Trip to Salinas
Friday and Saturday we took our cultural trip to Salinas which is north of Cayambe in the province of Imbabura.
The day before I had finally gotten my peace corps cell phone and set my alarm for a 4:45am start only to startle awake Friday morning to the calling “Abril, desayuno (breakfast). Aye! Luckily I got myself ready and showered in a whopping 10 minutes and out the door about on time. This was the start of my “cultural weekend.”
We took a bus up to the city of Imbabura and from there took the tourist train up to Salinas. The train ride was beautiful! We weaved in and out of the amazing mountains and could see the Imbabura Mountain for most of the ride.
Friday and Saturday we took our cultural trip to Salinas which is north of Cayambe in the province of Imbabura.
The day before I had finally gotten my peace corps cell phone and set my alarm for a 4:45am start only to startle awake Friday morning to the calling “Abril, desayuno (breakfast). Aye! Luckily I got myself ready and showered in a whopping 10 minutes and out the door about on time. This was the start of my “cultural weekend.”
We took a bus up to the city of Imbabura and from there took the tourist train up to Salinas. The train ride was beautiful! We weaved in and out of the amazing mountains and could see the Imbabura Mountain for most of the ride.
The city of Imbabura
Beautiful Train Ride
Once in Salinas we were given the cultural background of the community. It is a community of predominantly African decent. The areas main industry had been salt mining (which is where it gets its name) until it gained freedom. Now the main industry of the area is sugar cane. There are beautiful fields of sugar cane grown throughout the area. Sadly though, the farmers themselves still receive little profit from the sugar cane crop.
This is the final salt product once it has been burned and processed.
This mudd filter was used to test the salinity of if water to see if there was salt in the soil.
Mountain created during the mining of salt in the area. Salt is no longer a large industry in the area because the government controls the industry (i think, every was explained in spanish so I may have missed some important details)
Statue symbolizing the towns freedom.
Next culture moment….pig foot soup! Since being here I have been eating meat a lot. It’s definitely a change though I wanted to integrate myself into the Ecuadorian culture and no doubt meat is a large part of this. So I at my pig foot soup!
A group of women in the community came and did beautiful dances while we were at lunch and after eating a huge lunch (lunch here is always the largest meal, usually a soup and then a main course consisting of rice potatoes and meat) we danced the afternoon away as a local bang played for us. It was a ton of fun.
We then were split of to go to the families which were graciously having us stay with them for the evening. The families which we stayed with all lived together in houses connected to each other with a tienda store in the front.
Everyone was beat from a long hot day…
Once we settled into the room the curious children of course followed and proceeded to ask us all kinds of questions. One little girl gave Inez and sweet hair dew while they were enthralled with my camera and had to take tons of pictures. Later the two little girls took me hand in hand while we skipped through the community hand in hand. Hah I am quickly learning a lot about Peace Corps is being able to make a fool out of yourself, and that I think I am pretty good at!
Everyone was beat from a long hot day…
Once we settled into the room the curious children of course followed and proceeded to ask us all kinds of questions. One little girl gave Inez and sweet hair dew while they were enthralled with my camera and had to take tons of pictures. Later the two little girls took me hand in hand while we skipped through the community hand in hand. Hah I am quickly learning a lot about Peace Corps is being able to make a fool out of yourself, and that I think I am pretty good at!
We all had a wonderful large dinner of potatoes with mayo and ketchup (people put mayo on many things here!), rice of course and chicken it was time for the big futbol soccer match. I wouldn’t recommend eating a ton of rice and potatoes right before running around in a soccer game yikes! So it was the Peace Corps team vs. the chicas of Salinas (who I would imagine have played soccer about everyday of their lives, I can’t remember the last time I played soccer, maybe during recess in elementary school?) So we played an awesome game of soccer lead by our all star Lindsay and had a tied game! Surprisingly I did a lot better than I thought though I need to get myself back in shape (I try to balm my tiredness on the high altitude and plethora of ice creams and candies in Ecuador which I have been very much over indulging in!)
We wrap up cultural trip day two with a morning breakfast of chicken, peas, bread, fruit, and I think more rice. I also think I found my new favorite fruit! I had 5 today…hehe, though I forget the name. We headed off to see a women’s group that makes recycled paper and turns it into cards and other little gifts. We all got to take a stab at making that paper and we found it sure wasn’t easy.
We wrap up cultural trip day two with a morning breakfast of chicken, peas, bread, fruit, and I think more rice. I also think I found my new favorite fruit! I had 5 today…hehe, though I forget the name. We headed off to see a women’s group that makes recycled paper and turns it into cards and other little gifts. We all got to take a stab at making that paper and we found it sure wasn’t easy.
Sweet Granadilla (passion fruit)
...Lets just say I had 5 in one day, love them!
We begun the journey back home with all 20 some of us piled in the back of a truck, it was great fun with beautiful views.
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