You've seen the edible "tigrillo" of Zaruma, the delicous concoction made from green plantain, eggs, cheese, and then fixed up with onions and tomatoes and other local ingredients before being doused in the meat and stewed sauce of tender chicken, pork, or beef, served alongside the exquisite Zaruman coffee. NOW, witness the real tigrillo. This very amiable elderly woman invited me and a guest to approach and check out her tigrillo skin nailed to the side of her house in the Alborada neighborhood of the city. This is basically one of the few parts of town where things are a little more run-down, a little less affluent. Anyway, she claims that her son shot the creature (looks to be an ocelot) more than a month ago in an area not too far to the north of town where it had ventured down from the bosque to catch a chicken. Great to know that the beautiful beasts still live in the area on the western side of the Andes here, but sad to know that there is now one fewer of them.

Cerro El Calvario is always a great place for catching the sights and sounds (muffled usually) of Zaruma, Ecuador. Not long ago I was up there with some visitors along with the other volunteer and his girlfriend to catch the sunset. While that itself wasn't too shabby, what really impressed us was the rising nearly full moon cresting the ridges to the East. Please enjoy this three-part photo essay documenting that evening. It's titled: La luna es deliciousa y sin peso. (The moon is delicious and weightless)



A few days later I accompanied ANOTHER of the new volunteers down here in El Oro province on a visit to a finca outside of Piñas, a city about an hour from here. Some friends from his site wanted to show us their integrated farm to discuss the possibility of opening it up to ecotourists and people who are interested in learning about organic coffee production. As you can see, they did have an impressive spread of coffee drying in the sun, and this was only a tiny fraction of it. Here I am, possibly the first person ever to perform "coffee angels." I think the shirt still smells, but infortunately pre-roasted coffee (especially when still in the shell) doesn't have much of an interesting aroma.