One year after getting home and two years after leaving....

December 12th has been a significant date in my life since 1986.  That's when my sister Shari had her first child, Becky.  Becky came into the world 14 weeks early (her mother and others who know her well might be of the opinion that it's the last time she was early for anything!) and weighed just two pounds six ounces and her weight dropped to as low as one pound 14 ounces.  That was in the dark ages of preemie care, and it was a miracle that she survived and has become the beautiful woman she is today, as she celebrates her birthday with her husband Logan. 

12/12 took on additional significance in 2011 and again in 2012.  In 2011, it was the date that we left our suburban lives in Madeira to take our then 11-year old twins on a year-long trip around the world.  The experiences we shared over the subsequent twelve months have been well-documented in the various posts of this blog, and I thank everyone who has read them and everyone who has shared some kind words about them.  The trip was amazing in every sense of the word, and gave the four of us lifetimes worth of memories. 

We didn't necessarily have it planned this way, but our return back to Cincinnati happened on December 12, 2012.  As we tried to figure out when to come home from the South American part of the trip, the one thing we knew was that we wanted to be home in time to enjoy the holidays.  So getting home at least a week before Christmas was a goal.  We wound up deciding to leave La Paz, Bolivia on December 11th, flying through Lima, Peru to Atlanta where we would catch our 44th flight of the trip, a relatively brief one to Cincinnati, landing at CVG on the morning of the 12th day of the 12th month of 2012.  12/12/12.  But you probably figured that out on your own.

Being back home was great, and it was fantastic to see our family and friends again.  We were bombarded by questions about the trip. The most frequent: favorite place and best food.  Answer to both, at least for me:  San Sebastian, Spain.  Annie agreed the best food was San Sebastian, but her favorite place was Cambodia. We never EVER got tired of talking about the trip.  It was fun to run into people who had followed the trip on this blog or through Facebook or both and talk in person about our experiences.  One of my favorite early encounters upon our return was at Kroger in Madeira.  Annie and I went there together one weekday morning and were stopped by a woman wearing a Madeira hat and a Madeira pullover and she said it was great to see us, and what a great time she had following the trip and she went on and on, which was very enjoyable.  That continued for about five or ten minutes and then she said, "well I'll let you two go, great to see you!"  We said "thanks, great to see you too!" and as we turned the corner and walked down another aisle Annie and I looked at each other and each said we had no idea who that was!  But we enjoyed our momentary pseudo-celebrity status.

Over the next few months as we settled back into life in the suburbs, we got to tell our story over and over again.  And now, a year later, it has become this fantastic thing we did.  We are, and (at least to us) forever will be, the Family That Took A Trip Around The World.  It's something of which Annie and I and the kids are pretty proud.  At the same time, we try to be as humble as possible about it, and I still feel very fortunate that we were able to do it.  

December 12th will also always carry some sadness with it.  It was on December 12, 2012 that Annie's step-brother Hank Muehlenkamp died after a battle with cancer that lasted about a year and a half, much longer than anyone expected.  He was only 51 when he died, (the same age as Annie and I at the time) and his diagnosis, which came before we took the trip, is one of the reasons we decided to launch the adventure that we did.  We were glad we got home in time to make it to his funeral and see his family and share so many wonderful memories of Hank. 

But here we are on December 12, 2013.  I find myself with extremely mixed emotions.  It's great to be back in familiar territory, and be able to part of the lives of family and friends and be in our house with our stuff.  A year on the road is an unbelievable adventure filled with so many different once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  But at the same time it wears on you.  We stayed in over one hundred different apartments, hotels, houses, aparthotels, condos etc. and after all that time and changes of location, you get a little weary of trying to find the things you need to get through the day.  No whining here, I would do it again if I could.  However, familiarity is something you really miss when you don't have it for as long as we did.

Once this December 12th is behind us, there will be a little emptiness that I think Annie and I and the kids (to a lesser degree) will feel. For the past year, almost every day we have thought back to what we were doing a year ago.  We have a calendar we  picked up early in the trip in New Zealand where we kept track of what we were doing along the way.  It was fun in April of this year to look at the date in 2012 and say "Oh, this is the day we went to Great Wall of China," or "Look it's that date in May that we took the ferry from Croatia to Italy," or "Hey, it's that day in September that we wound up going to see Bayern Munich play at Allianz Arena!"  That calendar will always be a part of our lives, and we can forever recall that we were in Croatia on my birthday for instance, but there was something really special this year looking back to what was going on 365 days earlier.

One of my (minor) fears about leaving my job on the radio and being gone for that year was that people would forget the name Bill Bangert.  Before we took the trip, when mentioning my name to, say, a stranger at a store or on the phone after being on the radio in Cincinnati for 17 years, I would occasionally get a hint of recognition.  Gotta say, I enjoyed that.  I was afraid that one year away might erase that.  Turns out that hasn't been the case.  In the past twelve months I've come across a lot of people who in some instances think I'm still on either WEBN or WLW.  Others have mentioned hearing some of the reports I phoned in to WLW during our time on the road and saying they enjoyed being able to be part of the experience.  I'm thankful for that, and love hearing that.

The most recent example of that happened today.  I happened to be home when a UPS truck pulled up to the end of our driveway this afternoon.  Our dog Sophie was out, and while she barked away, I opened the door and got her inside.  As the driver stepped from the driveway to the walk leading to the front door he said "Are you THE Bill Bangert?"  I said "I'm not sure there is a "THE" Bill Bangert, but if there is, I guess that's me."  He said, "I loved your trip and hearing your reports on WLW.  You guys were very brave to do what you did."  

Wow.  Hearing that from a total stranger is mind-boggling.  To think that what we did starting two years ago today had an impact on anyone's lives other than our own is difficult to comprehend.  We did what we did because we wanted to do something adventurous with our children while we had the health and money to do it.  Plus the kids, who turned 12 a month into the trip, were at the perfect age.  It makes me so happy and fills me with such wonder to have people say they were inspired by our trip.  That includes a woman who was battling a recurrence of breast cancer in her life early in our trip, as well as a family that is right now doing their own Round The World trip after hearing us talk about it on the radio.  I never ever imagined that sort of thing being something that came out of our trip. 

The envelope that the UPS driver delivered today contained something that would take us on our next adventure:  Tickets to the Bengals/Steelers game Sunday night in Pittsburgh.  Over the years of going to Bengals games in Cincinnati, I envied the hordes of Steelers fans who would invade our town waving those damn Terrible Towels.  This past Sunday I saw the end of the Steelers game in Pittsburgh, (a loss!) and noticed there were plenty of empty seats at Heinz Field, or as my niece Jenni calls it, Ketchup Stadium.  I got curious and checked out ticket prices on StubHub for the Bengals game there this weekend and found more that 4700 tickets being sold for as low as $30.  After talking it over with Annie, we decided to take the plunge and make the trip on Sunday with our son Ben.  Some people have told us that showing up at Ketchup Stadium in Orange and Black might be more dangerous than going around the world, but we feel we're up for the challenge.  It doesn't hurt that the Bengals are 9-4 and the Steelers are 5-8.  Not sure we would be making the trip if those records were reversed.  One thing we've learned is that life is all about timing.

Being willing to take on a challenge is probably the one thing I hope that we come away with as I think back to what began two years ago today and ended 365 days ago.  I'm proud that we were able to make the decision to take a chance with our lives and do something different that all of us would remember and would impact us forever.  We wanted our kids (and ourselves) to see that there are a lot of different ways that people live their lives and that we have so much more than so many other people in other parts of the world.  And we learned (as cheesy as it sounds) that having "stuff" doesn't equate with happiness.  

All four of us are different people than we were on December 12, 2011.  We are certainly different people than we were on December 12, 2012.  What will we be like on December 12, 2014?  Who knows?  Not me.  But I'm looking forward to finding out.

South Africa

Here's another disturbing example (at least to me and some members of my family) of how my brain works.  Before taking this trip, when I thought of South Africa, I either thought of Gary Player and Ernie Els (two world-famous golfers who are natives of SA) or a scene from Lethal Weapon 2.  In the scene Joe Pesci is with Danny Glover at the South African Consulate in Los Angeles and the worker there is stunned that Glover would want to go to South Africa because of his race.  It's a pretty funny clip. 

A lot has changed about South Africa since Lethal Weapon 2 was released.  For one thing, there have been two more Lethal Weapon films, each more hideous than the one before.  More importantly, Nelson Mandela was president of South Africa from 1994-1999.  Don't know if you've noticed this, but he's, like they say in the Lethal Weapon 2 clip, "blek."  


In planning the trip, South Africa was high on our list of destinations mostly because of friends we knew who had either visited there or lived there.  It's not an easy place to get to, but we felt pretty confident it would be worth the effort.  And it definitely took some effort to get there.

With our 90 days in the Schengen Agreement burned through, it was time to get out of Europe.   We left Munich at about 4:30pm local time and arrived in Doha, Qatar at around 11:15pm.  We spent the night in the airport, not sleeping much, doing what we could to find power outlets to get some juice in our devices.  It was very interesting to watch the ebbs and flows of the airport during the overnight hours, as flights came and went from and to all around the world at all different times of the morning.

Our departure from Doha was at 7:15am, with a direct flight to Cape Town that arrived at 5:40pm.  It added up to around 25 hours of travel, our longest travel segment of the trip (so far).  It wasn't quite as much of an ordeal as I expected for whatever reason.  We did get to see the sun come up in Qatar, which was a first for us.

People we talked to about South Africa raved about its natural beauty and we saw evidence of that before we even set foot on the soil of that country.  As our plane approached the airport at Cape Town, the coastline spread out below us in all its' beauty.

We got to experience even more of that beauty first hand with the waterfront condo that I found online at a good price that I managed to negotiate even lower for our stay there.  It was in an area called Mouille Point, and was almost literally in the shadow of the stadium where the World Cup games were played in Cape Town in 2010. If you listened closely and the wind was coming from just the right direction, you could almost hear the echoes of the vuvuzelas, those horns that were blown constantly during the competition.  In case you forgot what they sounded like there is a website that plays the vuvuzela, 24/7-365:  http://www.vuvuzela.fm/  You're welcome!

The weather wasn't perfect while we were in Cape Town, but it was good enough for us to get to explore some of what was quite possibly the most beautiful urban setting we had seen on the trip.  There were vuvuzelas for sale on the streets of Cape Town, along with all kinds of other trinkets and souvenirs and clothing and hats, etc., etc.

We've tried to avoid doing "touristy" things along the way, but one of the activities that brands you as a tourist has turned out to be a great way to see an area that you are unfamiliar with, especially if you don't have a car:  the double decker open-top bus.  

We first heard of the bus tours which operate in several major cities when we were staying just outside Paris.  That's when we really started to plan the South African part of the trip and a friend of ours who is from SA recommended taking the tour as a great way to see the city in a short amount of time for not a lot of money.  We took her advice and did the bus tours in both Dublin and Edinburgh, and really enjoyed it. 

That enjoyment continued in Cape Town, and it really was a fantastic way to see the city.  You can get on the bus at any of its' many stops and get back off again anywhere you want.  And it's really a great ride in Cape Town, especially if you listen to the recorded commentary that describes the different parts of town the bus goes through and some of the sights along the way.

The water front area of Cape Town became one of our favorite spots.  With Table Mountain in the background, the water shimmered with the reflection of buildings and ships and boats and a gigantic red Lego figure.

One of the stops that the bus took was to the top of Table Mountain, where you could pay a fee and ride a cable car up to the top of the mountain for an even better view.  We were running out of time to catch the last bus of the day, so we skipped the cable car ride and settled for a beautiful view of the bay.

What a spectacular view it was! Those views continued as we took the bus south from Table Mountain towards Camps Bay and Bantry Bay.  The road hugs the twisting shoreline around some secluded coves that are home to pristine beaches.  Seeing the ocean, beaches and mountains as part of a singular landscape was stunning.

The bus route went right by the apartment we rented, and even though there wasn't an assigned stop there the driver was kind enough to pull over and let us out, avoiding a pretty long walk from the closest stop. 

We took that long walk into town the next good weather day to take the ferry to Robben Island.  Despite it's beautiful setting, Robben Island has been a place where unwanted members of society have been sent for about 400 years.  Home to political prisoners and even lepers over the years, Robben Island is best known for being where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.  A ferry runs a few times a day, taking passengers over to see where the prisoners called home.

The island is about four miles off the mainland and was also used as a military fortification during World War II when the locals became concerned about the Japanese invading.  Tour buses take people to a few stops on the island, and the most compelling one is the prison where Mandela was held.

Mandela's cell is closed off and preserved as it was when he was there.  Most of the guides are former prisoners who tell some pretty chilling tales of what life was like, especially while Mandela was there.

It's fascinating to get a first-hand look at the place where the future President of South Africa was held, and released just 22 years ago.

One thing I liked about the guide who led our group through the facility was that he seemed to have no bitterness about the half-dozen our so years he was held there as a political prisoner, and it was obvious he had great pride to have shared time there with Mandela.  And we were fulfilled to have been able to see a powerful part of South African history in person.

 

After five days, it was time to leave Cape Town and head east, along what's called the Garden Route.  The route through the southern part of South Africa is filled with even more beauty.  After seeing so much amazing scenery around Cape Town, you kind of figure that the beauty bucket would be empty.  Not quite.  We rented a car in CT and hit the N2, with the town of Mossel Bay being our destination for a couple of nights.  As we headed east, we were bombarded with non stop mountain views to our left.  This went on literally for hours, and as we got close to Mossel Bay, the scenery got even more beautiful as the view from the road would occasionally include the ocean to our right.

The place we booked in Mossel Bay was the lower portion of a house that had a great view over the bay and nature provided us a welcoming gift of a gorgeous sunset our first night there.  

The owners were a very interesting couple.  He was from Switzerland and she was a Brit and they had been living in South Africa for several years, having moved to Mossel Bay from Durban.  They were still searching for just the right spot and were thinking of South America and gave us some interesting reading materials, including several copies of International Living magazine.  Those articles got our  brains spinning about living somewhere else for a while.

The location of Mossel Bay made it perfect for a day trip to see an ostrich farm and a nearby animal sanctuary.  Both were near the town of Oudtshoorn, so we got in our rental car for the 90-minute drive to see some more wildlife.  Unfortunately, for us and more so for the birds, some sort of bird flu had the ostrich farms shut down.  But that didn't stop us from getting a close-up look at those amazing creatures.  We pulled off at the entrance to one of the farms, where some of the large, prehistoric looking birds were gathered.

They seemed to like the attention, and were not shy about us approaching them.  Up close, the birds are absolute freaks of nature.  These huge bodies on spindly legs with those long necks that don't look like they should be able to support their heads.  When they open their wings, you can see how the feathers are connected and it looks skeletal.  Very weird.  And while we were disappointed the ostrich farms were not open, it was great just to have the chance to see them separated only by the wires of a fence.

Fortunately, the ostrich farm wasn't our only desired destination of the day.  Not too  far away was the Cango Wildlife Ranch, offering a "hands-on" experience to check out some wildlife.  You never know about the quality of these places and how the animals are being taken care of, but we had a good feeling from the moment we pulled into the parking lot.

The wildlife ranch is sort of a glorified zoo, with the main attractions being large cats.  The cats had the appropriate large spaces to in which to move around, and seemed pretty happy with their surroundings.

There was an option, for a price of course, to have an intimate encounter with lemurs.  Ben and Annie were the most into it, so to economize as much as possible, we paid for just those two to have a personal tour with the lemurs.

That proved to be some of the best money we spent on the trip, if for no other reason than the pictures we got of Ben with the lemurs.  He's something of an animal whisperer and animals totally take to him.   He's got such a great heart that one time on vacation when he was about seven we were out to eat, and he ordered just plain fish and wanted to make sure it didn't have any spicy seasonings on it.  Turns out he wanted to take some from the restaurant to give to some stray cats he had seen as we walked to dinner from our rental condo.  Apparently word has spread since then among the animal kingdom, because animals of all varieties just seem to love him, including lemurs.

And the feeling is definitely mutual.

Annie got into the act as well, showing off her own animal magnetism.

If nothing else, our visit made me appreciate the animators of movies like Madagascar, who really capture the essence of animals such as the lemur and the meerkat.

 

On our way out of Mossel Bay we took the advice of the owners of the place where we were staying and went across the bay to try to spot some whales.  It didn't take long at all to see the graceful beasts swimming a few hundred yards off the coast.  We tried to take some pictures but we don't have a telephoto lens on our camera and they didn't come out, so we'll just have to rely on our photographic memories to recall the majesty of the half-dozen or so whales we saw that day.

Our final stop on the Garden Route was for a few days in a seaside area known as Nature's Valley.  We had to be in Port Elizabeth in four days for our flight to Johannesburg and the start of our three-day safari in Kruger National Park.  Nature's Valley was comprised of a few hundred vacation homes spread out among about a half dozen streets that ran parallel to a really pretty beach. 

We jumped on a good weather day and had a great time hanging in the sand and creating our own little village.  

Our house was fairly typical of many of the homes in Nature's Valley.  It was on a decent-sized lot and we loved the a-frame construction and the big glass sliding doors that opened up to a nice deck.  

There was only one restaurant in Nature's Valley and we ate there pretty much everyday, making friends with one of the servers there.  He had dreams of going to the States, joining a friend in Texas for a while working as a welder and saving up some money, hoping to return to South Africa with a bunch of money a few years later.  We wished him well on that.

Nature beckoned again as it does so often in South Africa, and just a short drive away was Monkeyland and Birds of Eden.  The two adjoining nature parks had a decent package deal and exposed us to even more wildlife.   As fellow primates, we decided to save the monkeys for last and began with the birds.  

Birds of Eden is described as the world's largest free-flight aviary, covering more than five and a half acres, with more than 3,500 specimens of almost 300 species.  They are enclosed in a massive netting system that rises about 150 feet into the sky, giving the birds plenty of space to fly around.  We walked along the more than mile and a half of boardwalks, and were amazed at all the different types of birds we saw.  I can't possibly describe everything we saw as well as pictures can, so enjoy!

We had a blast at Birds of Eden, but you know what's even more fun than birds?  Monkeys!!  Monkeyland was just a short walk away from the bird sanctuary, and Lots and lots of monkeys called Monkeyland home, and it was just a short walk from one place to the other.


To get into the primate world of Monkeyland, it's necessary to go through a double gate, to keep the monkeys from getting out.  Most of the monkeys at Monkeyland come from zoos that have gotten overcrowded or from people who thought it would be a great idea to have a monkey as a pet.  And it does sound like a great idea, until they start flinging poo at you at the dinner table or demonstrating inappropriate and distracting behavior while you're trying to watch America's Got Talent, which I'm guessing is a pretty popular show in the world of monkeys.

The monkeys at Monkeyland have free reign of the place and seem pretty content.  They were clearly accustomed to human visitors and it was great to have them scamper about on the ground and in the trees coming very close to us several times.

They're fed a diet of fruit and hover around the feeding stations, especially when tour groups come through.  It was fun to watch them eat the orange slices, some of them carefully studying them before deciding which one to devour.

One of our favorites was a Lar Gibbon, who unlike most of the other monkeys, hung out by himself most of the time.  He made a few brief appearances on the periphery of the other monkey activities.

The closest and most frequent encounters we had came with the lemurs.  They darted in and out of the trees and along the paths that we walked along, some of them carrying adorable little lemur babies.

There were monkeys beside us, around us and above us, and we enjoyed it as much as we could considering the 15 or so members of the group we were with.  We did have a very good guide who did a great job of patiently answering questions and explaining the different species of monkeys we were seeing.

We had a great time seeing all the different kinds of monkeys prowling around Monkeyland, and they seemed to enjoy our visit just about as much.  That taste of wildlife was just an appetizer for the seven-course meal of wildlife awaiting us at our next stop.

Ecuador

After three weeks back home in Cincinnati, it was pretty weird to be packing up and hitting the road again.  The time we spent at our house provided us with a great sense of familiarity, which we soaked up after ten months of staying in more than one hundred different places in 24 countries.  The familiar became exotic for us, as we got to see family and friends and places we had missed in more than 300 days on the road.  The challenge of routine everyday activities was gone, replaced by a welcoming ease of language and setting, which was very relaxing.  Now, it was time to leave that comfort level behind and dive back into the daily experience of living with a different language and culture.

Travel is enticing, however, and it took less than 24 hours for the thrill of the road to get us in its grips once again.  Our first stop was Quito, Ecuador.  We were on our way to a house-sitting assignment for 20 days in Cuenca, a 45-minute plane ride from Quito.  Our flight arrived in Quito at ten at night, so we booked a hotel for the night and would head for Cuenca the next day.  The Hotel Antinea was adorable, with great architecture and a welcoming feel, that started right in the cozy lobby.

My expectation upon traveling after being home for three weeks was that I wouldn't want to be living in unfamiliar surroundings and getting clothes out of a suitcase each day once again.  But those feelings faded away,  replaced by the sense of adventure of communicating with people in a different land and also by the sense of unity that we felt as a family.  Our ten months on the road from December of 2011 until early October of 2012 had created an unspoken bond that we all felt, even as we were seated apart on the flight from Atlanta to Quito.  It's what we'd done for almost a year now, and we really enjoyed it.

One of the more enjoyable parts of the trip was landing house sitting gigs.  We got the twenty-day house sitting job in Cuenca through trustedhousesitters.com, the site we used to take care of 5 labradoodle puppies in France back in July.  Our quality care of the property and pets there resulted in getting a glowing reference from that homeowner and paved the way for our next job through that website.

When we saw the listing for the house sitting job in Ecuador, we were immediately intrigued.  It was from a couple in a condo who needed someone to take care of their two older cats, plus it also featured Direct TV and wireless internet.  As much as we like to experience the local culture, it's also a nice perk to be able to have a bit of a taste of home, so the satellite TV and internet helped trigger our applying for the job.

Kathy and Maik, the cat owners and condo people, were originally uneasy about the whole house sitting concept, but Annie exchanged a couple of messages through the website and convinced them to do a video chat session to try to help seal the deal.  We chatted for about 15 minutes with them while we were in South Africa, and agreed to head to Cuenca at the start of the South American phase of the trip.

After a comfortable night in Quito, we headed for Cuenca on a Wednesday afternoon.  A 45-minute flight landed us in the capital of the Azuay province of Ecuador in the southern highlands of the small nation on the western coast of South America. It's nestled among the sierra of the Andes mountains, with an altitude of about 8200 feet, or roughly three thousand feet higher than Denver. 

The condo where we lived with Whiskers and Spirit was part of a multi-family building on the western edge of town.  On the ground floor of the complex were some shops, including a hair dresser, fish place, a couple of clothing shops and a mini-market.  There was only one woman who worked there the entire duration of our stay, and her name was, predictably enough, Maria.   She spoke exactly no English, but we had a great time chatting with her during our nearly daily visits to her shop.  It was a fun experience to converse with her in our "gorilla" Spanish and her patient toddler-level Spanish. (Me in Spanish: "Me like eat food.  Me like Cuenca and those beer!" Her:  Esta Bien!") 

One of the more appealing aspects of life in Cuenca is the large ex-pat population.  Cuenca is considered one of the top spots for foreigners in all of South America.  It's a city of about 500,000 people and the locals are friendly to gringos, plus there is a very well-organized gringo culture that meshes well with the Cuencanos.  Annie signed up for a daily email from a service called the Gringo Tree, which contains a handful of notices about activities in the community, along with a classified ad or two, sort of a Craigslist type of thing.

Taxis are very affordable, costing only about $2 to get into the center of town, but most of the time we headed into Cuenca, we chose to walk.  With no major hills in the way, the stroll was fairly easy.  We made that walk pretty much every day at least one way.  Three times a week, we took Spanish lessons at a bookstore in town where the people we are house sitting for took lessons and we slid into their two-hour spot while they were back home in Chicago.  

Maria Elena, our instructor, was very patient with us, especially with Ben and Marley.  Annie and I had some lingering Spanish knowledge tucked back in the distant recesses of what's left of our brains and some of that actually bubbled back to life.  The kids caught on reasonably quickly, and it was fun to put our limited but increasing knowledge of Spanish to use on the streets and in shops and restaurants.

We also put it to use during our second week in Cuenca, during the tres dias de fiestas the city was having as part of it's Independence Day Celebrations.  Vendors were selling a wide variety of wares in tents set up in locations all across the city.  Annie jumped on the chance to buy some alpaca blankets at a good price but most of the time we just tent-shopped, enjoying being among the crowds who filled the city from all around Ecuador.  

One of the highlights of the three days of celebrations was a parade held on the middle day, which we watched from the central square in town, Calderon.  The parade participants included a wide variety, with some sporting wild outfits and putting on a brief performance in front of the reviewing stand just to our left.

My favorite was some girls dressed in indigenous outfits who danced their way down the street.

The parade and festival were great ways for us to really get into the local culture as well as feel tall.  One thing that really stood out as we walked around the streets of Cuenca for almost three weeks was how much taller we were than most of the locals.  Gotta admit, that at the height of 5'8", I enjoyed that aspect of life in Ecuador.

Annie's daily email from the Daily Gringo updated us on the events that were happening in Cuenca, especially those targeted at Gringos such as us.  Various restaurants had "gringo" nights during the week, and we checked a few of those out during our stay.  One of the first we tried was a bit of a dud, as the food wasn't very good and the prices were high.  Plus, at the table next to us, what looked to be a first date was going on. They both looked to be in their 60s, with the woman at the table talking quite loudly, and the man trying to act patient while at the same time having a look on his face like he couldn't wait to get out of there.  Then at the end of their evening at the restaurant, he whipped out some dental floss and started digging into his teeth like he was starving and wanted every last morsel of food wedged between his pearly whites.  I don't know if he did that to try to make sure that he would never have to sit through a dinner with this woman again or not.  Turns out that we ran into him a few other times around town in our three weeks there, and he chatted us up once at lunch and turned out to be a very nice guy.  He was a Texan who had just moved to Cuenca a few months before.   As we were wrapping up our meal that day, I was tempted to ask him if he had any dental floss that I could use, but I managed to restrain myself.  

A more enjoyable Gringo night was our second Friday night there when a cute restaurant where we had breakfast once early in our stay was having a Mexican night.  That's one food group that we all enjoy, so we got in a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go and he headed in that direction.  As we got to where the restaurant was, I wanted to say something along the lines of "here is fine" which in gorilla Spanish would have been "aqui is bien" but instead I gestured and said "Estoy aqui!", which is "I am here!" I realized my mistake and tried to correct myself, much to the amusement of the driver and my family.  

Another popular gringo hangout that appealed to us was at a place called the Inca Lounge.  On Sundays, they showed NFL football games.  We stopped in there three of the four Sundays we spent in Cuenca, making some new friends and enjoying hearing from people who had decided to take the plunge and move from the U.S. to Ecuador.  It was a fun atmosphere, and one of the best things was that we only saw one Steelers fan our entire time there.

One of our inspirations for this trip is Anthony Bourdain and his TV show, No Reservations.  He has one of the best gigs in the business as he travels the world, going to locations of his choosing and eating the local food and drinking the local drinks.  His show has been an influence on some of the locations we have picked, especially San Sebastian, Spain.  In his shows, he frequently has what he calls a local "fixer."  That's someone who can guide him to some unique places to go and help him avoid unsavory spots.  We had a fixer in Cuenca:  Gladys the cleaning lady.

Gladys worked for Kathy and Maik, the Chicagoans we were house-sitting for.  She comes in once a week and cleans their condo and does a great job.  She also speaks pretty good English, it's certainly better than our Spanish.  We got to know her a bit and talked to her some and she offered to take us to some Inca ruins about two hours outside of Cuenca called Ingapirca.  She had just gotten a new car and was excited to take us for a drive in it.  She even said she knew of some places to get cuy (pronounced coo-ee), the local delicacy better known north of the border as guinea pig.  We'd seen Anthony Bourdain eat some cuy in one of his shows and he seemed to enjoy it, so we just had to give it a try.

The first two-thirds of the drive were on a nicely maintained highway, called an Autopista.  Gladys was an excellent driver and we enjoyed the smooth ride.  Things got a little bumpier once we took the turn-off at the decrepit sign that pointed in the direction of Ingapirca.  There were as many potholes as there were turns on this winding road, and Gladys did a fearless job of guiding her new Chevy Sail around the suspension-bending obstacles while somehow not losing any of that new car smell.  

Ingapirca is well known among the locals, apparently so well known that the government decided there was no need to put up signs saying, "hey gringo, Ingapirca this away!"  Gladys patiently stopped and asked directions from time to time.  At least that's what we thought she was asking.  She could have been saying, "hey, I've got a carload of gringos, and they must be loaded!  They've been traveling the world for almost a year, and you should see all the Apple devices in the condo they're staying in.  I think their last names must really be Jobs, can you help me find some people to tie them up?"  Okay, maybe she wasn't saying that, or maybe she couldn't find anyone to help carry out her evil plans.  Whatever the real story is, we made it safely to the ruins, which are supposedly the best-preserved pre-Spanish Inca ruins in Ecuador.  

The ancient walls and pathways at Ingapirca aren't exactly Macchu Picchu, but they were impressive nonetheless.   The complex was originally built by the local people called the Canaris, and the Incas came along and did something that rarely happens when two differing groups of people collide:  they co-existed peacefully.  The Incas adopted some of the Canaris traditions, while the Canaris accepted some of the ideas and customs that the Incas brought with them.  What a concept!

After about forty-five minutes or so, we had seen enough ruins and were ready to check out a couple of restaurants open near the entrance that we had spotted on the way in.  But before we could get to those, we noticed a small one-story white building with some tables out front and a sign listing some food offerings. 

At the top of the list: cuy!  Turns out one of the little buggers is enough to feed three people, so we knew that would be just right for Annie, Gladys and me.

The restaurant was run by an indigenous woman who was very friendly, and served up a local cheese that Marley had grown fond of, while frying up a fish that Ben just loved.  

As for the guinea pig, Annie liked it, probably more for the experience than the actual taste.  Gladys happily took the head of the guinea pig saying that was her favorite part, including the brain. 

For me, the effort it took to get what little meat there was off the bones was not quite worth it.  It tasted a little gamey to me.  I can eat chicken until the cows come home mooing your praises for not eating them.  I like big juicy hunks of animal flesh, not little slivers.  Still it was a great experience, and a testament to having the services of a local fixer.  

The route back to Cuenca happened to go through the home town of Gladys, Canar.  She was very proud of her birthplace, and even stopped to show us her adorable grand daughter.  

It was a display of grandmotherly love that needed no translation.

Another discovery we made in Ecuador is that Cuenca is actually the birthplace of the Panama hat.  The hats, which are hand-woven, gained popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  They were shipped to other parts of the world through the isthmus of Panama and since that's where they were first purchased they became known as Panama hats.  Stores, or tiendas, all across Cuenca sell the hats, but we decided to go directly to the source:  The Panama Hat Museum.   Inside were tables filled with Panama hats of all shapes and sizes, and they would take special orders for the regular retail price of $25.  I actually had to get an XXL for my big American noggin and Marley got an XL in a very pretty purple.  We picked them up the next day and had fun wearing them around town, while also enjoying their protective nature from the equatorial sun.

Our Spanish instructor Maria Elena wound up being a great resource for us on life in Ecuador.  She was very enthusiastic about showing us and the kids how the locals lived.  One Saturday, she took Ben and Marley on a half-day field trip to a couple of small towns outside of Cuenca.  Marley bought a beautiful locally made guitar for a fraction of what a similar guitar would cost in the States.  Our daughter looked adorable with the guitar strap over her shoulder, like she was ready to hit the streets and do some busking to help us afford to get back home.  

On our final Saturday in Cuenca, we got together with Maria Elena and her two children at what had become our favorite restaurant in Ecuador.

Chitople featured some great burritos and tacos and quesadillas, with fresh ingredients and a fun atmosphere.  It was great to see Maria Elena with her children, who were very well-behaved, especially considering we took about two hours to eat lunch.  

As has been the case with so many of our stops in more than two dozen countries, our best memories of Ecuador will be the people we met along the way. 

I came across a quote in the beginning of a book called Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann that sums it up pretty well.  It is attributed to Aleksandar Hemon in The Lazarus Project who wrote:  "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere.  That is what the world is."