The Grand Adventure, Part I

It was indeed a Grand Adventure and as I sit here nursing the end of my cold and enjoying my tiny vodka-peach drink, it seems a good time to start putting it down on paper.  

EATING OUR WAY TO THE COAST

Saturday:  We met up in Miami International Airport, 9 of us in all, bound for Ecuador: two sons, two daughters-in-law, two granddaughters, a nephew and his wife and me, the proverbial partridge in our little family tree. For this many people - and to give us the chance to enjoy everything together - I had hired a van and driver for the week. I was ready to burst through the doors of the Mariscal Sucre Airport into the thin, mountain air of Quito and find our driver (holding one of those little signs one holds when the picker-upper doesn't know the pick-upee.) I was excited.

I was still excited but a little less enthusiastic when we all cleared customs and no one was holding a sign with my name. 

Granted, we were significantly late. Visibility had been poor and our plane had to abort an attempt to land before circling around and coming at the runway from the north. But still. I was expecting a driver holding up a little sign, and not one of those signs being held up were for me. 

While my group tried to avoid the hovering ambush of gum and candy vendors, I ran around trying to find our van and driver. To the amusement of those holding signs, I went back and re-read theirs, just in case. A couple of phone calls and a number of friendly (and at least one possibly illegal) suggestions later, our driver, Byron, pulled up. To my happy surprise, the company had upgraded us free of charge to a 16-passenger touring bus. The lack of a little sign was instantly forgiven.

Byron had a genius for smiling in the face of absurdity, a trait that would stand him well over the next few days. To being with, I am not an address person. He followed my rambling description of "a block north of Rumipamba... top of the hill, south of Mañosca..." with good cheer and in record time the bus pulled up at the front door to our hostel. We unloaded our belongings and agreed that Byron would pick us at 10:00 a.m. the next day.

Sunday: The bus arrived at 9:45. Full of bakery-fresh bread, naranjilla juice and other breakfast goodies, we actually began boarding around 10:15. By 10:30 we were on our way to our first stop: the store, to get water bottles, toilet paper and a few snacks for the road.  I saw some granadillas and added them to the cart. A few chirimoyas looked decent: I chose three. What was meant to be a brief stop became a shopping trip and I checked out with two large cloth bags full of goodies for the road.

We stopped in Aloag, still in the highlands, for allullas and queso de hoja (hard biscuits and fresh string cheese).

After a couple of hours of breathtaking views down the twisting mountain roads, we reached Tandapi and bought some fritada, maduros and mote (fried pork, ripe plantains and hominy.)

In Alluriquín we bought hand-pulled taffy.

I opened the bus window and took in deep, comforting breaths of air. When I was a kid in boarding school heading home for the weekend, that peculiar smell of lowland forest, mountain rivers and taffy always told me I was almost there.

We considered stopping for lunch in Santo Domingo, where I grew up, but decided to just keep snacking.  Visits to friends would have to wait. We needed to get to the beach before nightfall. 

Several kilometers later, we stopped for gas and a street vendor tempted us with mango slices.  Travis saw the gas prices and began plotting how to sneak some home in his suitcase.

The terrain began shifting to hills with occasional flat land.  Plantations of pineapples, African palms, cacao and bananas lined both sides of the road.  Somewhere along the way, I took out the granadillas - I have no idea what they're called in English.  The 10-year-old liked that the insides look like fish eyes.

Close to the coastal mountain range, we stopped for yuca bread and oritos (tiny yellow bananas).

Finally, just around dusk, we reached Same (south of Atacames).  After settling into our cabins, we gathered to decide on our next course of action.  The answer was unanimous: supper.

The front desk clerk recommended Seaflower, a local restaurant just inside the tiny hamlet of Same next door. Seaflower... with the name in English, I thought "tourist fare", but we were hungry after a day of snacking, so off to Seaflower we went.

The bus turned down a narrow street and stopped in front of a quiet building with bamboo walls. Hundreds of bottles swung from the ceiling in a never-ending chime. 

A couple sat chatting at a small table; the only other people there besides the owner and his right-hand man.  It looked like no one had been there all day (as I found out later, there hadn't.)  But the man who came to greet us promised that we had, indeed, found Seaflower, so inside we went.

Instantly, the kitchen sprang to life.  The couple sitting at the small table got up; the wife came to take our drink orders, while the husband went over to the bar.  Her accent in English set her apart -  something I should recognize and just couldn't. So while others were asking for piñas coladas and margaritas and beer, I was asking our impromptu waitress about herself. 

She told us she was French-Canadian (ah-hah! the accent!), her husband was French, and they were staying at the beach for several weeks. They had become friends with the owner and liked to help out from time to time.  By profession, they were translators. 

Everyone at our table pointed a finger at me and chorused, "So is she!"

In between the parade of dishes (lobster in coconut sauce, grilled prawns in butter and wine, whole pan-seared fish, conch cocktail, calamari, mussels, plates of patacones, paella, drinks that were a work of art), Josie and I swapped stories and I thought about how I have been slowly shifting my lifestyle over the past year in order to live more of the nomadic life that she and her husband have already attained. It gave me hope. It also made me smile: what were the odds of finding someone living my dream in this quiet little corner on Ecuador's northern coast?

Our cook came out to chat. A local boy, he had been trained and worked at upscale restaurants in London, Paris and Barcelona before the call of home was too much and he came back to his roots. The restaurant had been abandoned by the former owner; he purchased it and kept the name. Business was slow, but life was slower. He was happy.

As we walked back to the bus, the bottles rang softly in the breeze and I was happy, too.

Monday: There's nothing quite like falling asleep to the sound of the ocean rocking the world gently just outside your cabin, especially after an unexpectedly gourmet dinner on the beach. And there's nothing quite like waking up to the early morning light playing on the waves and knowing that it's out there, just waiting for you to come play.

It was a beautiful morning. The 14-year-old picked up what she thought was a rock and found a very upset hermit crab in her hand.  Carol Ann's pink sunglasses were lost to the surf. Patrick tossed the 10-year-old into the breakers over and over and over until he was tired but she was not.  We played. We laughed. We burnt. 

Around lunchtime, we packed up and took off for Atacames.

On our way, we stopped at a cocada factory. Blake and I went in and bought several packets of cocadas, willfully ignoring the fact that if we ate that many while they were fresh, the coconut-molasses goodness would put us into a stupor.

After an enormous lunch in Atacames, we hit the open road again. 

It was probably only an hour or two later when someone recognized the place where we'd bought yuca bread the day before. 

From opposite ends of the bus, I heard Mandy and Tiffany both murmur, "I could eat...."

[next chapter: Mindo, or, How to slide down a mountain]

(Same, Esmeraldas, Ecuador)