Chapter 14: Saraguro

  7:00AM. Hiking pants. Hiking shoes. Hiking Shirt. Scarf. Water-proof jacket. 3 hours on the bus. Let's go climb something! 5 miles into the beginning of the trip, rest stop for gas and snacks. Loaf of chocolate bread, yogurt, chocolate amor wafers; back to the transportation vehicle. The staccato beats of the morning travel routine all around me, but smooth tranquil rhythms of Sufjan Steven's album "Feel the Illinoise" on my headphones. Stop for vista. Tour guide says on one side you can see the Andes Mountain range, the other side its possible to see the Pacific Ocean in the far distance on clear days. I'm calling bologna on that one, there was not a cloud in sight and no matter how far on the horizon I searched, I saw no horizon. So bologna. Bolgona I say! The Sufjan Stevens record ended. Album switch. This time to Seawolf's "White Water, White Bloom". Songs about Orion the hunter, lost love and glowing grass in the moonlight mixed with winding Andean mountain roads.

   We arrived in Saraguro, dropped a few of our things in the hotel then reloaded ourselves onto a different bus. This bus was especially different because it had wooden benches in open air aside from a tin roof to shelter the benches from rain. The benches were not very comfortable in the least and the road was bumpy. We stopped talk about an Indian dwelling. For the second leg of the open air bus ride we were allowed to climb onto the roof of the bus to sit up top for the duration of our travels. Surprisingly the roof made for a much smoother ride. The only obstacle was watching out for hanging branches that could hit faces or swipe cameras out from wayward hands. We disembarked from the tin roof and began a hike to end all hikes. Only our guide truly knew where we were going, the path was narrow, the scenery was beautiful and the clouds were scant in the sky. The whole hike reminded me of hiking through the Grand Canyon, complete with vertigo and the adrenaline. Since I know it was on the top of everyone's mind: yes I peed off the side of the mountain, you're welcome.

   Lunch was two hamburgers with papas fritas and mustard, either I was starving or I have rarely had hamburgers of similar caliber, so so good. After a break and lunch we set back the other way. The pressure had dropped during our break and those sneaky ecuadorian clouds had set in. We kept hearing thunder louder and louder as we hiked, it seemed to be approaching us, yet I did not see any lightning. We layered up with raincoats and scarfs and started hotelwards. It was a successful hike all around.

   We had a chance to rest for awhile, I took one of my best naps of this entire trip. I had some sort of dream revelation, but sadly I cannot recall what the revelation pertained to. By 7pm it was pitch-black outside and freezing. Before dinner we stopped at an indigenous textile workshop. They used large wooden looms to create intricate patterns and many shapes. They demonstrated the technique for us, showing how the pieces slide together to create a new line in the growing cloth, the worker's feet manouevering through the pedals to coordinate the next type of yarn to be used.

   Dinner was at a small family restaurant where we sat on long benches and at grey beans, rice, squeaky cheese, and chicken soup. After dinner we were treated to an Andean music demonstration. The players included a flautist, a percussionist, violin and guitar. They played and we danced about in a circle. Three songs later they asked us if we had anyone who could play music in our group. We elected Ross. Autumn, Isaac and I joined him in fumbling our way through a few songs. We started with Oxford Comma but couldn't remember one of the verses so we switched to first "Jolene" by Ray Lamontagne and then "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" by Belle and Sebastian. The Ecuadorains said although they couldn't understand the words, the music was beautiful and we put a lot of energy and feeling into the songs.

  The rest of the evening was spent sitting by our hotel's outdoor fire sipping Pilsener's. Pilsener is not a superb beer, but sometimes all you need is a crappy bottle of beer, a warm fire and good conversation.

                                                           ---

The next day the sun struck with a vengeance, it was hotter than hot. Any humidity in the air was instantly evaporated into the clouds miles above our heads. We took another hike, shorter this time, only 15 minutes or so to a small clearing where two women had set our blankets on the ground for a ritual. We spent the next hour or so participating in said ritual. It was interesting, to say the least. 

Ray Lamontagne
Jolene


Belle and Sebastian
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

Chapter 11: The View from Turi

  I ventured out on a Saturday afternoon after sleeping in and having felt a bit under the weather the past two days. My plan was to just explore the path that ran alongside the river by our house and see what happened from there. The sun was beating down on me with only scant clouds in sight and my nose full of sniffles. The sun and the sniffles brought me back to a similar day, a day with a twin sun to this one: Lobsterfest '09. When I was part of the radio station, Lobsterfest was the outdoor concert we had every year at the end of spring quarter. The day of Lobsterfest I couldn't breathe very well due to a stuffy nose and also couldn't talk very well due to losing my voice a few days before. My brother had come down for the weekend to hang out and listen to music, all of my favorite people from the radio station were there. The sun was mercilessly beating down, but the bands were great. Russenorsk, Kaslo, She Bears, they were all there as well as a ton more. Jay Reatard headlined; he was kind of a jerk to the set up crew and sound technicians, but he put up on a good show nevertheless.

Lobsterfest '09, the band is either Kaslo or She Bears

  Back in the present tense I was walking alone, only accompanied by the music in my headphones and the supplies I had brought along. In a short while I ran into my host mom and my sobrinos who were also out for a stroll. We all laughed at meeting there on the path. Lupe asked me where I was going, I admitted I did not know. Her eyes lit up and she told me that if I was feeling energetic then I could walk to Turi, the hillside vantage point on the outskirts of town. I thought that sounded like a fine adventure. Lupe told me to follow the river to the third bridge, there I was to cross. Then I was to wind my way through the new part of town until I found a staircase that would take me up to Turi. It was a quest!

Incan ruins, kind of like Starbucks, but more historically important

  I walked until I found the third bridge, on my side of the river there was a small site of Incan Ruins, yes perhaps they are everywhere here, like Starbucks in the US, except more historically important. I crossed the bridge then crossed the following roundabout. Just as prescribed I wound my way through the city streets, keeping Turi in sight as I went. Each step closer meant the sun beating down more and more, though I put sunscreen on before I left, I neglected to bring a water bottle. As I climbed one of the ascending streets I lucked into finding a store that had   large water bottles for only 50 cents. Proud of my find and now less in danger of becoming dehydrated, I continued on.

One of the cows, less dangerous than at Ingapirca

Sheep on a hill

   I ended up crossing yet another river that I did not know existed in Cuenca, finding a flock of cows and sheep as I went. A little further down the way I had to cross a four lane high way, it really wasn't too bad. I still wasn't sure exactly where the staircase was located, so I ended up asking a few different people. It was a good way to practice my Spanish and they were all fairly friendly. The grandma with her grand-daughter I asked, said that Turi was very close and in fact they were going the way way as well. Wow those stairs were steep, and they seemed to just go on forever. Once I made it to the top, it made the whole trek worth it. Wow, just wow, the view was magnificent. You could see all of Cuenca, the mountains in the distance and Cajas the national park nestled between the mountains. I was still extremely hot from the sun and the hike so I walked around a bit in Turi in search of ice cream. Luck beyond luck I found a vendor selling cones, two flavors per cone for 50 cents. I got a Guayaba and Chocolate cone, it hit the spot.

the endless staircase

The view from Turi # 1

The View from Turi # 2

The View from Turi #3, I magically got myself in this one, imagine that!

   The way back was a bit quicker since I didn't have to wind my way quite as much. When I was almost home I found some guys playing volleyball in the park so I stopped to watch for a bit. I think it was then that I decided I want to play volley ball some Saturday or Sunday afternoon before I leave. When I got home I wolfed my lunch down, Lupe asked me if I enjoyed the food. I replied it wasn't bad. She laughed and told me that there is an Ecuadorian saying that goes " Cuando hay mucho hambre, no hay mal pan" or roughly translated, "When you're really hungry, nothing tastes bad". I laughed and agreed that was a good saying.

PS I snagged an awesome pic of the clouds on the way home

Chapter 5: Roadblocks and Cuenca

So first off I´m going to apologize. Why you ask? Because I neglected to write much down directly after/during our trip to Cuenca and during the rest of the weekend that followed. The reason was it was kind of a crazy mix of everthing all at once, we were tired from traveling and slightly apprehensive about meeting our host families. I´ll tell you what I can remember but it might be more fragmental than usual.

First thing was we left the Hacienda we had stayed two nights at early in the morning. I feel like all of our departures have some innate need to be as early as possible. That morning in particular I could see the need as the drive ahead of us was going to be 8 hours long. We split the drive into two four hour blocks, one on each side of lunch. The first part of the drive was fairly uneventful until we reached the town of Alausi. There we got lunch at a small restaurant that had a special where you pay two dollars and you get a large bowl of soup and a plate of rice, beans and meat. It was a pretty good deal and then we set out to stretch our legs and explore the town before we hit the road again. We found one of the first Panaderias that we tried in Ecuador, I tried my first south american donut. The donut was a bit stale, not glazed and more bread like than I was accustomed to, but otherwise it was pretty tasty, especially so with the frosting. We followed one street as to its terminus that led to a steep set of stairs which we climbed to find a neat lookout over the rest of the town. There was yet another giant statue on the opposite side of town of the Virgin Mary which we didn´t get to see closeup but it looked neat from afar.



    Our bus winded on and on after Alausi, snaking through the mountain roads. Two hours in we took a bathroom break at the very first chapel ever built in Ecuador. It wasn´t fancy and I liked that about it. The rest of the drive was smoother and I fell asleep listening to music in my seat. I awoke to find that we had stopped, no we had not arrived yet, but rather there had been a small rockslide on the mountain road that we were driving on. We had to wait for about twenty minutes as a few of the drivers including our own made the road driveable again. In the meantime this huge cloud kind of glided next to use covering the giant ravine/valley to our side. It was about level with the road to the extent that it seemed viable that we could jump out and land on the cloud, yes I know that doesn´t actually work, but damn if it did that would have been so cool.

  The approach to Cuenca an hour later was incredibly exciting. It just kind of appeared out of nowhere, parks, buildings, churches all in front of us on that sunny afternoon. I know I was scared to meet my host family, I don´t know about anyone else on the bus. What if they didn´t like me? What if I couldn´t communicate? We climbed the stairs to our new university and were seated in a medium sized room with the host family coordinator Dunia. One at a time she called the next person to leave the room and meet their host family as if it was an elaborate game show. My name was called and I got to meet my host mom Lupe, her son and his wife(they´re in their thirties) and their son Sebastian. It was overwhelming, but they all seemed quite nice. We were given fruit, drinks and snacks and given some time to mingle. That mingling time went by in a blur, but I got to try my first granadilla which my host family taught me how to eat. Granadilla, for those of you who have never had one, are kind of yellowish orange in color and kind of pear shaped. They are related to the pomegranate, and if they´re not then they´re eaten in a somewhat similar way. First you use your finger to crack into the inside, the inside if full of sweet gooey crunchy seeds that you can then either suck out or use a spoon if you´re feeling a bit more civilized.

  (hmm I guess I´m remembering a fair amount)


My host brother then drove us all to Lupe´s house where I got to settle in. They showed me each different room, let me take it all in and showed me my room and how the shower worked then gave me space to unpack and take a rest for a bit before dinner. I came down a bit before when I thought dinner might be and everyone was getting ready and kind of heading for the door, which for me was enormously confusing as I assumed we were having dinner at the house. I asked Lupe where we were going and she answered that her sister had invited us to dinner at her house. Her sister´s house was nice and full of relatives all eating. I was shy at first          around so many new people when I was still kind of in shell shock. Dinner was delicious, it was this kind of stir fry with rice, various vegetables such as peas and then chicken and eggs mixed in. On the side was a small plate of broccoli and a cup of coca cola(coke is pretty popular down here). As I ate I became a little more comfortable and listened to the family and some of their jokes, I could only pick up on some of them. I learned the word ¨chendo¨ which is basically a joke.

Once everyone was finished eating half of the family all gathered around an ipad to play ¨Who Wants to Be a Millionaire¨ in Spanish while the other half started playing dominoes at the table. After mustering a bit of courage I went over to the ones by the ipad to investigate, they welcomed me over and had me help out. They were quite impressed when I knew quite a few answers, like that Zeus was the god represented by the planet Jupiter. I ended up staying longer with Sebastian to play with the ipad with the others while Lupe went home early.  When we did leave it was pouring outside. We scrambled to get into the car in the rain. I got to try out using my keys to the house as the rain poured down and we all got soaking wet, I was laughing: I thought it was pretty fun.

     When I got in, Lupe was worried about me being wet, but I said it didn't matter and I was grinning from ear to ear. Before bed they showed me how my TV worked, its a small little one with no remote and the stations come in depending on the direction of the rabbit ears. I found a channel that came in fairly well that was playing what Lupe told me was a fairly famous Mexican comedy. It seemed to me like the Mexican version of Billy Madison, but 20 or 30 years earlier. I washed up, turned the light off and crawled into bed falling asleep to the sounds of the river running in the background.

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I've decided I'm splitting the weekend's adventures into two parts since this is fairly long already, so expect part two in the near future.

Interlude 1

  The clouds here in Ecuador, I believe they have personality.  I´m pretty sure they´re default state is sneaky. These clouds are the epitome of sly. Turn your back for maybe an instant and whoosh! they´ve surrounded the valley or city like a band of silent ninjas. Maybe its because we´re up higher to the sky here, but I like the clouds here, I feel a bit more connected to them. Although they obscure vistas at just the wrong times, they´ve got spunk. Without the sneaky clouds here in Ecuador, it just wouldn´t feel quite as magical.

(A glimpse of those sneaky clouds and the valley of the giants)

  Also I feel like I could have called my blog ¨In the Valley of the Giants¨ since this country is brimming with valleys and mountains which just dwarf you so entirely. You know that scene in Jurassic Park, when they first arrive on the island and are just in utter awe of both the tropical locale and the colossal creatures running around? Driving through Ecuador feels like that almost continuously. Every time we go some place or see something one of us will say ¨We should just stay here. It can´t possibly get any better than this.¨  But it does get better or rather our amazement has yet to run dry.