Our little hibiscus trail

June 24, 2021 SouthAmerica

It has been a long time since our last post. I have to admit that it was Covid-19 that changed everything in our lives, as well as our personal projects. We have intended to travel to many places in Ecuador and other countries in South America, and although the travel restrictions are somehow lifted. We are taking extra precautions, and not travel as planned.

During our locked down, things shifted for us. Our blog came to a halt and only now I am starting over. We are still focusing in South America but with a different point of view.

While living in Ecuador I came to appreciate the culture, the food, and the Ecuadorian people. I am going to share what was our second week in Quito. After settling down in our new apartment, we had to sort of learn our way around. Making school and work our priorities. There were a few nice surprises on this part of the story.

Luckily for us, school and work were both within walking distance. We used to go to school first, hit work on the way back. This would make a nice circle before coming back home.

The walking distance to school in time was of 20 minutes at a sort of fast pace. I have to admit that we struggled for the first days of walking there. The city of Quito and especially the area where we lived which is called Monteserrin has hills, not very big, but enough that the ups and downs get your heart beating fast as a result of the high elevation.

Something I didn’t like much of our morning walks was the pollution of the fumes spelled by diesel vehicles. Also, one should always pay attention to every step because not everybody who owns a dog picks up after them. Additionally, there was this lady who had a small business. It was a shop; I don’t really know what kind of shop. She cleaned the entry way, (sidewalk included) with water (I hope is just water, not sure about that either) every day, but she used to throw the bucket of water without looking to see if somebody was passing by or not. So, we had to watch for her, otherwise we would get an unwanted bucket of cold “water.” We had to do this twice every morning and afternoon.

During this time, we discovered another way to get to school, this was our first surprised. We started using this back way to school and that is how we discovered our second nice surprise. It’s what now I call “our little hibiscus trail.” This was a narrow trail filled with hibiscus shrubs, and that was enough for me to make me enjoy the beginning of our daily early morning walk. I started to count the shrubs and I got as far as 35 there were more maybe 15 or 25 more not sure. I was saddened about leaving my golden yellow hibiscus back in Colorado, and I thought I wasn’t going to find them here, but I was wrong.

I loved Our Little Hibiscus Trail every day on the way to school, and this was the inspiration behind this eBook for children. A collection of the best 36 pictures of the many hibiscus flowers we came across in this area. I wanted to share these pictures, while at the same time teach the kids the names of the colors in Spanish. Plus, as a bonus chapter, I added the name of colors in Kichwa (this is the language that many indigenous groups in Ecuador speak.) It is after all, the language of the Incas, that still prevails in many countries in South America. Ecuador being one of them.