#Victoria Vicky IV Export

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Victoria och Zweirad Union i Tyskland, Mopedbladet nr 1, 2001 (2) by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: :copyright: Club Victoria. Från clubvictoria.org/om-klubben/klubbtidningen-mopedbladet/.

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1957‐03 Victoria Vicky IV Export Brochure (1) by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Gert Reiher. From victoria-rad.de/?p=4165.

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Mike and Vicky Go to Ecuador (Day 1)

I didn’t think I’d ever make it to Quito. That might sound like I’m stating the obvious, but if I didn’t go to Quito, that would end my self-important streak of visiting my sister in every city she’s lived in during her tenure in the foreign service. That streak has not only a weirdly competitive source of pride for me over the years, but also a weirdly consistent source of my stand-up material, from bullfights in Lima to ordering pizza in an Irish pub in Montevideo. These trips to see Susan have been a really special and surprising thing for me in my life. I mean, I pretty much had to go to Quito.    

So as my wife and I nervously dropped off our giant seven-month-old Bernese ‘puppy’ at an extended daycare, we headed out of L.A.( just as the Dodgers were hosting the World Series for the first time in 29 years) and we spent a travel day going L.A. to Houston and from Houston to Quito. I was unsure what to expect from a city and a country that was, to an embarrassing degree, a mystery to me. All I really knew was that we wouldn’t have time for the Galapagos, I should be scared shitless of the altitude and we’d be getting up early the next morning to pile into a van with my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew for a full day of sight seeing curated by the fam. And so that’s what we did. 

Here was Day 1.  

Our first stop was Hacienda La Compania de Jesus in Cayambe. And as we were greeted by women in traditional indigenous Kayambi garb offering bizcochos and blackberry juice, as well as a young tour guide in a faded Jack Skellington t-shirt, I realized I had no idea what the hell was going on.

The Hacienda isn’t mentioned in the Ecuadorian travel book I bought and skimmed before the trip, but for the past 15 years, the Jarrin family has apparently been giving tours of their old estate. That includes a big, hundred-year-old French neoclassic home with all original everything, an old barn that now functions as a showroom and a 300-year-old Jesuit chapel - all of the above ornamented in an amount of cut roses that I’d have to classify as ‘an overflowing fuckload’ of cut roses.

There were hundreds of rose pedals in the fountain out front. You couldn’t go anywhere inside the big old house without seeing at least one giant bouquet of roses. And the aforementioned showroom was where the Hacienda really flexed its rose-having muscles. They weren’t even pretending you were supposed to be impressed with old furniture or other antiques. That was just them going, “We run Rosadex, a massive rose greenhouse/plantation and export roses to about 50 countries. Look at it. It’s an overflowing fuckload of roses!” Fair enough.

On your standard FTD delivery website, you can get a bouquet of two dozen roses with a vase for about $75. In Ecuador, you can buy about a billion roses for a dollar. Really. Because of the direct, year-round sunlight on the equator and the high altitude (about 9600 feet), the roses grow perfectly straight and the setting is basically perfect. So in a pretty short amount time, these Ecuadorian roses have become one of the biggest exports of the entire country (along with oil, bananas and shrimp in case you’re some kind of nerd). They have long stem roses for the Russians, the dyed circus colors for the Chinese and even a deep blue option that I was told is popular at gang funerals in Los Angeles. I’m not kidding. The place is just lousy with the roses.

We saw the greenhouses. We saw the ‘post-harvest room’. The latter was so colorful and impressive that I almost forgot the part when our tour guide told us that the hacienda had been in his wife’s family for five generations -  ever since King Charles III of Spain kicked all the Jesuits out of Spain and its colonies in 1767. I immediately thought, “Wait. What?” And that thought kind of followed me around the rest of the tour. What type of Game of Thrones shit happened with King Charles and the Jesuits in 1767??? But I’d have to get back to that later.

I did manage to Google the Jarrin family later on and noticed that Jaime Jarrin, the Spanish Vin Scully, was born in Cayambe. So I’m thinking he has to be a member of the hacienda family. But before I could ask more questions, the tour was over and I was back in the van with my family headed off to another sight in the Ecuadorian highlands. But what the fuck happened with King Chuck and the Jesuits?   

Next, the van made a brief pitstop at a place called Mira Lago in San Pablo Del Lago, which was a souvenir shop overlooking the Imbabura volcano and (obviously) a lake. Because of Mira Lago’s name similarity to our current president’s favorite West Palm Beach cake restaurant or whatever, I thought standing by the sign with a confused look on my face would make for an amusing photo. But that’s before I saw the view… and the llamas.

Inside the gift shop, a traditional Andean band, which appeared to be a family, played charangos, guitars, seed shakers, a siku panpipe and sang in either Quechua or Aymara. I’m not sure. I don’t speak indigenous Andean. But I did fucking love them. I’ve tried to find them Online and I think their name is Ayllu Pura and they’re like the Incan version of the Staples Singers. This video doesn’t really do them justice, but whatever. It’s there and I think it’s pretty sweet. Anyway, Victoria bought some cool-looking scarves there and we left.    

Our destination lunch was at Hacienda Cusin, also in San Pablo Del Lago. The estate itself is said to date back to 1602. But the hacienda is a restored 19th Century country home that gradually added garden cottages to become a cobblestone-pathed, terra-cotta-lined, magical rustic hotel with a magical rustic ambience. Do you like Spanish tiles? Do you like more antiques? What about ancient trees? And what about more llamas? You do? Well, they got you. And it’s so dope.

All of that said, the actual food at lunch was the least impressive part of the visit. I mean, I didn’t think so at the time. It’s just that my mind would be blown on multiple lunches on this trip and I can’t honestly say I remember what I ate at Hacienda Cusin as much as I just remember being introduced to the tree tomato (a mango-ish/apricot-ish/passion-fruit-flavored tomato) and the naranjilla (an orange that tastes like a combination of rhubarb and lime) for the first time. The rest of the food was a shrug.  But that’s fine with me. I got to go to an old hacienda (the non-Jesuit kind, mind you) that made me feel like I was living in a Spanish-tiled version of the Led Zeppelin IV ZOSO cover.

The final van trip of the day was to the small village of Peguche, which is known for incredibly talented indigenous weavers and for a picturesque 60-foot ceremonial waterfall in a protected forrest.  

The weaving stores in the village were pretty incredible. So was the waterfall, but you kinda just walk up to it, get your picture taken, stand there and take in how neat it is and leave. Maybe you chicken out on climbing some rocks to get a better photo. Maybe you decide you’re too fat to try to get a photo on a llama.  Maybe all of that happened and it’s best we move on to the weavers.  

In Jose Cotacachi, the workers, all in traditional clothing, demonstrated how they made their wall hangings, shawls, scarves and ponchos from the looms all the way down to the production of the dyes they still make by hand. At one point, a woman who worked there took cochineal eggs from a cactus and smashed them in her palm, using the pigment the insects use to repel predators and added lemon juice and paprika and other stuff to create all sorts of different colors. And it was almost badass how cocky she was about it too. Like, Yeah, I just did that shit. Buy something. 

In another store, Artesania El Gran Condor, Victoria bought a beautiful multicolored table cloth and placemats, while I turned down an offer from my sister to buy me a poncho. These are the types of attire, when worn back in Los Angeles, that can get someone accused of cultural appropriation by the Woke Police. Even though, like, the entire purpose and income of these indigenous markets (especially in the surrounding market of Otavalo) is to sell their fucking wares to dipshit tourists like me.

Anyway, after our first big day of exploring, the fam, including my exhausted niece and nephew, headed back to Quito in the van. My niece, who is 7, got roaring mad at me for some reason or another along the way (I think I ate a piece of her candy), until I sang a song I made up on the spot that went, “I’m so sorry in the van. Won’t you ever shake my hand,” that became such a hit with the kids that it was requested randomly and enthusiastically throughout the rest of the trip. What can I say? Much like the real “Weird” Al Yankovic, my target audience is probably elementary school children.  

Back in Quito, the adults stayed up a bit longer, ordered specialty sushi rolls from a place called Noe and watched Game 7 of the ALCS. The Astros won and were headed to the World Series to face the Dodgers. And I was headed to bed. Thus concluded Day 1.

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1957‐03 Victoria Vicky IV Export Brochure (2) by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Gert Reiher. From victoria-rad.de/?p=4165.

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1957‐03 Victoria Vicky IV Export Brochure (3) by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Gert Reiher. From victoria-rad.de/?p=4165.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.

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1957 Victoria Vicky IV Export by Mats Peterson Via Flickr: © Andy Tiernan Classics. From andybuysbikes.com/archivehtml/5798vic.html#.