Hole-in-the-wall Restaurants

By Graham

We were walking down Rocafuerte looking for a restaurant. We came across a run-down place and walked in. It was poorly lit, small, and a TV was blaring. The paint on the walls was peeling. Beer advertisements were tacked to the walls. Along one wall pots were bubbling with soup. There were about five tables covered with oil cloths, and the seats were small and metal. But the restaurant smelled very good.

We sat down and ordered three lunches and a bowl of soup for Katharine. Here, you just order a lunch and they bring you what's cooking. Usually, they start you off with a bowl of soup, made of chicken, broth, noodles, and potatoes. You also get a glass of juice. That is enough for Katharine, but Mom, Dad, and I eat the next course, too. Normally, it is chicken, rice, lettuce, and mote. Mote is hominy.

The chicken is very good. I have had some of the best chicken here. It is cooked perfectly and they add the right amount of salt. Some of my favorite lunches have been in Ecuador.

The Zip Line

By Katharine



It was a long way down. I was standing on a cliff, 300 feet above the ground and do you know what I was doing? I was preparing to get on a zip line to cross a river at the bottom of a gorge. There were mountains in the distance and cows standing on the hills. But the scariest thing was the murky brown rapids below me.

We learned that the president of Ecuador did the zip line, so it should be safe. We were all very scared, though. It was my dad's turn first. He stepped up to the line. A man made him put on a harness and a leather belt. He was doing "Superman." He had to climb up on a chair and the man held onto his legs. Next, my dad got lifted into the air and was hanging on his belly. Finally, the man let go and and Dad went shooting across really fast, high above the rapids. When he reached the other side, a lady ran to get him. She climbed up on a ladder and unhooked him.

We all decided that we did not want to do "Superman." Instead, we wanted to sit and hold onto handles as we went across. It was my turn after Graham's. I kicked myself off. I zoomed across with a loud "zip." It felt as if I had big white wings. But as soon as I passed some boulders, it seemed as if I was falling because I was going down so fast. I landed safely on the other side. I wanted to do it again.

La Oruga

By Katharine

One Sunday in Quito, a giant green caterpillar appeared at our door. The caterpillar was 50 feet long! Instead of legs it had wheels and lights, it was a bus. It had boxes full of seats, every two boxes were connected with a trailer hitch. Each caterpillar segment was covered with a metal umbrella. In front of the caterpillar was a smiling face, it looked as if he put too much lipstick on. The caterpillar was short in height and played music.

We begged our mom to get on even though it looked babyish. After a while she said yes, and we climbed in. We might have misunderstood the driver because we think he said that the caterpillar would only go around the block and come back in 10 minutes. But nooo, he actually said we would have to wait 10 minutes until it started.

After 10 minutes of waiting we started. First the caterpillar swerved down the street. When the front went to one side of the block, the back would go to the other side! Unfortunately, we were in the back, it was really scary. All the cars had to get out of our way. Some cars even had to be halfway on the sidewalk. When we rode to a certain spot where there were no cars, the driver started spinning in circles, one loop after another. The head of the caterpillar was almost touching the tail. After 10 circles he started swerving again. Close to the end of the ride a guy tried to jump on and was hanging on to the back until he let go. Finally, the caterpillar stopped back in front of our house. I felt sick later.

Rambling down Rocafuerte

By Graham and Katharine, with an assist from los padres.

When we arrived in Quito, Ecuador, at midnight, we could not see anything. When we woke up the next morning, it was sunny but cold. We went walking down Rocafuerte, our street, and what did we see?

Avocados galore, one behind every door.
Baskets of berries, stacked in narrow doorways.
Colonial Quito, with its cobbled streets.
Dense morning fog rolling off the mountains.
Early-bird children, in gray and blue uniforms, heading to school.
Fish frying in blackened pots.
Gold glittering in colonial churches.
Heavy bags on the backs of tiny women.
Indigenous women in brown felt hats.
Jugos de maracuya, mango, anana, zanahoria, naranjillo, manzana, mixed any way you want.
Kitchens on the sidewalks, with steaming pots of locro, sopa, humitas, and chifles.
Long braided hair on women and girls.
Munecas with rainbow-colored skirts and beautiful shawls.
Nuts, roasted in silver pans with sugar and salt.
Old women with bundled babies on their backs.
Platanos, fried and delicious.
Quinoa, a grain shaped like small beads eaten here for thousands of years.
Rotating chickens in restaurants.
Sopas and locros, served at every meal, usually with chicken, noodles, potatoes, and corn.
Tostados, crunchy corn kernels sold as a snack.
Umbrellas for the daily showers.
Volcanos as far as the eye can see.
Washing hanging on the lines.
X-crossings for pedestrians, striped like a zebra.
Yemas (egg yolks), yellow and rich, added to potato llapingachos.
Zanahorias, as big as Mom's feet.

That's what we saw on our first day, walking down Rocafuerte Street.



Our house.


The view down Rocafuerte.


Fruit & vegetable store.


Roasted pork with llapingachos.

Have Empanadas, Will Dance

By Eric (visiting cousin)

Tango
My trip to Buenos Aires was fantastic, and I can’t thank my aunt and uncle enough for having me. One thing that was interesting to me was how popular dancing the tango is. There are famous tango restaurants where you can have dinner and a dancing show. There are people tangoing in the streets to make some money. I thought it was very cool to see people tangoing while we walked through the market. I saw one man dancing with a dummy. He had comedy in his act; he would stop people if they tried to walk past him and block them from passing by--all while he was dancing. One group of tango dancers had two people playing the Spanish guitar for them to dance to. I liked them the best because their style was very relaxed and it looked like they were going with the flow. You can see this in the video below.





Pockets of Pleasure
Empanadas are great. I fell in love with the first one I had. Why can’t they be a common thing in the U.S? I may have started with one that was too high class because I got my first one at a luxury hotel before I went to a regular restaurant. But regardless they are great. If you take a trip to Buenos Aires then an empanada is a must-have snack. They can be filled with things like cheese, beef, and chicken.

Punta Delgada Asado

By Graham (photos & text)

Cordero Asado (grilled lamb) is a Patagonian specialty. We experienced it in Punta Delgada, on the Peninsula Valdes. Raul, the man in the photos, was the maker of this outstanding meal. He also took care of the horses Katharine wrote about.

Here is how grilled lamb is cooked.



First, the lamb is butterflied: It gets cut down the middle, and then pulled down flat.



Here are all the butterflied lambs. Raul is having a break with a tea called mate. He drinks it out of a hollow gourd, using a metal straw called a bombilla.



The lambs are pinned to a cross and put in front of a roaring fire.



An hour later, the lambs are looking better, but they still have a long way to go.



Now the lambs are done. Raul gives me the first bite. It is delicious.



He slices some meat off a lamb and cuts it up. Next, he lays the meat on a platter and rings a bell for the waiters to serve the meat.






This is the platter of meat.



After several mouth-watering hours, we finally get to dig in.

Taxi Scam

By Louise

Thanks to a short, stocky, old man with gray hair and his much younger, chubby, darker-skinned female friend our kids don’t have any math books. No, this isn’t part of some new-age unschooling thing we've launched into. We were robbed.

We had been in Buenos Aires for 45 minutes and were waiting for the apartment rental agency to bring us our keys. It was early, we were exhausted from a sleepless overnight flight. The street was quiet. The couple mentioned earlier appeared at the apartment building door the same time we arrived. And within moments they had grabbed the kids’ backpack and dashed into a taxi. Realizing what had happened I chased them, grabbed the door of the car, and started shouting. They fought. There was a distraction. They got away.

Unfortunately, the pack had all the math books, the kids’ journals, Graham’s camera, and three pairs of sunglasses that Katharine stashed before we left.

It was a rotten thing to happen within the first hour of our arrival. Needless to say, within 20 minutes it dawned on us that we had been set up by an official airport-approved taxi.

When you arrive at the Buenos Aires airport you’re bombarded with flyers about gypsy cabs. So we did what you’re supposed to do and went to the official taxi stand and made a request. When we got in the car we handed the driver the paper from the taxi service that gave the cross streets of our apartment. The driver asked if we were going to a hotel and we told him no. He then placed a phone call and while on the phone asked for our apartment address—twice—long before we were even near the city.

Andrew and I have always been alert travelers. Living in NYC taught me to pay attention. I’ve never been robbed; maybe I’m lucky, I don’t know. Now, in hindsight, the whole thing seems like a page out of a thief’s textbook. I felt like a fool for being taken. I do keep on reminding myself that we were exhausted and dazed but we did have our wits about us enough to have our passports in a pouch safely around Andrew’s neck and our computer in a pack secured to my back. Why bring this first-day event up on our last day? Because a few friends have shared with me their bad travel experiences, so I thought I would share mine in the hopes of preventing this from happening to someone else.

Fortunately, this did not set the tone for our stay. I love Buenos Aires and am very sad to leave. Katharine, on the other hand, is kicking herself for not sliding at least one pair of sunglasses into a suitcase.