Chevre (in Spain, guay). This is what they use in Chile and Ecuador to say something is “cool”.
Pelucón (in Spain, pijo/pija). Used to describe rich people, or fancy upper-class places. It can be derogatory or used sarcastically with friends. The root word is peluque, referring to those big wigs that aristocrats used to wear in the 17th/18th centuries, and pelucón was introduced into contemporary Ecuadorian vocabulary by none other than the socialist president, Rafael Correa. He’s pretty populist, every Saturday he does a 4-hour speech, broadcast on radio, TV and the internet.
La línea ecuatorial
So I was taken to visit La Mitad del Mundo, a big monument marking the equator in Ecuador. It stands just outside Quito, and an entire tourist village with shops, restaurants, a performance areas, and several different museums, has been built around it.
Apparently the French guy who made the calculations was a few hundred metres off, and the “scientific equator” was built later, not far away from La Mitad del Mundo. My Ecuadorian hosts, however, did not take me there. I asked about this, saying I’d heard they made a mistake with the numbers, to which the reply was – No, there was no mistake, it’s just that we have one to celebrate the equator, and the other to mark the actual equator.
Ha. Ha. Of course.
⎯suansita⎯ 