Animal, Vegetable, Rice

We have this week been experiencing the delights and otherwise of Ecuadorean flora and fauna. Being an extraordinarily biologically diverse country we have been on the keen look out for enormous cockroaches, venomous snakes, spiders that live under the bed, huge belligerent frogs, toothy sharks and of course the eponymous llama. I regret to inform you that apart from a few hummingbirds-I was thrilled!- and the odd vulture, the only specimens of native fauna we have encountered have been stuffed (Quito Museum of Natural Sciences had a stuffed bear that I poked around while Chris had his back turned), dead (quite a big cockroach) or executed before our very eyes (RIP Nanegal the Chicken, but you did make a very nice sopa de gallina)

On the subject of food, I should put on record here that the staple food group in Ecuador is rice, the principle domesticated food animal is rice, and on special occassions the main dish eaten is rice. On non special occasions the main dish is rice. Rice is served with meat (non-specified) and a variety of accompaniments including bread, potatoes, and pasta often in the same meal. Extreme dieters take note: this is no place to try the Atkins diet. Flesh-wise we don't believe we have eaten a guinea pig yet although it is only a matter of time. At the Friday market where we work there is a nice stall where you can buy your guinea pigs fresh i.e live and take them home and play with them before you cook them. I admit I have been tempted each time I pass to liberate the guinea pigs while singing Born Free but have resisted on the grounds that the stall owner has a machete and that the guineas would only be eaten by one of the thousands of stray dogs that lope around in Quito and the surrounding area.

I have this week myself become part of the Ecuadorean food chain. As some form of karmic revenge for our murderous carnivorism in the countryside at the weekend I have been savaged around the feet by vicious flies. Now as most of you know I am very very brave and hardly ever complain about anything but ye gods! I have never had such itchy fly bites in my life. At time of writing my feet are slathered with germoline and I smell like a hospital waiting room, but I have been reliably informed that said flies are not vectors for malaria or dengue fever and I am not expected to die from my wounds. However, do feel free to send medicinal jaffa cakes c/o the British Embassy in Quito.

To further cement my reputation as a brilliant after- dinner speaker and raconteur I decided to find out what animals said in spanish as opposed to english. Dogs, for instance, say Gau gau instead of woof here and I can confirm that large frogs hiding in bushes say merk! instead of ribbit. But the greatest divergence to date is our old friend the chicken. In Ecuador the chicken says kikiriki instead of cock-a-doodle-do. Our host family were entranced and spent the next hour or so perfecting their cock-a-doodle-dos. Now imagine if you can, a respectable middle class family around a dinner table all gravely trying variants of this in a somewhat quizzical tone in heavy spanish accents. It has now become a sort of standard house greeting. Cockle doodly doo. Now we all say it before we eat our rice. Happy days.