Trip to Quinindé

 We accepted an assignment to clean out an empty missionary apartment in a tiny village outside Quinindé. In order to get out of the city with our license plate, we had to leave at 5:30am. The traffic is so bad in Quito that if your license plate ends in a certain number, you cannot drive on certain days during rush hour.

We took the northern route which took about 3.5 hours. We climbed down the 9,000' elevation of Quito and back up to Quinindé. The roads were good but full of hairpin turns. We arrived and checked on the three apartments in the city and met the elders. Then we took a companionship of elders with us to Guayacana. Since it is so small, it doesn't exist on a map, but this red pin gives you an idea:

It took 2 hours of driving on mostly unpaved roads to arrive at the village. Paul said he was afraid all his fillings were loose by the end. We arrived to very humble families. The members here wanted the missionaries so bad that they built them a house (in a week).

We traveled with a rented truck and unloaded all the furniture. Hopefully we left the bugs.

I got to talk with the neighbors as the men loaded the moving truck. They all had beautiful names and Spanish was their second language. I never did find out the name of the indigenous language they spoke in Guayacan.

   

Most of the land is covered by palm trees for palm kernel oil. Natives own a few acres each and grow what they like. Unfortunately, a virus from Colombia destroyed a lot of the crops, so they switched to cacao trees.

You can see the large fruit pod that is harvested here. We've seen trucks full of them pass by. Palm oil and palm kernel oil both come from the same tree and the products are in half of everything on the grocery store shelf.

Cacao is just as much work to process. This man is laying out his cacao beans to dry in the sun next to the highway. He has four bags worth and will do this for three days before sending them to the roaster.

The roaster doesn't want to pay for water-logged beans, so this process of drying is necessary to market.

By the time we unloaded all the furniture back on the 3rd flor of the Quinindé missionaries, it was 4pm. We tok our missionaries to eat at a popular chicken restaurant and found this little display. I had no idea it was Valentine's Day!

These egg distributors would be doing very well in Estados Unidos!

We spent the night in a hotel and then headed for Viche to inspect another apartment. This is the view from their apartment. Their version of Chinese food is called Chifa and it's a fusion between Chinese and Peruvian cuisine. I laughed when I saw this on the roof of the elder's apartment. Viche is as close as we will get to Esmeraldas, which is too dangerous for gringos.

We stopped by La Union for another missionary housing visit and then headed for lunch. We had no idea this Parrillada menu item would be so much barbecued meat. There was Argentinian beef sausage, pork, heart, and kidney. We were stuffed.