Today began with a most interesting encounter. Isabel´s staff was a bit late getting in this morning, so when the doorbell rang, I was the one who went to answer it. Outside the front gate was a guy selling fish from a cooler, and when I say fish, I mean whole fish, including a massive eel that he lifted out to show me, and several prawns complete with eyes and antennae. Back inside, Isabel asked who it was, and I replied, a bit rattled, "Es los pescados¨("It´s the fish¨). She thought this was very funny, and told the salesman to come back later. I have a feeling I´ll see that eel again.
After that, it was off to La Lengua and another morning of lessons with Pilar. When class was over, instead of going straight home for lunch, I decided to check out a bookstore down the street from the school, to see if they carried Spanish versions of anything I knew. They did, but not many: I settled for Stephen King´s El Pistolero (The Gunslinger) and Jules Verne´s 20,000 Leguas de Viaje Submarino (I assume even those who don´t speak Spanish will recognize that one), as well as several mechanical pencils that tried to compensate for their tiny erasers with flashy metal exteriors.
Back at Casa de Isabel, Miguel and I were joined at lunch by a very attractive young man from New York who, like me, came to Ecuador to teach English (unlike me, though, he´s actually a professional teacher). When I first saw him, I thought he was wearing eyeliner, but then I realized he had a fading black eye - from what I overheard of his chat with Miguel, it´s from a mugging. Yet another reminder never to let my guard down here.
On a side note, I´m pretty open about trying new foods, and even if I´m served something I don´t like, I´ll still eat some of it to be polite. Since I don´t know the names of most Ecuadorian dishes, I tend to eat first and ask questions later - so far, I´ve enjoyed almost everything. Today, however, I found myself facing down my vegegable nemesis: avocado. I hate avocado with a passion, so when half of one appeared on my plate, I won the standoff, and politely sent it back.
The Vivarium in Parque Carolina was open today, and that´s where I spent the afternoon. It´s the cold-blooded equivalent to the botanical garden: reptiles and amphibians native to Ecuador, plus from a few other places. I didn´t take any photos, since it was dark inside and the flash would have bothered the animals, but highlights included:
- A family of tiny poison dart frogs, dark red with neon-green lines down their sides.
- A ´rana verde de Quito´, a very fat and wrinkly frog.
- A beautiful rainbow boa, with black-ringed copper spots on its back and a gray-green underside.
- Several garden boas, which have fat middles and huge heads on skinny necks and tails.
- A ´verrugosa´, a venomous snake that lives where I´m going.
- Three very ugly African clawed frogs: blobby white things whose eyes look like octopus suckers.
- A turtle with a fun name: ´cabeza de sapo´(toad-head)
- A little caiman, the size of a housecat.
- Two oriental boas curled up together, with a third one lonely by itself in the corner.
- River turtles having a turf war, biting and chasing each other.
- A basilisk lizard and a frog, both of them the same shade of brown, sitting together on a branch.
- A dart frog with the best name of all: ´rana diabolito´ (´little devil-frog´)
- A cage that had a baby mouse in one corner and a toad the size (and shape) of one of my hiking boots in the other. Draw your own conclusions.
- A tank full of ´renacuajos´(tadpoles).
- A tank holding a mother rattlesnake and her two-week-old babies.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I worked some more lesson plans for Salango, watched The Simpsons in Spanish, and eventually fell asleep. If things go smoothly tomorrow, I´ll try and go back to the Centro Metropolitano - there´s still lots to see there.
A few token photos:
The outside of the Viviarium.
A close-up of the python figure on top of the sign.
