September 6, 2010

Country Friends


I am happy that I have found a friend who's game to accompany me on my bus excursions. Today we took the bus from Terminal Terrestre (the main bus station) to Gualaceo (a little less than an hour traveling time, 60 cents fare). I will post Gualaceo pictures later on but right now I'm in love with the farm animals we saw once we took another bus, from Gualaceo to San Juan parish about 25 minutes away (35 cents fare).

It's a tiny town with little to see so we started walking away from the main square, along a dirt path lined with small houses and grazing pastures on both sides. And we saw the usual assortment of farm animals except these were the Ecuadorian variety, which made them novel, interesting, and worthy of being photographed! I was somewhat chagrined when my friend noticed a few people watching with amusement as I took pictures of their turkey. Oh well, my pleasures are simple.

We saw sleepy-eyed sheep.



And different kinds of turkeys.

And this shy pig with heart-shaped ears, who did not want his picture taken and would have run away, except he was tied up.

And my favorite, this bad boy, jauntily chewing on a blade of grass.

Then we went back to Gualaceo and this time took a taxi to Uchucay, a tiny hamlet of only 7 or 8 families. I'll post about that later.

3 comments:

Nancy Watson said...

Superb photos!!

indel said...

Beautiful pictures. If a sheep is there, there might be more, and in this case I wonder if there are any dairy products out of sheep milk. First that come to mind would be white cheese (known as feta). Others would be yoghurt and processed cheese. Are these products available in Cuenca or in the neighborhood?
Nicholas.

Lourdes said...

Thank you, Nancy!

indel, domestic sheep are not native to South America and were introduced by European immigrants just a couple of hundred years ago. They are still now mostly kept for wool and meat. However, quite recently there has been an increasing demand for mature cheeses and both sheep and goat cheese are available. However, they are not easily found and fresh cow cheeses are vastly preferred (90 to 95% of cheese production). I have not heard of sheep milk or yhogurt being sold but I know fresh goat milk can be found at markets around town. I recently saw it being milked right from the goat and sold!