Finding suitable food can be challenging for vegetarian travelers. Here is a blogpost of my food experiences from my two week birding vacation to Ecuador. I was traveling with a group of birders from the Monterey Peninsula Audubon Society who amiably put up with my diet restrictions. We stayed at nice birding lodges that overall did an excellent job of providing me with vegetarian food. The first night we stayed at El Jardin, near Quito, the B&B run by our bird guide Juan Carlos Calvachi. A bit before dinner I mentioned to Juan Carlos, that I was a vegetarian. I told him I didn't want anything special, that I was happy with simple rice and beans or bread and cheese. He said it would be fine and slipped into the kitchen to inform the chef. I was too exhausted that first night to take a picture, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find a lovely bell pepper stuffed with rice and veggies on my dinner plate. We stayed several nights at El Jardin and they did an incredible job of providing me with great vegetarian food.
Below is our primary chef at El Jardin, "Mamacita," Juan Carlos's mother, with our typical breakfast spread. Here, you can see: toast, orange juice, fruit such as mango, papaya, and banana, dry cereal, yogurt, and cheese. The cheese was a sort of farmer's cheese and very salty. I don't think I ever encountered typical American cheeses such as Cheddar or Swiss in Ecuador.
Our first day of birding, we stopped for lunch at the Yanacocha Reserve. Juan Carlos packed lunch for us stored in the back of the van along with water until the appropiate time. Here is a nice bowl of rice and beans with veggies and a plantain. Perfect!
I don't usually have dessert back home, but desserts are big in Ecuador. Below is a simple packed dessert of the farmer's cheese I described before and a fig in molasses. Unusual to me, simple but interesting and subtly sophisticated I thought.
Back "home" to El Jardin after a first long day of birding. Ecuadorian dinner typically begins with a delicious soup. I was treated to a dozen or more lovely, warming vegetarian soups during the trip. I have a feeling that the rest of my group would have enjoyed more meat soups if I hadn't been along. I appreciate their sacrifice and understanding. I think this first soup was cream of celery.
Dinner this night was yucca cakes, soy meatballs, a little salad, and some marinated beets and radishes. This was great. Yucca was commonly featured in my meals and very tasty. I think the rest of the group had fish this night.
Day 3 lunch was a delicious quiche with artichokes and other goodies, still warm.
And here was the dessert portion of this lunch.
We would usually have snacks in the afternoon while we were driving. One that was typically chosen by Juan Carlos was called Tango, some sort of cookie with a purple filling.
I resisted the Tango at first, it's not really something that I would normally consider food, but I guess I got hungry and gave in. It's really purple inside. Purple is my second favorite color after gray, but I don't usually eat purple.
Below, soup, day 3. I don't remember what kind it was, perhaps corn? With little cubes of cheese or tofu within?
Dinner this night was a nice pasta, doused liberally with parmesan and some marinated cucumbers. At lower-left is a bit of salsa. Ecuadorian food is generally quite bland but there is usually a small bowl of a flavorful tomato salsa on the table which was in high demand with our group.
Dessert was some starfruit in light syrup. The kitchen staff at El Jardin had different selections for us every day and we tried many tropical fruits that are popular in Ecuador but less familiar in the US.
The next day we went to plateau below Antisana volcano. The packed lunch from El Jardin was some nice pasta shells and veggies. Good home cookin'!
And here was the dessert:
Back at El Jardin was this delicious soup, almost like matzo-ball!
A nice dinner consisting of a stuffed eggplant, mashed yucca, fried plantain, and something green.
Ice cream and wafer for dessert.
The next day we headed down the western slope of the Andes. The breakfast at Alambi restaurant was simple scrambled eggs, roll, and yucca cake, but the hummingbird feeders here were great. I don't normally order eggs at home in Santa Cruz, but I wasn't going to refuse them in Ecuador, figuring that just asking for vegetarian food was demanding enough. I ended up eating eggs almost every day.
Lunch was at the Mirador Rio Blanco in Los Bancos, a very popular destination for birders as you can observe and photograph birds at their feeders through the restaurant's windows.
The food wasn't as good as the birding. Here, a clear veggie soup:
A chow-mein sort of thing:
We had dinner at Septimo Paraisio birding lodge. Soup to start, of course, a spinachy soup.
These were like, some flautas, but they were incredibly salty, probably from the cheese. Not so good, but there was some great watermelon juice here.
The Septimo Paraiso dessert:
After seeing Maria, the famous Giant Antpitta at the Angel Paz reserve, we lunched at the reserve we they fed us this delicious savory cake called a bolon...
...and these awesome light cheese empanadas. I would happily eat these every day.
Back to El Jardin, dinner starts with soup, garlic bread and side salsa.
A tamale pie for me with crumbled soy meat!
Tree tomato, a tropical fruit for dessert.
From Quito, a short flight to Coca provides plane food: boxed apple juice and chocolate chip cakelette.
We boated down the Napo river to the renowned Sacha Lodge in the Amazon jungle. There are no roads to Sacha, everything arrives by boat, but they present an impressive spread of food. Here are several salads.
There is soup of course.
Usually, a particular server at Sacha would deliver a side vegetarian dish, even though there was already plenty for me to choose from. Besides soups and salads there was always a fried vegetable such as zucchini, but this first night they brought me some veggie eggrolls as well.
The desserts at Sacha are quite beautiful, such as this flan.
Breakfast at Sacha, eggs of course, fried potato sticks, a pancake, fruit, bread and butter.
Our first packed lunch from Sacha was so much food. A very simple cheese sandwich, an omelette, beans, broccoli, hard boiled egg, apple, pretzels, and water.
Sacha dinner of fried something, salads, veggies, and rice.
This Sacha lunch included a delicious veggie pizza.
Sunday night at Sacha is barbecue night, which was not so good for me...
... but they brought me this tofu teriyaki. Juan Carlos said the black caimans gather around the lakeside dining room on barbecue and are fed meaty scraps after dinner
After boating back to Coca, we birded up the east slope of the Andes stopping at the Wildsumaco lodge which served this elegant salad with avocado.
and for a vegetarian entree, another omelette, a good one though with mushrooms and a side of zucchini.
This was the dessert the first night at Sumaco, I don't recall what it was, a tapioca pudding perhaps?
Sumaco french toastlings for breakfast.
Soup, Sumaco-style:
The Sumaco chef told me he wanted to do something with chicken salad for lunch, could me make me something with eggs? Sure, no problem. I got some hard boiled eggs, avocado, a roll and tomatoes. I hate raw tomatoes.
Sumaco came through with an awesome veggie lasagna for me for dinner.
Breakfast the next morning at Sumaco was scrambled eggs with buttered rolls.
This Sumaco lunch was a delicious veggie chili. I had two helpings.
A good-looking soup started this Sumaco dinner.
And...it's an omelette for dinner entree...
Carrot cake dessert, I think:
Our next stop was the Guango Lodge. Here is their rustic dining room:
Guango Lodge forms their rice into hockey puck shaped patties, here with a nice stuffed zucchini for me.
And a flan for dessert.
Breakfast at Guango: omelette!
Here was lunch, on the road: mora juice, beans and corn, and Chips-A-Hoy!
Later... soup!
For dinner: white asparagus, carrots, and rice.
And a classy crepe dessert.
Back home to El Jardin, dinner starts with soup!
And a big plate of pasta for my last El Jardin pasta!
And a special final dessert.
Juan Carlos took us to this special restaurant for our final lunch, El Tipico Locro.
First came some avo and cooked corn kernels...
...which go into the "locro" a hearty corn stew, really good.
And then, a big eggy meal.
That was the last meal I had in Ecuador. I really had my fill of eggs, but I enjoyed the soups, fruit, juices, the attention of the chefs, and the company of Juan Carlos and the birders in my group. Ecuador, I'll be back one day!
Big dragonflies like darners seldom land. Getting a focused picture of a flying one is near impossible for me, but the big male Common Green Darners sometimes hover in place long enough for me to use manual focus and get a decent image like this one at Westlake Pond. The green thorax and blue abdomen can be seen with the naked eye, making this odonata easy to identify.
I really interesting dragonfly that perched for me was this Black Saddlebags.
Butterflies can be even tougher to photograph than the odes. One of the most obvious local butterflies is the Cabbage White which is actually introduced from Europe and considered a pest.
This Red Admiral was basking with wings open on a palm frond near the homeless garden.
These mating Mylitta Crescents were preoccupied enough that I was able to get some good pictures.
Ok, that's all for now, there will be more to come later on.
