Susudel, Saraguro, Tequila and Cops

We enjoyed our day trip last month with a local tour company,  so when they advertised a trip to two local villages, we thought it would be fun.

Our first stop was an organic farm about 50 miles down the Pan American Sur Highway, in a town called Susudel.  The farm produces dried fruits, meat jerky's, granolas, maize, cheeses, pickles, peppers and lots more.  We were served breakfast and given a tour of the farm.

 

Breakfast was delicious, homemade yogurt with figs, scrambled eggs ( a combination of chicken and duck eggs) mixed with the organic pork jerky, we were also served  homemeade breads, pastries, and jams, all made on the farm.  We had  Horchata tea, (made from a flower) and locally grown coffee.  The owner, Fernando and his wife Xime were our gracious hosts.  Apparently Fernando was chubby as a child and was nicknamed "Ferbola", (I have no clue what that means) and it stuck, so that is his brand name, he also has his picture on in label which we thought was funny.

Organic Farm in the mountains

Farm House, it is also a Posada, they provide horse riding tours, river kayaking, or you can simply hang out and enjoy the scenery.

Fernando, the owner of the farm.  He is an Agricultural Engineer.  Cool hat huh?

One of the many jams they produce on the farm.  It was a $1.00 per jar.  Notice his smiling face on the label.

Stone oven used to make breads and pastries.

Our new friend Margit, she is the lovely lady that will be living in our new building with us!!

Trays of locally grown banana's on their way to be dried.

Fernando won a "prize" in college for developing this drying machine.  In the tray to the right of the machine were red peppers being dried.

Dried Bananas, they were a little too sweet for me.

This is the plant that the Horchata tea is made from.  The leaves are beautiful, total Christmas colors.

We just find it amazing that cactus grow 5 feet away from lucious grapes!!  The grapes are harvested twice a year here.

View from the Farm

Fernando is passionate about horses, what a great landscape to ride in.

We have NO clue what this flower is, we just thought they were beautiful.

Wild Orchids

OK, Cuy (Guinea Pig) is a part of life here in Ecuador.  These little guys are waiting to be plump enough to be served for lunch. 

The next stop was the Church in Susudel, we were supposed see the floral arrangements made by the woman in the village every week, and visit a local weaver next to the church.  We got to the church and waited for the caretaker to open it up for us, we then found out that the caretaker had been gored by a bull, yes, gored by a bull, the week before, he was layed up and couldn't make it.  His son was supposed to let us in to the church, but apparently no one told him because he never showed up. 

Church in Susudel.

We did get to visit the weaver !

Just a pic of some cute kittens hanging out with the weavers, the shoes were bigger than they were.

From Susudel we went on to Saraguro, we stopped along the way to watch the traditional method of making the bricks Susudel is known for.  They tie two horses or cows together, they walk in circles mixing the materials to produce the bricks.  We didn't take any pics because we actually felt sorry for the animals.

This is a cemetery outside of Susudel, most graves are above ground.  We learned that if you could not afford one of these crypts, they rent them for 40 years, upon which time a family member has to come and remove the bones and place them in a really tiny crypt.  Yuck, who gets that job.  Kinda creepy.

We again stopped along the roadside on the way to Saraguro to look at some plants that only grow in this area of the Andes.  We were all munching berries off of the branches, they were delicious.We were told you cannot buy these berries in any markets. The pic is the view across the road.

 A flower called "Inca Earring".

Saraguro means "Land of Corn", the Saraguro people originally lived in Bolivia, but were forcibly relocated by the Inca's during their colonization and expansion into Ecuador.  The Saraguros have strongly maintained their roots and identity, even after 500 years. They are easily identified by their distinctive clothing.  The women wear flat white hats with really wide brims, and black spots on the underside of the brim, their skirts are heavy, pleated black wool, and the shawls are fastened with an ornate silver pin called "tupus". 

The men have single ponytails or braids, they wear black ponchos and calf length pants, often with "Wellington type" boots.  This is to avoid trudging mud into the house after a day of work in the fields. 



Typical Saraguro Man

We saw two women dressed in the traditional Saraguro clothing ( we had no clue at the time, but we realized it was  a sort of identification of their tribe) at the Quito Airport a few months ago. 

We only saw one woman dressed in the traditional garb on our day trip, we wanted to be respectful, so we didn't take a picture.  We read that if we go to Saraguro on a Sunday, we can see men and women in the traditional dress, it is the day of worship and also the important market day. We think we might try to take a bus.  It should cost us about $2.50 each way. 

 I downloaded a pic from the internet to illustrate the beauty of the hats.

 Our guide told us that Saraguro only opened up to tourism 3-4 years ago, they kept to themselves and didn't get along very well with Mestizo's (people of mixed indigenous and European decent).  He said that if we had gone there 5 years ago, the people would have actually thrown rocks at us!! 
Michael thought that would have been cool.

We wandered around the town square and we stood out like sore thumbs.  We didn't see a single gringo in town that wasn't on the trip with us. 

The women make and wear really distinctive beaded necklaces, beautiful work. 
I bought one for $8.00, probably over paid. 

My necklace, I wish I  could do this type of beadwork.

We left the main town area and went up a mountain road to Pukara Wasi, a restaurant/Posada where we were treated to a traditional meal, the type of food only served at celebrations.  We all sat around a big table and were given wooden spoons, then lunch was served. 

YOU GUESSED IT, CUY!!! 

We were all given a bowl with boiled wheat, placed on top of the wheat was a piece of local cheese, a biscuit and a chunk of Guinea Pig. 
Thank God I didn't see any little feet anywhere.  LOL, or OMG, I am not sure.

I avoided the piece of Cuy and ate the wheat, cheese and biscuit. 

The man next to me was thoroughly enjoying his Cuy so I gave him mine.  I dodged the bullet, I didn't want to seem disrespectful by leaving the Cuy in the bowl.

We were served Horchata tea again, all in all, it was a nice lunch. 

A woman in the traditionl skirt, shawl and  necklace.  She had a wicked sense of humor, ( we found that out through our guide/translator), she was cool.  Note the guy in the calf length pants.

Is she beautiful or what??  Notice the HUGE necklace of beads.

Cloud cover, our view after lunch at Pukara Wasi.

After we had lunch, we started back to Cuenca with a stop a tiny Tequila distillery.  As we drove down the driveway, the huge Agave plants made us laugh.

Michael and I were not up for the Tequila tasting so we just wandered around.

Some pics of  a really beautiful flower we had never seen before.

We called this "Invasion of the Body Snatcher's Flower" 

Same flower, in  bloom.  It was incredibly beautiful, the petals covered Michael's hands, this thing was HUGE.

Bamboo Plant at the Tequila Distillery.

It was a long day, filled with history, scenery and food.  When we got on the bus in the morning, everyone was talking and laughing, by the end of the day we were tired and ready to go home.  The trip back was pretty quiet, UNTIL, for absolutely no reason, the bus was stopped by the police.    

The Policia gave the driver a hard time and finally said we had to pull over.  Apparently, they did not like the gray shading on the back windows.  He HAD to remove it, right now.

 The driver got out and started trying to scrape the shading off, on the side of the road, with his fingers as his only tool.

  It was the consensus on the bus that if we all pitched in a buck, for a total of $18.00, ( sixteen passengers, one guide and one driver) maybe we could get the Policia to let us go. 

The driver spent about 10 minutes trying to get the shade film off,  he got about 1/4 of the way done, and all of a sudden the Policia didn't care anymore, and we were let on our way. 
It was total nonsense.  TOO  FUNNY