Beauty is a thing, perhaps a quality that best describes our personal attractions, however mysterious they may be, but beauty is also a feeling, and on the coast I was inclined to feel it everyday.
Last Thursday I entered Canoa as if walking into a sandy dream, but I left it in a sweaty daze. During the days I surfed, swam, and when possible, I napped in a hammock under a hut made of bamboo and dried palm leaves. At night I partied with a group of international neo-hippie intellectual adventurists, much like myself. We drank and danced on the beach until sunrise, greeting daylight by diving naked into the morning´s first set of waves.
I lied in a hammock Monday morning, dirty, burnt, bitten and tired. The beauty I first encountered in Canoa´s wide beach and horizons had quickly dissipated in a fog of beer and sweat, and I knew it was time to leave. I had only a faint idea of where I should go, but when you travel alone, faint ideas gain brighter traction quickly, and by that evening I was sitting on yet another beach, drinking a beer and watching the orange sun set between pink clouds and blue sea, having returned to Puerto Lopez, the wild fishing town tucked like sandy pages between rocky bookend bluffs.
Beauty struck me then, prompting me to stay there longer, but it also made me lament the need to have a plan, the need to think of schedules and returning dates, to be anywhere at all at certain necessary times, and as the sun lowered itself into the Pacific, dousing its color in the now darker blues, my thoughts drifted to Bolivia.
When walking more than two years ago through Switzerland, my friends and I dreamed of a place called Cinque Terre, a small collection of coastal villages in Italy, and everyday we fantasized about ending our trip there, knowing nothing about it, but letting our imaginations run wilder every day we neared it. In the end, we never got there, but it served as inspiration, the approach and process of being high by traveling, not knowing where we were going, but always drifting towards a dreamland. In South America, Bolivia is my Cinque Terre. I know nothing about it except what trusted friends have told me, and I know only that I want to go there. I don´t know if I´ll make it--in all likelihood I won´t--but for me Bolivia is less of a destination or a country than it is an idea. That I do not have to end my vacation. That I don´t have to be anywhere at anytime because I am controlling my own journey, and I can end it where I want-- in Cinque Terre, in Richmond, Virginia, or in sweet unknown Bolivia. Every time I have one of these moments, I am afforded with a new and invigorated attitude, and I go on to have wide-open adventurous days.
The next two days were the best yet of my trip. I woke early in the morning and walked along the beach with a group of tourists. The fishermen were bringing in their morning catches and their families backed trucks onto the beach to get ready for the load. Above, frigate birds swarmed the air like eager puppies while pelicans floated in the waves like cool cats, waiting for the market leftovers. Men sliced through the heads of fifty pound albacore with rusty machetes, and bloated blowfish the size of overgrown babies sat discarded next to six feet swordfish (below), its colored fan splayed out in dazzling display that made me wonder how much more marvelous it might appear when alive and cutting through the water.
Our guides pushed a boat out into the water and we all waded through the waves and hopped in, starting straightaway for an island, a faded blip on the horizon, about forty kilometers away. As we left the coast I could see another nearby island, guarding a secluded beach between yet another set of rock bluffs set like points of a coastal semicircle. The further we went, the more the faded coastline looked like a smaller set of Blue Ridge Mountanis, perched on a wide bed of blue water, and I thought, this is what West Virginia would be like if it had beaches instead of guns--wild, wonderful and wet.
The Isla de Plata (Island of Silver, below and above) sat in the Pacific like a rocky fortress, named by fishermen who thought the bird poop covering the cliffs shined like silver at sunset. We waded onto the island and hiked across it, seeing birds nesting in the bushes, blue-footed boobies perched on cliffs, living the good life, always ready to fly. And they fly wonderfully, like model airplanes almost, gliding rather than flying. After hiking we snorkeled, but as someone who once possessed a phobia of crocodiles in lakes for many years, I am still squirmish about things appearing out of murky waters and rushing by my face, even if they are small colorful fish. More interesting to me were the shafts of underwater sunlight that rotated and danced as the surface above bent and rippled. To celebrate, I climbed to the roof of the boat and dived into the green waters, scattering the fish below.
While returning, I fell asleep, and when I awoke the island had disappeared under the sun. I saw the coast approaching and it looked just like the island, but extending infinitely on each side, and I thought, "How strange to come and go from such places," and it reminded me of my favorite Dr. Seuss book, Oh the Places You´ll Go!
Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!
When I got off the boat I met people on the street who talked like old friends, including a guy living in a tent on the shore whose name was Crusty. "Why is your name, Crusy?" I asked. "Porque estoy loco!" (Because I am crazy!) That night we partied by a fire on the beach and when I woke up I decided to skip my trip to Montanita, Ecuador´s most infamous surf-party town. Instead I went to the town´s only stoplight and waved down a local taxi to take me to the beaches in the national park. The taxis in Puerto Lopez are not cars, but half-motorcycles constructed to fit dual-wheeled carriages, like motorized rigshaws. At first I thought it was cool, but after further inspection of its loose bolts and rusty metalwork, I realized it was only as cool as a moving deathtrap could be.
I arrived at Los Frailes and the feeling of beauty again overtook me. Only five other people lied along the shore of a beach that spanned almost a mile, a perfect half-bowl, again marked by near symmetrical rock bluffs at each end. I swam and then found a trail and walked through the dry tropical beach forest past hundreds of flowers, butterflies, cactii and small striped lizards that scattered nervously along the path. The second beach, La Tortuguita (below) was maybe the most beautiful I had ever seen, and I had it all to myself. My first instict was to leap into it, but my better senses told me to be prudent, if only for a moment. I found an inconspicous small sign at the edge of the brush, saying "Peligroso! No Bañarse." (Danger, No bathing). In a country generally without standard safety regulations, and where the word safety itself does not seem to be part of cultural vocabulary or tradition, it is important to heed the seldom warning when offered. I inspected the beach further and realized it was actually a rocky peninsula that dropped off as a small cliff at the edge of the shore where the waves crashed and doubled in eruptive size. At the middle of the beach was a tower of stone where the waves came together in opposite directions. I stood in the tranquil middle, feeling almost beloved by nature and then moved on.
At the third beach I almost cried (I am man enough to admit it!). Beauty, the image and feeling corresponding in perfect harmony, had finally overwhelmed me. Crabs ran sideways across black sand and shells of purple, red, pink, and green heaped in piles at the feet of placid waves. Water cut small caverns into the reddish rocks lining the shore as frigates and vultures soared above. I walked along the beach, trying to reach a cave but stopping at a collection of small boulders where skyblue-bellied crabs waltzed along the rocks. I meditated there for some time and then was happy enough to break out into a run going back the way I came. I felt childish, even native, running barefoot and shirtless through a tropical beach forest while lizards scurried before me to get away.
I left Puerto Lopez and the coast the next morning, afraid that if I didn´t leave then, that I might never leave and would spend all my adventure in a single wonderful place. Besides, it is not the nature of the trip to stay. If there is a mantra to my movements, it is movement itself. Until next time...
And when things start to happen, don’t worry.
Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.
Hey Sam! It was nice to meet you in Cuenca; enjoyed our conversation. Sorry about the drama at the end of the night. If you're in Quito before April 29th (or in GA after May 1st), hit me up! Good luck in Lima.
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