This would be our last day in Ecuador and, since
our flight was not scheduled to leave until midnight, Alejandra decided that
our day would not start until noon. We were okay with that. We drove about an hour to the Hacienda
Sierra Alisos, in Tambillo in the foothills of the Ilinizas, a pair of volcanic
mountains. We passed a horseback rider on the way in, which made us feel like
we were in the Ecuadorian equivalent of cowboy country. 
After lunch in the hacienda, some
of us decided to ride bicycles, since the bike trails had been described as
"flat," or "plano" in Spanish. They were flat only in
comparison to the Andes Mountains. Most people ended up walking up to a pair of
adobe houses on a hill overlooking the main hacienda, which was also adobe.
Sarah and Mark, who have an adobe house in Tucson, were especially interested
in the Ecuador version of adobe architecture. One of the houses was rammed
earth rather than adobe, meaning it was made with forms rather than adobe
blocks. 
We had a tour of the farm's dairy
operation and watched cows being milked and calves being fed. There seemed to
be about 50 cows on site. The milking practices were similar to what I know
about milking in the United States. The farm also contained pens for guinea
pigs and rabbits.
We drove back into Quito for a
private cooking class at the Plaza Grande Hotel. We made seviche and ice cream,
the latter involving lots of dry ice. We ate a traditional Ecuadorean dinner of
meat, beans, corn and rice. The food was delicious. A man dressed in a strange purple costume,
looking disconcertingly like a purple Klansman, served us our dessert, smoking
from the dry ice used to cool it. On the way out, in the hotel lobby, we saw
men dressed in tuxedos and women dressed in gowns getting ready to go to a wedding at the nearby Jesuit
church. We said goodbye to Alejandra, and then Jorge drove us to the airport
for our uneventful flights home.
Despite the tribulations of this
trip - partial blindness, seasickness, altitude sickness, and the heat and
humidity on the Galapagos - we loved Ecuador. The people are friendly and the
climate in the mountains is perfect. Our stay with Selso and Sylvia's family in
the Magdalena indigenous community was very special. We resolved to spend the
next year improving our Spanish so that we could return next winter, spend some
more time with them and get to know them better. 