Mango Mulling

It’s Sunday and I’m feeling a bit stiff and lazy. Yesterday I’d done a hard workout at the gym, enough that my hamstrings hate me this morning. I shuffled up from bed and out to the kitchen to put coffee on. While it rumbled and grumbled on the stove I threw one of the dog’s toys about so she got her morning exercise.

I’ve become used to Ecuadorian coffee, at least the ‘café con leche’ version. This is troubling in many ways. Ecuador is a coffee producer. You’d think a coffee producing country would know how to make good coffee. The coffee in Colombia, for example, is just fantastic. But here in Ecuador all the good coffee is exported. The most popular coffee is Nescafe Instant (a moment of horrified shudders). Tins of Nescafe inhabit massive lengths of shelves in Ecuador’s supermercados (super markets – sort of).

For the intrepid few, like me, you can get ground coffee and with a small stove top coffee maker brew up an expresso-strength brew, then cut it with water or milk. I’ve become used to the café con leche, half coffee half milk. It’s not great, even with the Colombian coffee I got on our last trip to Cartegena. Still, it’s whole universes better than Nescafe Instant Coffee.

So then I head out to the back patio to throw the ball again for la perrita. My gaze falls on the hammock there and I realize it has been some time since a good relax in its soft folds. When I’ve run most of the energy off Ellie I lay down and spent a good thirty minutes looking up at the green mangos ripening in the trees towering over me. I thought of Ecuador politics and my coming trip to Los Angeles, international flights and international terrorism, baseball and the NFL, and will USC be in the hunt for another football championship.

You noticed there was no hint of writing in any of this?

I noticed that there was none, so at 9:30 I had a lazy breakfast with my wife… breakfast burritos and fruit.

Now I’m at my computer working.

Happy writing from Ecuador!