Raining in Riobamba

It's raining in Riobamba.  Pouring, in fact.  I was wondering why there were drains all over the patio at the hostal we're staying at.  Now I understand.  All this water has to go somewhere, and without those drains, it'd be coming right under our door and into our room.

We arrived yesterday, leaving our idyllic stay at the Hostería la Ciénega in Cotopaxi province and heading south along the Panamericana (that's the main "highway" running north/south along the west coast of South America).  We're now in Chimborazo province, named after Volcán Chimborazo, the tallest peak in Ecuador, but no longer an active volcano.

Arriving on a Sunday to any town in Ecaudor seems to be a good way to arrive in the middle of what appears to be complete lethargy.  Very little goes on Sundays, especially in smaller towns, and even less (in terms of restaurants) is actually open.  Arriving in Riobamba didn't prove to be any different.  The town was apparently a bit more astir than usual, as we're approaching their annual independence day festival, the Independence Battle of Tapi, on April 21, and there's a month of festivities leading up to it, and then another couple of weeks of festivities after that.

After finding our hostal, the Hostal Oasis, on the southeast end of town center, and dropping our packs off, we wandered back toward the market we'd circumnavigated on our entrance to the place.  It was a local street fair, on par with some of the smaller festival in Baltimore, with food stands, music sponsored by Pilsener (the Ecuadorian beer), some crafts vendors, and some other activities that we couldn't quite discern.  We ended up buying some empanadas dulces from one of the vendors, an old Andean woman.

We thought the sign said they would cost 10 cents apiece, but she asked us for 50 cents.  I made my case (in Spanish, pointing to the sign), but she said something to the extent that the 10 cent empanadas were the ones they had earlier and they were smaller than the ones we'd asked for.  I didn't argue any more and handed over the 50 cents, not sure if this was truly the case or if I'd just been fleeced because I was a gringo.

30 cents isn't a big deal to an American, but down here in Ecuador, it'll buy you:

• A local bus ride
• A bottle of water
• A small eggplant
• Two apples (or maybe one large apple)

Anyway, the empanadas were wheaty pancakes filled with some kind of sweet fruit, sort of like raisins but orange.  They weren't exactly what we were expecting, based on the typical empanada we've had (of course, that was the kind filled with cheese and fried), but regardless they were quite tasty.  We're coming to learn that empanada really just means anything stuffed inside of dough and fried.

After a bit more wandering through the semi-deserted streets, we decided we would probably want to make dinner (as nothing appeared to be open).  Our hostal, which is really a gem of a place in an otherwise dusty one-horse town, has facilities for self-catering, including an outdoor gas grill and a bunch of communal pots and pans and plates and silverware and cups.  We found one of the supermarkets (think "small grocery store", not super-chain) that our hostess at the hostal had recommended, and after wandering the aisles collected the ingredients for a tasty eggplant and onion pasta dish, complete with a small packet of parmesan cheese and a small bottle of oil flavored with achiote (which, after some debate between Karla and myself, we decided must be a pepper, and not anchovies, which was our second guess - and in fact, both guesses were wrong; achiote [in this context] is in fact annato).  Toss in a small bag of bow-tie pastas and a package of grapes (to snack on, not for the stir fry), and our total checkout price was $3.56.

Let's recap:

$0.69 = 1 small bottle of oil flavored with achiote
$0.24 = 1 small (0.27 Kg) eggplant
$0.32 = 1 package (200 g) of pasta
$1.17 = 1 package (0.40 Kg) of green grapes
$0.95 = 1 small package of pre-grated parmesan cheese
$0.19 = 1 purple onion (0.28 kg) @ $0.6738/Kg (or $0.3056/lbs)

Anyway, we took our purchase back to the hostal and, later, around dinner time, cooked up a quite tasty travelers meal.  We spent the rest of the evening lounging around our suite - there's a separate dining area with a television in it - reading and watching TV.  In fact, we ended up watching Iron Man, in English, with Spanish sub-titles.

Today, we started out with the search for a non-existent café that we'd read about in our guidebook.  I'm not sure if it's Ecaudor, or it's the Ecaudorian editors of Lonely Planent, but our guidebook has been off quite a few times on locations and even the existence of the location question.  I've historically found the Lonely Planet guidebooks to be extremely reliable - I've used them in all of my travels across Europe, but whatever the case may be, there's something off about the Ecuador version.  I imagine it might be a bit of both - some editor error, and the fact that, well, in the two years since the book was published, a lot of things have changed in this country (as well as the rest of the world - we did have a global economic crisis).

That said, we aborted our mission for the missing café and ended up going to a place Karla had noticed us passing earlier.  Caffeinated and full, we continued our exploration of Riobamba.  The city was bustling with more activity, a lot of it apparently related to the festivities, but that wasn't really saying much.  We found our way to one of the big parks, primarily set up for kids (one thing about the parks here - there are some awesome things for kids to play on, probably some structures that in fact would not be legal in the States with our litigation-happy culture), and hung out there for a while.  Then we visited the bus station to see if we could buy tickets a day in advance to Guayaquil (where we're headed tomorrow), but it turns out they just told us to come back tomorrow morning.  Apparently "in advance" for the bus lines means a few hours in advance.

Next, we started back up the main street and stumbled into a parade!  All of the local schools were represented with their marching bands, the kids decked out in various uniforms and holding their instruments in variuos degrees of discomfort.  Everyone appeared to be represented, from the art and science acadamy to the relgious schools to the military prep schools.  We observed this for a while, taking in this very local and very authentic display of civic pride, until the parade passed us by.

We spent the next few hours back in the park and eating at a Mexican restaurant called El Rey del Burrito, then wandered back to the hostal to relax in the lazy afternoon, both of us quite tired, after 24 hours, of being in Riobamba, a large town in the center of a mostly agricultural region.  It's like, of all things, deciding to visit Davis, California - maybe an interesting day trip, but after that, you've probably used up all of the local charm.

Which leads us up to now, with the rain starting to abate, and our stomachs growling.