A vegetarian birder's food experience in Southern Ecuador 2011

Okay, at last, here is my blogpost on my food experiences from my second trip to Ecuador. Once again, Juan Carlos Calvachi was the bird guide, but this trip was to Southern Ecuador, home of more specialty and endemic birds than the more typical Northern Ecuador trip.

The first night, was January 29th, 2011, our flight landed in Guayaquil and Juan Carlos met us at the airport and we were shuttled to the Howard Johnson's. Tired. No real dinner that first night.

We got up early the first day to see the Horned Screamers at Manglares-Churute and many other birds as we drove south. We stopped for a snack and I was handed this salad of carrots, peas, corn and hearts of palm:



Eventually, we stopped for lunch at a place called Quizas Hoy, home of the Royal Flycatcher. Here you can see some quiche and a fried plantain:



You can click on any of these photos to see them enlarged and view the Ecuadorian food in grand detail. Check out this here watermelon:



We eventually made it to the Buenaventura lodge that evening, home of incredible hummingbird feeders. I guess I was too tired to get a photo of the dinner that first night but the food here was typical of nice Ecuador eco-lodges, which is to say: Very Good.

Breakfast at Buenaventura. First off: cereal with fruit and fruit juice:



Secondly, I believe this is a yucca cake, delicious, plus hard boiled egg:



After seeing the Long-Wattled Umbrellabird and the Club-winged Manakin in the morning, lunch included an interesting dish that I think was yucca and corn:



Okay, so here is the problem with blogging on the food months after actually eating: I don't remember exactly what all the food was. See this lunch course below:



The two...round things...I think even at the time, I wasn't sure what these were, but they were stuffed with some tasty cheese. I think the pale yellow stuff was a sort of squash, and of course we have here carrots and green beans.

And now for dessert, a nice fruit-kabob:



If you don't like fruit, don't come to Ecuador.

And now, for dinner, for starters, soup, perhaps a cream soup with spinach, and looks like some coconut juice and the ubiquitous and inexpensive Ecuadorian beer Pilsener:



In Northern Ecuador, most dinners and many lunches started with a lovely soup. On this Southern Ecuador trip, there was still soup, but not as often. Now for the dinner entree, it appears we have here some spaghetti with vegetables in a photo taken without flash:



Dessert, appears to have been apples with perhaps a custard of some sort



Breakfast number two at Buenaventura Lodge, scrambled eggs with salsa and toast:



Lunch. Fried cauliflower, broccoli, and cucumber! This is perfect for me:



Dessert, a chocolate mousse with strawberry:



So, as in my first trip to Ecuador, I was often served a different entree than the meat-eating birders in my group, and frequently this would entail eggs. Though I'm not a vegan, I don't normally eat, cook, or order egg dishes, but I certainly eat them in desserts and stuff. So here is some sort of egg dish, with green and white asparagus, and ... I think the green globs are peas:



A final breakfast at Buenaventura, more eggs, but an interesting twist, appears to be an omelet wrapped around some tomatoey veggies:



That night we arrived at the Urraca Lodge at the Jorupe Reserve. Dinner here started with a veggie salad:



and featured, for me, some Ecuadorian-style mozzarella, some beans, a hockey puck of white rice, and raw tomatoes (not my favorite but I probably ate them):



And a fruit bowl for dessert:



Breakfast at Jorupe, scrambled eggs with hominy:



Lunch, first off, soup with popcorn!



And, here's a hearty meal, a fried egg, beans, a hockey puck of rice, cucumber, and I think some red cabbage:



And ice cream for dessert:



Dinnertime! For starters, a veggie salad in lettuce cup, how nice:



And the main course, let's see, pasta, carrots, salsa, water, beer, not sure about the stuff on the left, maybe mashed potatoes?



So, a note on the salsa. Ecuadorian food defaults to fairly bland. Chili peppers are uncommon (though the salsa in the photo above contains jalapenos). But small bowls of salsa are provided for those who wish to add some flavor to their food. The salsa may be a tomato-onion sauce or might be something quite different. As Californians, the folks in my group were accustomed to flavorful food and we generally devoured the salsa, though I have to say that Juan Carlos and our excellent driver Wilson also enjoyed generous portions of salsa, to the point where the lodge would run out and different tables would compete for the last salsa portion.

Hey, its another travel day, here is my packed lunch, a rice salad with peas, this is exactly my style:



Dessert on a travel day, Club Social, Cua Cua, and Festival. I doubt if Michael Pollan would consider this "food" but I'll eat what I'm given, no complaining.



Finally, we made it to Tapichalaca Lodge, on a reserve with a huge bird list near Podocarpus National Park. This lodge serves a couple special warm beverages, both quite wonderful. At right is some mulled wine, and at left is an "horchata" which unlike the aqua fresca found at taquerias in the states, here is an herbal tea mixture which varies from recipe to recipe.



Next up was a delicious soup with quinoa, probably my favorite grain, very nutritious, and native to the Andean region:



followed by a hearty meal of omelet, pasta, and salad



and fried plantain for dessert:



The next day, after visiting the friendly Jocotoco Antpittas, a meal at Tapichalaca included a nice soup with mozzarella slices and another horchata:



and mushrooms! My favorite!



Breakfast the next morning, fruit salad, fruit juice, and cereal, what no eggs?:



Dinner that night was at a hotel in Loja, here is the group at the dinner table:



I got a nice plate of pasta,



and dessert was well-presented (and probably contained gelatin, so not actually vegetarian, ah well, so it goes):



The next night we stayed at Cabanas Yankuam, home of the very localized Orange-throated Tanager. Yankuam was by far the most rustic of our lodgings on the trip, but the food was perhaps the best. Unfortunately, I was mainly too wet and hungry to bother to photograph the food here but here is one photo of broccoli and rice goodness:



Our next stop was the Copalinga lodge, which was my favorite lodge of the trip. The food here was excellent and the outstanding proprietress Catherine was willing to tailor to the preferences of each birder and was also very knowledgeable of the birds and wildlife at the lodge (including Spangled Coquette). Here is a poor photo of an excellent salad:



Employing the technology called "flash," here is a nice photo of my main course, doesn't it look tasty?



And a fruity dessert, no flash. The thing was, taking a flash picture was pretty distracting to the rest of the group, so I tended not to do so:



Hey, it's another travel day. Juan Carlos passes bags of snacks around the bus while we travel. A particularly notable snack is Kucker, a salty-sweet plantain chip snack. If it makes a krrrack...it's Kucker:



Eventually we made it back for another dinner at the hotel in Loja. And so, there was soup:



a heapful of pasta:



and an artfully prepared dessert:



Alas, it appears, that was the last photo of food that I took on the trip. We did stay the last night at Juan Carlos's B&B, El Jardin, where the food was excellent and comforting as always, and had breakfast there the last morning, but I guess I was too birded-out to photograph. In any case, I do recommend Southern Ecuador as a worthy destination for birds and food.