Fish, Sand and Surf

---

Geo: -1.56124, -80.8072

I know. I know. We haven't written for a long time, but we've been really busy having fun. Remember talking about going over to the main offices of our school while we were in Quito? Well Ligia the director, whose office is in Quito, is here in PL for the weekend with a student named Ensu (which probably isn't spelled right, as she's South Korean) and we've been having a ball.

Ligia is such a kick! Saturday morning all of us went to the fish market--Raquel, too: Bob and 4 women. He loves being king--they keep telling him in this country the man is king and he seems to be adapting pretty well.

Shawn, the fish market wasn't ANYTHING like the market in Chennai--you'll see in the pictures.

Later Raquel made ceviche, as she said they don't make it right in the restaurants. It's easy, she claims. We were going to all make it together but the rest of us went to a beach down the road and got back too late. She'd already put it together.

Whoooohoooo was it good. I could eat it all day, it's so amazing. Fresh fish that had hardly stopped flapping, and the thinnest slices of onion, tomato, green pepper and cilantro. And lime juice. Wow. Raquel used to have a restaurant of her own --she is an amazing cook, but her speciality is vegetarian. Interesting, huh?

The beach we went to was in Solongo, a $3 taxi ride away. It was gorgeous, but the waves were so strong they picked me up and tossed me up the beach like rolling a ball. It was a blast! I jumped up and ran out to do it again, but it was so exhausting, about 3 times was all I needed.By then I had sand EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE, I tell you. Bob too. It knocked him down and Ligia and Ensue ran over, each grabbed an arm and they were dragging him ashore when I rolled by. What a time we had. I didn't think we'd ever get all the sand out of our ears, etc., etc.

There were showers at the beach but they had no water, so a lady sold us a small bucket of water for 25 cents that we tried to wash off with, but the stuff's so sticky it's almost impossible without running water and soap.

Nevertheless, it was such a fun time we went to a different beach the next day to do it all again...more on that--what they claim is the most beautiful beach in all of Ecuador, later.

---

Photos

Our Catch
Okay, I WAS GOING to claim we'd gone fishing and decided just to bring home the small ones, but truth won out. Fishermen brought these in early this morning.

Cleaning fish with a machete
And then I was going to claim we'd had a little help cleaning them...

Frigate birds--great cleaner-uppers
These birds swoop down within inches of your nose scrapping for pickings. They don't fish themselves, they just steal from others.

Pretty older woman cleans fish
She must have been a beauty when she was young because she's still beautiful

Bob and the girls
Raquel (our teacher's wife) Ligia (the school director, and Ensu (student from South Korea

Fishing boats and cat
Boats rest here on the shore until night time when they go out again

Ligia walks the beach at Solongo
Notice the hordes of people

Holding on for dear life
We're laughing so hard it's hard to keep a watch on the demon waves about to roll us over again.

Bob & I make it out
We decide enough's enough. Ensu's photos all have date stamps on them.

Comments

[Kari]

Ohhhhh, that looks so good it hurts!

[bobnkaren]

Kari--you would not believe how good that was.

[Shawn]

Reminds me a lot of India. I can almost smell it through the pictures. :)

[bobnkaren]

After having seen the fish market in Chennai, I was expecting lots of smell, but really, it just smelled like fish. Not rotten or nasty, just clean fish. They do an amazingly quick job of cleaning and filleting them, then getting them on ic
e and off to the trucks.