February 15 - February 28, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 2
	January 4 - January 17, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 1
	Return to the Index for 2023

This page is the final continuation page for the pictures from our trip this time to Ecuador. If you wish to return to the previous page for this trip, please click the link below.

Walking from the House to Parque Cumbaya (and beyond)

One of the most common walks we take, and one I particularly enjoy, is from the house down to the area around Parque Cumbaya. There is always something new to see, or some new bakery to visit along the way.

We do this walk a lot; not just to visit the park, but to go to the businesses and restaurants that we frequent in the old part of Cumbaya- including our furniture store (Colineal), the Paccari Chocolate Shop, a pizza restaurant Fred and I favor, and numerous little restaurants and cafes. We also have to traverse about half of this route if we want to get to the entrance to the Chaquinan Ecological Trail.

We've walked this route many times, and on many of these occasions I find something interesting to photograph. I could just put all the worthwhile pictures in a slideshow, but instead I'd like to order them a bit. The first part of our walk takes us from Paseo San Francisco, over the pedestrian overpass, and then down Av. Francisco de Orellana to a point where the street jogs to the left.

The second part of the walk varies. Sometimes, we follow Francisco de Orellana to the left and continue along it to Parque Cumbaya. Other times, we turn to the right to follow a different, parallel street down to the park (Garcia Moreno). Oftentimes, we end up at the park, where it is fun to sit and people-watch (both day and night). Other times, we continue further down Francisco de Orellana- when we are going to Colineal, our favorite burger place, Paccari Chocolate, or the Royal India Restaurant.

So let me organize these pictures (and, again, they weren't all taken the same day) into these four "sections" of the walks we take from the house to Old Cumbaya.

From the Paseo to the Jog in Francisco de Orellana

So the common route down to Parque Cumbaya begins at the Paseo San Francisco, where the first thing we usually do is to cross the pedestrian bridge over to Francisco de Orellana.

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The pedestrian overpass is a very familiar feature along many of our walks. I am pretty sure that it was originally constructed for all the student traffic that goes between the University and Paseo San Francisco. Not only do scores of students seem to take their lunch in the mall's food court, but I think that those of them who have cars park them in the mall's underground garage.

That last supposition is the only way I can seem to justify the large number of vehicles that exit the garage in the afternoon, and another feature of almost every walk we take at that time of day is navigating through the stopped double line of vehicles that are coming out of the garage and waiting for the light at the traffic circle to change. Just looking at the drivers when we go past, it seems as if many of them are young.

Anyway, the overpass also offers good views out over the Tumbaco Valley, and you have seen many of those before. On one of our walks, I made a movie as I crossed the bridge, and it will show you exactly what the walkway is like as it takes us all the way over to Francisco de Orellana. You can use the player at left to watch it.

All the way down Francisco de Orellana to the jog there are little restaurants and numerous businesses on the south side, and more residential areas on the north side (including a LDS school).

In this picture, we have just come down the switchback ramps from the pedestrian overpass to the north side of Francisco de Orellana. We usually walk down this side of the street to the square as the sidewalk is better.

On the opposite side as we walk there are all kinds of little shops and businesses. There is even a tattoo parlor, as the practice seems to be common among young people here (though not as prevalent as in the US).

About halfway down to the jog intersection, on the south side of the street, there is a nursery/garden center, and Fred has stopped by there a few times to see what different plants they might offer compared to such stores at home.

This is one of the three or four small gated communities on the north side of Francisco de Orellana.

Down where Francisco de Orellana jogs to the left, there is actually a small gym right on the corner.

Francisco de Orellana from the Jog to the Square

One of the two ways to get from the bottom of the Francisco de Orellana hill to the square is to take the jog to the left and continue walking down that same street.

Along this street to the square we pass the trailhead for the Chiquinan Ecological Trail- another walk we've done many times.

Just past the trailhead, this view looks down Francisco de Orellana towards the square- the green area in the distance.

It seems as if only in the malls to you find large stores; on streets like this, you may find just about everything you want, but the shops will be quite small.

This view looks back the way we've come. We are on the south side of the street now.

This view looks down Francisco de Orellana towards the square.

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One of the odd things I'd seen so far was that both shopping malls and also the strip centers on either side of Av. Oswaldo Guayasamin near the house seem to have hired people to help their customers find and get into parking spaces. Why this is true I have no idea; in the US we would just cruise around 'til we found a spot. I have noticed that most people seem to like to back into their spots, and the hired people seem to help with that as well.

But along this street I saw, for the first time, the same kind of thing being done for on-street parking. When we walked by this area, I thought that the man seen here was just crossing the street, but he was actually helping people find spaces and park (for a tip, I assume). I made a movie of this unusual practice, and you can use the player at left to watch it.

An Alternate Route to the Square

If you go right where the jog is, you get onto Garcia Moreno Street, which also goes down to the square. (I often take this way when I don't take the overpass across the main drag but just walk on down to the five points intersection you saw in a previous walk.) This route also takes me past my favorite bakery, so when I am returning from the square I usually come up this street.

I have turned right at the jog in Francisco de Orellana, and come a little way up Garcia Moreno. This view looks back towards the intersection where the jog is. The reservoir is straight ahead at the end of that street.

When Garcia Moreno curves around to continue to the east, the Hotel Cumbaya is on the corner. (I have no idea what this hotel is like, and it is the only actual hotel I have seen in Cumbaya.)

Walking down this street I passed the entrance to what seemed to be a very narrow entryway. I went in, taking care not to upset the dog (who was pretty chill) and found a couple of little cafes and a residence or two.

An Ecuadorian record store. When was the last time you saw one of those?

Some typical stores, including one I would probably never visit.

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Everyone loves ice cream. But Ecuadorians, particularly in Andean cities, are convinced they love it more than anywhere else. There are art exhibits made about it, a monument dedicated to it, no celebration is considered complete without it, and it’s everywhere – even early on a weekday morning.

You can find it in all the normal forms, but what is uniquely Ecuadorian is how it is made right on the street and sold to passersby. Local legend has it that mountain dwellers "invented" this style of ice cream in Ecuador. The mountain dwellers, it is said, lived in the north-central city of Ibarra at the foot of the formerly snow-covered Imbabura volcano, and are said to have used ice from the surrounding mountains to create their fruity concoctions.

Along Garcia Moreno I passed one of these traditional ice cream parlors (although there is also a Baskin-Robbins just two blocks away). The young man is stirring fresh fruit and milk in a copper dish set atop a rough pile of ice and rock-salt, which are inside yet another copper container. After about 15 minutes of mixing round and round by hand, it slowly starts to solidify into the local treat, helado de paila. I was so intrigued that I made a movie of the process, and you can use the player at left to watch it.

As I said, you can find just about everything within walking distance of our house.

This is a little pizza restaurant with a few outdoor tables. Pizza seems to be "big" in Ecuador- right up there with KFC.

At the Square (Parque Cumbaya)

When you are walking down Francisco de Orellana, you eventually reach the old square of Cumbaya, with its beautiful central fountain. The square is a great place to sit in the daytime and watch all the people going by and the various families and kids playing in the area.

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There are often kiosks or sidewalk stands around the edges of the park, as vendors try to take advantage of the foot traffic to sell what they have to offer. One was this neat display of small plants and succulents.

The park is always pretty neat, but maybe photos don't do it justice. So on one day here, as I walked through the park, I made a short movie. You can use the player at left to watch it.

Not only is the park interesting in the daytime, it is just as pretty at night, what with the fountain and the church just across the street:

Continuing Past Parque Cumbaya

We have often continued down Francisco de Orellana, past Parque Cumbaya. Further down the street are restaurants that we frequent (including the Royal India), the Paccari Chocolate store, the Colineal furniture store, and even a Baskin-Robbins. On our various walks up and down this street, we've taken numerous pictures over our visit, and I want to include some of them here.

In the Courtyard of a Shopping Area

A Restaurant Along the Street

Another Restaurant

A Mini-Mart

This building houses one of our favorite burger joints right next door to the Paccari Chocolate shop.

A High-End Restaurant

Not exactly a donut shop with a drive-thru, but if it works...

This is a typical street view looking eastward down the hill.

Down by the Colineal furniture store, there are some good views out across the Tumbaco Valley:

The parking lot of Colineal offers good views out across the valley. The view below look out across to Scala Mall and the area called Primavera in the hills beyond. Incidentally, that's a brewery between here and the mall:

"Can we have a seat by the window?"

It was late, and most of these little shops were already closed.

The Royal India Restaurant, where we ate twice, is the farthest point we go to when we walk down the hill along Francisco de Orellana. When our renovations are completed later this year, I suspect this is where we will take the Architekten staff for a congratulatory dinner:

A Walk on Avenue Pampite

The last area where we walked was the street north of the University. It is named Av. Pampite.

We've already seen the walk up Diego de Robles past the University on the walk we took around Plaza Cumbaya. This walk will simply be all downhill along Av. Pampite to the Centro Comercial La Esquina- a very nice little two storey mall right by the reservoir. On a previous visit, you saw the walk back to the house from that mall, so this time all we'll deal with are the pictures we took along Av. Pampite.

Right at the corner of Diego de Robles and Av. Pampite is a restaurant that the three of us went to for lunch one day. It's called Cactus (because of the landscaping) and it had a wide, varied menu. We ordered too much stuff and ended up taking a lot of it home.

Walking down the street to the east, the University was on our right and shortly we came to the Plaza Pampite, another small shopping mall. This one was three stories and had a number of restaurants and some other shops. We haven't eaten at any of them yet, but when we run out of places to try closer to the house, I am sure we will.

Further down the street, there are gated communities on the north side and upscale stores and shops on our right.

Around a curve, the street begins to slope downward significantly, and there are more little multi-storey shopping buildings. There was also a branch of a local burger chain.

Our last stop on this short walk is the Centro Comercial La Esquina. On our househunting trip here, we found a very good German bakery. There are a couple of other bakeries and numerous other shops.

This was a short walk, but this is a very nice street in a nice area of Cumbaya.

A Few Pictures from Santa Lucia Baja

I have a few pictures from our own little community that I want to include here.

This late afternoon view looks toward our community gate. The street through our community is one-way, and essentially a circle.

From the same point, this view looks in the other direction, along the rear of Paseo San Francisco. Sometimes we walk to the house this way, just to vary things up.

There are lots of plants here that we don't have at home, and this is one of them.

Not all the buildings in Santa Lucia Baja are single-family homes. This is a new multi-family structure that is being built.

I thought it interesting that this serviceman arrived on a motorcycle, with all the tools he needs to work on what I think is a water line.

Some residents park their cars on the street, although I doubt that this a normal, daily-use vehicle.

An Eclectic Collection of Pictures

Throughout our stay, we all took numerous pictures of odd things or at odd times. Most of these pictures are totally unrelated, save for a few that Fred and I took at a pizza restaurant down near Parque Cumbaya. Here are the pictures we took at that restaurant:

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Here are a few more of these eclectic pictures:

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Finally, I want to put the last dozen or so pictures into a slideshow so you can go through them quickly if you wish. In these pictures, you'll see lemons from our garden, a cat expo held over at Paseo San Francisco, our meal at Cactus, and various scenes from around Cumbaya.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

To complete this section of eclectrivia, here are three random movies from our stay in Cumbaya:

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) This is the five-point intersection down the hill from Paseo San Francisco. We walked through this intersection frequently.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) I noticed something unusual in the Hornero restaurant. They have their storage room actually above the restrooms, so they go up and down this ladder to get what they need.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) I made a movie in the pizza restaurant near Parque Cumbaya, and the pizza maker was only too willing to be in the movie.

 

The Trip Home

We left Ecuador on February 14th, having accomplished a great deal. We furnished the kitchen and TV room, both our bedrooms, the patio, the rooftop deck, and the laundry room. We met numerous times with our architect, and we have now defined all the renovations that need to be done and that we want to do. We don't have a timeline or exact cost just yet, but we will have some zoom meetings in the couple of weeks after we return.

There was one snafu; Greg inadvertently made his return reservation for the 15th. Instead of staying another night in the house by himself, he decided to ride with us to the airport and spend the night at the Wyndham right there. So our Uber dropped Fred and I at the airport for our JetBlue flight back to Fort Lauderdale, and then took Greg to the hotel.

Navigating our way to the concourse was pretty smooth, although finding just which check-in desk to go to took a bit of inquiry. But getting through security and customs was easy. To get to the concourse, you have to walk from customs through the shopping area, but this is something lots of airports are doing now. Once at our gate, I left Fred for a moment and took a few pictures of the concourse.

The JetBlue flight home was very pleasant. This will probably be the last JetBlue flight we take, since they are ending their cooperative arrangement with American, and my perks won't work any longer. But that's OK. Flying from Dallas through Miami is just as cheap, and Lynne won't be dealing with four cats for almost seven weeks.

We arrived back in Fort Lauderdale right when customs opened at 5AM, so with no checked luggage, we were back in the condo and climbing into bed at about 6AM. You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	February 15 - February 28, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 2
	January 4 - January 17, 2023: Our Winter Trip to Florida- Part 1
	Return to the Index for 2023