This city is known for being the “chaulafán” capital of the world (again, one of those self-made titles). Chaulafán is the Ecuadorian version of fried rice, which is mainly served in Chinese restaurants. When I arrived to Quevedo I felt like another grain of rice being fried in this city´s heat.

I checked in the Hotel Central. It has a fancy name, but that’s the only fancy thing about it. I stayed there because I loved the decadent interiors and the weird conversations with the cleaning lady, Rosa Rosado Rosales.

The town itself has grown disorderly throughout the years: commerce, as well as noise, is abundant on the street. While walking around it was impossible to be invisible, even worse with the cameras on my neck. At least five times a day someone warned me (two policemen and a security guard included) to be careful with my equipment because of thieves in the city. I did not really felt threatened until my last day of stay, when two men approached me and started joking about stealing my cameras. They told me, while laughing, that they did’t have a job and the cameras could support their families for a month. I laughed and played dumb. Then I asked if I could take a picture of them first. They were surprised by my reply and I think they enjoyed it but refused to be photographed.

The Manta-Manaus commercial route is supposed to pass next to this town, but here, nobody knew anything about that. And I asked a lot of people.

For this post, again, I chose to show you some of my favourite photographs made during the first day of stay in chronological order.

Next stop: Latacunga