Hello everybody, hope you are well!
We are both well and have settled in, and it´s still dry (although extremely windy)
Here the locals are eager for the rains to start as it has been dry for a long time and the price of potatoes (which is the staple food here) has reached five times what it is during harvest time, as supplies are running low (although the hospital is very well stocked and if anything we eat more here than at home!).
At the weekend Adele and I tried a second time to complete the five hour walk from Chugchilan to Quilatoa without getting lost, but this time we got even more lost! We ended up at the bottom of a valley where we luckily ran into a farmer called Manuel who was headed towards Quilatoa with a sack of watermelons and offered to lead the way. He was middle-aged but it was hard to keep up with him as he jumped across streams and scrambled up practically vertical "trails" which seemed to only exist in his head. Further on we were joined by a 10-year old indigenous girl walking the same way home from school, and who seemed very disappointed when she asked us how many hectares of land our families have and how many "beasts´", and the answer was "a cat"! Here, wealth is measured by how many llamas, sheep and cattle a family has, and how many fields of potatoes it manages to grow and sell.
Speaking of eating, I also experienced "cuy" for the first time a few days ago- otherwise known as roast guinea pig. It´s a big favourite here, everyone keeps a few in their house, and all the Ecuadorians were very excited about such a delicacy (the Italians less so!). I got the back end. It was a lot like rabbit, but the amount of meat on it was microscopic!
Apart from that I can´t think of much other news... we would like to send some more postcards but Zumbahua doesn´t have a post office or any postboxes so it´s a bit difficult! Adele is getting on well in the hospital and has now delivered five babies, and treated lots of illnesses that you hardly ever see in Europe (but she will have to fill you in on the details).
Love to everyone, write to us or leave a message here to tell us how you are!
Ross (and Adele)
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