Bienvenidos a la selva

For my next installment of belated recollections from the past, I submit to you my first trip to El Oriente, Ecuador's wild west. Or rather, wild east. And while the western deserts and mountains of the United States are tamer than ever, the jungles that make up a bulging third of Ecuador's territory to the east of the Sierra are still, to a great extent, salvaje. And, since I made my way there back in February, during the peak of Carnaval celebrations, it was a lot more wild that I'd wager it is on a regular basis.

Here I am, in Tena, with a monkey. It's a spider monkey, so named for it's ability to maneuver through tree limbs using its tail like another limb. Which makes for five tree-climbing appendages, not eight, but that was close enough for whoever came to the Amazon and christened them long ago. The look on my face might lead you to think that I don't like monkeys. I get along with them pretty well, in fact, but I'll elaborate more on that further along.

Tena is the nearest jungle municipality from Quito, Ecuador's capitol city and a major tourist destination. It's proximity to both civilization and wild jungle makes Tena a town geared to tourism as well, and thus, one of the more attractive of the established communities we visited on our tour. Tena, on the other hand, is one of the farthest towns from Cuenca, where I teach and live. By the route we took, we found ourselves bussing about 14 hours to make our way there, stopping in a couple of other jungle towns on our way. Those two, Macas and Puyo, were worth exploring in their own right, more for the excursions deeper into the jungle that you can arrange from town than the communities themselves. To do a jungle trip right, you ought to have at least a week to get deep into the undisturbed rain forest, for the simple reason that, being undisturbed, there's no roads in and you've got to do some walking. This time around, we had five days free, and so contented ourselves to explore the settlements carved out of the jungle as we did in the jungle itself. We weren't disappointed.

By the time we crawled out of our bus in Tena, it was already late afternoon. So with our packs weighing heavily on shoulders bent out of shape by the bus ride, we walked downhill from the bus terminal to the town center and our beds for the night. Along the way, being Carnaval, we got very, very wet.

Carnaval is what I would refer to as a reactionary religious celebration. In other words, while Carnaval itself is not particularly religious, it wouldn't exist if it weren't for another celebration which is. The holiday that gave birth to Carnaval is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the 40 day Lenten period of traditional fasting, sacrifice and devout observation of the miracle of Jesus' transubstantiation. The prospect of all that fasting and quiet meditation led some Catholics, long ago, to get their kicks in before their 40 day purge. The idea of a party appealed to enough people for these binges to become annual celebrations of their own, manifesting in the French culture of New Orleans as Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, so named for the consequence of all the eating and drinking the day before Lent. In many parts of Latin America, we have Carnaval, taking the idea of Mardi Gras a step further. After all, why celebrate for just a day? Carnaval is traditionally recognized as a weeklong celebration, but my experience has been that it starts a little after New Year's Day and keeps getting bigger and bigger. And even if you're not Catholic, everyone gets to play, usually whether they like it or not.

My first experience with Carnaval was a mysterious splash of water behind me as I was walking down the streets of Cuenca. I looked around, but couldn't tell where it came from. There was no one around, just a wet spot on the ground. I shrugged my shoulders and kept on walking. In the coming weeks, however, it became very clear what had narrowly missed me. With a disturbing frequency, I became witness to many personal attacks executed in broad daylight. Often the perpetrators operated from motor vehicles, with a variety of weaponry. Their targets were always the same: unsuspecting passersby. The more unsuspecting, the better. Couples and gringos, wrapped up in their own worlds, were the most vulnerable.

A case study: a group of five CEDEI teachers are walking down a quiet street, too involved in their own conversation to take notice of the attackers waiting, plotting, above. Then, comes the strike, all at once: uncounted water balloons, some off-target, but some bound to connect. Amid the screams and confusion from below, drifts down the devilish laughter of four boys from their upstairs balcony, already armed with another battery of balloons, dripping, swollen and sagging from their hands.

A grim portrait. And there is little we possess in our arsenal of defence, save our own wits. The playing of Carnaval is technically illegal in Cuenca, but as I also witnessed, the police themselves are complicit. One day an armored car was driving slowly down Gran Columbia, a main thoroughfare in Cuenca's center. Through the slot in the side of the vehicle, designed for visibility and protection, jutted the barrel of a watergun, blasting distracted pedestrians with precision.

CEDEI teachers, especially women, seemed to be particularly obvious targets. A group of three of them were walking through parque de la madre one day, enjoying ice cream cones. A driveby hurling of a water balloon left one of them wet in the face, her cone empty, and her beloved scoop of cookies n' cream laying uselessly on the ground. Que pena!

Some teachers, perhaps traumatized and desperate from too many drenchings, choose to join rank and buy some innocent-looking little rubber balloons at the corner store, turn them into weapons at the nearest sink, and mount their own ambushes. The rest of us opt to stay on the defensive. Which is very challenging, especially considering our own places of work are crawling with the most common source of attack, namely, cuencano teenagers. I found that as long as I keep my head up, they stay their attacks. Sometimes, out of respect and fear for those that hold the gradebooks, the group of kids ubiquitously hanging around the front door of CEDEI have the courtesy to ask me if they can throw a balloon at me. Nope, sorry.

Nonetheless, I chose not to take up arms, deciding that if I wanted to stay dry, I couldn't in good conscious add to the water level. That said, I did toss one at a few CEDEI preschool teachers as they walked past our BBQ, but I would've done that whether it was Carnaval or not.

On the street, I developed a strategy for my self-defense. I walk around with my eyes lifted upward to the terraces that lie on the rooftops of nearly every building in town. I noticed that even if there were kids upstairs from me, they wouldn't throw if they knew I saw them, because then I'd just dodge out of the way before the balloon reached me. I stroll slowly, confidently, choosing one-way streets where the oncoming traffic comes in front of me, lessening the chance of sneak attacks from behind. Overall, I would venture to say that my strategem was successful, seeing as how I managed to stay dry throughout my entire Carnaval experience in Cuenca.

But this fortune did not carry through to Tena. Perhaps it was due to the general laid-back lifestyle in Cuenca that helped keep me dry, or that the last days of Carnaval whip the revelers into a heightened frenzy. But we weren't in Tena for more than an hour before getting soaked. Water balloons, water guns, buckets, hoses. Kids on rooftops, kids with big barrels full of water in the streets, splashing it everywhere. Don't stand around and laugh at how wet you are or you'll just keep getting wetter. Even on the bus ride to Tena, kids waited along the sides of the road, ready to hurl a balloon in any window cracked open for relief from the humidity inside the bus. Fortunately, our hotel was several blocks from the main drag, and despite the late hour, the jungle sun had just about dried us off in the calm of the walk on the backstreets.

The next day we wandered out into town, where we met the aforementioned spider monkey.

He seemed, judging from his ample belly, very comfortable living in town, and he probably was. If pea-brained pigeons can make a living in cities around the world, an animal with thumbs and a prehensile tail ought to do pretty well. In fact, smaller villages such as Misuhualli, deeper still into the Amazon, are crawling with monkeys who have adapted to life in towns catering to tourists by stealing their drink bottles as they sit in the town square. Rumor has it these monkeys have developed a habit for the caffeine in soda and know where to get their fix. They don't have any trouble opening the cap, and once they have the bottle they go high up a tree where you'll never get it back.

This monkey, though, was very calm, albeit alternating repeatedly from sitting upright to adopting the more casual pose it struck in the first picture. It also made lots of funny faces for no particular reason, and made all kinds of odd gestures with its hands. After we had communed briefly with him, we walked down to the Rio Tena, which divides downtown from the more commercial district.

The river was wide and calm, flowing slowly down to the nearby Rio Napo, which by and by is a tributary to the Amazon itself. As such, any water here, just about 250 miles from the Pacific Ocean, will ultimately drain all the way to the Atlantic. The Sierra region of Ecuador straddles the continental divide, and any water to the east of it, no matter how close to the Pacific it might fall, will flow inexorably in the other direction.

At the confluence of the Rio Tena and the smaller Rio Pano (not to be confused with the much larger Rio Napo) is a park called La Isla, a small zoo featuring several jungle creatures for the enjoyment of tourists who will never venture any deeper into wilds. And, for some reason, an ostrich. Also in the menagerie lived a few monkeys, most of them running free. One of them, of a much smaller species than the spider monkey we met in town, was very friendly:

He spent several minutes crawling around my neck, head, shoulders, back, arms, and water bottle, doing his best to chew his way through the lid. He never tried using his hands, which were, admittedly, more like paws, and opted instead to use his teeth like a common animal. It's little guys like this that help bridge the evolutionary gap between primate and rodent, probably. His small size proved to be a disadvantage, as shortly after he leapt to a tree nearby, a much larger monkey decided he wanted to take him away. There was little the small monkey could do, as the bigger spider monkey kept a firm grip on his tail and wouldn't let him go. After wrestling for a little while, finally the big monkey just picked him up and hauled him off, in footage resembling a candid sasquatch sighting:

For a moment, it seemed like the small monkey might have been able to make his escape, but the spider monkey once again seized him by the tail and climbed up into a tree. Once amongst the branches above, the little one made his last bid for freedom, but ultimately, it was the tail, that enigmatic fifth limb lost to us higher primates, which was his undoing. In a dramatic display of agility and determination, the spider monkey, dangling from his own, got hold of the white one's tail as he dropped wildly, pulled him up into the canopy, and that was the last we saw of him.

Crazy monkeys. So like us.

Later that afternoon, we went for beers at a little grass hut doubling as a bar. Fortunately we were able to find seats under the thatched canopy of the hut, as the sky soon opened up into a mighty downpour that lasted for hours. The three of us were impressed by the intensity and duration of the rain, but the locals just shrugged and calmly waited it out, sucking down Pilseners to pass the time. That seemed like a fine idea to us, and once the rain subsided we were ready to take in more of the local color.

We walked over to the town square, which in most Latin American towns I've visited is given over to an urban park with stone walkways, benches and colorful flora. The people of Tena opted to build an amphitheater in theirs, and that night, being one of the last nights of Carnaval, there was a concert series with several singers and bands performing. There was also a lot of carioca. Not to be confused with karaoke, which you'll hear about later. Carioca is the name that somehow got applied to those cans of toxic, colorful foam that kids love to play with. Ecuador must be the world's largest consumer of carioca, judging from the quantity of it that circulated even the small town of Tena. A can, once in the hands of a child, lasted about 10 seconds, as he would immediately empty it all over whoever was sitting next to him. The sight of little kids running around with an enormous glob of neon pink foam stuck to his head and face was a common one, and, being the only gringos anywhere to be found, we were easy targets.

It began with the occasional spurt of foam from behind, higher up in the grandstand. At first we all laughed, but bit by bit these infrequent blasts came more often, and in larger doses. We quickly realized that we were surrounded by armed children who were rapidly losing their inhibition to lay seige on foreigners. The first few shots appeared to be to test their limits, and when neither the gringos nor their parents did anything to stop them, they began to thoroughly enjoy attacking their unarmed victims. We got tired of being easy targets and bought a couple of cans. Holding one, I waited for a kid to spray me. Then I spun around and let him have it, dousing him good on the side of his face and then even better on the back of his head as he turned tail.

Unfortunately, now that we could and did defend ourselves, the last vestige of self control came down and we were fully assaulted by children on all sides. We fought back well, turning a few on their heels, but in the end it was a war of attrition and our limited arsenal was no match for their numbers. An image of the fallout:

A look at the crowds around us well illustrates how we were targeted. Only those people who had the misfortune to sit in the crossfire are wearing foam, and a look at the faces of the audience reveals a disturbing indifference to the aggression. My theory is that years of this sort of spectacle have rendered the locals numb to the diablitos (as these little kids are locally referred to during Carnaval) and their shenanigans. As for us, we drained our cans on a few more grade-schoolers and went home. Along the way, the foam that covered us melted in the light rain, into a bizarre and strange smelling film that, thankfully, rinsed off easily in the shower. We all decided that we'd much rather get hit in the face with a water balloon.

For our last full day in Tena we went whitewater rafting on the Rio Napo. The river rapids were frequent but mellow, never once threatening to flip our raft. In order to give us more bang for our buck, our river guide chose to take a few extreme measures to make sure at least a few of us got wet. The first was his offer of River Rodeo, and he insisted on a volunteer before he would explain the rules. Emboldened by the calm waters, I raised my hand, and was promptly ordered to sit up on the nose of the raft with my feet dangling over the front of the rubber boat. All I had to hold onto was a small metal ring which I managed to get a couple of fingers through, and I slid around on the wet nose of the boat with every bump of a rock. We went through some rapids, admittedly small ones, and I got through them without getting bucked off the raft. Even I was able to toss one arm into the air for awhile.

Our guide seemed disappointed and asked for another volunteer. Vince, one of my fellow travelers, got the honor and parked himself up front. Another ride through the rapids left him perched safely on the nose of the boat as well, and our guide, a burly but athletic Ecuadorian raised in El Oriente, jumped up to the front of the boat and with a sudden shove to the back, Vince disappeared into the river.

A few seconds later he emerged alongside the raft and we hauled him back in. We all were wearing lifejackets and helmets, and the river so wide and slow that Vince was never in any danger, even if he hadn't been a trained swimmer. The waters are so mellow and gentle between rapids, in fact, that during a particularly long stretch of smooth sailing our guide proposed another game. This time, he ordered us all to the back of the boat, and, running a rope through the metal ring up front, joined us in the stern and with a pull of the rope, lifted our raft so that it was floating vertically down the river, nose straight up in the air and us hanging on to whatever we could to avoid flopping out of the back of the raft and taking the whole thing upside down on top of us. For a few seconds I wondered if we might try to go through the rapids this way, but long before any came along he let the boat smack down into its proper position in the water and we got back into our places.

I've heard of some other jungle rafting experiences that have left rafters spinning violently in class 4 rapids under their raft, getting dashed against rocks as they struggled to swim up along side a boat equally out of control in the whitewater. In light of those kinds of stories, I was glad most of our excitement was manmade and under control, even as I had hoped for a little bit wilder of a time going through the rocks.

That night we had our last dinner in Tena, at a restaurant open late. While we were eating, we couldn't help but notice the horrible singing that constituted the music we were listening to. Could that possibly be a professional singer? A trip to the bathroom by Lauren revealed a karaoke bar on the other side of the building, and we decided to check it out. The song list was rife with love ballads in Spanish, which one girl was systematically crooning one by one in a broken cadence of long, high notes.

An exhaustive examination of the list revealed one song we all knew: Another one bites the dust, by Queen. I was a little skeptical of this choice, because while we all knew the refrain, there were a lot of other words in that song I'd never bothered to pay attention to, but we came to sing, and this was our only option. One equally shameful display of virtuosity later, and jobs done, we finished our beers and walked out to a resumed performance by the same girl who'd been singing, all night long.

There was something poetic about songs sung so badly but so proudly, late at night at what may have been the only karaoke bar in the province. Amid the songs of jungle birds and insects that make the real music of the Amazon, those off-key lyrics are a fine example. Human beings will never be able to approach the beauty of the jungle with anything that we carve out of it. Right now the only sizable comunities in El Oriente of Ecuador hug the bottom of the eastern cordillera. Further east is the wild jungle, wilder and wilder the deeper you go. With all the oil still waiting quietly under much of it, I hope it stays that way a long, long time.

New Year's in August

Why write about New Year's in the summer months? Is it because here in Cuenca, the few degrees south of the equator that we are, the seasons and holidays are in reverse? Nope. I just haven't written for that long. But don't worry, the events and details of my New Year's experience here have only embellished themselves in my brain in the meantime.

So, I was sitting with President Correa when he got a call from Hugo Chavez about a conspiracy regarding Ingrid Betancourt...

Not really. I promise to deliver to you my experiences, as they happened:

We'll begin here, where I was standing on Calle Larga with a few of my CEDEI colleagues. Clutched in my left hand was a bottle of mezcal I had brought from Mexico. Tucked gently under the arm of Drea was a box of red wine. Had we been drinking? Perhaps. But in fact, these packages of booze were actually mechanisms operating in our defense. You see, according to the long list of traditions associated with New Year's celebrations in Ecuador, if you have a bottle of aguardiente and you see someone who's not drinking, it's your obligation to serve them a copious amount from the same cup any number of strangers may have been drinking from previously. Having learned this the hard way early in the evening, we opted to carry around our own preferred selection of alcohol. That way, when someone kindly offered us some Zhumir (the preferred label of aguardiente in southern Ecuador), we would hold up our own supply, raise a toast and drink a more reasonable quantity than what we were likely to be handed by our generous patron.

What is aguardiente, you may ask? Scroll down a story or two for a detailed description. What, you might also be wondering, are some of the other traditions of New Year's in Ecuador? Read on:

As it turned out, the booze only helped prepare us for the craziness about to unfold around us. Amongst the Christmas lights hanging from the walls, up until midnight on New Year's Eve you'll find these kinds of displays out in the streets of every neighborhood around town. Like the one above. A banner telling you the neighborhood responsible for the panorama before you. It also advertises the substance fueling the pageantry: Zhumir. And, the display itself. Always big, usually political. Here, a graveyard full of the people and organizations better off dead in the coming year, and the added satisfaction of a bagfull of arms in the foreground.

Here, along another backstreet, a stab at the big blue busses and ubiquitous yellow taxis that deliver us from place to place. The message is clear, fuera los buses. Cars, trucks and busses claim the lives of innocent people every day, around the world. In the US, for example, there's often a fair amount of talk about gun control, but year after year, automobiles kill more people in the United States than guns do. Do we talk about car control? Maybe now, with $4/gallon unleaded. Here, the gas is still leaded, and still under $2 a gallon. And the exhaust from the busses is thoroughly black and stinky. I've personally wondered many times, as I walk the beautiful hilly streets of Cuenca, amidst a backdrop of big, green mountainsides, why we contaminate our planet and run one another down, all to be in a hurry. As a spectator from the outside, some of the political commentary of the night was over my head, but this one was hard to misinterpret. It's never been a better time to be car free.

This image might help to better illustrate my position as a first-time visitor to the Cuencano New Year's experience. On the surface, for example, the message is more or less clear even to a newcomer. A shark devouring the bloodied carcass of a man with the initials of a political party on his sleeve and another on his pantleg. Ecuador has a dozen or so political parties, each with differing levels of control. Here a few of them are roasted, with some plays on words that only now, 7 months and a few questions later, have I come to understand and be able to laugh about. At the time, the look on my face was probably more like that of my friend Chris to the left. I'd try to explain them to you, but if you've ever tried to translate a joke, you know that most of the humor is, as they say, lost in translation. Plus, the idea is to lure some of you down here to learn for yourselves.

With all these gruesome images, you're probably asking yourself, is it safe? Do all the bloody spectacles and Zhumir lead to a night of violence? Fair questions. To begin my reply, I first offer you Exhibit A:

Three innocent little girls with their lollipops, up long past their bedtimes, one of them staring a blood-encrusted shark in its paper-mache eyes. What may be going through their heads? Another good question that I won't venture to answer. But suffice it to say that there were countless children on the streets that night, all absorbing the tradition that they will surely help to cultivate and deepen themselves, later in their own lives. For now, they at least all seem to enjoy the loud noises.

Which leads me to the moment that everyone around the world, time-zone by time-zone, looks forward to, no matter where you are. We all count the seconds before, and then, that moment comes. That magical time, no different really, from any other second that passes by, other than our own human observation, when one year ends and another begins. What happens now depends greatly on where you are. Here, that means fire. Lots and lots of fire.

I should probably explain here the real intention and philosophy that underlies the Ecuadorian New Year. The occasion, in Spanish, is El ano viejo. We call it the New Year, but here, the emphasis is on the old. Where we tend to think more about our intentions looking forward, the idea here is one of looking back, thinking about what we want to get rid of, forget about, exorcize, cleanse, and burn. Hence the big displays. All sorts of images, tending toward the dark and graphic, come to life for everyone to see, all to bring to mind the demons and ghosts in our own lives. Then we take power over those things by, at that magic moment, throwing them all into a pile and setting them alight. Now we can look forward to a new year, having cleansed ourselves of our pasts.

To witness it is truly powerful. For several short but exhilarating minutes, every direction you look, up and down Cuenca's gridlike, cobbled thoroughfares, is fire after fire. For a short time, while the fires are still burning, people revel around them. They dance, drink, laugh, and some try to jump over the blazing remnants of paper, wood, and other materials I'd rather not think about. Then, when the fires go out, the party begins. Cumbia music plays at high volume, and people keep dancing, laughing and drinking until long after I go to bed. And, when I wake up late in the morning, I can still smell the night from the smoke that lingers on my collar.

Los chorros

Pictured above is the author standing near the calm and beautiful stream that flows just below one of several massive waterfalls that are referred to unassumingly as los chorros. The name translates more or less as "the spurts," but as you'll see, the many waterfalls in this cloud forest outside of the village of Giron, about 45 minutes by bus from Cuenca, are a far cry from a mere sputtering of water. But then, Ecuadorians, as I've noticed, have a penchant for diminutizing everything. For a commonly encountered example, I present to you this conversation I might have on any given morning as I go downstairs to the market for some eggs.

"Diez huevos, por favor," I'll ask.
To which I'll hear, "Claro mi patron, diez huevitos." Ten little eggs.
And in regards to payment, I might ask: "Y cuanto le debo?"
In reply: "Ochenta centavitos, no mas." Just eighty tiny cents. How could I refuse an offer like that?

So it should come as no surprise to you to see what I saw one morning as three fellow teachers and I made our way up a hill into a tropical rainforest. A rippling torrent of water pouring down a sheer cliffside, soaking everything around it with its freezing mist as it pummels the rocks below, before transforming itself into a quiet brook and rambling peacefully downhill.

























I could have sat for hours watching the shapes that constantly evolved from the cascade of a river seized by gravity and pulled suddenly straight down, like the flames of a fire flickering in the opposite direction. No less impressive was the backdrop of a mossy cliff surrounded by hills that were almost dripping with vegetation.

But we had a day of hiking still ahead of us and another waterfall to see. And we were still buoyed enough by the events of the night before to hold still for very long.

The plan to take a trip to Giron had begun months before. Just weeks after I had arrived in Ecuador, in fact. But this plan went forgotten in the whirlwind of obligations and frenzied sightseeing that ensued as 30 some gringos descended simultaneously on a foreign land, intent on witnessing as much of it as possible in the short months they allotted themselves to teach and travel.

Finally, during one of my first long weekends after New Year's, it seemed like the time had come. Five other teachers decided it was time as well, and we made a plan to leave in the early afternoon. At 1 o'clock we'd meet and get a bus soon afterwards. That morning, though, a few text messages informed me that 1 o'clock wouldn't be possible, it'd have to be later. But how much later?

As two of the teachers backed out and the afternoon began drifting by, I sat patiently waiting in my apartment with my guitar and some carefully measured quantities of my favorite mezcal brought with me from Mexico. Some further correspondence led me to believe that at first at 3 and then at 4 o'clock we could finally meet and get on the road. Sure enough, my roommate Vince arrived shortly before 4 and we made our way across town to the house of Heidi and Lauren, who were almost, but not quite ready to go.

Then there was the question of provisions. There was shopping to do, for such sundry goods as an avocado, a little 10 cent loaf of bread, and a box of wine. Then, thoroughly outfitted and prepared, we arrived at the terminal terrestre and found our way onto a bus bound for Giron in just half an hour. As it turned out, however, the bus was taking a detour and our anticipated 45 minute trip was some duration of time greater. Greater enough, as it turned out, combined with the various other delays, to bring us into the village after dark under a light drizzle of rain.

Fortunately, Heidi, a British lady married to a Peruvian fellow, had been living in Ecuador for a few years and had been to Giron and los chorros before. She knew what to do and what to say in order to get us where we needed to go. What that was was waving to a pick-up truck driver, saying "los chorros" and then hopping in the back of the truck. The rest of us did the same, and the truck driver proceeded to drive us along a muddy and winding road up a steep hill for 20 minutes or so. At the top he collected his fare, and pointed to the only two buildings anywhere in sight, indicating we could spend the night and have a bite to eat at either one of them. Without another word he drove back down the hill, leaving us at the end of a country road in the now-heavier rain.

We approached the closer of the two buildings, which had a covered patio with a large wooden table. We knocked on a door and waited, but there was no sign of life. No lights, no noise, just a sleeping dog on the patio. So we walked the quarter of a mile over to the other building, which was also conspicuously dark, and pounded on a few windows. Again, no response. In 15 minutes, we had systematically exhausted our two options for a place to stay at los chorros, which left us at something of a loss for what to do next. But, becoming increasingly wet, we opted to go back to the first building, have a seat around the table, and get dry.

It turned out that through all the preparations that had been made that afternoon, none of us had gone so far as to eat lunch. Once under the covered patio and seated around the table, we opened the box of wine for nourishment, began passing it around, and broke our little loaf of bread. There was enough of a loaf for about 3 or four bites each, it looked like. Lauren, who'd made friends with the dog who awoke to the smell of bread, began feeding it some. The rest of us decided that her generous offer came out of her portion of the bread ration, and we began spreading avocado on what remained, while the dog, appetite now whet, began begging shamelessly for more.

At this point, with no indication that we'd be finding any accomodations for the evening, and having discarded the idea of walking back down the long, dark and muddy road to Giron, we began sizing up our surroundings for a way to pass the night. None of us had brought anything like a pillow or a blanket, but the wooden table and benches seemed large enough for the four of us to all lay down on, which seemed better than the cold and wet dirt floor. A grim assessment for the night ahead, but a realistic one. We continued drinking the wine and I began to discern a pattern emerging from the events of the past few months: when I go into the woods, I find myself in some sort of unexpected and arguably risky situation, bringing others with me for the duration. At least I never go alone.

After an hour or so, as the chill of the night settled into our bones, we nonetheless began making our peace with the idea that we'd be sleeping on the table. Then we heard a phone ring in the house and some rustling of life. Interesting. I should mention that before we had made our peace with the situation we had first banged loudly on every door and window we could find. And yet, a few minutes later, an drowsy but amiable woman opened a door and explained that she had been sleeping upstairs but she eventually noticed that we were here and had just called her brother, El Negro, who owned the lodge but was down in Giron at a party. He was now on his way home to set up our beds if we wanted to stay the night, and in the meantime she could offer us trucha and canelazo. If you've been keeping up with my postings, you already know that trucha is trout, and for a detailed explanation of canelazo you'll have to scroll down a story. But suffice it to say that it's served hot and it's got alcohol in it. Which seemed perfect right about then.

About the same time that our trout was served (fried, and whole, complete with scales, head and tail), El Negro arrived in his Chevy Blazer. He made sure we were comfortable, and then explained the accomodations. He told us that he had just one bed, but he was sure it was plenty big enough for him, his sister, and the four of us. He let that idea soak in for a minute before laughing and telling us in English that he had lots of rooms, and a bed for each one of us. Funny guy!

Then he went inside, put on some Simon & Garfunkel at high volume, and turned on a disco ball above our heads which had somehow escaped our notice. El Negro knew how to entertain. He also came back outside and joined us while we ate. This wasn't the first time I'd been presented with a whole trout, and I knew what to do with it. But I have to admit, while I did take a bite out of the head I didn't eat it all, though I did enjoy the crunchy tail and fins. Vince, on the other hand, relishes the idea of eating a fish down to the spine and did so with gusto, especially enjoying the head and eyes, if his detailed description of the texture and flavor was any evidence. The meal also came with mote, a variety of large-kerneled corn similar to hominy, in this case fried with egg. I found out later that this was an unusual pairing of foods, fish obviously being eaten more on the coast and mote a traditional crop of the high mountains. But they went well together on my palette, and the canelazo rounded out the meal nicely.

El Negro, for his part, had emerged from the building with a large frothy mug of yellow beverage which he explained was a Pilsener blended with a raw egg. The rest of us opted not to sample this drink but we did enjoy his company and the ambience, which had shifted again with the change of music from 60's singer-songwriter folk to dancehall reggae, played even more loudly. I suggested that we play some cards and we settled on a round of rummy. El Negro played as well, often remarking about his malas cartas and other examples of his rotten luck.

As the weather cooled off further, El Negro thought it might be a good idea if we retired to one of the rooms where we'd spend the night, to stay warm and keep playing cards. We went to the room Vince and I'd be staying in, and upon seeing that there was a nice comfortable bed and a sorry-looking bedroll on the ground for sleeping, we both agreed that whoever won a round of rock-paper-scissors would get the bed, which I won, best two out of three.

After we'd played cards for a few hours we reached a natural pause in the game and I noticed El Negro was shuffling the cards with some dexterity, so I asked him if he knew any card tricks. It turned out he did, and he showed us one that stumped us all. I did happen to know a trick that it reminded me of, though, and I asked him if he'd show it to us again. He said he'd do better, he'd show me how the trick worked once and I could try to do it again myself. Luckily, the trick worked similarly to the one I knew after all and I was able to reproduce it without any trouble. Heidi had already gone to bed at this point, but Vince and Lauren both remained stumped by the trick, which I still haven't gotten around to showing either one of them.

Then El Negro mentioned that he knew another trick, this one involving a banana. He explained that he could slice a banana from the inside, using a knife that would never actually touch the fruit, and while the peel would remain intact, upon opening it, it would fall into evenly and cleanly sliced segments. He proceeded to demonstrate the trick with a whole banana, which he let us examine first. Sure enough, it looked like a regular banana, nothing unusual about it. Then he stood a few feet back from the yellow fruit, now resting ominously on the card table, made a few cutting motions with a knife, and told us to look at the banana again. There it was, same as before. Didn't look any different to us. But when we opened it, sure enough, it fell into slices. The peel on the inside was cut, but on the outside it was whole and smooth. Then El Negro wiped off the knife on a towel, where some banana pulp was left behind.

El Negro, for whatever reason, had deemed me worthy of learning this trick as well. I managed to learn the trick pretty easily and recreated it for Vince and Lauren a second time. They were thoroughly confused by this piece of trickery and a bit upset that I became the sole inheritor of our group. I pacified them with the explanation that before they returned to the States I'd show them how it's done. While I won't reveal the mystery to you here, when you see me I'll be happy to demonstrate this piece of mystical know-how I learned in the rainforest of Ecuador. It gives me a bit of a headache to perform, but if you're entertained enough to offer me a beer afterwards I'm sure that ought to relieve it.

At this point we were well into the early morning hours and we all decided it was time to call it a night. I slept great in the big cozy bed and it seemed as though Vince did as well on the floor. That morning, I got my first true glimpse of our surroundings, unfettered now by the cover of night and rain, but still enveloped in a thick layer of clouds:




















The cloud cover proved relentless throughout our day of hiking, from this early morning view seen from the patio where we had spent our time the night before, to the first waterfall where this story began, and all the way up a mountainside to a second waterfall. Walking around inside of a cloud gave everything we saw a surreal quality, as though we were exploring the threshold of someone's dream about the Ecuadorian countryside.

Indeed, after a few hours of hiking it dawned on me that finally, after nearly five months of living in Ecuador, I'd stumbled upon a near likeness of my own dream from before arriving here, of what this mountain country must look like. Sure enough, I guess my pre-conceived notion wasn't too far off the mark after all. Except that besides this one particular landscape, Ecuador offers virtually every other type of countryside I'd ever seen before as well, plus several that I never had.





















During our walk to the second waterfall, having climbed up a steep and slippery trail that more than once demanded that we humbly get down on all fours and trudge along, we found ourselves in a sort of foggy, high mountain prairieland.



















This dreamlike pastoral setting was complete with various livestock. It seems like no matter what mountain I climb here, regardless of how steep and strenuous the ascent, there's always a cow at the top leisurely munching the grass, serenely looking at me, its very presence humbling my once-great physical achievement of the climb.

The clouds seemed thicker here than anywhere else, and besides contributing to the mystical quality of the environment, they also added to the element of risk. We had to hike up two or three level plateaus like this one, each stretching out to the left and the right as far as the eye could see, which here was only a few dozen yards. Our trail disappeared once it led us here, and another one, which would lead us to the falls, laid somewhere at the top, amongst many other trails just like it. Getting turned around anywhere in the woods is disorienting, but with clouds as thick as these and with surroundings that all look the same, we could easily wander around for hours looking for the right path.

Fortunately Heidi's previous visits here were still fresh in her mind and she led us to the correct trail with little hesitation. The second set of falls, not far from these open and misty plateaus, was no less impressive than the first, and if these cascades were not as picturesque as the first we saw, they dropped a greater a volume of water and were all the more amazing to us after our long and beautiful hike to reach them.




















We spent a good deal of time at these falls, enjoying the refreshing mist that they sent flying everywhere as they rolled down the cliffside, and also enjoying the opportunity to take a break from hiking before we began the descent back down the muddy mountain trail. Our return journey was spent largely in silence, all of us in an almost meditative state engendered as much by the serenity of the foggy green hills as by the mighty waterfalls at the top.

Once we reached the bottom we found El Negro and his sister feeding a group of teenagers who'd arrived to enjoy the nearer of the two falls we'd visited. To entertain them, our hosts had put on some Cumbia music played at an even higher volume than the music we'd been treated with the night before. It seemed El Negro had a library of albums for any occasion or perceived taste in music of his guests. We were fed another delicious and fortifying meal, and were then offered a ride back to Cuenca in the Chevy Blazer, as El Negro had some family business there and would be driving there anyway.

Our drive back seemed to take minutes, and we even got a ride downtown, just a few blocks away from each of our two apartments. Another free ride from the country to the city, twice in a row! But I'd better not talk too much about my luck. Instead, I offer you a photo of our host, here pictured with Lauren, in front of his kitchen:

A long ride

During the holidays my friend Jules, who I studied TOESL with in Mexico back in August, came down to Cuenca for a few days with his girlfriend. He got a job shortly after I did, working for a school in Quito, and as it turns out, his girlfriend has family here in my new hometown. Over a few drinks one evening on Calle Larga, we made plans to go Cajas the next day. In Cajas, as you'll see if you scroll down a few stories, I had a little run-in with some banditos in September. Despite that, Cajas is a great place to hike and I was ready for another trip.

So in the morning, myself, Jules, his girlfriend Alejandra, her brother Alvaro, and Alvaro's son Pancho all made the drive up the hill to Cajas in Alvaro's car. We hiked around quite a bit, had a good time, and then rewarded ourselves on the way back down the hill with some canelazos and trucha. Trucha is trout, usually served whole and traditionally eaten down to the spine, leaving behind neither head nor tail, and in order to honor the tradition, I dutifully ate the head, which was crunchy on the outside and fatty on the inside, and the tail, which was like eating a fish-flavored potato chip. My willingness to eat a fish from stem to stern may have also had something to do with the canelazo, which is a strong drink made from naranjilla fruit, a type of citrus somewhere between a lime and an orange in flavor, sugar, some water, and a fair quantity of aguardiente. Aguardiente is a liquor distilled from sugar cane, like rum. Except while good rum is distilled in quality wooden casks, I think aguardiente might be aged in plastic jugs and it sells for pennies an ounce. That said, canelazo is a tasty and wholesome beverage as mixed drinks go, it's served hot, and presented tastefully in a ceramic decanter. This batch was a particularly strong one.

By the time we were done with lunch we were even more enthusiastic than when we began, and decided it was time for some hot springs. Our original plan was to go to Bagnos de Cuenca, a resort village south of town, but Alvaro claimed to know of some wild hot springs on the other side of the mountains to our south from Cajas. Well fortified (and yet still road worthy, for those of you concerned), we made our way along a long dirt road to the promised springs, which were there indeed, and were excellent, set deep in a green valley with sheer, lush mountains on either side.

We made our way home that night and already I was plotting my return trip to those springs. A couple of weeks later, I went for it, by bike. I managed to persuade my friend James, another professor at CEDEI, to come along as well. We set off one Saturday afternoon, James having borrowed a bike from a friend and me on the one I bought a few months ago. James, while sharing my enthusiasm for mountain biking, enjoys downhill a lot more than uphill (who doesn't, right?), and was probably a little surly after our first trip up a very steep hill outside of Cuenca. He was surlier still after it turned out we went up that hill for nothing, having taken a wrong turn. But what can I say, I'd had a few to drink the last time and was a little fuzzy on the directions. Fortunately for our morale, the ride back down that same hill was a lot of fun and got us back on track.

Properly oriented now on the scenic dirt road to the hidden springs, we enjoyed a leisurely ride without too many intense ups and downs. The road was, in my view, the perfect country bike ride, reasonably well maintained, very little traffic, and lightly peppered with dwellings interspersed amidst some incredibly beautiful countryside:

In this gently sloping valley, I found the homes and other buildings to be as interesting as the countryside.

This store, for example, features many of the qualities I appreciate in an Ecuadorian country tienda, and what will always be missing from corporate America: a pile of bananas, the ubiquitous sleeping dog, and a sign advertising the most attractive options available for sale, in this case, the mixed assortment of trout, gasoline and cheese. That's a sales strategy with heart.

But, now is not the time for my philosophy on economics. Because, shortly after this picture was taken, my idyllic outpourings of appreciation for my pastoral surroundings began to be increasingly interrupted by James' more pragmatic insistence: "So, how much further is it to these springs we're heading for?"

You see, we left for our ride, as I mentioned before, in the early afternoon. What with a wrong turn and with what was perhaps a gross underestimation of the length of the journey by the author (which may or may not have also been due to my liberal self-administering of canelazo the last time around), we were an undisclosed distance from our goal, a few hours away from home, and with the evening already showing signs of setting in. Worse still, the common sight of evening storm clouds was also looming over our heads.

As some readers have learned from previous outdoors experiences with me, I possess what could be described as an unrealistically optimistic view towards country travel. On foot, by bike, in motor vehicles, I often view the open road as neverending and full of good times ahead. As a result, such details as food, warm clothes, the onset of darkness, for example, have arguably been downplayed in my mind from time to time during my consideration of a given journey. The years and the experiences they've offered me have taught me a lot about this sort of thing, and have taught a thing or two about me to my traveling companions at the same time. Today, as fate would have it, was one of those kinds of life experiences.

After some deliberation, James and I agreed to flag down the next passing vehicle regardless of the direction it was heading. As it turned out, it happened to be a truck heading towards the springs and our goal, driven by three teenage boys. They very agreeably not only told us their estimation of the distance we still had to cover (which, in the end, was on par with my own optimistic, and inaccurate appraisal), but offered us a ride as well. So we threw our bikes in the back of their truck, jumped back there ourselves and went for a ride.

20 minutes or so of driving at high speed on the bumpy dirt road got us to our destination, which turned out to be theirs as well. By bike, that amount of ground would've been traveled in just over an hour or so, at which point dusk would have firmly settled in. Luckily for us, these kids were on a fishing trip on the river that flowed along next to the hot springs and were stopping to fish more or less where we were stopping to soak. Even more luckily, they all lived in Cuenca and were willing to give us a ride back to town as well. So while they went fishing, we spent the next hour relaxing before one last high-speed downhill bike ride before dark, back to where they parked their truck.

The teenagers thought it was great to have a couple of gringos in the truck with them for their ride back to town, and we proved to be entertainment enough to warrant a free ride. Not to mention that they were genuinely buena gente. As much as we offered to pay them, they refused, and even gave us a ride downtown just a few blocks from our respective homes. Once, on the hour-long, dark, rainy ride back down the hill towards town, they shut off the headlights of the truck to show us what a ride home on a bike at night would've been like. Needless to say, we couldn't see a damn thing. No moon, storm clouds, nothing like a street light for miles at a time.

As I may have mentioned before in my writing, I generally view the idea of thinking about how things might have been different as a waste of time. After all, reality works out the way it does and no other way, and we have only to reflect on what has happened to decide how to act in the future, rather than spend our precious time on earth dwelling on the impossible past. Nonetheless, an idulgence: had we not run into those kids, we probably would've ridden ahead a little longer, gotten discouraged, and started riding home. In which case we would've missed the springs, and probably gotten caught in the rain and the dark for at least part of our journey home, had we not broken down and decided to hole up under some awning somewhere in the middle of the night out there in the country.

But, life had another plan for us that day, and it's an understatement to say that we were incredibly lucky to have flagged down a car full of nice teenagers going to the same place we were headed, and returning to the same place we came from. I mentioned at the beginning of this story about Cajas and the three teenagers who threatened us and did everything in their power to rob us. This day on the road to some wild hot springs, three teenagers managed to take what could have been a trying time and managed to work it out to be as close to a best-case scenario as I can think of. I could spend hours of your time reflecting over the forces of the universe that have the power to drive a day in your life into the realm of the truly remarkable, for better or for worse. But for now, let's suffice it to say that I'm thankful for the way that things went.

Galapagos

The image above, a juvenile frigatebird maneuvering itself deftly around the channel between the islands of Baltra and Santa Cruz, was among my first impressions of the Galapagos islands. I had the good fortune to spend eleven days on a few of the many islands in the archipelago, with a group of several other teachers from CEDEI. We barely scratched the surface.

Here pictured with a partially-molested Galapagos tortoise in the highlands of Santa Cruz are Coreen, Emily, Alena and Chris, a group of friends and teachers at CEDEI, all from the fine nation of Canada. Molestar, a perfectly innocent Spanish verb meaning "to bother," is often seen written around the island, as advice for what not to do to the animals. Our literal English translation was quick to follow and insinuated itself into our casual conversations. Galapagos tortoises, as it turns out, are very easily molested. Walk within a few feet and they draw all their extremities into the safety of their considerable shells, while making a deep hissing sound. A few seconds later, though, they get over their nervous reaction and hesitantly begin to withdraw from the confines of their natural defenses.

This is Jenni, a naturalized Iowan and former roommate of mine, here seen next to a very sun-burnt individual who might also look familiar. Shortly after our return from the Galapagos, Jenni got on a plane back to Iowa, where she can currently be found playing cards with her extended family before moving to our nation's capitol. This photo was taken late in the evening at one of Puerto Ayora's many bars, all of which obligingly play "Legend" by Bob Marley until all hours. The many songs produced towards the end of Bob Marley's career seems to be ritually played throughout the bars, restaurants and boats of the islands, so for a more authentic experience, I recommend that you find one of his later albums and play it for the remainder of this story.

Here you'll see Jason illegally posing inside of an exhibit at the Charles Darwin Research Station. A few seconds after this picture he was caught by a volunteer and publicly chastised. This Research Station is beautifully situated on the beaches north of Puerto Ayora and has as its mission to protect the unique wildlife of the islands. The Station takes its name, of course, from the man for whom the animals there served as an important inspiration for his theory of evolution during his 5 year voyage, and understandably so. A trip to the Galapagos is a walk back in time. There are very few mammals living there, and so reptiles and birds dominate the ecosystem, filling niches in the environment presently occupied by larger mammals in most other parts of the world. It's no surprise, then, that such a one-of-a-kind place has attracted the curiosity of visitors from around the world.

The Galapagos was quietly claimed by the nation of Ecuador many decades ago, long before the concept of eco-tourism had flourished. Today, 90% of the 600,000 visitors to the Galapagos each year come from countries other than Ecuador, and from the looks of the many tourists we saw in Puerto Ayora, they almost all come from places outside of Latin America. It's an unfortunate irony that most Ecuadorians have never visited the incredible national treasure that these islands are. While the cost of entry is considerably less for Ecuadorian nationals, the cost of flight and expenses on the islands are prohibitive for the majority of the people here.

That said, the tourism business there is booming, perhaps too loudly for the peaceful animals and plants that belong there. Already Puerto Ayora. the largest city in the Galapagos, has grown to over 15,000 residents, all vying for a piece of the pie offered forth by the bloated masses of the northern continents. While this number may seem small, the pressure that such a human population places on an ecosystem like the one here in these islands is great enough to have warranted measures put in place by the government, which are viewed as draconian by some. For example, there is an effort to prohibit new immigration to the islands, as well as to remove those whose residence there date to after 1998.

Indeed, life on the Galapagos is an exercise in controlled socialism, with the intention of limiting the impact of human presence on the islands as much as possible, while enabling the profits of tourism to continue to flow. Fishing, for example, is limited to "artesanal" practices, that is, use of the old-fashioned line and hook. The area of ocean protected around the island has expanded and contracted - but mostly expanded - as a result of the constant push and pull of the government and the local population.

Even these measures fail to protect entirely. While talking to a Peace Corps volunteer living in Puerto Villamil, a smaller village on the island of Isabela, for example, he told me about a fishing trip he went on where they inadvertently caught a baby sea lion and were unable to remove the hook. The metal barb had driven itself deep inside its cheek and after struggling with the frightened creature for some time, they ultimately threw the baby back to the sea, where its fate was questionable.

All this in mind, our time there remained an amazing interaction with the wildlife who continue to go about their lives blissfully unalarmed by the presence of humans, a behavior shared by precious few of the wild species left on the planet. Among the most numerous of these animals are the marine iguanas, little dragons living on the ubiquitous black volcanic rock that built the islands.




















My first experience with the iguanas was on the beach at Tortuga Bay, easily the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. White sand with grains nearly as soft and tiny as refined flour powders the shoreline amidst occasional outcroppings of porous black rock. Stretching as far as the eye can see, with a tableland above full of massive opuntia cacti with trunks the size and texture of a ponderosa pine's, the beach is made better still by the fact that, due to the fact that most visitors to the Galapagos are confined largely to cruise ships, we were nearly the only ones there each time we visited it.

Seeing a proliferation of opuntia cactus - close relative to the nopal cactus with which I'm so familiar and have written about previously - so far from the mainland where it most likely originated was amazing as well. While the animals of the Galapagos have gotten most of the attention for their adaptations, the plants there are no different, having specialized noticeably from one island to another. For instance, on Santa Cruz island, the opuntias, with their characteristic paddle-shaped branches and big flowers, are distinct from many of those on the mainland for their large trunks:




















There are, instead, on islands such as North Seymour, very similar opuntia cactus, whose outward appearance is virtually identical to those on the rest of the islands, with the exception of their lack of tall trunks, which would keep their juicy paddles separate from the ground by several meters:




















Why would these two types of cactus have developed so differently on two different islands? The answer most likely lies with the iguanas, such as this one, basking in the sun on North Seymour Island. The iguanas on North Seymour eat the paddles of these cacti, able to reach them easily without a tall trunk keeping them out of reach. On the other islands, the opuntias with paddles low enough to be eaten by creatures like the iguanas were selected out, while those with tall, robust trunks unable to be chewed lived long enough to pass such an adaptation forward.




















So why would the cacti on North Seymour be an exception? After all, there are iguanas like this one to be found all over the island. As it turns out, these iguanas were introduced to North Seymour by a scientist in the 1950's, as an experiment. They started eating opuntias, which are more scarce on this island 50 years later as a result.

Those on the other islands, incidently, while safe from the likes of the reptiles by virtue of their height, can't protect themselves from another introduced species, donkeys. The donkeys have figured out that they can use their hooves to knock down the tall opuntia cacti and then suck the juice from the insides of their trunks. There have been many measures to limit the populations of invasive animal species such as donkeys, goats, rats, cats and dogs, some easier to implement than others. For now, despite the meddling of humans and their introduced animals, the opuntias are still plentiful. Another species, the famous Galapagos tortoises, from whom the islands take their name, are another story.




















These giants, gentle and slow, count the Galapagos as one of the few places left on earth where they can survive. They have arguably been exploited more than any other Galapagos species, especially by pirates who used to use the Galapagos as a hideout before attacking vessels going to and from the pacific coast of the Americas. Seafarers learned that the tortoises could be stacked on board and survive for months without food or water, providing a handy source of meat for the crew. As such, several of the many subspecies of Galapagos tortoises were driven to brink of extinction by this practice.

One subspecies now has only one member left, an elderly male named Lonesome George. He now lives on the Charles Darwin Research Station, in a habitat with two females of a similar subspecies. He refuses to mate with them for unknown reasons; with him goes the fate of a species as close to the brink of extinction as it gets. George, for his part, spends his days relaxing in an easy retirement. Here he is from behind, in what is apparently a rare sighting, as he typically stays in hiding during visiting hours.




















Tortoises seem to be one of the few Galapagos species to have a fear of humans. Get too close, and they hide in their shells, sometimes drawing their head, tail and feet inside so fast that their shells fall to the ground with a heavy thump. Their reactions are understandable considering their treatment in the past centuries, and they live long enough to perhaps bear as many mental scars as the rough shells they develop after 150 years or so. This reaction, sadly, is exactly why they were so easy to capture. Sea travelers needed only to step up to them, watch them retreat into their shells, and then haul them upside-down to their ships.

Today, it's not seafarers that the tortoises ought to fear, but by another species introduced inadvertently by those sailors from long ago. All the species of tortoises on the islands are at great risk due to rats introduced by humans and their ships. The hungry rats find tortoise eggs buried in the sand and make short work of them, and the proliferation of these pests on the islands have made it virtually impossible for the tortoise eggs to hatch in the wild. Without human intervention, at this point tortoises would probably not be able to survive this infestation. As a result, young tortoises are hatched and reared at stations such as this one before being released into the wild once they're of sufficient size.

In a habitat near George's at the research station was a group of males, not nearly as old as George but still huge and formidable. The visitor's walk through the station takes you right through their habitat, where it's possible to get probably a bit closer to the animals than they'd prefer. This one, rather than being scared, seemed interested in this strange creature to have entered his presence:




















Indeed, this group of males got a little riled up by us hanging around, and one started charging me. Of course, with his pace, by the time he got near me, I managed to take a few pictures, stand up, and walk away casually. Having succeeded in driving me off and ire still up, he then began intimidating one of his companions and a round of deep, reptilian hissing ensued. We decided it was time to go.




















The next day we took a boat tour around the south shores of Santa Cruz and one of the outlying islets where we were able to do some snorkeling. Here, we swam with the sea lions, the largest native mammal to the islands. They spend a lot of their time laying around on the beach, warming themselves in the sun after a fishing trip. They also find themselves laying around on boats, harbors, docks, and pretty much anywhere in Puerto Ayora that people will let them.




















This one, if you can't tell by her grace, is a lady. The females of the species are sweet and playful, as are the young males. The older males, on the other hand, are blustery and belligerent, belching and growling and posturing at anyone who gets too close to their territory or their females. Even when by themselves, they tend to be more impatient than the females, as was evidenced when we passed one sleeping on a docked boat. As we motored around it, it raised its head grumpily and belched a loud protest at us for disturbing its rest, before flopping its head back to the floor.

There were plenty of sea lions the next day as well, as we took a longer excursion to North Seymour island, known for its extensive bird populations, and less so for the sea lions that greet you on the shore upon your arrival. One of the first sights we saw was a baby sea lion with barely enough energy to get out of our way as we climbed the rocks up to the trail carved out through the desert landscape of the island.




















Some people may try to tell you that there are seals in the Galapagos, but as it turns out, seals don't live anywhere near this far south. There's not a lot of visible differences between seals and sea lions, at least not to the average onlooker, but this baby above can show you the one characteristic trait that distinguishes the sea lion: ears. Seals don't have the little floppy lobes like the ones this sleepy little guy was relunctantly modeling for me.

The last and perhaps most entertaining of the animals I'll mention here is the blue-footed boobie.




















These odd-looking birds have some of the strangest behavior of any animals I've ever seen, and due to their lack of fear of humans we got to see them indulging in quite a bit of it. Not the least of which was their mating ritual:




















This is a male, showing off his stuff to a nearby female. First the male selects a female, who does a good job of playing coy while he shows off his wings, his big, blue feet, and his ability to build a quality nest, as evidenced by how well he picks up little sticks and branches in his beak. All the while the female alternates between feigned lack of interest and a careful observation of his spectacle. The white stuff all over the place, by the way, is bird poop, a clear sign that these birds have been at home on this particular island for many, many years.

The mating ritual, as it turns out, lasts for several hours, and so we ran out of patience before witnessing the act itself, which was probably better for everyone involved. There are many other incredible animals and plants unique to the Galapagos which we had the good fortune to witness, but this has already been probably far more than enough for one story! Here's where I bid a farewell to the islands, hopefully not for the last time.

Pacha Mama

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to do much writing. The reason? I've been busy teaching, playing music, learning Capoeira, enjoying the city of Cuenca, and otherwise having a good time. Now, I'm on vacation until January, and in the coming weeks I'll be relaxing on the beautiful Galapagos Islands. In the meantime I hope to spend a little more time doing some writing and enjoying some time off. I may only teach a few hours a day, but I've managed to fill up my free time with a fair amount of obligations that don't involve me sitting in front of a screen as much as I once did, and for that I'm grateful.

In the last few weeks I have had a chance to do some exploring outside of Cuenca, including a trip with some of my fellow teachers to a place called Susudel. Susudel is named after the Sucsudel, a Native American tribe that called as their home a place remarkably like New Mexico:

There we met our guide for the weekend, the appropriately named don Juan. Juan and his family are shamans, all living in the beautiful mountains surrounding Susudel. He and his father Alejandro both own property lying next to a small mountain stream from which they've managed to coax their own oases up from the arid landscape around them. Juan's home, humble and peaceful, is quite different from his father's, an incredible and expansive 200 year old hacienda lying on land whose tall palms and old dams stand silently in witness over a place that's been under careful cultivation for many generations.

We met Juan at a church a few miles from the village of Susudel, where he led us on foot to his home. Along the way we witnessed mountains as rugged as I've ever seen, made moreso by their stark and barren slopes, unsoftened by vegetation. Here is Juan speaking with Jason, another teacher at CEDEI. We stopped here briefly to catch our breath and, in my opinion, to witness a place of honor, graced by a stand of majestic trees well-adapted to their dry and wind-swept environs.

Juan was taking us to his land so that we might experience a temazcal ceremony. To call temazcal a sweat lodge is as poor a translation as the rendering of the beautiful word and concept of acequia into the English 'irrigation ditch.' But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we needed to make our way to Juan's property in time for us to build our camp for the night, which, as is predictably the case throughout the year in Ecuador, would be coming at 6:30 sharp. We got their just in time, to both set up camp and take in our surroundings before dark. Here are a few glimpses of our setting for the night:

There you'll see Juan's house, a closer look at his kitchen, and our recently built camp, on the far side of Juan's fire pit, where very soon we would place the pile of rocks in front of the left tent. On top of those rocks would be built a massive bonfire that would burn for the next several hours, until the stones underneath were glowing red. Also in this picture is a strange white light that I don't quite understand, and nor, judging from the look on her face, did Erin in the blue shirt. But there you have it.

Once it was fully dark, Juan asked each of us to pick up a rock from his pile, put our prayers and intentions into it, and hand it to him to be placed in his fire pit. Once they were all in place, Juan and his assistants began to assemble a large pyramid of cut wood for the coming blaze. Meanwhile, all of us sat in a circle around the fire and prepared ourselves for the temazcal in whatever way we could. Before the fire began burning, Juan's father arrived with his wife and younger son. Just in time, in fact, because only a few minutes after his arrival, Juan asked his father to light the fire, which in a short time began burning furiously.

To the right of the fire in the background, you can just make out a small little hut in the background. That is the place of the temazcal, where all 20 or so of us would be huddled inside in short order. Before this, Alejandro's wife Monica administered to us a preparation of San Pedro cactus, a traditional visionary medicine that grows wild throughout the mountains of Ecuador. Compared to my previous experience with San Pedro, this one was very subtle, serving mostly to contribute to my sense of calm and appreciation throughout the grueling temazcal to come. After we partook of the San Pedro, Juan then came around with a snuff he had prepared from tobacco and other herbs, stuffing copious amounts of it up each of my nostrils before ordering me bruskly to inhale it deeply. This I did, and shortly thereafter this round of medicine, the fire was encircled by loud coughing and sneezing from all sides. We were told that this snuff, as well as the San Pedro, would serve to open up the doors of our senses, to permit us to fill our awareness with powerful sights and experiences, while ridding ourselves of the negativity we may have accumulated in our lives.

Then Juan and his father lit a cigar and while smoking it, said prayers of intention and thanksgiving for the ceremony to come. They then handed the cigar to Monica, who did the same. Watching this, I, sitting only a few places ahead of the path of the cigar, began to hastily prepare an adequately profound oration of my own in Spanish, but then saw that once the cigar reached the hands of a layman assistant, it was passed to the next person with nothing more than a few deep inhalations in silence. I had even come up with a phrase or two of prayer in the subjunctive and was quite proud of that fact, if not relieved that I wouldn't have to recite it to a crowd.

At this time, a few Ecuadorians who had journeyed to Susudel for healing underwent a ritual with Juan and his father, which involved the shamans spraying the petitioners' bare chests with a combination of alcohol, herbs and their own saliva before setting them alight. They also did some chiropractic work on them, cracking their backs and shoulders. From the frequent moaning I heard, it wasn't a pleasant process. But Luis, one of those who sought healing, told me later that he'd been suffering from back pain for months and it was now much alleviated.

It was now time for the temazcal to begin. We all put on the lightest clothes we could, swimming trunks and bikinis for most people. Then we walked barefoot clockwise around the fire, and then clockwise around the lodge for the temazcal. We were told not to break the line between the fire and the lodge, which was like an umbilical cord that connected the two. The women all entered first, and then the men, all of us crawling on all fours to fit through the tiny doorway. Once inside, Juan and his father began to explain that the temazcal, where we all now resided, was like the womb of Pacha Mama, the Earth Mother. Within here, we would experience the journey of life and death, through four doors that would be opened and closed throughout the ritual. The first door, the door of nascency, would prove to be the easiest overall.

One by one, blazing red rocks were carefully brought to the door of the lodge by one of Juan's assistants. Juan, seated closest to the door, would then pick up the rock with a tool that he had ready, placed it in a small hole in the center, and Alejandro would sprinkle various herbs on top which at first produced a heavy smoke so thick that I could barely breathe nor see. Meanwhile, the rocks were quickly bringing up the ambient temperature in our little lodge so high that my face and shoulders were already burning from the heat. Once the proper number of rocks had been placed in the center of our circle, Juan ordered the door closed from outside. It was now pitch black, save for the glowing red mass of stones in the middle of us all.

With a few prayers, Juan began ladling water onto the rocks, which rapidly kicked off a steam so hot that it stifled my breath. My lungs refused to inhale an air so humid and burning, and all I could muster were short gasps of air drawn with my head between my knees. How could I possibly withstand hours of this smoke, steam and burning heat? I already began thinking about what I would do if I needed to leave, but I kept reminding myself that I had chosen to engage in this experience and would see it through.

With steam pouring off the rocks, Juan and his father begin beating their drums and shaking maracas, singing the songs of the temazcal. After several renewed doses of water onto the fire and the subsequent bursts of steam throughout our black and enclosed space, Juan ordered the door to be opened. As a fresh salvo of rocks was brought into our circle, this one proving to be easily twice as many as the first, Alejandro explained that this second door was the door of youth and adolescence. Here we should reflect on our lives and shed the negativity of the past, while embracing our spirit of youth. Another sprinkling of herbs was bestowed on the glowing red heart in our center, and Juan invited any of us who would like to, to sing a song. Danilo, sitting to my right, volunteered.

So the door was closed, Danilo was given a maraca, and Juan once again began pouring water onto the rocks, this time in greater quantities than before. While Danilo sang, the steam issued forth copiously, and while I struggled to keep my head lifted, more than once I was forced to duck down and seek cooler air closer to the ground. Meanwhile, our group was packed so densely within the lodge that I had the knees, elbows and feet of my friends jabbing me in various places as we all struggled to find a modicum of comfort. This time the heat was so much greater than before that I could hardly believe it. When I lifted my head high I could literally feel the steam cooking my flesh as though I was holding it above a pot of boiling hot water on the stove, after just removing the lid. Only now I couldn't draw it away, I could only sit there and feel the heat and let it run over me. Each round of steam would last a few minutes before the heat would subside, only to be renewed by Juan's faithful administration of water over the rocks.

How could Danilo sing with a face full of steam? I struggled to draw enough breath to sing the refrains as they came but could scarcely make a sound. It was so hot this time that one person in our group lost control. Sitting right in front of the stones, he couldn't tolerate the intense heat and in a loud, frantic voice, screamed, "Open it, open the damn door!"

Juan let the heat subside, mustering what English he had to soothe the man: "Take it easy man, take it easy. Don't worry!"

Finally, Juan ordered the door to be opened again. There was a collective moan of relief from us all, and Juan was forgiving enough to dole out cups of water to those who needed it, and then threw water on us, which was so cold it was shocking. He also waited a few minutes before giving the order to bring more rocks in, which turned out to be the greatest quantity of all. Alejandro explained that this door was the door of maturity, the door of our lives in the present. Here we would set our intentions and give thanks. He offered my roommate Jenni to sprinkle herbs onto the rocks as they were brought into the circle, and Juan asked if anyone would like to sing. It suddenly occured to me that I wanted to sing, and so I volunteered. I was handed a maraca, told to shake it with confidence and steadiness, and the door was closed.

As the steam rose in the lodge, I began singing a song of thanksgiving in a cadence that had come to me during my previous San Pedro experience:

Thank you, Lord, for what you've done for me.

Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing now.

Thank you, Lord, for every little thing.

Thank you, Lord, for every song I sing.

I don't need no competition,

Because I've made my decision.

You can keep your opinion,

I'm just calling on the wise man's communion.

For those of you that aren't familiar this song of Bob Marley's, I couldn't help but sing it in a slow chant with prolonged syllables. I was amazed by the transformative effect that the singing had on me. I was able to draw long sustained breaths and hold my head high in order to sing loudly. After I had finished singing this newfound tolerance for the heat stayed with me, and I relished in the ability to withstand the heat and steam. It was empowering to me, and I began composing in my mind a prayerful intention that somehow seemed to connect palpably the thoughts in my mind with the will of my body in a way that I had never felt before.

As I recited and perfected this prayer in my mind, I began thinking about events in my past that had led me to where I am now, experiences both pleasant and painful. I gave thanks for them all in a way made more profound by the intense physical duress of the moment, and in my mind that thanksgiving drove my intention with a willpower stronger and more tangible than any that I can remember. That is prayer. That, for me, was the purpose of temazcal. It gave a poignance to my thoughts and prayers of intention, through the sheer overwhelming physical presence of the heat, darkness, and throbbing heart in the center of the lodge.

Around me, people's moans were especially noticable to me. I'm not sure if there was more moaning than before or if it was just more obvious after I had found my peace with the heat of the temazcal, but I found a great solace in keeping quiet in the midst of the groaning of those around me. Interestingly, it was especially the men who seemed to be making the most noise. The women in the group, who composed probably half of the temazcal participants, were silent.

When Juan ordered the door open, so did many in the group, with the loud yell of -Abierta! As Alejandro explained the last door being that of life's end, I was greatly looking forward to the last quantity of stones and the steam they would bring. Once I found comfort in the heat, I felt like I had found myself on the other side of a barrier and was now eager for another experience with it. As Alejandro sprinkled his herbs onto the fire, I breathed deeply and tried to allow as much of fragrance to enter my nose as I could. I leaned forward to be closer to the smoke. As if sensing my willingness, Juan encouragingly said to the group that if we felt heat on a part of our body, to try to expose that part of our body even more to the heat, to allow the heat to have its way with us as it would.

Once all the rocks were in place, the door was closed, and Juan poured so much water on the rocks that the entire lodge was instantly saturated with steam. I held my head high and took deep breaths of the steam, feeling water dripping from my chin, my nose, my elbows, my ears and my hair. As Juan and Alejandro sang the last songs of the temazcal, I renewed my prayer and watched the pulsing red of the stones and felt the heat from it burning my forehead and shoulders. I followed Juan's advice and leaned into the heat, finding a comfort in the burning sensation it caused. I felt like the temazcal was a metaphor for life, that finding peace in the physical challenge presented by the stones was like a crucible that the challenges in our life represents as well: an opportunity for us to polish ourselves and find out who we really are.

When the last door was opened and we all exited the lodge one by one to dry off and stand around the fire, I was impressed by how clean and fresh my body felt. I had expected to feel grimy from the thick smoke and steam and sweat trapped within that small space, but I felt cleaner than I would after a long shower. I looked at the stars, a far different set than I'm used to seeing in the northern hemisphere, and then looked at the moonlit mountains around me, so similar to the mountains of New Mexico. The paradox of the strange sky and familiar landscape was made sharper during a hike we took to Alejandro's land the next day. On the way, we walked past a patch of nopal cactus, so common in the hills around Santa Fe.

I had encountered a lot of this cactus in Oaxaca as well, huge varieties that dwarfed the small patches of it that grow in northern New Mexico. Here in these mountains, they looked much like the nopal I was familiar with, same size, same shape. The only noticable difference for me was the flower, here small and orange, in New Mexico, large and yellow. This cactus, so humble, is the home of the cochinilla, source of the red dye that contributed in large partto making Oaxaca the rich and beautiful city it is, as it was traded around the world for centuries by the Spanish. Here, as in New Mexico, you wouldn't know that to look at this tiny but threatening plant with its thorns and unseen little fibers that imbed themselves in your skin at the slightest contact.

The unassuming nopal has made its habitat throughout the entire great distance between the Andes and the Rockies. It has found itself transformed by virtue of its journey. Is it any different for someone like me, or any other traveler? I'm grateful to have had an experience like this in a place so much like my last home, high in the mountains of Susudel.