didn’t care for yesterday so I skipped it in favour of some much-needed beauty sleep. The breakfast that’s included with our hotel is a watery juice smoothie type thing (these are very popular in Latin America), two pieces of buttered white toast (yucky), and café con leche. You can also have scrambled eggs for 50 cents! This photo shows the breakfast area and the nice view.
Since I’m not much of an eggs and toast person, I decided to venture out on my own and find something else for breakfast. I was half asleep so I got kind of lost, but I got to see a lot of the downtown area that we hadn’t seen before. It really is beautiful and the people are very friendly. Dave and I were marvelling over the fact that no one hassles us or even pays attention to us like is so often the case when we travel. Anyway, I wandered around for awhile and ended up getting some yogurt and a Christmassy-type roll from a bakery (sweet, dry bread with raisins and candied fruit), so I was very pleased. Yummy breakfast for under $1.00!
I also got this cappuccino that Dave and I are addicted to. The woman who works there laughs when she sees us coming and knows just what to make without asking, that’s how many times we’ve been there in the past few days. The coffee situation here is awful (same as everywhere I’ve been in Latin America).
We are in Ecuador, which is on the border of Colombia, for god’s sake – you’d think we could get a decent cup of coffee! Nope, it’s all instant coffee, and you have two choices: café tinto (black coffee, instant and watery) or café con leche (coffee with milk). As I mentioned before, café con leche involves mixing instant coffee into a cup of scalded milk with a thick skin on top (usually they do this for you, but sometimes they just give you a cup of milk and a jar of instant coffee). Often, the milk is evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk, which I hate. Anyway, last night at the place where we ate supper, I was so proud of myself for asking (in Spanish) for a cup of black coffee with a side of milk, so that I could pour just a little milk into my coffee. I was certain that the waiter understood me, and I got really excited when I saw him coming with two cups and a little tiny pitcher. Dave and I laughed our asses off when he set down the two full cups of steamed milk and the little tiny pitcher of coffee to add to the milk. I guess he did understand that I wanted the coffee separate from the milk, but the concept of putting just a little milk in one’s coffee is apparently not well understood here. So, that’s why we’ve been living on the delicious cappuccino from this little café near our hotel. Only trouble is that it is very small (as real cappuccino is, outside of the land of Starbucks) that we need to buy a lot of it, because we are both caffeine junkies. Dave is on a cappuccino run right now, bless his heart.The rest of the day was spent in our room working, except for a brief outing to an internet café to submit some of my final grades and then to a restaurant for some supper. We decided on a Mexican restaurant because we were near it and we were hungry. It was good, but expensive - $15 total including alcohol, tax, and a tip. Our previous splurge had been $12, so we really kicked it up a notch tonight! Funny how quickly your perceptions of what’s expensive can change!
Unfortunately, we decided that we need at least 1 more full day and night of work. Boo. Oh well, even working here is fun. Dave and I both agree that even getting out for an hour or two a day is fun. But, we can’t wait until we can really begin the vacation…that’ll be on the 24th (knock on wood)! Ok, back to work for me!
Here are some pictures from a little adventure Dave had walking around the city:
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