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So we made it to Otavalo, the town with the supposedly largest market in South America. The night before market day (i.e. Friday night) we ate at a pizza place that, as do lots of touristy restaurants, has a menu with English on one side and Spanish on the other. We had to laugh when we were looking through the menu and saw that the toppings for the vegetarian pizza contained “clifford”. That sounds not only carnivorous but a bit cannabilistic as well. To satisfy my curiosity, I checked on the Spanish side and found the word coliflor (cauliflower) in the same place in the topping list. So this must be a case of Clifford being lost in translation.

On a food-related note, a couple days ago we visited the town of Ibarra, solely to eat. The book said we could eat at a restaurant that serves only one dish (el plato): marinated beef cubes with sausage, fresh cheese, avocado mote (it’s like boiled corn), potatoes and a banana empanada (like a hot pocket). Also there were included appetizers of fried crunchy corn and beans and a salsa similar to pico de gallo (but without jalapenos) and blackberry sorbet for dessert. This restaurant, El Alpargate, has been in business (again, serving only one dish) for over 130 years, and they do enough business to justify 3 locations. We went to the oldest.

From there, we walked to Heladeria Rosalia Suarez. The Lonely Planet (South America on a Shoestring) description says it best: “Don’t leave Ibarra without having a scoop of ice cream at Heladeria Rosalia Suarez. It’s the most famous ice cream shop in Ecuador, opened by Rosaliea herself over 90 years ago. Rosalia is credited with perfecting the tradition of helados de paila (ice cream - usually sorbets - hand-turned in a [brass] bowl); she lived to be 104.

We got to see some of the guys turning the helados - definitely looks old fashioned. I felt like a real wuss when I thought back to my days working at White Mountain. I thought that ice-cream making was hard work but I had an electric motor to turn the dasher for me. These guys use a big spoon and arm strength! Definitely tasted good… no doubt about that! We had coco (coconut), mora (blackberry), taxa (similar to passionfruit), vainilla (vanilla), and another tropical fruit I can’t remember the name of. All were spectacular. Then I had to slide down the fire pole they had in the restaurant!

For those of you geographically nerdy types, this is our first (and probably only) post with positive lattitude (i.e. north of the Equator). So click on the Map This button!