Tags
Cayambe, Ecuador, Frizztext Story Challenge Q, Hacienda Guachala, Latitude 0, llamas, quinoa, Quinoa in fields, rose production
Trekking across quinoa fields near Cayambe Ecuador
While staying at Hacienda Guachala near latitude 0 in Ecuador’s Andes, Hank & Marie Groff and I toured a rose production center as well as a quinoa farm a few mornings ago. The pastoral landscape soothed our senses as we journeyed through the Andean countryside, far off the beaten path.
How can one have a bad day when views like this soothe the senses?
Who forgot to close the gate?!
Disconnect from your worries and go with us! We need someone to help with the gates!
After early-morning duties at the hacienda, Manuel escorted us to several neighboring farms.
Early-morning llamas (Where’s our breakfast?)
Hide and go seek!
From Ecuador to your neighborhood florist; those roses clear many hurdles before being selected for export.
Xavier & Manuel – Don’t forget the rubber boots!
Quinoa Lessons from Xavier
How’s this for an up close and personal peek at the Andean super food?
Quinoa: lovely for the eyes, healthy for the body!
Does anyone else see quinoa’s resemblance to grain sorghum?
This quinoa feature joins another great pool of posts for this week’s Story Challenge. See the rest here. Thanks, Frizztext, for tolerating three of my posts for the letter “Q.”
Photo by Marie Groff (Thanks, Marie!)
See you again soon!
Z
Zeebra Designs & Destinations 
thank you for the walk through the Quinoa field 🙂
You have been quite prolific with what is a difficult letter for most! I plan to cheat a bit by tweaking the spelling of a destination 🙂 But I need to get through P first…groan 😦
ha! i was extremely lucky to have those two subjects to use! i am sure that your post will be lovely!
i’m still travelling, so have little time for reading anything online. i look forward to catching up soon!
z
seems to be an open gate paradise for cows!
P.S.:
yesterday we saw in a cinema the German movie “Die Vermessung der Welt” featuring Alexander von Humboldt: we were excited by the many fragments which had been filmed in Ecuador – must be a wonderful country!
wow, that sounds like an amazing movie! my friend hank drinks in historical information, and i am sure that he would love the movie. yes, ecuador is an amazing country, and my friends are just now realizing how many faces she has!
thanks!
z
Just discovered quinoa last year. LOVE IT! Nice to see it from the beginning 😀
Cool cows. Great photos.
yes, the cows look so lovely in the pastoral andean settings! we’re having a wonderful trip through quinoa country, though they raise an amazing variety of crops!
z
I’ve never seen a quinoa farm and yes, it resembles sorghum. Lovely views. I’ve seen the rose green houses in San Pablo Del Lago, I believe north of Cayambe. Beautiful area.
yes, the andes are beautiful mountains, so pastoral with the many varieties of local garb and color. theh only thing that would make it better would be to meet you and ron here and share these experiences in person!
thanks for the second opinion about the sorghum. can one/does one eat sorghum, and if the answer is no, i wonder why not?
z
We’ll definitely put a get together on the list…would love to get back to your lovely part of the world that you describe with such energy and passion.
i returned home two days ago and am slowly catching up. i have been wading through photos add day – some prompt belly laughs, some remind me how stunning the andes and its people are. when those images find their way to my posts, you will most likely get wistful to return!
z
Wonderful stunning photos! I liked
#2 with the snow capped mountain in the distance,
the test of Quinoa in the hands (what’s the sign of a good crop?)
and the close up of Quinoa on the stalk (is that what you say? It’s not a branch?)
I was surprised to see the roses growing like baby veal – stuck in a cage and unable to move.
hey rosie! we did not ask about details about growing the quinoa, though we had the ‘hands on’ process of separating the tiny seeds for a token sample to take with us. a normal bag of quinoa in the supermarket is about $1.50, which we greatly appreciate!
the roses had been cut and were sorted according to the length of their stems! they weren’t in cages – that would have been sad, wouldn’t it?!!! different countries have different requests for stem length – russia asks for the longest stems! (1 meter+20 cm long)
thanks for your great comments!
z
Love the tour of the field! Beautiful!
we had a great tour and enjoyed the leisurely trek with amazing views! thanks so much!
Lisa/Z
I’m back home, and ready to get caught up with everyone. I had to laugh – I DO see the resemblance to sorghum. The photo at the top of my current post was taken in the middle of a sorghum field. It was my first visit to a sorghum field, and now I have a real sense of what your wonderful quinoa looks like!
wow.. you were inspecting sorghum, and i was inspecting quinoa! we always called grain sorghum, ‘milo,’ though i do not know where that name came from.
travel is nice, but it’s also nice to get home, isn’t it?!
z
Absolutely beautiful on so many levels. I love the beauty of quinoa.
I had to laugh because I grew up in villages of farming and cows were always stopping traffic on the dirt roads; love it!
ecuador certainly has its share of traffic-stopping cows! donkeys/burros as well!
i’m so glad that you enjoyed this post! gracias!
lisa
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