Comings and Goings

After a brief respite in San Francisco for the funeral of Agnes's Great Uncle Francis, who passed away at 97, we're back in Ecuador.

We'll finally be off to the Amazon tomorrow for a week and then the Galapagos the week after. In the past few weeks, we've been working on our still horrible Spanish and just bumming around the city of Quito.

A few folks have inquired about the guinea pigs here, which are considered sort of an Andean delicacy. As mentioned in our previous posts, we did finally have some cuy, as its called here. Cuy is not really something people eat on a regular basis and many folks consider the consumption of a guinea pig to be no more appetizing than eating a rat. And it's a traditional cuisine of indigenous folks in the mountains. That said, it is still widely available in Finer Ecuadorian restaurants.

My cuy was served whole and deep fried. Much to my surprise, the meat was quite tender and moist. I had thought before that it might be sort of dry, like many rabbits I've eaten, but the texture and quality of the flesh was consistently inviting in a way that I suppose is only possible in a small animal, which likely cooks evenly.

The meat itself tasted like sort of a gamey chicken. Unfortunately, the batter on the outside of the carcass was very thick and overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the flesh. In fact, much of the cuy tasted a lot like pollo campero chicken, if you've ever had that (Pollo Campero is the KFC of Guatemala, though though are now opening franchises in the US). I would have enjoyed the meal more if I had had some buffalo wing sauce some ranch dressing on the side.

If I try cuy again, I´ll have it baked.


In other news, I got into a minor scuffle in a bar in Quito here. Every year, the streets in the capital fill with drunken revelers to celebrate the founding of the city. Our area, Mariscal Sucre, is especially chaotic with street stages pumping out live music all night for a week straight and people peeing all over sidewalk since they don´t supply nearly enough porta potties (I think I saw two). It´s like New Years Eve for a week straight.

Anyway, on Friday, at the peak of the festivities, some folks in a bar all started beating on our Ecuadorian friend, who is a former teacher at our school. I got the chance to rear back and really unload a series of rights into the skull of some poor fellow. I originally was just trying to hold him back from beating on Jorge, our buddy, but he wouldn´t stop coming, so I just beat him to the ground. I don´t think I´ve had such a pure moment of clarity in a long, long time, just unleashing maybe eight or ten shots with the full force of my weight into his head. I felt like Mike Tyson! (when he was younger and faster). Afterwards, my knuckles were quite sore. While beating on this guy, some knucklehead busted a bottle on my head.
The amazing thing was that it didn`t even hurt! Two things were working in my favor here, first, whoever hit me, was nice enough to do so on what must be the hardest part of my head, and second, I was wearing a bandana (which I rarely do, but some beer girls were passing them out), which prevented a gash from opening up on my scalp.

I´m not sure what precipitated the whole fracas but I believe Jorge was probably just hitting on the wrong girl. Before I got to engage the guy who blindsided me with a bottle, I got pulled away and we continued our festivities in another discoteca. The whole thing was actually pretty amusing, no one got hurt, and I found out that I must have a really hard head, which is not the type of discovery you make except under very specific circumstances.

Post fight, I´ve been asking a lot of people about bar fights here. People seem to fight a lot here when they drink. While I haven´t encountered any stats on the subject I have asked a few people about the frequency of such occurrences, and the consensus is that about 50% of guys in bars fight about once a year. One guy I talked to last night said he hates fighting but gets caught up in them just ´cause they happen. He dislikes the fact that most bar fights aren´t one on one. It all recalls an odd conversation I had with my Spanish teacher here when I first arrived in Quito. She thought it was highly unusual that I don´t fight in bars and that I hadn´t been in a scuffle since like third grade. I told her that I was just a little guy and there`s no upside in beating on a little guy.

Anyway, I don´t plan to getting into any more brawls, but considering that bar fights are quite common here, I`ll chalk it up as an Ecuadorian cultural experience.