I was going
to wait to discuss my vacation until I had finished editing my photographs but
if I did that, I’d never end up talking about the trip. It’s quite sad how many photographs I take
on vacation. I’m still editing photographs
from vacations we took five years ago.
So in the interest of memory’s sake I shall at least discuss the first
few impressions of Ecuador that I had as a vegan. You know, incase anyone of my readers here wants to go there some
day.
First of
all, here is Ecuador:
That may
seem odd to those reading this if you’re not from the U.S. but it really is
necessary. Geography and Americans are
like the continental drift: as time
goes on, the distance between the two groups grows.
…Anything? Come on, that’s a decent geology joke. Anyway.
I was quite apprehensive about our trip to Ecuador. I had visions of the streets roaming with pickpockets, volcanoes spewing down in every town we stopped (it seemed like every travel book said some active volcano was right next to wherever we were staying), and having terrible food poisoning throughout the trip. I must also point out that this didn’t happen just because we were going to South America, per say. I also got nervous before our trips to Ireland, Costa Rica, and Germany. Any destination far from home where I either don’t speak the native language fluently or where I expect culture clashes to occur can fill me with dread.
…Anything? Come on, that’s a decent geology joke. Anyway.
I was quite apprehensive about our trip to Ecuador. I had visions of the streets roaming with pickpockets, volcanoes spewing down in every town we stopped (it seemed like every travel book said some active volcano was right next to wherever we were staying), and having terrible food poisoning throughout the trip. I must also point out that this didn’t happen just because we were going to South America, per say. I also got nervous before our trips to Ireland, Costa Rica, and Germany. Any destination far from home where I either don’t speak the native language fluently or where I expect culture clashes to occur can fill me with dread.
Then you
add in the fact that I’m vegan and I have to somehow convey this message whenever
we eat out? Checking out the Happy Cow
site didn’t do much to calm my fears much either. Even 1 review of, “I tried to tell them I’m vegan but I could
definitely taste dairy cheese,” can be enough to fill me with panic. I had taken Spanish for 2 years in high
school and off-and-on while in college but even with a small refresher using
Rosetta Stone, I still couldn’t remember every fruit and vegetable out
there. What if I thought a word that
was in a dish was a vegetable but was really some sort of animal product? Yeah.
Fun.
 |
| How I knew everything would be ok. Bumblebee was at the Quito airport! |
So, with
all of this apprehension, we arrived safely in Quito after a long day of
flying. After walking through the
airport and taking a taxi that seemed to zip in-and-out of lanes with a speed
barely slow enough for the human brain to process, we were dropped off at our
hotel in the heart of Quito. Being
almost ten o’clock, we didn’t feel like eating anything despite having nearly
nothing of substance to eat all day.
Instead, we decided to just eat a snack bar and some homemade bread we
had stuffed in our backpacks.
 |
| Quito! From the slopes of Pichincha |
Because we
were there for only a limited amount of time, and because we wanted to see as
much of the country as possible, we crammed as many activities into one day
that we could. After hiking around the
slopes of Pichincha volcano (exhausting, by the way, if you’re not acclimated
to the heights. We went from about 10,000 ft. to about 13,000 ft.) and parts of
the old town, we went for a late dinner at El Maple, which was about a
ten-minute walk from our hostel.
It was a
bit difficult to find, however, since Happy Cow’s directions were both a bit
off and vague. I walked up and down the
block it was supposedly on and tried to get directions from people inside a
fast food joint (awkward much? Being a
vegan and going into a chicken fast food place for directions.). That didn’t pan out. I finally found someone inside an internet
café that had heard of it and we were on our way!
It was a
cool little vegetarian restaurant with brightly lit rooms on the inside. We had one room all to ourselves for most of
our meal but that’s probably because we were eating after eight and most people
in Ecuador seem to have dinner either earlier or later. Either way, I was looking to devour some
food. Besides a very small breakfast in
our hotel that morning, we hadn’t had much since. Eating one or two meals a day would be a regular thing for us on
our vacation.
 |
| Breakfast at 1 of our hostels. |
With the
apprehensions I spoke of earlier running through my mind, I nervously ordered
dinner for myself. Thankfully, the meal
turned out to be quite good! For an
appetizer we had ordered a plate of diced potatoes covered in some sort of
sauce (sorry, my memory is fading) and for a main meal we each had a plate with
rice, seitan ‘steak’, lentils, a plantain, and a tiny salad. I was worried about the raw salad because
everything I read said to avoid raw salads but I figured that was mainly aimed
at people eating in omnivore restaurants, so I ate it anyway. Besides, when you’re ravenous, you will eat
anything.
Even though
the meal was delicious, it definitely wasn’t an American-sized meal. Needless to say, I was still a bit hungry
even after the meal but it probably would’ve been fine had I had more food
throughout the day. Thankfully,
worrying about the raw salad was pointless because I had no trouble that night
or for most of the three-week vacation.
I’m not sure if that is due to veganism or because I was just lucky but
I’ll take it.
 |
| Restaurante Manantial |
The next
day was another day where we had one main meal but this time it was a late lunch
at Restaurante Manantial, a vegetarian restaurant. Again, the place was impossible to find because there was no sign
outside to indicate where it was and the directions on Happy Cow were vague. Again, we were hungry as hell when we showed
up. The portions for our meals were
small but that was my fault. I
misunderstood the guy at the counter and asked to have the fixed menu for my
wife and I. The meal cost us about six dollars
and while the food was good, it wasn’t enough for people who were starving. And again, I ignored the warning about raw
salad and ate some anyway.
That night
my stomach was just killing me. I even
passed fast food joints where I knew there wouldn’t be anything to eat with a
look of longing. We ended up ducking
into a place called the Toronto Restaurant, a buffet place, because if I was
going to resort to eating in an omnivore establishment, it was going to be in a
Canadian-themed restaurant in Ecuador.
My wife didn’t partake but I devoured the hell out of a ton of potatoes,
broccoli, rice – to name a few. It was
a pit stop made out of necessity rather than desire, really. I was really nervous because it was our
first stop into an omnivore restaurant and a buffet to boot. My mind’s paranoia was screaming at me not
to put anything on my plate but my stomach won out. I’ll admit that I’m not really proud of this food stop. Not because the food was bad but because
after leaving, I felt like someone sneaking out of a one-night stand’s
apartment with disheveled clothes at five in the morning.
Overall, my
initial fears around food were somewhat misplaced. Up to this point I didn’t really have trouble communicating that
we were vegan and didn’t eat certain foods.
I enjoyed Quito a lot more than I thought I would even though there were
quite a lot of people. The food for
vegans and vegetarians is pretty decent and there are several vegetarian and
vegan restaurants throughout the city.
If you ever make it there, you won’t go hungry. Just make sure you don’t do it like I did
and eat one or two meals a day (womp womp).
One thing
that made me a bit sad was the amount of street cart vendors that had piles of
dead animals roasting on open grills.
The smells wafted through the air around these carts and there were
quite a few people eating off of them.
It was a sad sight for a number of reasons, not least of which was the
image of all the animals being raised for these food carts. Plus, it just looked so incredibly
unhealthy. If even half of all the food
carts that we saw in Ecuador and Peru started to operate in the States, every
single one would probably be shut down for poor sanitation.
South
America also has a lot of stray dogs roaming the streets and every sad or sick
or malnourished dog I saw, I could only think about our Collie. I wish I could’ve taken care of each one of
them. I had to resist the urge to go
pet every dog I saw. My wife, on the
other hand, picked and chose which dogs she would or wouldn’t pet, leaving me
exasperated as I tried to urge her to back away. I secretly was glad she ignored me to show the dogs a small sense
of compassion.
Other than
that, however, it was a positive experience in Quito. I would definitely go back.
I think this is as good a place as any to end things for part 1. Perhaps I will pick it back up at some point
in the future. Until then, keep calm
and vegan on!
