love

She will always.

Get It Try It

love

10 Feb 2013 20:48

OMG I just ate the most delicious mango I've ever had in my entire life.

Then again, I can say that about much of the food I've had here: the best mangos, pineapples, bananas I've ever had. All warm, sweet, fresh, filling, and (I assume) organic. Pineapples ($1.50 each) with almost-white flesh, sweet as anything but smooth too -- lacking that harsh chemical sweetness of the stuff found in US stores. Soft, dripping mangos with ripe flesh nearly falling off from the stone -- 25 cents. Firm, hearty bananas aplenty, stacked in yard-high piles at the open market, 15 cents apiece. Fresh, tan-shelled eggs sold in nearly every store (even in bike parts shops). Once last week I made a meal of a couple handfuls of fresh, uncooked, crisp green beans scooped up from a bin at the open market.

And some of the best ice cream I've ever had, thick, sweet, creamy, cold. So rich, it's almost a meal by itself.

Yet, with all of the food, I've seen no obesity anywhere in Ecuador. Makes you think there is validity to claims that the chemicals in processed Western foods are making people fat and ill.

Today is hot, with a cooling breeze. While it's always spring in Quito, Puerto Lopez is neverending summer. Lately I've made a habit of walking the block or so to the beach and putting my feet into ocean water at least several times each week. So healing. Healed also by the two-year-old Staffordshire terrier named Spike who lives at this hotel; the hammocks, palms, and many flowering trees and plants on the grounds; even the noisy roosters as they greet each morning.

My time here is ending as the high season begins -- lots of buses parked around now, music bumping from the beach clubs from 10 am til 4 the next morning.

There is much beauty here, and there are many things that I will likely miss. But whatever their pleasures, the places where I have traveled these past months all seem empty without you.

<3

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