Final Day and Final Thoughts

Check blog below for pictures from the last few weeks.

My last night in Quito was Saturday night. I was watching Columbian soap operas about inter-cartel romances with my family when I decided I would go to the Mariscal for a few final drinks with friends. I began the night with my gringo friends, international enough to represent a G20 conference, and drunk enough to get kicked out of it, but inevitably I ended the night on the street with wild group of Argentinians who were touring the continent on motorcycles. After a round of tequila, and several slaps on the back, I loudly declared, “I will see you all next year in Buenos Aires.” My drunken promise of return.

The next day I sat in the Teatro Plaza and watched an indigenous group perform a set of traditional songs and dances from the Central Andes region. The music was fast and the dances were filled with twirling ponchos and layers of colorful felt skirts that spun in perfect fluttering circles, a beautiful illusion of women sprouting from colorful spinning tops, men with black greasy hair dancing around them in smiles. I could think of no better superlative for the dance, or my entire experience in Ecuador, than “most colorful.”

Afteward, I walked through the Centro Historico (central historic district) and everything reaffirmed that fact. The noise, the street performers, the pedestrians, vendors, buildings, the life itself, and I marveled at how much I have seen while also marveling at how much more I had not seen, but yet still remained dazzled.

When I said goodbye that night to my family, they made me promise to return. It was the question of every Ecuadorian I talked to. After telling them I was leaving, they all asked with intimate smiles, as if coordinating the warm congeniality in an effort to win me back, “y cuando regrasa aqui?” “And when are you coming back?” They never asked if I was coming back, only when.

When I left the house, my latino mother, Nelly, stood in the window with a worried frown, the daughter in the doorway, and the father on the street, all waving goodbye to me. I kept my head down and got in the car of another family I knew in Quito, trying to keep myself from becoming emotional. At the airport, my other family friends hugged me and wished me good luck, and like the others, made me promise to come back with that smiling question, one that seems to say to me, “you love it here, and why wouldn’t you love it here, so when are you coming back to see us?” I promised to return, a drunken promise coupled with a sober one, and both worthy of keeping.


Halfway through my trip, while sitting at a sidewalk café in Mindo, I wondered why I felt a daily compulsion to record so many details in my notebook. Even worse, when I wasn’t writing on napkins, in margins of books, or whatever paper was available, I was writing in my head, translating images into words, filtering my experiences into something expressable. So often, what I really wanted more than anything, was to take you all (although not all at once, of course) with me. To show you what a jungle river feels like, the current fighting your strokes while monkeys run along the beach next to you. To smell orchids in rainforests, to dance on a beach until sunrise, to climb a hot sand dune at high noon in the desert or surf Peruvian Pacific waves, but since I could not take you with me, I stored as many details as I could in my books and memory, and have tried to express them at a fraction of the quality possible. I hope you have felt some of these places, and that my descriptions and enthusiasm were sufficient enough for your imaginations. Many times, my posts were my way of saying “I wish you were here.”

It has been a pleasure to write, to take notes and reflect, but it has been an even greater pleasure to have readers. By reading my blog, you have kept me company, and I am interminably grateful because of it.

I have many reasons to work harder on writing as a craft, and one of the greatest reasons is that I might have one day have more readers, and therefore more companions when I travel.

Because this trip began as a dream I thought of several months ago when I was youthfully restless and working for little money as a volunteer. The trip never seemed real until I was on the airplane, looking down at the city lights of Cuba below me at night, wondering what goes on down there, or what goes on at any of the places reflected in grounded electric stars thousands of feet below me that night, before finally descending, the opportunity to discover one of those lit places. A friend of mine (from the blog Free Country, cited below) once talked about the difference between tourists and travelers, the difference laying in the method of journeying, the uncertain idea of destination and purpose, and I hope and believe that I am the latter. Because while this began as a vacation, it seems like the possible discovery of a new lifestyle. I have met many travelers moving in different ways, some for several years now, some far more adventurous and courageous than myself. And I think that many of you who have traveled understand its joys, the vitality of the road, the liberating uncertainty through mobility, the natural high of seeing something new everyday, and the social pleasure of ephemeral, or sometimes more longlasting, friends everywhere. To see the world is a dream many people have, but having realized one small dream already, I think it seems too good, as well as possible, not to pursue and work hard towards a future in it.

Which brings me to another point of purpose in my blog. I admit, I have been guilty of trying to inspire jealousy in you. It is true my trip has had its moments of frustration of travel and its empathetic images of poverty and hardship that were hard to swallow, but these are not the experiences I wanted to convey because they were overwhelmed by other daily wonders. I do not dwell in negativities, not anymore, nor do I think they have any currency worth sharing here. Instead I wanted to express what was real and colorful, to take you there, and to make you jealous enough to inspire you to travel, too, if you are not already. Not to make you feel bad, or to help you resent your office space or study cubby or winter weather, but because of what I had said in the beginning, of wanting to show you these places, and also because I know many people who want to get up and go, but don’t, because they aren’t sure where, when, or more importantly, how. My trip in South America was very easy and safe. Most of the mild dangers I experienced were ones I imposed on myself. It required a relatively small budget, little preparation, and more than anything, a sustainably enthusiastic and eager dispostion. If at any point while reading this, you felt you wanted to be there, too, then do not be afraid to consider it more seriously. Such trips are, in many ways, risks, but I am starting to believe risks are the necessary foundations of any valuable journey, maybe of life itself.


Once again, thank you so much for reading. It has meant a lot to have you with me on the way. If you ever want to talk more about Ecuador, Peru, or the trip, or anything at all, please e-mail me at sfwnelson@gmail.com. If you enjoy reading South American blogs, below are links to friends' that I recommend, most of them very insightful, photogenic, and often more adventurous than my own. Also below are links to other items of interest to those interested in more. Thanks again, paz, amor, y brazos, Samuelito.

Free Country with wonderful pictures
Two Wheelin’ Texan, riding a bike from Buenos Aires to Houston
Eyes on the Andes, including lots of graffiti looks

For Spanish-readers
Crazy Argentinians riding motorcycles across South America


Links
http://www.ecuador.com/
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ec.html
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ecuador

Que Tan Lejos, a beautiful Ecuatorian movie with typical landscape scenes

Photographic Highlights

These are some photographic highlights from the trip. Most of the photos are from the last couple weeks, but a few favorites from earlier are sprinkled among them.


Tubing in Mindo


Ziplining in Mindo, "The Batman," I had to turn around to not hit my head on the platform



A very common dish, potato soup flavored with chicken feet



My gringo friends in Quito



A last cuy, made fresh


My one and only travel partner, at the ecuator together

Alpaca

Rooftops of Central Historic Quito, above and below

Sunset in Huanchaco

After surfing in Huanchaco

The famous reedboats of Huanchaco, fishermen paddle them out in the morning and after catching their morning load, they surf back on them to shore

Huacachina, Peru's desert oasis, and town of 95 residents

The lagoon at Huacachina

Mancora, beach town resort in Northern Peru

Cow head in a market in Cuenca, Ecuador

Guayas, a sweet peruvian fruit in a pod

The rocky beach in Miraflores in Lima, Peru

Catedral Nueva, Cuenca, Ecuador

Peruvian friends, who slept in the dunes at night, and sold craft jewelry and drank beers with us in the day

By The Numbers

With only two days left in South America, I confess that my overwhelming emotion is fatigue. It has been accumulating with each trip, and it has finally overcome my enthusiasm for the adventure. Sarah left early this morning, and I am again staying at my Ecuatorian family´s house in Quito, choosing respite and reflection over any last thrilling activities that might drain the last of my energy and spirits. I have had my fill of adventure and novelty, and despite my ambivalence about leaving, I feel very much ready to return home to both comfort and meaningful work. It has been a beautiful trip. Here are some numbers I have been keeping or compiled recently.

151 hours of bus rides
66 hours of private Spanish lessons
3,400 dollars spent (includes airfare and lessons)
19 cities I have spent the night
26 different hostals
38 towns or cities I have stepped foot in
9 beaches visited (I swam in 6 of them)
14 waterfalls played in
10 modes of transportation taken (includes taxi varieties, e.g. motortaxi, rigshaws, chivas, etc.)
1 bottle of water stolen by monkeys
3 guinea pigs eaten
6 new extreme sports attempted (canyoning, surfing, swing jumping, sandboarding, rafting, ziplining)
1,700 pages of read literature
121 pages of travel notes
11 days in Peru
66 days in Ecuador

An unrelated anecdote:
It seems that everyday in Quito there is a protest. Today several thousand workers marched for Labor Day, protesting lack of rights and jobs. Marchers posted a sign everywhere saying, "Pais con despidos, Pueblo sin derechos" (Country with lay-offs, town/people without rights). They filled the streets of historic Quito, not just marching in a single direction, but filtering multiple ways and covering several blocks, like a flood moving downhill and filling all the outlets on the way.

Yesterday Sarah and I were riding the Trolé, one of three electric trolley lines that runs north-south (in an effort to combat traffic in a bottle-necked city), when all traffic stopped. They opened the doors after awhile so we could escape. Further up we discovered twenty to thirty high school students standing in front of the cars and trolleys on 10 de Agosto Avenenida. They were armed with small stones in each hands, but they were not menacing anyone, just standing and chatting, disallowing traffic to move forward to protest the rising costs of sugar and milk, a price influenced by the government . No cars honked. Nobody yelled or appeared angry with them. Pedestrians passed through as if not noticing, and everyone waited patiently. We sat by the curb and watched, wondering when something would happen. A vendor selling candied coconut sweets stopped to talk to us. She laughed and threw up her arms, "¿Donde está la policía?" (Where are the police?) The police were standing next to us, watching and casually chatting, waiting like everyone else. After twenty minutes, half the students left, and the force of traffic, like hot air trapped in a bottle, burst forward and past the remaning students. Someone later explained to me that that the police only intervene in serious, more threatening protests, to avoid violence for small disputes, especially with high schoolers. I liked this. It seems like a reasonable exchange, or lack thereof, resisting the trade of violence for the end of small disruptions. Every big city I went to in Ecuador commonly had protests, demanding rights, demanding better water, demanding the president step down (I always lingered at the fringes, it is illegal for foreigners to participate in political protests here). The indigenous are particurarly well-organized and protest often, since they are a group often disadvantaged despite their significant population percentage (approximately 35% I think). It makes me wonder if our American government had not killed nearly all of our Native American tribes, and in turn, if they constituded similar population numbers and political will, then what would American politics look like today? What do you think?

Thanks for reading (well, I hope you are still reading), and putting up with my lack of pictures and declining quality. Stay tuned for a final post, complete with final thoughts and pictures sometime in the next few days.

Bussing Back Home

Last Sunday night we sat under a lamp post, fighting off flies, and waiting for a bus outside the border town of Huayaquilles. There was a huddle of gringos standing next to a heap of bags, everyone ready to scatter in different directions in Ecuador, many trying to skip the country entirely by taking a bus to Quito and then flying somewhere else or heading toward grand Columbia. In all relevant conversations, I try to persuade these people to linger just a little longer. "It´s beautiful here," I tell them.

After traveling the near-entirety of the Peruvian coast and back (a mad dash of more than 3,000 kilometers in 11 days), we took two more long stretches of buses back into the central sierras of Ecuador´s Andean mountains. As the bus tilted upward, the air began to cool and the roadsides were again sprinkled with farm animals and white wooden crosses, designating the drivers and passengers that didn´t survive the mountain roads, I felt like I was returning to a familiar and welcome place, my transient latin home. I thought back to a week earlier, when I was sitting at a sports bar in Lima, watching my first basketball game in months. The guy next to me, who was coincidentally from Anandale, VA, had worked several years for the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador and Peru. He asked me how I got around, and I told him I took buses everywhere. Over 100 hours of bus rides at the time.

"Well, I´m glad you made it," he said.
"Why, do the buses have a lot of problems in Ecuador?" I asked. I mentioned the crosses I always saw.
"They turn over, all the time."
"Really?"
"All the time." He asked how I was getting back to Quito.
"By bus."

He laughed, left a tip, and wished me good luck. With him gone, I turned to my neighbor to my right, a young man with a beard of equal scruff to mine. He said he was biking from Buenos Aires to his home in Texas, the most ambitious of trips I had heard of yet, although he had met a few people biking the entirety of the Pan-American, from Alaska to Buenos Aires, Argentina. He told me when he crossed the border into Bolivia he had come upon a bus turned over on the side of the road. Its passengers stood next to it, dazed and bleeding, but no one wanted help. He biked further up the road and found some some pick-up truck drivers and tried to persuade them to help, but they didn´t want to. Apparently a lot of the passengers were smuggling things, and to get across the border they had to be smuggled by the truck drivers, who paid off the officials at the border. The drivers didn´t want to have to go back near the border, in fear of reuniting with the officials they just paid off. It would be awkward. (for a great pictoral blog read about his ride, check out http://www.swiftkidhistory.wordpress.com/)

After surviving another series of bus rides, zooming through curvy mountains, making blind passes at high speeds in both day and night, we stopped in Baños for one last day of thrills in one of my favorite cities, and we were not disappointed. In the morning Sarah and I took a ride out into the secondary forests and climbed a couple hundred meters to the top of a jungle river canyon that cut through the thick greens and rust-colored rocks in a series of cascades. Then, with our guides and the appropriate safety equipment, we rappelled down four consecutive waterfalls, the last being a hundred feet high, and then slid down the fifth. Our guide, with harnesses and ropes, preferred to run down the waterfalls face first. At the end, our guide told us, "Thank you for surviving."

After resting in the afternoon, we decided to ignore the rain and some kind of off-road vehicle to drive around the area. Sarah and I debated for a long time which vehicle would be best, the dirt bikes, the buggy, or the four-wheeler. We settled on the buggy. Less than an hour later, we drove it along a river road that went up and down like a series of waves. Going up a tall wave, a band in the motor snapped, and we stopped moving. We pushed the buggy for a kilometer, digging our heels in the road on the way up, and coasting on the way down. We made it to the small town of Lligua, a couple kilometers outside of Baños, and had to stop to let a fun-sized monkey named Paco cross the road. Soon after, a stumbling man in a suit offered to help us. His name was George. He worked in a small political office in Lligua, and he had been drinking all day. He told us we have no authority in Baños, so he would use his political influence to help us. Then he repeatedly offered us candy. I find it hard sometimes to reject someone´s help when they are so insistent on being generous. More than anything, I think he was bored, which is probably why he drinks all day long in his small dark office, a politician in a town of three hundred people who likely have no need of politicians or clerks. So we sat in his office, watched him urinate in the bathroom, ate his candy and waited until someone showed up in a four-wheeler and towed us back to town. I rode in the buggy, trying delicately to break just enough so that we didn´t crash into each other, but not too much that I didn´t lose the slack in the rope, snap it, and go flying off the side of the road. At night, we washed off our small adventures in the volcanic hot spring pools, and left the city feeling cleaner than ever.

We are now in Quito, doing whatever last things we want to do before we return to the States. I find it hard to believe I lived in this city for four weeks, and yet I remember all my adventures in the places after with more vividness and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, it is good to relax at our final stop, knowing there are no more buses or broken buggies to wear us out. I confess I am tired, fatigued by our scramble up the coast. I move slower and with less excitement than I did weeks ago. And while I am disheartened I have to leave soon, I am also happy at the idea of returing to family and friends, dark beer and other certain comforts. But the trip is not over yet.

Sonrisas and Sand Dunes

More and more I am in love with Pacha Mama, Madre Tierra, Mother Earth. I have spent the last ten days moving up and down the coastal deserts of Peru, exploring sand dunes, swimming at dusk and dawn, marveling at the strange beauty bestowed so differently upon all the many places of our planet. After galloping through cities in the north, wandering Lima for a couple lazy days, Sarah and I took a bus south to a desert oasis. I have heard this term, desert oasis, but never really understood what it meant or should look like. Instead it is a term that has had the same meaning to me as any other item from a book of fantasies or faraway places I´ll never see. But amidst the hot city bustle of Ica is the small town of Huachachina (pronounced Waca-cheena, click here for photo link), a community of 95 unreasonably affable residents living around a palm-tree-lined lagoon that sits like a droplet in the bottom of a bowl of rolling dunes on every side. The dunes themselves appear improbable and majestic, an infinite set of hills extending and folding into each other, ubiquitious in their rolling golden colors. That first evening we took a dune buggy ride into the desert. Our driver´s name was Sonrisas, or Smiles, and he drove like a madman, riding us to the top of small shiftless mountains only to take us right back at full speed. It felt like a rollercoaster without tracks, and every minute I had to wipe the sand from my eyes and the drool from my cheeks. At the tops of the bigger dunes, we waxed snowboards with candles and then rode facefirst 80 meters downhill into the golden valleys.

It seems everytime there is a beautiful place, locals in South America find a way to innoculate it with an extreme sport. Ziplining over rainforests. Canyoning in waterfalls. Sandboarding down mountainous dunes. It is absurd, almost perverse in a way, but a mostly wonderful and thrilling way to enjoy the earth´s treats.

Before I left for Ecuador, I was often asked why I was going. Why Ecuador? Why South America? Why do any of the stuff that you are doing? And I was always ready with an outstanding number of reasons that at the time seemed logical and justifiable. But once I arrived, when someone asked me, "So, what are you doing here," I could not give a good reason. It seems I forgot them all. So instead I would say, "Just chilling," which was probably closer to the truth than any premise I provided before. Some friends accused me of "going on a quest," an expression I disliked and denied fervently because it seemed to imply a cheesy degree of soul-searching. But nine weeks later, I confess, I have gathered such a collection of images and feelings that I might just be guilty of having gone on a quest and fulfilled it.

If I were more inclined to organized religion, I would have been persuaded to become religious while sitting in the resplendent Catedral Nueva (New Cathedral) in Cuenca, but instead I have found my spirit invigorated by the geography and natural world of Peru and Ecuador. I usually believe that it is the people you meet on a trip that comprises its true value, but here the treasures of my journey glisten with sunsets and landscapes. And while I have made many friends and acquaintances, it is my communication and connection with Mother Earth I will remember best. Wind whistling between sunlit sand dunes. Singing rainforests. Embracing waterfalls. Swimming in pacific dawns and dusks.

Tomorrow we leave Peru, taking a bus out of Mancora, where the sand is white, the beach filled with soccer games and kite surfers, and the sun sets like a melting teardrop against the horizon. And every hour is happy hour. We are crossing the border and returning to the Andean mountains on our way to colonial Cuenca. In another few days we will return to Quito, and after that I will fly back to the States on May 2nd. I apologize for the lack of blogs and quality recently. If there is any indication that I am having as much fun as possible in my last days of this vacation, it is that I have taken few notes recently, and so I have had little to transpose to here. But expect one or two last blogs next week, equipped with pictures. Hasta pronto, Sam

Peruanas

I arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru, early this morning after a nine hour ride through the desert at night. In the past seven days I have visited 8 towns and cities (Cuenca, Zaruma, and Machala in Ecuador; Mancora, Chiclayo, Trujillo, Huanchoco, and Lima in Peru), taking more than seven different buses for a total of 34 hours (equaling 99 total for my trip) across more than 1,500 kilometers of the Panamerican American highway.

I have sloshed through old, wet gold mines in Zaruma, visited centuries-old palaces in the ancient capital city of Chan Chan, and tried to surf the formidable waves of Huanchoco, amidst a backrop of a rocky coastal desert. More and more, I feel like a pendulum, swinging between the fatigues of travel and the enchantments of a dream vacation. Crossing the border was the best thing I have done yet in South America, further proving my theory that personal ambivalence most often preempts my best experiences. Here, Peruvians are not Peruvians, but Peruanas (pronounced similar to the fish, Pirahuana), and everytime I feel tired or irritable, a local Peruana stops to talk to me while on a bus or in the park or anywhere really. Not wanting anything except an affable chance to talk to the tired kid from the States, something that more seldomly occurred in Ecuador. It invigorates me everytime.

Bus travel itself has become a sort of magical thing. It is not like a greyhound trip, rounding the mixing bowl of concrete criss cross highways and sitting at ugly, unclean stations. Instead, riding a bus through South America is what I imagine it would be like to ride the Magic School Bus. Everytime I fall asleep and then open my eyes, I am somewhere new and unlikely. Even 1,400 kilometers of Peruvian desert proved to be geographically transformative and dynamic, as flat sand turned to dunes and dunes turned to mountains, and in the distance strange things , mirages maybe, appeared and flummoxed my eyes, so much that when cities like Trujillo appeared, I wondered if they were real at first. Or the man who boarded the bus in the middle of nowhere, selling chicken sandwiches. And why did his sandwiches taste so fresh?

Tonight I meet my friend, Sarah, at the airport in Lima, ending my adventures as a lone traveler. I have enjoyed my moving solitude, especially as it is one of the few things that seperates me from other travelers on similar or more ambitious journeys. Traveling alone has afforded me many chances for reflection, meditation, and less squabbling about where to go and what to eat, which I see so often among European groups moving together, like a fickled herd. It has helped me gain independent confidence in many senses of direction, and I have enjoyed it greatly. But once, while playing in a waterfall in Mindo, I lamented that playing in cascades alone is simply less fun without a friend. If not for the company of Paccha Mama (mother nature), I would be downright lonely often here. But now I have a friend to play with in waterfalls, and I think it is just what I need to recharge my energy for the final leg of my vacation.

I do not know where we will go next. With only two weeks left time is limited. Machu Picchu is 20 hours away, but going there means at least 55 hours of returning buses to Quito. But Peru is large, much larger than Ecuador, with as many, if not more possibilities for touring geography and ancient histories. Do you think we should sacrifice the time and go to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, or should we venture elsewhere, desert oasises, glacial mountains, beaches, other less glorified ruins? What would you do?

Border Thoughts

Last Saturday night I sat in my hotel bed trying to digest my new guide book. I felt suddenly ambivalent. The guide book was about Peru, and I felt all the confidence I had gained traveling solo through Ecuador slipping as I tried to swallow a new map. Weeks ago a wonderfully impulsive friend bought a ticket to arrive in Lima this Sunday, now pleasantly obligating me to go south. But suddenly I didn´t feel so sure I wanted to leave the comfort I had acheived in Ecuador.

That night I went out and followed the smoke of fireworks and the strange rising stars in the sky to a nearby plaza where the people of Cuenca were celebrating the city´s foundation with an annual weekend party. I ate grilled chicken feet--the talons are a little softer than bones, but crunchier than french fries--and watched an Ecuadorian scene that I felt properly exhibited its cultural festival attitudes. Children lit bottle rockets at the edges of the plaza, peering over the explosives, while families watched and laughed. Women roasted all sorts of different unintelligble meats, teenagers exhibited half-practiced indigenous dances in the center, crowds strode by a makeshift body of a saint in a glass case to say their prayers and cross their catholic hearts. Somewhere a family was lighting small hot air balloons, balls of flame that lifted up into the sky like rising stars (this is what I had seen earlier) and disappeared somewhere over the rooves of old colonial churches and apartments. A man stood under the costume of a paper-mache goat, kind of like the Chinese dragon in parades, dancing wildly, adorned with twirling firecrackers that sometimes went astray and fired into the shrieking crowd.

I woke up the next morning, still unsure about where I wanted to go. Should I linger in Cuenca, or another place in Ecuador? Or should I head straight for the border to cross? Usually I let impulse or augury guide me, but both were absent. When choosing between staying or going, I usually give weight to the latter, so I packed my bags, headed in the direction of the border, but first taking a detour to Zaruma. Before leaving for Ecuador, my friend and spanish tutor, who studied the mining culture in Ecuador ten years ago, gave me three letters to deliver to families he lived with. It has offered me an occassional purpose, a sort of mysterious mission, and I find that I very much enjoy trying to track down a family without any information except their name and that of the town they live. It is even more exciting to magically show up at someone´s house who doesn´t know you, bearing a mysterious letter and an old welcomed connection. Zaruma was the last of my letters, and I delivered it with some difficulty and great reward to a wonderfully pleasant and modest family. (click here for a borrowed picture of the city)

In most cities, there is a feeling of always being grounded. If not skyscrapers, the sky itself seems like a distant thing, but in Zaruma, I was inclined to reach up and touch it. It is not as high as Quito, but it feels like its sits on a throne above a kingdom of ranges, being isolated and improbably perched near the summit of a mountain in the midst of infinite alpines on every side. It likely would have never existed if the Spaniards had not been so intent on finding El Dorado, South America´s elusively fabled city of gold. When Felipe II was presented with a 3.5 pound ball of pure gold from the mines of Zaruma, the prosperous future of the town was guaranteed, and for almost 500 years it has seen prospectors and rugged, and sometimes abused, workers fill the streets and hillsides. Walking through the thin, stone-cobbled streets of Zaruma, the city in the sky (la ciudad en el cielo), between old wooden apartments, has been the most relaxing of all my activities. The air is like a bath and to breath and walk through it is be constantly cleansed in its tranquility. In the afternoon I sat on a rail, drinking a Budweiser, my first American beer in eight weeks, and looked at across the mountain range, which rised and fell like the folds of a long green dress, and I no longer felt worry. Not about Peru or returning to the States or anything. After Zaruma, I felt like I could cross Siberia if I had to. But I don´t. I only have to go to another new place, just across the border, with new beaches and mountains, stories and people, meandering south for three more weeks of joy-wandering.

I have lots more to say and tell you, but I am going to exercise restraint. I´ll see you in Peru next, paz y abrazos.

Traveler´s Metaphorical Proverb
6. If you can, walk it.

Coastal Meditations

I apologize for the length of this, but I guess I just have too much to tell you, details of my best days yet. Thank my aquatic disposable camera for the pictures, but realize they only capture a fraction of the color and shape present.



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.

Rainbows and Beaches

On the coast, everyday is better than the next. I started my Pacific trip in Puerto Lopez, a sort of wild coastal town famous for whale-watching and its local islands. As a traveler, I am often skimming in and out of local life, constantly on the outside, but always peering in, and on the best occasions diving below the surface for a taste of what it´s like to live somewhere else. The degree to which I can, in the words of travel writer Tom Swick, "approximate the life of a local" is often the best measure of success for me while traveling. In other words, am I hanging out with Ecuatorians?

By this measure, Puerto Lopez was my best stop yet. After dinner, I played cards with the family who owned the restaurant (and I won a dollar). I stopped often to chat with people on the street and in shops. I mildly partied with others around a bonfire on the beach. And I made friends with the owners of the hostal. At night I waded out to the water at low tide, and I believe that despite all the glory the sun disposes upon the water in the daytime, the Pacific is even more beautiful at night. The moonlight illusionary tricks moving through the water, enough to make me wonder if I was hallucinating, and the waves rise and break without warning in the dark, like an angry dog sprinting out of a shadow, but much more pleasant. The sky and sea are the same, possessing no horizon, each an extension of the other. I thought that I could stay there for days, if not weeks, but I decided to change my habits of lingering in the places I liked most. Instead I attempted to continue my fortune through movement, and the next morning I promised the hostal owner I would return next week, and then got a ride with a Chilean couple to Portoviejo and continued on bus to Bahía de Caraquez.

Bahía is the antithesis of Quito. Instead of buses there are bikes. Instead of garbage there are trees. Instead of volcanoes there are rainbows. Everyone is relaxed and the locals speak slowly. The town itself is a thin inlet, like a kitchen knife laid flat against the table of water, cutting into the Pacific and forming a wide bay between it and San Vicente, the town across that table. Around sunset, I took an aimless walk in the streets. I walked through a very poor neighborhood and up a set of crumbling steps towards a large cross on top of the town´s only hill. The walls of houses were made of old, dry bamboo and the rooves made of tin. As I walked upwards residents smiled and exchanged salutations, pointing the way up. More and more I notice that in Ecuador, the povery of smaller towns and rural communities is accompanied by amability, while in larger cities like Guayaquil and Quito, poverty preempts crime. Is this the same everywhere or in the States? And why? I can´t think of a good reason yet, but I am working on it. What do you think?

At the top of the hill I saw all of Bahía and above it a full arching rainbow, stretching from one end of the bay to the other. It seemed perfect. A place of birds, bikes, beaches, and rainbows. But like in Puerto Lopez, I was determined to keep moving. The group of friends I met in Mindo had told me everyday that I should come to Canoa for the beginning of April, and the more I moved North the better everything seemed. The next day, I took a boat out of Bahía (the best way to travel) and then a bus to Canoa where once again I felt like I had walked into some kind of sandy dream. The beach was wide, the ocean wider, and everyone was friendly, everyone seemed like a friend. I could have kept moving, but I decided to stay for the weekend of Semana Santa, when a very large party will ensue on the beach. Until then, I sleep each night in a tent at the edge of the beach and spend the day loitering and swimming in the water at a temperature approximate to my own body, a true blissful bum in a lazy beach town.
In this week´s segment...

The Traveler´s Proverbial Metaphors or Metaphorical Proverbs or Metamorphing Proverbial Wisdoms
4. Strangers are friends you haven´t met yet
5. Barefoot is better
6. Say Yes more than No
7. Jump off Bridges (but don´t tell your mother)

Paz y abrazos

Ups and Downs the Coast

When I left the jungle last Thursday I had no intention of stopping in Baños (above). But there is an adventurous alure that draws foreigners and Europens alike to the mountain resort town. It is a current tourist highlight for anyone´s trip in Ecuador, but I have seen black and white pictures of its past, families dining over waterfalls, young men scaling ropes across canyons, and I think it has long been a place of cavalier spirit. I suppoose that living under an active volcano, in a valley of rushing cascades, invigorates something relaxed but renegade in its people. I felt the same. After four days of biking, bathing in volcanic hot springs, hiking, and on the last day, rafting (my new favorite sport), I felt replenished and ready for something new. For the sake of my mother I did not jump off the 100 meter bridge on my way out of town (from now on, I will either not jump off tall things or not tell anyone, to spare my family worry), but instead took the first bus out to a small provincial capital, Guaranda, where I was the only white guy in town, again people laughing at my elementary Spanish.

That night I took a bottle of coke and cheap Ecuatorian whiskey--predictably terrible--and sat in the plaza under the watchful eyes of Simon Bolivar, reading Les Miserables on a bench under lamp and moonlight. I relished the opportunity to sit alone in public, without Europeans or smog, able to read my book and eat local french fries (the best I´ve had yet, served with three kinds of sauce, onions, and fried chicken on top). Above me the moon provided fantastic light. When lonely sometimes, I have found consolation in the idea that the sun shines on everybody, in all parts of the world, but I think the same cannot be said of its always-changing counterpart. In Guaranda, the moon possessed a halo, a nocturnal rainbow filtered through the clouds, and I realized how seldomly I had bothered to look up at night in Ecuador. But I also realized that I have become boring at night. Eating fries and reading my book, falling asleep early, hanging out with mild Europeans and rarely going to bars or testing my salsa skills. But there is a remedy for this. Easter and the Coast. This week is Semana Santa, and for any Catholic country this is reason enough to party, and the best parties are supposed to by the sandy Pacific stretches.

This morning I left Guaranda early and took the first bus to Guayaquil, the largest city in the country and a southern start to its longer coast. I am starting to log a lot of hours on the bus, so much that I feel more comfortable, more enchanted on a bus through the mountains than I do settling into a hostal. For me, the bus window is like a movie screen, a view of the moving pictures of the nation´s remarkable geography and a glimpse into the domestic lives of rural roadside families. For the first half of my trip, I watched the window movie, and its theme has been mountainous. Going to Guayaquil, I closed my eyes (on the buses, because of its bumpiness, reading or writing is impossible, so there are only two things to do, sleep or look out the window), and when I awoke the road was flat and the mountains absent. Instead I saw men wading waist high through vast fields of tall grass, waving machetes, impoverished houses on stilts, unpainted and weathered, with rotten bridges leading to more men lying in hammocks on porches, a wet and beautiful sort of poverty.

Soon, the bus pulled into a three story station in Guayaquil, and when I stepped off I discovered a giant mall inside, complete with sweepstakes cars and a McDonald´s. Not far away, a friend had told me, I could find a TGI Friday´s. I admit, the temptation of American culinary comfort was tempting, and to make it more develish, I saw beautiful women my age that for once were not yet mothers (god-blessed cathlolic country). I went to a ticket counter, simply to inquire about a place I wanted to visit, and before I knew it, I was on a bus to a different place I had never heard of (Jipijapa, prononced Hippie-hoppa) .

By evening, I was taking my first ever swim in the Pacific Ocean in the small wild town of Puerto Lopez, equipped with dirt roads, lizards, rats, turtles, motorized rigshaws, and enough long-haired men and women selling crafts to shame the Haight-Ashbury. The beach was thin and beautiful, symmetrically bracketed on its north and south ends by gorgeously carved rock bluffs, offering a strange and exotic sense of isolation. The distant horizon seemend infinite, but the immediate horizon was filled with boats and birds fishing between the waves. The water, warm and wonderful.

I hate to interrupt the parade of good sentiments, but I have to post here three bad things, goddamnit, because every person needs a chance to vent, and since I travel alone, you will have to hear my complaints:
1. Mosquitos. They are bad here, my room is harvesting thirty or more of them, and after dousing my body in Deet, they are relegated to biting my face.
2. Littering. Ecuadorians litter. A lot. For someone who spent the last two years forcefully encouraging the children I worked with to pick up their trash (if you kick it, you pick it, I´d say), it is painful to watch kids and parents alike throw the remains of their lunch out bus windows when a trash bag is next to them. If it weren´t for the trash lining the beach, I might have mistaken Puerto Lopez for heaven. People throw garbage into the perfect Pacific as if venerating its waters by offering it sacrficial trash. I hate it.
3. I lost my camera. I took three buses for eight hours today and after taking pictures of the stilted marshland communities, I left it on my seat. Some lucky bastard is showing it to his/her family now. I have lost them before, in a taxicab in Israel, in a mountain creek in the Smokies, which is why I bought one used before traveling again and saved my pictures whenever possible. But from now on, unless I buy an unreasonably expensive (because of the import taxes) camera, you will have to bear with my descriptions as images. If I could take only more picture to show you, it would be of the beach here, which I hear is less beautiful than its neighbors ¡Que Pena!

And finally, after finishing my Ecuatorian whisky the other night, I dreamed of a fun, new segment for the blog. It´s a gimmick, sure, but I am going to perform it anyways. For someone who reads, travels, and writes, metaphors are irresistable. So with each blog from now on, I will offer a metaphoror or few, without any purport (it´s for you to find the meaning). They might not seem like metahpors, perhaps proverbs instead, or just literal advice, but I swear there are a few levels if you are inclined to read them. So, to finish here, finally, I present to you (because we are all travelers, even if only within our own streets, unless you haven´t left that goddamn couch or computer chair today)....

The Traveler´s Proverbial Metaphors
1. Kiss the Locals (even if only the cheeks, but more is better)
2. Eat Food You Don´t Understand
3. Don´t drink the water, but don´t be afraid to swim in it

on the good road....paz y abrazos

Halfway Home Highlights

I have been in Ecuador for almost six weeks now; I have five remaining. Here are some photographic highlights and notes from the first half of my trip. On another note, I have been posting long narratives once a week, but I am going to try and offer some quick hit ditties more often, so stay posted.



1. Streetfood- I spent the first several weeks in lustful fear of streetfood. I had heard many secondhand stories of people coming back from Ecuador with worms, parasites, or whatever things inhabit your innards, after experimenting with food on the street. So I didn´t eat it. Instead I would hang out in the parks, standing in the plumes of smoke from the grills where various meats on sticks called to me. After awhile, I wondered if it wasn´t worth the risk. My firt venture was a fried platano (and still my favorite to eat, like a fried banana, split and stuffed with cheese, pictured above), and then I started to eat the fried fish, the pork, the... well, whatever looked like it was delicious and freshly hot (I have a set of intuitive rules about what to eat so as to avoid trouble, the number one rule, don´t eat food that is sitting in a bowl on top of raw meat). Both my wallet and stomach are rejoicing at my new commitment.



2. Monkeys. When I arrived in Misahuali, a small jungle town east of Tena, there were monkeys running around the town, on the beach, in the plaza, on the rooftops. They aren´t natural, but someone brought them here some time ago, maybe thinking it would be a good idea to attract tourists. My first impulse was to say, "Hey, look at the monkeys. They are so goddamned cute." But since I was just by myself, sipping beer on a sidewalk like usual, I just said, Whoa. Monkeys always seem so cool. But they are not. By the second day, the monkeys were not cool or cute, but simply little obnoxious thieves (ladroncitas). I was sitting in the shade of the plaza reading my book when a monkey stole my water bottle. I admit, I didn´t stop him, I wanted to see what would happen and if it could even open the bottle. A moment later four of them stood in a circle pouring the water on their heads and then smashing the bottle, frustrated it wouldn´t naturally refill. Then they all turned to me, searching my pockets and bookbags and lifting up my shirt. I had to beat them away with my bookbag. It was no longer, "Hey, look at the cool monkeys!" Instead, it was "Get your grubby little primative fingers out of my underwear!"

Tena sunset

3. The Jungle. Maybe a third of Ecuador is jungle, but I have to be honest, you have to possess an endurably cheeful disposition to enjoy such a place. It is hot, humid, and filled with people trying to court your wallet and take you on canoes to strange places for prices that are extravagant for a country where lunch costs a dollar fifty. I spent most of my time in Tena sitting in my underwear in the my air-conditioned hostal. In Misahuali, I was at first charmed, being able to walk barefoot, swim in the rivers, and play with the monkeys, but as the beach flies began to bite, the monkeys began to steal, and the locals were only friendly when advertising, I decided I had enough. I felt somewhat cowardly, fleeing the jungle, and taking the first bus of out of Tena, not caring where I went. By a stroke of good chance, the bus passed through Baños, where I decided to get off and revisit. I spent my first night soaking in murky hot spring pools under the gleam of a waterfall above. Sometimes you follow your heart, sometimes you follow your wallet, and sometimes you just flee. I´m in Baños by some combination of all of the above.



4. Family. The best choice I have made was to live with a family in Quito. They are warm, humorous, and always looking out for me. Most importantly, I have a home to retreat to when needed.

Plaza de San Francisco, Quito

5. Spanish. My Spanish is still terrible, and I only understand a fraction of what anyone says, but it seems to be enough to get by and get going (As dominican-american writer, Junot Diaz, once said, "a portion of what anyone says is unintelligible, anyways). Jokes are easy ways to communicate, since Ecuatorians are ready to laugh at anything, and even a failed attempt at humor is usually enough for a belly laugh. But the best ways to practice Spanish are flirting and drinking. After several beers, it is easy to think that spanish is easy, and you talk without thinking, without regards for vanity or bad grammar. Flirting, well, it inspires creativity. I don´t flirt because I want to, I flirt to practice the language. It´s practical, really.



6. Back in Baños. For now, I have returned to the resort town of Baños, where gringos drive go-carts wildly in the one-way streets, the locals lounge in the hot springs, and the volcano Tungurahua looms over everyone´s fun, ready to ruin it in a hot flash. I don´t know where I´m going next. Impulsively taking buses to new places seems to be my favorite activity now (On the bus, el controlodar, the man who collects the money always asks, where are you going, and I love nothing more than saying, No sé todovía, I don´t know yet), so as always, I´ll keep you posted. Paz, abrazos, Sam.

Mindo, My Sweetheart

Cascada Nambillo

Me, jumping

On Sunday night I sat at a small picnic table in a rustic plaza eating fried tilapia and watching children play in the street. While the oldest girl hit the younger boys with a long stick, the smallest boy picked up a large rock and tried to pulverize his friends. Everyone scattered wildly and then put the rock back in the infant's hands and kept playing. As a child, my mother never let us throw rocks at each other, at least not while she was looking, and for a moment, I wanted to be a child in Ecuador, not just Ecuador, but Mindo, the small community tucked into the cleavage of Paccha Mama´s (Quechua for Mother Earth) Andean cloud rainforest, where I was staying.

On this trip, I was learning that there is a balance between persistence and submitting to the signs presented, that for any traveler a mixture of circumstance and choice dictates every destination, and it is up to that traveler to decide on the proportions of each, and to swallow the product with cheer.

I had left that morning expecting to volunteer at the Mindo Cloud Forest Foundation and was dropped off by a dirt road in Milpe, a town so small that even its neighbors hadn´t heard of it. There was only a young boy at the foundation to receive me, so as I waited for the expected family to return, I explored the woods, and never have I walked the trails of a forest so bustling with life. I heard the likes of high-frequency power drills, low bull-horns, strong mechanical hummings, all backed up by prettier alto-soloist notes twittering above, but these sounds did not belong to tools or machines, but birds. The cloud forests possess awesome color, rich gradients of greens and intermittent flourishes of brilliance in the forms of purple orchids adorned with pink leaves, tropical hummingbirds, and other flora and colors inexpressible in any medium except by the image itself. Glimpses of distant ranges were sluiced by clouds, offering an illusion of floating mountain tops. I found a waterfall, washed my face in it and returned to find the foundation´s lodges empty. The dormitories were hot, full of insects, and the only company was the birds, so I read the signs, and I left to sleep in neighboring Mindo for the night. But while eating my fried fish and watching the blue clouds roll over the jungle town, the children playing in the street, I decided I would not persist to retun to Milpe, but instead stay at exactly where I was.

The community of Mindo contains about 3,000 people, most of them living off dirt roads scattered in the jungle. There is only one central street, a few hundred feet long, and four policemen, one or two on duty at a time, although they are mostly unnecessary, since there is no crime. It is supposed to be a tourist town, and the community has economically thrived on offering ziplining, tubing, waterfall climbing, and other activities similar to other tourist mountain towns in Ecuador, but on a Monday afternoon, I counted more chickens on the streets than tourists.

On Monday I discovered that not only did I not have money, but the town´s only ATM did not accept my card. At the time, I disregareded the possible augury, and instead decided on persistence, and over the next seven hours I took several buses and trucks in search of a working ATM, before finally returning to Quito for fifteen minutes to get some cash. I returned that night confident I had chosen the right mixture, especially as I bumped into a wonderful group of people from Uruguay, Ecuador, Germany, and providentially, my hometown Richmond, Virginia and neighboring Charlottesville. That week we tubed through river rapids and ziplined over jungle canyons (a very strange way to examine a forest, especially when upside down), which was only scary because children strap you into the zipline and sometimes forget to lock the beaners on your harness, but in Ecuador everything is as relatively dangerous as it is relatively safe, so you just have to trust the people and watch other people go first. (I don´t mean to worry anybody, I only mean to say that safety is relative, especially with extreme outdoor activities).

On Wednesday several of us had various ailments so we skipped the adrenaline-hungry activity of the day and visited the public health clinic instead. I had thirty or forty itcing, bubbly bug bites I had accrued in the small mountain rural town of Lumbisi a few days earlier, from playing in a dirty river and hanging out in the gardens (no more shorts for me). The doctor looked at me legs worriedly, and said I had an infection, but that nothing was living inside. I took my prescriptions to the pharmacy and nursed my health for the day.

On Thursday a storm had knocked out the power in town, and so I sat at a sidewalk café drinking beer and watching the rain form small tributaries in the crooked stones of the main street. I had come to know several locals in town, and the night before I lightly kissed a local girl on a bridge over the river. I was comfortable there, and while watching the rain fall, I realized I could probably stay in Mindo forever. If I had to characterize the few places I have been so far in Ecuador, I would say that Quito is a petty thug, Baños a friendly badass, and Mindo, my sweetheart. And like any guy with commitment issues, I thought maybe I should leave her early, before I grew too fond. I went back to my room, and I considered the rain, the infections on my legs, smelled the strange funk of my wet clothes by my bed—I considered that maybe kissing the locals was a bad idea, and not very sustainable—I read the signs, retired my persisitence, and I packed my bags to leave the next day.

Before leaving, though, I wanted to see Mindo´s cascadas (waterfalls), and so early the next morning I took a truck and then a tarrabita (like a gondola) across the valley. On the tarrabita, a young teenager hung off the back, unafraid of the 100 meter (or more) drop below. Children are always hanging off the back of moving things in Ecuador, and it´s usually their parents driving.
I saw six waterfalls that day, but even waterfalls lose their novelty after awhile. While playing in the fifth one, I realized how much more fun it would be have someone else to play with. There are benefits and drawbacks to traveling alone. I threw a few rocks around, got bored, and left. But the sixth waterfall redeemed everything. In the river before the final waterfall, there was a shaky wooden ladder supported by two vertical pipes and I climbed up, but noone was there. But I did not give up. I waited and climbed up again later when I saw a group of people, and someone let me in at the iron door at the top. Cascada Nambillo is not tall but moderately violent and its rapids rush impressively through the shallow canyon below. On a ledge before the falls there is a white strip of carpet and a guide with a rope and harness, waiting for anyone willing to jump. As always I asked, “Es seguro?” (is it safe?) and as always, he answered, “Claro” (sure). I asked again. He threw some grass down into the rapids, 40 feet below and pointed—that was where I needed to jump. There are few things more fun in Ecuador than jumping off tall things, and this was no different. I jumped, swallowed my stomach, and was in turn swallowed by the rapids. The water was resplendently cold, and the rapids strong enough that I needed a few tugs from my friend above to get out. I climbed back up, jumped again, then I gathered my things and left the forest, saying goodbye to the friends I had made that week on the main street before getting back on the bus to Quito, dirty, wet, and content.

Comida (Food), Part 1

Cuy


Fried pig´s head in a Quito market

I was going to wait and post about food in one great flourish near the end but I had an eating experience this week that I didn´t want to wait to share.

Before coming to Ecuador, I was dabbling in vegeterianism (I was, I guess, what Michael Pollan calls a flexitarian), but I decided that it would be too difficult to execute here. Often if you tell an Ecuadorian (or a Kentuckian) that you are vegetarian, they will politely ask, well, how about chicken? Besides, I´m not very principled.

The fruits in Ecuador are the jewels of the eating experience. They have fruits we don´t have in the States (guanabana, taxo, tomaté de arbol, and other names I cannot spell correctly), and they are often prepared as juice (jugo) or with milk (batido). They taste like smoothies, but better, because the fruit is simply better here.

Generally, most meals come with soup, potatoes, chicken or beef, more potatoes, and well, rice and sometimes more potatoes. My favorite eating is consistently the empanada, which is kind of like a samosa, but can be prepared with a fried crust of corn or platano (a kind of banada, de verde), with whatever meat or cheese you want inside.

But beyond fruit and strange variations of prepared corn, most of the exciting eating opportunities are carnivorous. My trials include meat from a pig´s head (la cabeza de choncho) over boiled corn kernels, soup made of lamb´s stomach (yuagarlocro), soup flavored with chicken feet (sopa con las patas de pollo), and cooked lamb´s blood in salad (ensalada con sangre de oveja).

On Wednesday, though, a generous and hospitable local family (Ecuadorians are iconically hospitable) took me to Otavalo, a town famous for its indigenous market crafts, and then north to Atuntaqui, a small farming town famous for its cuy, or better known to us as the annoying American pet, guinea pig. Cuy is considered a delicacy in other countries, like Japan and Germany, who are importing the meat from Ecuador, although I don´t know why, they are easy enough to grow and kill and cook without South American help. But in Ecuador, cuy has been a common meat for some time, and often in the past, it was the easiest meat for a poor rural family to cultivate and feed their family with. It is not common in most restaurants today, but it is always available if you search for it. In Atuntaqui, it is the cornerstone item of each restaurant´s menu. I ordered the animal expecting a part of it, but instead they served the whole little beast, splayed along its belly to fan out the rest, so that it appeared like a fried flying squirrel, still smiling at me on the plate. All the parts were there, even the teeth, and it reminded me of high school biology class when we dissected frogs, except that you get to eat it, too. The best part was probably the liver, fried and placed to the side, which tasted similar to eggplant. The meat itself was white, soft, and lean. It had more meat than I expected, and when I couldn´t finish it, Tito, the father I was traveling with, declared, "Y el ganador es... el cuy!" (The winner is the cuy!) We raised its severed claws in triumph, but then I thought about this, and decided I was the winner, and I bit off its face. It is good to eat meat guiltlessly again.

More on more food later in the trip. Tomorrow I leave for Mindo, a cloud rainforest in the mountains. I don´t know how long I will be there, or when I´ll be able to post next, but until then, buen provecho!

Some edible spanish for you readers (the genders might or might not be right):
Aguacade - avacado
verduras - vegetables
frutas - fruits
Choncho - pork
Fritada - fried pork
marisco - seafood
canquil - popcorn
bistec - steak
cuy (coo-ey) - guinea pig
most importantly, cerveza - beer

Shoeshopping in Quito

Hey, I wrote my first non-blog essay about my first week here. It is too long to post here, but if you are interested in reading about the troubles of shoeshopping in Ecuador and other stuff, comment below and I will email it to you. More blogs coming soon, paz, sam

Abajo y Arriba en el Sol y Basilica

Yesterday I woke up to the unroyal rumbling of more buses and a pack of dogs fighting and howling, and I realized I needed to leave Quito soon. I have made arrangements to travel to the big city´s antithesis, Mindo, a small town situated in a very large cloudy rainforest in the mountains, where I will be volunteering for the eco-friendly, tropical bird-loving Mindo Cloud Forest Foundation. I left the house feeling better about my next move and met with two friends, who have been making their way steadily from Mexico towards Bolivia, and had stopped in Quito briefly before leaving again. I celebrated the well-spirited, sunny afternoon like I used to in college, by drinking early, and a half bottle of Zhumir later I was climbing the belfry of the Basilica, my second favorite church in the world (next only to Milan´s Duomo), that took one hundred years to build. In most churches in Europe, there are more passageways, stairwells, and windows locked or roped off than are accessible. But in the Basilica you can climb almost anywhere, and even change the time on the big clocks if you are both knowledgeable and inclined. Like most wonderful opportunities, it will stay this way until somebody breaks something important, or gets fatally hurt and ruins it. We climbed safely up and walked across the top of the church on a shaky wooden bridge, and soon I was meditating in the open air of one tower and then drinking coffee and cognac in another. It felt good to be with familiar friends again, acting loosely in the cathedral sunshine.

Later that night I found out I was rejected by Teach For America, a job I feel very sure that I was overqualified for. I´m used to women doling out my rejection, but this is the first time a job or school has turned me down, and I can´t help but feel a bit stung.

I woke up hours later very sober, again hearing the chorus of street dogs fighting to certain death or submission, and I had my first ¨What the hell are you doing in South America" moment. It struck me that I´m on another hemisphere without financial prospects, spending the little money I actually have. I thought I had a plan of return, but now I really don´t, and this is both liberating and slightly frightening. I have planned this trip with the idea that I don´t know where I´m going, and I guess I can now extend the metaphor beyond the trip itself. I have a feeling I am not alone in this regard. For now, I´ll uphold my Panglossian disposition and maintain that the best of all possibilities always happens, because its the only way it happens, and I´ll move forward spiritedly to the mountain rainforests of Mindo in another few days.

In another, non-sequiturial note: have you ever wondered where all the Sacagawea dollars went? Well, they all went to Ecuador. The economy here has been US dollarized for almost a decade now, and while they often print their own coins, they use our forgotten gold dollar very commonly.

Lastly, I have updated some of the older blogs with pictures. Check them out, and never be afraid to comment, even if it is something small. It is good fuel for me to keep writing. Paz.