In a little over an hour I’ll be getting into a cab to head to the airport – about an hour away from Quito.  Talk about mixed feelings.  Of course I’m anxious to see friends and family, but as I’ve mentioned on Facebook, it is really difficult leaving Ecuador.  I really did fall in love with Peru and Ecuador, especially because of the friends I’ve made here.

But I won’t dwell on that.  My last blog on this trip will be about a cooking class I attended at the Peruwayna School where they did a great job trying to teach me English with a night of cooking thrown in for good measure.  We made causa (a Peruvian dish composed primarily of potatoes) and a chicken stew. What the heck.  Here’s a link that gives one of many recipes for causa.

http://blog.cookingchanneltv.com/2011/07/01/peruvian-causa-recipe-with-tuna-avocado-and-tomato/

I continue to be amazed that Peru has over 3000 varieties of potato – and every single one that I’ve tried has been delicious.  Matter of fact, I had a potato as my main course at dinner last night here in Ecuador.  Yummy.

And here’s the class:

That’s me with my partner, who also just happened to be the instructor of the cooking class.  Bet you can’t bet whose causa turned out the best.  And here below (dammit, why didn’t I write down names?) my partner, me and one of the wonderful staff members at the school.

And oh, yes, we did make Pisco Sours, but for some unknown reason they wouldn’t let us make them until after we finished making our causa and stew.

You can clearly see in these pictures that I have finally gotten over my fixation of only posting decent looking pictures of me.  Even though the bottom one looks like we’ve already made the Pisco Sours, I don’t think we had.

And just to show you that I CAN take a fairly decent picture:

That’s Hanna, my irrepressible classmate.  What a lot of fun she was – well, I’m sure she still is, but I just don’t get to see it any more.  She is in Colombia at the moment….

 

And that’s my friend Denyse. She just finished hiking the Inca Trail, which quite impressed me.  I think it’s a four-day hike, and it’s over some pretty rough terrain in the Andes.  It ends up at Machu Pichu, if that tells you anything.

Just about time to go to the lobby and wait for my taxi driver, the wonderful Henry Pozo, who put up with my bad Spanish for almost an hour yesterday.  I know I’ve done some complaining about some taxi drivers, but in the main, they’ve been very patient with this excitable gringa, and Henry has certainly been the  best.

That’s it.  Lord, I hope I can close my suitcase.