Monumento al Dolor

Municipal Cemetery, Cayambe

What a strange thing, a cemetery. A monument to death, a monument to pain…where the culture of the living is clearly reflected in the objects they leave behind. I had never before entered a cemetery in South America. There was a baroque excess of detail in bright color, plastic and acrylic paint – cutsie cherubs singing out of tune for the duration of their dying double A batteries, names and dates of death painted by hand onto concrete, golden-framed photos, amateur frescoes of Catholic iconography, shriveling roses in dirty bottles, faded colors of weather-worn plastic, crumbling concrete, crooked crosses, weeds, overgrowing the graves.

It was depressing to me, that people should choose to linger in such a place. A gloomy reminder set by the church of the fear we should have, our cult of death.

Bizcochos del "Padrecito"

Cayambe, Fábrica de Bizcochos San Pedro

“I’ll take you to where the real bizcochos are made,” said my travel companion as we entered Cayambe, a small pueblo in the mountains about an hour and a half to the North of Quito. “All the other bizcochos that you see in the shops along the highway are simply imitations,” she claimed.

We diverted off the highway and wove through the narrow streets of the town center. We parked on a quiet side street in front of the municipal cemetery and walked past a flower shop, a bench of elderly mendigos wrapped in their blankets, and followed the scent of the baking bizcochos through a doorway, a patio and into the shop where an oven stood at one end and an entire wall was filled with racks of cooling bizcochos. They were being baked, sold and eaten, right there, on the spot in a tiny house-complex that belonged to the Father of the local parish.

Bizcochos are something I’ve found to be particularly Ecuadorian – a cross between a cookie and a biscuit, flaky and savory, served in oil-stained paper bags and often eaten with sweet coffee and queso de hoja. They are typical to the area surrounding the Imbabura region.

These particular bizcochos had a smoky flavor and a texture that crumbled on the tongue.

Camping in a Crater

Pululahua is an inactive volcano about 17km north of Quito. Approximately 40 families inhabit the area today living off agriculture, animal pasturing and tourism. There are various sites to visit in the crater and hosterías in which to camp, hike and ride horses. Our group stayed at the Rinconada de Rolando Vera - a small hacienda owned by retired marathon champion, Rolando Vera.




Having arrived in the dark of night, we were surprised to wake up to this view of cloud-kissed mountain peaks.



Pululahua is Quichua for nube de agua, or cloud of water.





Rolando Vera walks the fields of his hacienda.

Sunsets and Silhouettes of Sleeping Giants

I I would imagine that anyone from here, the Ecuadorian sierra, would miss these mountains and these mountain sunsets...as I have come to miss the wide open sky and flat lands of the Midwest and the Erie Basin.

Chagras de Cotacachí

"Chagras", Ecuadorian cowboys at the fiestas de Cotacachí. May 2011.

Around the Cuicocha Lagoon

La laguna Cuichocha is a natural preserve just 10 minutes outside of Cotacachí Ecuador. The lagoon itself is a volcanic crater 4km by 3km wide whose name, of pre-incan origins, means "lagoon of the Gods". It is also a common site to spot the endangered and elusive Andean condor.

Dreams of La Foch

Lights from Quito's bar district, La Foch, reflect in the windows of a penthouse apartment. The dark shadow of one of the city's surrounding mountains looms overhead.