

And my adventures with vegetables is far from over.  I wanted leeks the other day and looked them up in the dictionary to be told they were long onions.  However, when I asked for them in the market, I was told that that is what Colombians call them - here in Ecuador they are white onions.  I pointed to a heap of beautifully peeled onions and asked what, therefore, they are called.  Oh, they are just onions, and the purple ones are pink onions.   Spring onions are green onions, and I have yet to find shallots.  Goodness what they will be called.

I have told you about our musical garbage men, but did not realise they were on You Tube!  If you Google Puerto Limpio, you can wach and hear the garbage truck for Guayaquil.  It is not the same tune as is used here, but you can get the idea.   By contrast our local ice cream seller only has a bicycle, so is not capable of broadcasting.  Instead he has one of those old fashioned car hooters with a bulb you squeeze.  He only has 2 flavours, orange and coconut and either a cone or a tub is 50c.

We went house hunting the other day, but found nothing to suit us.  http://mls-ecuador.com/en/search/rs1600198  which you can view here, was too old and the bedroom windows were a mere metre from the street.  However, it had one Ecuadorian feature, an enormous underground cistern 1m squre and 3m deep, in the front yard.   Apparently, before piped water, the tanker truck would come and fill it for you.  Nowadays it gets automatically filled from the system.  However, if the water is turned off for any reason, you have about 3-4 days supply on hand.

http://mls-ecuador.com/en/search/rs1600270 is completely new but boasts a vertical back garden space I would not want to tackle.  As in all Ecuadorian houses, there are no built in cupboards, just an alcove with a hanging rail.

http;//mls-ecuador.com/en/search/rs1600057 has a nice yard with plunge pool and outside shower - something always found with a pool here, but not in RSA!  It was built and lived in by a Chilean family and all the internal doors are those flimsy concertina kind.   Apparently Chile gets a lot of earthquakes, and no-one wants to be trapped in a bedroom with burglar bars on the windows and a warped doorframe.  After the recent quake in Ecuador, they are beginning to look like a good idea.

Spanish has changed.  Well, all languages do, but you never notice it with your own, because it is daily and small, incremental steps.  But when you have not used a language for 50 years and then come back to it, you realise, you learned it another world where there were no SIM cards, ATMs or computers,; where nothing needed recharging, recycling or rebooting and semi-skimmed milk and probiotic yoghurt were unheard of

So it is a minefield and you cannot begin to guess what some of these words might be.  In French, and ATM is an electronic window but in Spanish, it is a small automatic box.  Go figure------ but of course you cannot.  I asked for plain yoghurt without sugar the other day, and got it sweetened with artificial sweetener instead.  Back to the dictionary to learn that what I really want to say is no endulceado - not sweetened at all.

However, I am learning and have so much actual success that Calvin now wants me to buy a crown top bottle opener, which is a bit of a facer if it is not on display.   I foresee mime and "for beer" in my future!

Another aspect of bureaucracy here - or rather the lack of it.   When I was here in November, I had a small infection and had it successfully treated (in English) by a doctor in Quito.  It has suddenly recurred, and I was not looking forward to telling a doctor here in Spanish, since there is very little English spoken here in the south, all my problems with antibiotics.

I consulted my American landlady about finding a doctor and the conversation went like this
"Do you have the original scrip"
"Yes"
"Then you take it to the nearest pharmacy and get it refilled"
"As simple as that?"
"Oh yes, you can use it until it falls apart"
So it proved. No questions, and I still have the original scrip.   Its a failure in the system, certainly, but saves a lot of hassles and expense also.

I received one of those letters where I had to prove I was still alive.  It needed countersigning by someone official, and as I know no-one yet, I went to the police station and spoke to a constable, who called a corporal, who called a sergeant, who called the senior sergeant.  They all deliberated over the document,which none of them could read (it being in English) and asked for a translation of every word.  - and what I was getting a pension for, and from whom and what I had done in my working life.  All this strained my Spanish to the limit, but eventually, the senor man wrote his name, grade, etc. signed it and affixed the police dept stamp, which was what I really wanted.  Smiles all round and they took my cell phone number for their records.  So when the earthquake hit, I got three reassuring messages from them by SMS No 1.  Keep Calm.  No.2 There will be no Tsunami and No.3 Try not to travel in case of aftershocks.

Of course, that hurdle surmounted , I then had to beard the Post Office to get it sent by some secure method.  I was sent to the Civic Centre, a long low white building (but then most buildings are white) rather like a shopping mall.  All airconditioned and with a wide walkway containing benches, while each department lives behind a glass wall, so you can see what they are up to.   Here I found public health, child welfare, electricity account, telecom, transportation and refuse collection, and my destination - the Post Office whose office contained chairs for you to sit on while you wait.  I only saw the ground floor so goodness knows what lurks upstairs

The lady who helped me spoke some English so we established the urgency, the security and my fears.  She said it could be tracked all the way, but the system was down.  She took the letter and said she would email me in the morning with the tracking number, which she duly did.  I am beginning to gain some faith in the infrastructure here! (although all Americans remind me this is a 3rd world country.  They just dont know what that really means)

Learning to use the buses.  We have five busroutes which pass the end of the street - about 100m away and we have only learned to use No7 which goes to the Municipal Market which is much like markets everywhere, a large warehouse building with the stalls inside along the walls being fruit and veg, dry goods and miscellaneous items such as shampoo, dogfood and plastic household goods,

The central space is occupied by marble slabs where seafood, fish, poultry, pork, beef and other meats are sold.  Each aisle is one kind of product and perhaps the "other" aisle is the most interesting, consisting, as it does, of offal, some recognisable, some not, goat meat, home made cheeses, strings of sausages and other bits I can only guess at until my Spanish improves.

There are apparently bus stops, but you actually just flag one down where you are and get off by moving to the front near the place you want to alight.  The fare is the same, whatever - 15c.

Like all buses, and these are luxury coaches with A/C, they have airbrakes, but none makes the gusty sigh I am used to.  Some growl like lions, others like angry canines.  Some cough like leopards, and yet others squeal  like pigs on the way to slaughter.  Coming up behind you, when you have not heard them, this can be quite frightening, especially after dark.

Today is dustbin day and has a certain novelty here.  As there are no wheelie bins in this area, rubbish is put into large black bags.  But if you leave them overnight, the local dogs, not to speak of the vultures which decorate the overhead wires, will get them, so when the dustbin truck enters your street, he plays music, just like an icecream van, and you can take out the bags for him.

First order of business ....get a local chip in my cellphone.  Very easy as it happens and I like the way you load airtime.  They have ATM type machines where you key in your number and then the amount you want to load.  Put in the money and the cellphone in your pocket goes ping, and it's done.

Next thing...accommodation. We are in the cottage in someone's garden, with the use of the pool.  Only a block and a half from the hypemarket, in an area called Ballenitas, which means small whales.  Once we are unpacked, I shall tell you more

On the first evening we went  to a barbecue restaurant and ate brochettes of steak, green pepper, onion and sausage.  Calvin celerated by ordering a black beer.  When I read the label on the bottle, some of the darkness apparently came from the fact that it was flavoured with chocolate!

The following night we wet to a fish restaurant and I had a whole sea bass ( a small one) and Calvin a fish and shrimp casserole in a pimiento sauce, and we drank the most delicious juices.  Mine was lime, not too much sugar and his was coconut - each one a half litre or joy.

I walked one kilometre yesterday along the seafront and hope to do better today so you can see my health is improving.  

Adventures wouldn't be adventures if they went as smoothly as business trips (though they are not always smooth).  So it was with this trip.  We arrived safely in Guayaquil but two pieces of Calvin's luggage wound up in Panama.  One followed promptly on the next flight ( 6 hours later) but the other took a further 24 hours, so we had to stay in Guayaquil an extra day.  This was no bad thing since 33 hours flying and a seven hour time change meant that we slept for about 13 hours!   Still, not entirely caught up, but have developed a system

You only allow your body food at the times appropriate for where you are, and the other patterns fall into line quicker.  Anyway, finally made it to Salinas, and after a good night's sleep, are ready to tackle the problems of the day - and all the days to come.