Tag: travel

Sisid Anejo, Ingapirca, and Biblian

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

On Wednesday May 7 2025, I went on a day trip to Sisid Anejo, Ingapirca, and Biblian in Ecuador. The trip was organized by my friend Kendel, with his friend Francisco as our main guide.

The day started with coffee and light snacks with my trip mates at Kendel’s apartment. We left on the approximately two hour trip to Sisid Anejo at 9am. Sisid Anejo is an indigenous village in the canton of Cañar. On arrival we were given a drink – a colada made with machica (toasted wheat ground on an ancestral stone).

We then had a tour of the community’s church, which is the second oldest in Ecuador. It’s largely only used on holidays and for ceremonies, but it is remarkably well preserved.

After our tour of the church, we were treated to some indigenous music, played on a drum, some other percussion instruments, and an accordion. Accordions are very popular here – a lot of both traditional and current popular music uses them. And we danced! Well, some of us did anyway. I am a child of my mother, and she never missed a chance to clap, dance, and participate in any way she could. So yeah, Pat, I clapped and danced and had a great time, thinking of you.

Next we made our own machica. They asked for a volunteer to help. Yeah, Pat, I volunteered. Our indigenous guide from Sisid Anejo ground the toasted wheat on a stone, using another stone, and I caught the machica in a container.. Someone asked how old the stones were, and they had been in use by at least her great great grandmother. so no-one really knows for sure. Man did that machica smell good.

Lunch was next. It was a typical Ecuadorian almuerzo: soup, second course, dessert, and juice. but everything was fresh from the community farm and was absolutely delicious. The details – Soup: Pea flour soup with cabbage, potato, and fresh cheese. Second course: Dry barley rice with quinoa, baked chicken, and corn and peas with homemade mayonnaise and lettuce. Drink: Melon juice. Dessert: Sweet pumpkin. There was also a really innovative aji (the hot sauce served with most Ecuadorian meals) made with fresh pumpkin seeds. Five stars, baby. Absolutely wonderful.

After lunch we took the Uillcañan tourist train to Ingapirca. Tourist train it was. It was more like a party bus that was made to look like a train, and it ran on the road, not on tracks. It was great fun though. I was on the top of the train car with some others, dancing to the music, and waving to the locals as we went through the little towns. Everyone of all ages was smiling and waving, and not sarcastically. They really do appreciate that you are coming to their area.

At Ingapirca, we got another local supplementary tour guide. Access to Ingapirca is tightly controlled; you can’t just show up and go in. You need an advance reservation and you must be accompanied by an approved local guide. I like that a lot – it separates out the yahoos, and ensures that the site remains as untouched as possible.

Ingapirca is basically kind of the Ecuadorian Machu Picchu. It is part of the network of sites along the Inca Trail. But Ingapirca predates the Incas – the Cañari were there thousands of years prior to their arrival. You can clearly tell which areas are which: the Cañari used round stones from the river to build, and the Incas used milled square stones. Our guide was very informative as she described the various histories, eras, and areas.

We finished our tour of Ingapirca with our choice of chicha (a fermented drink made from yuca/manioc) or coca tea.

Last stop for the day was Church of the Virgen del Rocio at Biblian. The gothic style church is built into the side of the mountain, so the sanctuary has only three walls. The fourth wall is the mountain itself. Beautiful and inspirational. Quite a few steps to get to the church itself, and then you can optionally take even more steps to visit the fourteen stations of the cross that rise far above the church itself. Of course I went to the very top, high above the dome of the church.

We got back home about 7pm – tired, but the day was so interesting, and I made several new friends. Highly recommended, but remember, except for Biblian, you’ll need to book a tour to duplicate the day.

2nd oldest church in EC, Sisid Anejo
Making machica from toasted wheat
2nd course of lunch, with melon juice
Llamas at Ingapirca
Ingapirca
Incan ruins at Ingapirca
Church at Biblian
Church at Biblian
Interior of church at Biblian

May 2025 Update

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

First of all, since my last post in 2023, my husband of 26 years, Kirk Lawrence-Howard, passed away of Covid, six months after our March 2024 early retirement to Cuenca, Ecuador. He received world class healthcare but was unable to fight off the virus. There is a memorial page for him with much more information at http://kirklawrence.com.

Kirk and I had planned to explore Ecuador and the wider world, and I am going to live out that dream, largely as a solo traveler. Since I no longer have social media, I’m going to use this site to document my future travels.

On my current two year temporary Ecuadorian visa, I’m only allowed 90 days out of the country until I get my permanent visa in January of 2026. At that point I’ll have more available days to travel more widely out of Ecuador. So I’ve decided to make weeklong trips within Ecuador every month until this January.

This is my upcoming travel schedule:

  • May 2025: Sisid Anejo, Ingapirca, and Biblian
  • June 2025: Chimborazo, Quito, Mindo
  • July 2025: Cotopaxi and Quilatoa
  • August 2025: Izhcayluma
  • September 2025: Kapawi Ecolodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon
  • October 2025: TBD
  • November 2025: Loja

December holidays in Cuenca are magical, so I will likely stay around the city, and I have a guest coming early December for two weeks.

Each of my future trips will get a post. If you want to be emailed when new posts are made, please contact me to be added as a user.

how not to be a douchebag tourist in nyc

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via digg, this guide to not pissing off the natives while visiting new york city, if you care about such things. ok, so the title is too provocative, and the author has waaaaay too much attitude. but for the most part, the tips are spot-on.

many people don’t care if they piss off the locals. that’s fine. just don’t expect much assistance, and do expect to get barked at, at a minimum. you know the saying, “when in rome…”? that’s good advice. kirk and i act differently in new york than we do in paris, say, or tampa. it’s good form to adapt to your surroundings, and pick up on local customs. it shows that you are sensitive about ethnocentrism. kirk and i have traveled in many cities that famously hate tourists, and we consistently have no bad experiences and are frequently mistaken for locals, or at least people don’t think we’re american. i think that’s a good thing. you may not think so. if you don’t, do me a favor.

stay home.

it’s fun to read the comments at the linked article, by the way. so many people miss the point entirely. you can tell who the travelers are, and who the new yorkers are.

ricketts [glen state park] rankings

~ jamie ~ 11 Comments

kirk and i spent three nights at ricketts glen state park in north central pennsylvania this past weekend through tuesday.

what an incredibly awesome place. we’ve been before, but this time we especially enjoyed every minute of the peace and quiet, especially on monday night, when we were the only campers in the park. and the cell phones don’t work there. love that.

we took advantage of the empty time to take a look at the campground, figure out the camping spots we liked, and picked a top 5. our positive criteria were seclusion, beauty, and space. negatives we looked for included being too near or (especially) at the end of a road (headlights in the tent — not good), being too close to the road in general, and close proximity to the bathrooms (too much noisy foot traffic). we labeled the ones we liked with “y” (for “yes”) and appended a “-” for a decent site with some problems, a “+” for great sites, and an “!” for the outstanding sites. our top five sites are all “y!” sites.

your criteria may differ from ours. if so, check out the details of the individual sites and plan accordingly. kirk took pictures of the sites we liked — they’re coming soon.

here’s a page where you can download a map of the campground, so you can play along at home.

there are two camping areas in ricketts glen: the big loop (sites 1-73) and the small loop (sites 74-120). the small loop sites are all knocked out of serious contention immediately. none of them border the water, some of them (sites 80-93) allow pets (no pets allowed in the big loop), and they are very crowded with no buffer zones to speak of. we gave three small loop sites a “y-” ranking: sites 101, 108, and 115. but they are strictly a fall-back position, in case the big loop is completely full. if the big loop is full, and these sites are gone, certainly there’s enough positive features at the park to still come. but it’s going to be packed with people, and you’re likely to have a less than optimal experience.

for the big loop, i’ll list only the sites that got “y-” or better. the sites not listed got knocked out for the aforementioned reasons.

big loop “y-” sites:

3, 5, 17, 23 (17 + 23 close to bathroom but big), 27, 33, 46 (27, 33, 46 at end of road, but on water), 49, 52, 54.

big loop “y” sites:

7, 9, 24, 26 (campground host site, near entrance), 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 57, 71, 72, 73. all but 42, 44, and 71 are on or near water. 57 is at the end of a road but is so spectacular that it loses the minus.

big loop “y+” sites:

5, 20, 22, 29, 31, 56, 66. all but 5 on the water.

big loop “y!” sites:

21, 36, 37, 59, 61, 64, 65. there’s nothing wrong with any of these, in our estimation. site perfection.

and for the top five — again, culled from the “y!” sites:

#5 — site 64. at the end of a road, on the water, huge with no near neighbors.

#4 — site 59. secluded, on the water, huge surrounding area.

#3 — site 36. at the end of a road, on the water, huge, only site we saw with a constructed tent platform.

#2 — site 21. huge, on the water, secluded. the best part about this site is that the area behind the site drops down to the water, and then there’s a shelf right by the water. so you can sit by the water, and no one can see you. spectacular.

and the #1 site — #37. the huge site drops down from the road, so you are hidden from everyone else. and you have an enormous peninsula you share only with site 36, with water views on three sides.

there you go — our subjective opinions, explained. what do you think? leave a comment if you disagree, or have experiences to share.

food on the florida trip

~ jamie ~ 4 Comments

kirk’s been doing a great job with the florida vacation recap, with more to come, so as promised i’m kicking in with a bit of a food overview.

dinner on landing was at a branch of the orlando ale house. big cheap beer and big cheap food — kirk had an extremely brown fried seafood platter, and i had a not-too-bad shrimp cajun fettucine alfredo thing, and $2 fosters on tap. slow service and a noisy atmosphere, although it was good to watch a bit of the tail end of the baseball game. food was edible but not much more than that.

friday of course was epcot food & wine festival day. yummo, as rachael ray would chirp. walk around the world showcase at epcot and eat appetizers all day. how can you beat that? while we didn’t eat absolutely everything, we put a pretty good dent in it all. each plate was ~$3, and kirk and i of course shared all plates.

in order of consumption, with occasional notes:

    » Peru: Cause de Cangrejo (crabmeat and sauce on a polenta-like cake); Arroz con Pato (rice with duck)

    » Canada: Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup (cheesy and bacon-y); Maple Glazed Salmon with Roasted Corn and Arugula

    » Greece: Spanakopita

    » New Zealand: Lamb Slider (awesome gravy and scone-y roll)

    » Oklahoma: Three Sisters’ Soup (corn, beans, squash); Seared Buffalo with Scalloped Wild Onions

    » Morocco: Bastilla (like a samosa, with middle eastern flavors and phyllo dough), Walnut Baklava

    » Italy: Insalata Caprese, Lemonato

    » Germany: Debriziner Sausage with Sauerkraut in a Pretzel Roll

    » Turkey: Meze (can’t remember the specific ingredients, but this is definitely misnamed. meze means “appetizer” in Turkey, so it’s a generic description rather than a specific dish. come on, epcot. step it up.); Manti with Yogurt Sauce (a kind of turkish ravioli — this is a specific meze)

    » South Africa: Durban Spiced Chicken on a Skewer (nice Asian flavors); Bobotie with Mango Chutney (spicy minced meat with an eggy topping); Spice Cake with Marinated Fruit (best dessert of the day).

    » Ireland: Boxty (a potato pancake) with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic and Fresh Herb Butter; Irish Cheese Plate and Brown Bread with Apple Chutney and Kerrygold Irish Butter; Bunratty Meade Honey Wine (far too sweet for me but still tasty).

    » Chile: Shrimp con Pebre Salsa (like gazpacho with shrimp minus the liquid); Tomaticán with Manchego Cheese (tomato and corn stew). Both were outstanding.

my favorite was, surprisingly for me, oklahoma. they were there to celebrate their 100th anniversary of statehood. the three sisters’ stew was the most flavorful dish i had all day — absolutely delicious. and the buffalo was tender and tasty, and the onions were really strong and balanced the slightly gamy buffalo well.

that evening, we had tickets for the south african wine event, basically a big tent with about 25 south african wine producers, each of whom had 2 or 3 wines to taste. definitely took advantage of the spit buckets on that one. i like the wines but found them uniformly too alcohol-tasting (their wines averaged 14% alcohol, strong for wine). kirk is the wine guy, so maybe he’ll give details of the ones we liked. the food was buffet style — good but basically an expanded version of what we had sampled from the south africa nosh stand.

lunch saturday, with momfla, was at the festival de sabor in ybor city. big plates of asada-style pork, moro (black beans and white rice), yucca, and platanos (fried plantains). it was a booth run by a local restaurant, and unfortunately i don’t know which one, but the food was amazing.

dinner saturday was a papa john’s pizza in the room. we were exhausted, watching the baseball game, and craving convenience. not a bad pizza as chains go, but totonno’s has nothing to worry about.

lunch sunday, again with momfla, was in ruskin at by the bay cafe — mom and i had been before, but kirk hadn’t been. they specialize in real maryland crab dishes — soup, authentic crab cakes, etc. we had crab dip as an appetizer, along with an order of battered and deep fried portobello mushrooms. crab dip worderful, mushrooms ok. momfla had a small plate with broiled salmon (i think), kirk had crab cakes (all crab and practically no breading — good stuff) and i had blackened grouper (perfectly cooked, moist and flavorful). there were sides of coleslaw and potato salad, the choices we made from the list of sides — both were great in that mayonnaise-y, southern way. you never know where you’ll find quality food. this place is definitely worth the trek.

kirk and i wanted to have a great last-night-in-florida meal, just the two of us, preferably romantic, so we asked the desk clerk at the holiday inn express in bradenton for a recommendation. she chose the beachhouse on bradenton beach, and she could not have made a better choice. it’s old florida — they have a stretch of undeveloped beach, and you sit on it outdoors at a table, watching the sunset and the moonset, listening to an acoustic guitarist playing island-ish but not jimmy buffett music, drinking boat drinks, and eating wonderful food. kirk had never had conch before, so despite his aversion to bouncy food, we split an appetizer of conch fritters. the conch in conch fritters is ground, so he didn’t have to avoid the bounce as it wasn’t there. light, not at all oily, and delicious. next stop for kirk: gator tail. for the entree, we both had surf and turf. the steak was just ok (ribeye, not the most flavorful cut, though it was tender and well-prepared) but the grilled lobster was remarkable. perfectly cooked, unadorned except for the drawn butter. we had dessert (can’t remember what — kirk?) and coffee. service was attentive and friendly — our waitress gave us a customized list of local beds-and breakfast that we’ll probably check out come winter.

obviously, we ate very well on the trip. but extravagantly. i must admit that the excess affected me negatively — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. and on my return, i did a three-day brown rice fast and haven’t had meat since, except for using up some chicken broth in a weekend soup kirk made.

and then i read the omnivore’s dilemma, which kirk had bought and was lying about the apartment.

sometimes the signs are all pointing a certain way. i’m going to be vegetarian again for a while. we’ll see where it leads.