Twenty years ago, the Tango was out of fashion in Argentina. Only older people danced the Tango, and only tourists were interested in it. Kids didn’t learn to dance, and the music was considered old-fashioned. Could anything have been more un-cool than playing the accordion back then?

Well, that’s all changed. ‘Electronic Tango’ is hot music. The accordion is the coolest instrument on the planet. And Tango culture is once again the heart of Argentina.

Michelle and I are out every single night of the week, either taking Tango lessons, watching Tango, listening to Tango, or dancing the Tango at one of the Milongas (dance clubs) in town.

Mendoza is a quiet, rural town, there are only a handful of Malongas here. The ‘Tango Culture’ here is very small, you run into the same people again and again in the dance clubs. It is laid-back, everyone tells us how tranquil it is compared to Buenos Aires – where they start later and party harder.

Don’t know how that can be. We can schedule our lessons at reasonable times, but the shows, practices and dances typically start around 10:00, and dinner is afterwards. We often eat with amigos, who remind us that Mendoza is the heart of Argentina’s wine district – and so why don’t we order another bottle. We have to hustle home to get to bed by 1:30AM, often with sore heads. I’m sure we were able to do this when we were younger, but this life is hard for us now.

Anyhow, here’s a quick snapshot of a week of our ‘Tango Nights’.

This is Ana and Luis, our dance teachers. We take two private lessons with them per week – 90 minutes each. Then we try to attend at least two of their three group lessons per week, great opportunities to practice and get help if we get stuck.

You wouldn’t think there was any time left for anything else. Especially since we have homework every night from Spanish school.

But there’s so much going on in Mendoza – something every night. We missed one of the group lessons to have dinner at La Mar – they have live music every Tuesday night, and they had brought in a local Electronic Tango group. The food was terrific, the wine flowed like water, and the music was sexy and hot.

These guys were a 3-piece band – violin, squeeze-box, and keyboard. Very jazzy, kind of a jazz-tango fusion. The accordion (played by the guy in the middle) is a surprisingly expressive instrument – a combination of percussive breaths and a plaintive melody voice. With some electronics, it is as versatile as an electric guitar.

Later in the week, a ballet performance. “Compania de Danza Lucia Y Valentina Fusari” was playing at the Teatro Independencia – a lovely old art-deco building – and we had to go see it. The main event was a ballet to Fados music – spectacular – that had sold out several nights in Buenos Aires. Being an Argentine dance company, they also had a very hot Tango number on the program. (No photos allowed, but I snapped this one when they came out for a round of applause).

And out to the Milongas to dance the night away. We are not much more than beginners, and we like to get to the club early before the dance floor gets crowded. The Mendocinos typically show up at 11:00 or later (and work the next day), we’re happy to be finished by then (and heading out for dinner).

And then, the big event. Electronic Tango has become the rage here. It’s a modern evolution of the 150-year old tradition, and it’s really good.

The best-known group in Argentina is The Bajo Fondo Tango Club – they are the superstars. They are holding a concert in Mendoza, in the biggest venue available. It’s the hottest show in town, sold out, people have been talking about nothing else. And Michelle and I have front-row tickets !!

These guys are the ‘Pink Floyd’ of Tango – both in the classical, multi-layered flavor of their complex music, and in the wonderful 1970’s style rock concert format. We are in awe of the technical skills of the musicians – they clearly love this music. The performance isn’t polished, it isn’t choreographed, it’s loud as heck, and it’s a HUGE amount of fun. The melodies are infectious – you just can’t sit still.

We were giggling like children. We didn’t know the songs (unlike the rest of the audience, which would roar and sing along with the better known pieces). Didn’t matter, we had SUCH a good time.

Bajo Fondo doesn’t really play dance music – it’s more rock-tango fusion with a heavy beat. But there are other groups that have taken the electronic sounds and created very traditional Tango dance music. Our favorite is Gotan Project – when we are practicing Tango in the apartment, that’s what we put on. Here’s a sample of their music ( a 30-second clip from Amazon.com), listen for the accordian.

gotan-sample

In two weeks, we hit Buenos Aires – where there are about 150 Malonga’s, and a much larger, much more active Tango community. We’ll have enough Spanish and beginner Tango to be able to navigate. It will be the adventure of our lives.  Just wish there were more nights in a week.

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We are enjoying Mendoza, and have decided to extend our stay to 6 weeks. Staying with a family was fun, but we needed our own space. We have set up our temporary home in an apartment-hotel within walking distance of most of our haunts—school, dancing, restaurants, shopping.

The apartment is part of an eight unit complex. Each unit has a small kitchen, living room and bathroom on the main floor, and a bedroom in the loft above. Modern and clean.  The cost is modest–$40 day.

There are green patios between the units for privacy, and a vine covered pergola over the back garden—perfect for reading and wine tasting. In typical Argentine style there are two serous barbecues set up in case you need to cook your own steak. (There are more parrilla restaurants than coffee shops, so no need to do it yourself.)

But because it is a hotel, they supply breakfast (coffee and juice) and media lunas (sweet croissants). In the interests of our waistlines, we have traded the croissants for larger glasses of juice and supplement this with yogurt and cereal.

We have a standing arrangement for 7:30, but this does not prevent the late night call (10:30) from the front desk to ask what time we would like our breakfast. Of course, it is not late by Argentinian standards.

It is because of these Argentinian time standards that we have set up our own kitchen. We can avoid the ignominy of being seen to “dine before nine”, like a tourist.   And we can make a salad (not a commonly-seen food group here).

Of course this means grocery shopping. Because we are studying until 1 pm, we have found certain challenges to doing this. By the time we start home after classes, the small shops are closing down for lunch and siesta. When the shops reopen at 5 there are often shoppers anxiously waiting in line, and the stores will stay open until 9 PM.. It takes some getting used to this schedule

Overall, we have managed to adapt, and find shops for fruits and vegetables, cheese and meats, bread and pasta. One of our favorite vegetable ‘stores’ is this sidewalk kiosk down the street – somehow the Chinese family running it seem to have the freshest and best variety, and the friendliest, fastest service.

We were amazed by some of the prices. This large bag of fruit and vegetables was $13 pesos (less than $4 dollars).

One of our favorite place to shop is the old Mercado Central, which is similar to St. Lawrence market in Toronto. It is thoroughly modern, but in an old-fashioned sort of way.   There are about 20 kiosks like this – with different specialties.

The variety is amazing, and much of it is local. After all, Mendoza is an agricultural center.

Our other alternative is to shop at the supermarkets. They are indistinguishable from their North American cousins, and open throughout the day and evening. The one near our apartment is so crowded at times that there is not a shopping cart to be had. But before you think that these are paragons of efficiency, you need to stand in the checkout line.

The lines are painfully long, because the cashiers don’t use scanners. They will key in the UPC code on a product – and if their computer doesn’t find it, then ask a manager for a price check. There seems to be some mysterious paperwork that is required from each cashier every few minutes that stops the line.

And then, there is the problem of making change.

The most immediate currency crisis in Argentina is not the one on the front pages of the business sections. There is simply not enough change. The bank machines dispense nothing but $100 peso notes, but a $100 peso note will create a crisis if you use it to pay for a taxi.

Smaller bills are worn down from reuse until they are barely recognizable. Coins are scarce. Actually the coin situation is considered good here because the buses use a smart-card system. We are told to stockpile our coins and take them to Buenos Aires, where the shortage is dire.

Even in the large supermarkets, rendering a $100 peso note (about $30 USD) for a $45 peso grocery order will require a cashier to get change from a central cash desk. Sometimes the cashier will start processing the next customer while you wait, but often not. It is considered a courtesy to have small coin change or $2 peso notes to assist in these transactions.

But the store that had us shaking our heads in disbelief was a small deli where all the cheese and cold-cut products had weight and price barcoded onto printed tags. In typical North American fashion, we took what we wanted off the shelves, and to the cashier, only to be sent to the back of the store to have these items reweighed.

There, a woman used a pricing scale to generate duplicate bar codes to the ones on the packages, which were affixed to a strip of paper (presumably for inventory purposes). When she was done, we took back that strip, with our purchases, to the cashier. She hand-wrote the details of each item on a control list, and then processed our order using her barcode scanner. If this sounds time consuming, well, we are mellow from being on vacation, but we don’t have to go back there.

The basic problem is that store owners don’t trust their employees. Everything has to be handled by several people, and create paper trails that can be cross-referenced.

There are other book keeping habits that make me smile—like watching a clerk sew up the day’s invoices with ribbons, into a lovely packet for the accountant to process.

Still and all, for my money, the fruit vendor has it right—quick and friendly service—as long as you have small bills.

We’re falling into a routine – four hours of Spanish lessons each morning, tango lessons and practice most nights. Mendoza weather is predictably sunny with day-time hitting 30 degrees. Life here is pretty perfect, hard to imagine any improvement.

But of course, we try. On the weekend, we decide to escape the city to the Cacheuta thermal water spa, about an hour’s drive from the city.

We go to the bus terminal to rendez-vous with the van that will take us there. I hustle Tom to get there for nine o’clock, punto! Tom bets me 20 pesos that we will not leave before 9:30, and sure enough it’s 9:45 before we see our van.

We leave the city and soon approach the mountains that skirt the city. The countryside shows its desert colours.. Behind this inner border of dusty crenelated hills are snow covered ones. Water from these mountains feed the city of Mendoza and make it a green oasis. (Historical note-the Incas first developed the system of irrigation from the mountains.)

But it is not the cold waters from the mountains that we are heading for. Mendoza is in an earthquake zone and is seismically active. We are going to the hot springs.

We arrive, pick up robes, and head out into the hot cascading pools at the side of the river.

Like kids in a candy shop, we don’t know which ones to try first-the ones with water cascading down, or ones where it is bubbling up. Some are hot, some warm, some cool. Like Goldilocks, I know that we have hit one that is just right when I see the smile on Tom’s face.

But in our haste to soak, we omitted an important step in the process—the therapeutic mud. And so I coat myself in a fine layer of mineral rich mud.

The next step is to bake in the sun until dry. We wait patiently to become life size terracotta figures.

As I paint, I sing a happy hippopotamus song to myself:

Mud, mud glorious mud

Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood…

(Flanders and Swan)

After vigorous hosing, we are now ready for a proper pool progression.

The Cacheuta resort is an old ‘railway hotel’, with huge grace and dignity. The walls are lined with photos from a century ago, when the wealthy would travel out from Mendoza to take the waters for their rheumatism.

We end at the side of and old style Olympic size swimming pool and read until lunch.

Lunch is a lavish ‘asado a la parrilla’ – a barbeque buffet with mountains of beef, pork, chicken, and lots of other options. There is far too much to try everything, but we make our best stab at it..

The dessert table is also lavish. While Tom is finishing a second plate of barbeque, I visit it and come back with a heaping plate of different flans, pies, mousses, and poached fruits. I offer to share with Tom. But I don’t share – somehow I eat them all myself.

The afternoon passes quickly beside the pool, the sun slowly moves across the perfect blue skies and there are unconfirmed rumours of naps in the shade. Swallows race back and forth across the lawn, missing us by inches as they hunt for insects.

At 6:00 PM, we load into the bus and head back to Mendoza, in a state of bliss.

We did a real tourist thing – went to the ‘Wine and Tango’ dinner cabaret. It’s something the locals would never do, strictly for visitors. It was a thank-you night on the town for our house mother, Malena, who took such amazing care of us.

Sometimes I think that tourists have all the fun. The locals don’t visit the museums, don’t rent bicycles in wine country, etc. Same as at home I guess. Well, this evening was serious fun.

‘Wine and Tango’ is a dinner-and-show event. Singing, dancing, and live music, with a thread of history that ties the performance together. There is a big-screen movie that relates the history of immigration into Mendoza, the evolution of the wine industry here, and the evolution of the tango culture. The performers and musicians tie it together.

The original tango was danced only by men. This probably had to do with the shortage of women – immigrants would come over to work, leaving their families at home. Another variation of the story says that men danced together in the waiting areas of brothels.

The style of this particular dance is that the men never face each other. Imagine that they both have knives, so they always must keep the other at an angle to avoid giving an opportunity to stab.

Over time, the prostitutes joined in the dancing, and the tango evolved into a very sexual, intimate dance.

Early tango was mostly just drums. The accordion became the key instrument, often with a violin or guitar.

In the early days, ‘Tango’ was much more than just a dance. Yes, there was dancing, but also tango music, tango poetry, a tango slang vocabulary, and an underworld culture of tango. It was dangerous, and very low-class.

Then, somehow, tango became popular in Paris in the 1920s. And with that ‘seal of approval’, tango returned to Argentina, and became the mainstream culture. It evolved into the ‘Golden Age’ of tango, which is what we are mostly familiar with.

Carlos Gardel, ‘El Zorzal’, was probably the most famous singer and movie star in Latin America, the Frank Sinatra of Tango. When he died in an airplane crash in 1935, several women around the world attempted suicide. The show did a tribute to him, and everyone in the audience (except us) seemed to know the words to his music.

The show continued with various singing and dancing routines.

The ‘Tango’ being danced in the show has no relation to the tango we are learning in our dance classes. These are highly choreographed and polished set-pieces, performed by professional dancers with ballet training. Our tango is an organic lead-and-follow, where two strangers can walk out to the floor together and dance.

Dancing is part of the culture here, so the show had a dance competition. They invited members of the audience up on stage to dance with the pros – no practice, just get up and dance – and ranked them on the ‘applause meter’. The shock was how good the audience competitors were.

At the beginning of the night, as we were being led to our table, we were asked what country we were from. At the end of the show, we found out why. The two singers did a quick tour of the audience, welcoming people from each country. And with each country came a blast of that country’s music.

“Who is here from MEXICO ?” – and the theatre pulsed with mariachi music while the visitors from Mexico stood and waved from their chairs. “Who is here from BRAZIL ?” to an infectious samba beat that had everyone clapping along. Reggaton from the Dominican Republic, Cumbia from Columbia, Malonga from Chile, different Salsas from Costa Rica and Panama, Merengue from Venezuela.

This went on for some time – there were about 130 people in the theatre, all tourists, and all from Latin America. Many were in Mendoza for a big medical convention. The crowd was rollicking, fuelled by clapping, dancing, party music, and wine.

And then, “Who is here from CANADA ?” – and this mournful, slow, toneless dirge played on the speakers. The temperature of the room seemed to drop 10 degrees. I looked at Michelle – expressions of mystification, then shock, then horror as she recognized the opening bars of Celine Dion’s theme from Titanic.

We thought that we should provide the theatre with a different tune, perhaps a Shania Twain recording, as a gift to future Canadian visitors. We are taking your suggestions…

One of our trip goals is to learn the Argentine tango. We expected that this would keep us occupied in Buenos Aires, but little did we guess that this would keep us up nights in Mendoza.

We looked for teachers via the internet before arriving here, and found Ana and Luis. http://www.anayluistango.com.ar. We got lucky, this couple are the heart of the tango community here. They hold group classes three times a week at a community center, give private lessons, and organize ‘Milongas’ or dances at a dinner club two other nights.

Tom called them on Tuesday, the day after we got here to ask about lessons, they suggested we come talk to them at the studio that very evening at 9:00 PM. This was pretty late – we didn’t realize that this was the START time for their group lesson. Before you could say (tan)go, we were in the group, walking to the tango rhythm for the next two hours.

All instructions are in Spanish, so you quickly learn the words for left, right, forward and back, but it seemed that our feet were hard wired in English. None the less, with coaching from Ana and Luis, we managed to move in a halting tango-like fashion.

Tango is a very physical dance. It has its roots in Buenos Aires in the late 1800’s when there was a lot of immigration from Europe — men who had left their families behind for better opportunities. The first dancers were men dancing with other men, with music improvised on flute, violin and guitar. . Then the tango evolved into the bordellos.

The women of these houses gave the current costumes for tango their inspiration. The posture of the dancers is your first hint of what is to follow—the woman leans her upper torso well forward of a normal position, draping herself on her partner. This is very unlike the ballroom dances of waltz and foxtrot. When you see two good dancers, your first thought is “Get a room!”.

The drill for the group lessons is simple – first about 20-30 minutes of practicing basics – walking, turning, following the music. Then Ana and Luis demonstrate a few beginner and intermediate steps. The rest of the class is practice.

The practice group is very friendly and supportive – the better dancers pair off together, but make a point of helping the beginners. One couple bring their 2-year-old daughter, who has mastered the Tango walk. Ana and Luis circulate giving pointers and encouragement.

We followed up with another group lesson on Thursday and then a private lesson on Friday. Here’s a shot of Michelle in the private lesson with Luis:

We dropped in on their Milonga on Sunday night. It ‘started’ at 9:00 PM, and we were the first to arrive at 9:15. Another couple arrived soon after – but we recognized them from the bike ride in Maipu the previous day, also early because they were also foreigners. No matter, we ordered a glass of wine and got up to dance (very, very badly – we only knew 2-3 steps).

Around 10:00 PM, dancers started to arrive – many that we recognized from the group lessons. During the evening, they made a point of coming over to dance with us – to make sure we were having a good time. Ana and Luis also dragged us out to the floor as well.

We have been ‘adopted’ into the tango family in Mendoza.

The school hosted an afternoon of wine-tasting, with one of the local experts, which we participated in.

These after-class activities are intended to provide language practice, but they are great fun.

In Cuenca, our first South American home, we took the school tour around the city centre. Aside from the barest of basic data, it may as well have been self-guided. The Spanish flowed freely over our heads but did not penetrate our skulls.

Now that we have a few more Spanish words in our lexicon, we can participate in extracurricular activities in Spanish.

It was a happy combination of the vocabulary of grape growing, wine production, flavours and scents and practical application (a.k.a drinking). It was conducted totally in Spanish. There was a range of Spanish mastery in the class, but between us (and our dictionaries), we were perfectly comfortable.

The school hosts a week-long course on wine tasting and production with daily tours to various bodegas near the city, but Tom fears for the health of our livers. Instead, we decided to explore the bodegas on our own.

So, on Saturday, we jumped on the bus to the Maipu wine district—about 15 km from where we are staying–and rented bicycles for the day. The bus system in Mendoza is remarkably efficient – well-maintained buses roar in all directions at short intervals. To pay, you swipe a smart-card when you board the bus, and the reader hands you a receipt that tells you how much credit is left.

The bikes were heavy duty workhorses, but that was probably a good thing given the main focus of the day.

Our first stop was the wine museum for a short tour. The history of wine making in the area and some of the handmade implements were on display. Interestingly, they had us sample a wine produced especially for tourists rather than a more typical vintage of the area. The tourist wine was selling for 90 Argentine pesos for 6 (about $5 a bottle). We passed on this bargain priced, but very drinkable table wine and headed for other wineries.

We particularly enjoyed our visit to the award winning Tomassi winery. It is a family-run winery with roots dating back to 1869.

The wineries here are huge, much larger than we are used to in the Niagara region, there seem to be vast tracts of suitable land. Tomassi is tiny, but it still exports wines around the world.

The same wine will be labelled in many different ways, the wines for the local markets have a simple, traditional white label with black lettering, but those for exports are much more diverse. Red and gold for China (where white cannot be used, it is the color of death), jazzy red-on-black with twist-tops for the US and UK youth market, etc..

Some of the early machinery decorated the restaurant, all hand forged chains and wooden gears. An electric motor was strapped to a bucket-brigade contraption that hoisted crushed grapes into the fermentation vats,  the original design would have used a steam engine. The owner who showed it to us said that they used to burn the dried remains of the fermentation to power the steam – and we could almost imagine the sweet smells and sounds on a warm sunny day like this one.

We left our lunch order with the restaurant, and went off to do a tasting, postponing the important decision about which wine to have with lunch until after we had sampled the wares.

We chose to sit out in a sun dappled patio. We passed on dessert (which had been created with all of the notes of the dessert wine that accompanied it)–maybe on our way back later that day. While we in Ontario stress our grapes with cold temperatures to make ice wine, here they simply stop irrigating the grapes to concentrate the flavours.

We left reluctantly–the owner was a delightful host who went out of his way to show us his bodega.

We wended our way past olive groves and made a stop at an oliveria. We were surprised at how inexpensive extra virgin olive oil and assorted olive pastes were ($5 USD for a half-litre of top-quality olive oil), but were not tempted to stock up and cart bottles around for the next few months.

Our final stop on Saturday was a chocolate and flavours boutique. They made liquors and savoury products in addition to a variety of chocolates. It was a hard decision indeed—which chocolate liquor was better—the chocolate cafe, the chocolate hazelnut, the chocolate banana…. We tasted about a dozen flavors – hard work, but someone has to do it.

We fell in love with the dolce de leche combined with coffee flavour, and rode happily back to the bike shop with a stock in Tom’s backpack.  Sorry, you shouldn’t expect any to be left by the time we return to Toronto.

There is a uniquely Argentine expression of endearment that we now understand: “Sus mi dolce de leche” (you are my…).

All in all, a day full of sweetness.

It’s been a few days since the last post. Tom’s mom has already written to us, worried that we hadn’t posted any blogs in the last few days – are we ok?. Certainly we have lots to write about. The reason is that we are exhausted. Here’s why…

We have moved south and are now making our home in Mendoza, Argentina.

Mendoza is a city of about 1M people – half in the city and half in the surrounding suburbs. It lies on the Argentine side of the Andes, on the flat plains – think of Calgary – with a magnificent view of the mountains to the west.

The weather is warm – it’s spring here and the sun beats down. It’s already about 80 degrees at noon. The peak of summer will be very hot, but we will be gone by then.

Mendoza’s streets are lined with trees that give a welcome shade, and also give the city a leafy, comfortable look. The wide sidewalks are tiled, and the polished woodwork on buildings gleams like jewelry. The air is clean and the cars are well-maintained.

Mendoza is the heart of the Argentine wine industry. It’s warm enough to grow grapes and olives, which are the main products in this region. Mendoza is also a great jumping-off point to go hiking in the mountains and there are thermal hot-springs nearby.

Although the city is quite compact, we have been walking for miles. We are staying with a family, about a 30 minute hike from the school. Since we are not expected back to the casa for lunch, we have gone exploring the centro after class – checking out the cafe’s and sights. The city has some spectacular architecture – old colonial buildings, art-deco wedding cakes, tiled parks with ornate fountains, you name it.

We were used to having a quiet lunch in Ecuador, but we always made a plan for the afternoon. So when we arrived here, we booked a few afternoon activities as well. The school offers a number of afternoon activities, and the city offers many more.

Mistake. Here, businesses open between 8:30 and 9:00 (our Spanish classes start at 8:30), and stay open until about 1:00 PM (when our classes end). Then everything closes, and people head home for a LONG siesta. Businesses reopen around 5:00 or 6:00 stays open until about 9:00. Then people head home for dinner. Then the night-life starts.

At 7:30 PM, the restaurants aren’t open – the chairs are upside-down on the tables. At 9:00, anyone you see in a restaurant is likely a tourist. The locals start to arrive around 10:00, often with small children. A proper time for adults to dine is 11:00 or later.

We didn’t know. We decided to take a Tango group-lesson, which started at 9:00. We thought that was unusually late, but figured the teachers had day jobs or the venue wasn’t available.

We had participated in a 2-hour wine-tasting class in the afternoon, and Michelle had booked a hairdresser for 5:00 (the earliest they would take her). And when we got home, we had homework to do. So we didn’t get a siesta before dinner.

We should have realized the situation when we had to beg our house-mother to serve us dinner early enough to race out to the class. Other students knew better – a 9:00 PM class is exactly the right time for students who want to learn BEFORE dinner.

The tango lesson was terrific – we’ll talk about tango in another posting. After the lesson, we stopped for a glass of wine in the Paseo Sarmiento, off the Plaza Independencia. It’s a big pedestrian street filled with cafe’s, bars, and restaurants. It was 11:00 PM on a Thursday night. There was live music, and the warm evening air was perfect.

Turned out the restaurant didn’t sell wine by the glass – the local custom is to order a bottle. So we got a delicious bottle of local Malbec (with a plate of local cheeses to accompany it). We settled back happily, wondering how we had ever found such a perfect place.

When we arrived, the cafe and surrounding ones were empty, and we thought they were close to closing. But as we sat and drank our wine, the seats around us started to fill up. Around 1:00, the street was rocking. But we were dead tired, we tipsily hailed a taxi home.

The next morning came too quickly for us. We struggled out of bed with our 6:30 alarm clock, but we were hung-over and ruined for the day (our professor took pity on us, spent two hours in simple conversation exercises, and didn’t assign any homework). We groaned that we had previously booked afternoon activities and had to stay awake until mid-afternoon – we hiked home afterwards and collapsed into bed. We had wanted to go to a dance club in the evening, but we just couldn’t do it.

Mendoza is a very safe and tranquil city. We are told that the only time we need to be careful is 6:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday, when the drunks are coming home.

We’re learning not to fill up the day – that afternoon siesta is critical. We’re also learning the practice of eating four times a day – breakfast at the casa, lunch at a restaurant (always a leisurely event, see below), coffee and a snack at 6:00, and dinner at 10:00 or so. (We call it the Argentine diet plan—not sure of the ultimate effect this will have on our waistlines.)

The locals also fuel their day with regular hits of excellent coffee, and mate – a tea with a mule’s kick of caffeine. We’re learning to do that too.

We are told that Buenos Aires isn’t like this. The siesta is shorter, and the workday ends earlier. Malena, our house mother, tells us that when she moved here from Buenos Aires, she was surprised that people here got into their pyjamas and settled in for a serious nap in the afternoon.

Mendoza is a lovely place. We’re going to park ourselves here longer that we had originally planned (we’re already talking about renting an apartment here for November). But until we get acclimatized to the local schedules, we may not get as many blogs posted as we were able to in Ecuador.

Well, it’s been seven weeks, and we come to the end of our stay in Ecuador. Time to look back a bit.

We’ve been totally charmed by the people we’ve met. Ecuadorians are the friendliest, most lovely people on this planet. (OK, Newfoundlanders are the friendliest, but we’re here now.)

We use an ‘cabina’ (like a phone booth, but part of a retail store) to make a phone call – by the time we finish, we are amigos with the store owner who will wave at us every time we pass his store. When we return to a coffee shop a second time, the staff greet us like we are family returning from a long trip.

We are adopted by the families that we stay with – including the kids, the in-laws, and the cousins – and they all take pleasure showing us their cities and sharing their time with us. We thought this would be a leisurely few months, with long afternoons to read, study, and loaf. But we barely have time to sit down. Ecuadorians repeatedly amazed us with their generosity and hospitality.

Families are big in Ecuador. It’s still an old-fashioned place (but unfortunately learning our North American ways). ‘Kids’ still live with their parents until they get married, and afterwards drop in to visit several times a week. Meals are still eaten at the family table.

= = =

Ecuador is huge. Not physically huge. There is so much to see, crammed into such a small space. And you can’t see it quickly – it can take 15 hours to drive from here to there, because the terrain is so rugged. Most of the roads are excellent, but the exceptions are painful.

Last year we visited the Galapagos. It is a unique experience, a week there will change the way you look at nature. People who has been there will tell you that it is NECESSARY that you visit it yourself.

Cuenca is an architectural jewel-box. Unfortunately, we can’t show it to you, as much as we want to. The narrow streets defy photography, the crowded urban kaleidoscope doesn’t translate to the still image. Take it from us, it is impossible to walk in the centro streets without grinning like a cat.

We have climbed on Chimborazo. There is a magical draw to this huge mountain – it dominates you. You cannot hike even the lowest foothills without feeling awe. And when you finally climb above the clouds and look down on them, wow.

We have cruised part of the ‘Avenue of the Volcanos’, repeating their ancient names like incantations. After a while we don’t even bother to take pictures of these spectacular mountains (“That’s Cotopaxi over there.” “Is it erupting today?” “No, seems quiet.” “OK, keep going.”).

Tungurahua – (say it as four syllables, Tun-Gue-Rah-Hua, with emphasis on all of them, sort of like saying four separate words.)

The Coast, with its spectacular beaches and balmy weather is a tourist draw. Our bad luck to be there during an ‘El Nina’ event. Anytime in the next 10 years will likely have much better weather. But it was still perfect.

We didn’t get to the ‘Oriente’ – Ecuadorians refer to their portion of the Amazon as ‘The East’. We chatted with another tourist who has just returned, she was gushing about how amazing, how wonderful it was. But Michelle was looking at the insect bites up and down her legs – the size of alligator bites – and vetoed a visit. (Hint: if you go, wear full-body spandex at all times).

We saw just a fraction of the wonders of this country. It’s a magical place.

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The saddest part of Ecuador is the poverty. This should be a rich country, it has natural resources coming out of its ears, and the people are natural entrepreneurs. Like much of South America, it is hobbled by bad government and corruption. But Ecuador has some unique challenges.

Education is important here. Parents dig deep into their pockets to send their kids to University. But people here simply don’t read – it’s not a ‘reading culture’. We have not seen books in any of the homes we visited. Bookshops are rare – especially in the smaller towns – and shabby. The big-city newspapers are closer in content to the Forest Hill Crier than the Toronto Globe and Mail. It’s OK, we hear. The kids read on the internet. But of course they don’t.

We were a little surprised at the high-school schedule in Manta. Lots of kids, not many schools, so they run three shifts. Carlos’s children are on the late shift – they start classes at 4:00 PM and finish around 8:00 PM. I wonder how effective that is.

There aren’t a lot of jobs waiting for University graduates, Ecuador isn’t part of the 21^th century knowledge economy yet. The export economy runs on oil, fish, bananas, flowers, and ceramics. Ecuador grows the best coffee and cocoa in the world, and exports it to be processed.

Almost 20% of the citizens are working overseas (2M out of 13M citizens). That’s huge – because the 13M includes children and retired people. Everyone seems has a brother or cousin in the US or Spain or somewhere. Every cabbie says he has spent a few years working in the US. Remittances drive the consumer economy.

A construction worker in Spain earns almost 10 times what a similar worker in Ecuador makes. But every newspaper has a sad story of expatriates having to return to Ecuador – the global financial crisis is drying up work. These are huge surges of people.

One last story – so typically Ecuadorian – about training and process and trying to get anything done.  Ecuadorians are lovely, but there isn’t the management layer or commitment to skills and training. Perhaps it’s because salaries are so low.

When we are in Quito, we stay at the Hilton Colon. It’s a 5-star hotel, a bit stuffy but very comfortable and has a terrific location. Rooms are $128 a night, which is very high in Ecuador, but I’ve paid that much for the Holiday Inn Express in Duck’s Butt, Missouri.

We know we’re coming back for one last night, so we walk down to the front desk and ask if we can book a room. Yes sir, it’s $180 a night. That’s the rack rate, we have always paid the lower rate. We argue, the clerk consults with his supervisor and comes back to tell us we can have the lower rate if we book it ourselves on the internet.

Huh? We’re standing right in front of him. But we can’t sway him. We figure we’ll get the travel agent to book it when she books our air tickets back to Quito.

But that doesn’t work either. The travel agent believes the rate is $128 per person. No, we explain – simply look as the last time you booked us there. But she is adamant, the rate is per person.

I try the Hilton Colon website, it redirects to the US Hilton site and I don’t get a good feeling that a reservation will actually be waiting for me when I arrive.

Almost across the street is the Windsor Hotel – a nice looking hotel that has a sign offering rooms for $39 (a bit more for double occupancy) including free internet.

I paid almost that much alone for the internet service at the Hilton – although that includes having a bellboy in a funny hat deliver a secret code to the room). The Windsor website simply sends an email, I sent one and got a confirmation back in about 3 minutes.

www.windsorhotelecuador.com and it was perfect. We’ll be staying there next time too.

So the Hilton has lost about $200 in revenue that night (a month’s salary for one of their staff) and a repeat customer. How much money do they save by not training their staff?

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So goodbye Ecuador, and Thank You. We’ve had a wonderful time, an amazing time.

We’ll be back.

We have all played a version of this parlour game where you get others on your team to guess a word without using it yourself. If you are friends of Jeff and Stacia, you have probably played it many times.

When it is your turn, you talk your way around the chosen word and hope that your team mates will quickly figure out the excellent clues you are giving them—for example you might describe “astronaut” as someone who likes to be out of this world.

We’re getting good at this game, because we play it all the time. With our fledgling Spanish vocabulary we talk our way around words all the time – simply because we don’t have the one we really want.

Our Spanish teacher had us do a version of this game on Friday. I call it the miscommunication game.

I started with the verb “Dormir”, to sleep. I thought it would be simple—what you do at night—but Tom had different ideas. He was going through the seemingly infinite variety of list of reflexive verbs we had learned, like “to go to bed”, “to get undressed”, and “to brush your teeth”. After several minutes of trying to convey this basic human need, in desperation I resorted to singing “Frere Jacques”. Time over, no points.

So it was now Tom’s turn to give clues about his verb. He gave out excellent clues. Unfortunately, the clues were for “Sentir” (to feel) – a verb very close in spelling (but regrettably not in meaning) to his assigned verb “Sentar” (to sit) — 5 points for presentation and creativity, 0 points for execution.

He had both the teacher and I wiping the tears of laughter from our eyes.

It is not a coincidence that our host mother would look up from some of the conversations with Tom, nodding her head in a “that’s nice dear, but I have no idea what you are saying” sort of way.

We are refining our skills in this game and will be ready for future parties.