Saturday, March 31

8:30 p.m. - Greet Travel Partner #1 at Quito Airport with ridiculously large bouquet of tropical flowers. As it turns out, Ecuador is a major flower exporter, and a dozen roses can be purchased for all of $2.00. I decided to be slightly less cliche and go for the $4.00 monstrosity. Travel Partner #1 can't spot me behind the bouquet.

9:00 p.m. - Return to hotel, introduce Travel Partner #1 (henceforth referred to as "TP") to large quantity of strange and exotic fruit (granadilla, pitahaya, and maracuya, or passion fruit)

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When I first visited the grocery store upon arrival in Quito, I think I counted 9 different kinds of fruit I'd never seen before. On further inspection, I may have found more as different fruits have rotated through the store, and as I've discovered them hidden with the vegetables and spread throughout the produce department.

My favorite so far is the pitahaya, a thick-skinned yellow fruit covered in rubbery, pyramid-shaped bumps. Slice it open and you find soft, translucent white flesh filled with tiny black seeds, and vaguely reminiscent of a kiwi-fruit in both flavor and texture. The fruit of a certain type of cactus, it ranges in size from about 5 inches long (like the first several I tried) to about 3 inches (all I can find of late).