A Notebook from Ecuador

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I bought this notebook in Quito, Ecuador, on the last night of a week-long trip spent in  the Galapagos Islands, with a stopover in Quito in each direction. (You can see a few of my Galapagos sketchbook pages in this post.) There weren’t many opportunities to shop for stationery on the trip, but I did see some notebooks in Quito and at the airport, many of them a local brand called Betero– I would have bought one of those too but they were that 9 x 15 cm size that bothers me, and they were a bit expensive in the airport shop, so I ended up deciding against it, which I regret now! I purchased this notebook in the gift shop of a rather touristy restaurant called La Choza that was supposedly one of the best places to get Ecuadorian/Andean food. The food was fine, but I was more interested in the cultural experience, as there was an elaborate Ballet Folklorico dance and music performance during our meal, and the shop had some charming crafts.  I picked this design out of several variations, all of which had uniquely Ecuadorian objects or art pictured on the covers, in this case an antique coin.

The brand is ArteSonado. (They have some other interesting designs on their website.) It’s kind of  a hybrid softcover– the cover is just printed cardboard, not wrapped, but it’s not as flexible as some softcovers. It’s slightly smaller than the hardcover pocket Moleskine shown below for comparison.

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The elastic closure is a bit narrower than most, and anchored further away from the top and bottom of the back cover than usual. The outer cover is creased and left unglued around the spine in order to give it room to bend so the notebook can open totally flat.

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The black endpapers are nice, but the rear pocket is not very well thought out. It’s so small it won’t hold much more than a business card– no expanding sides. The open edge also faces outward so anything stored in there could slip out.

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The paper is slightly toothy rather than smooth, and show-through and bleed-through are a bit worse than average.

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Ultimately, this notebook has mainly souvenir value for me. It’s not the sort of thing I’d use every day due to the paper and the awkwardness of the pocket, but if I ever decide to try to collect a notebook from every country, I’ll have Ecuador taken care of!

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