Let’s Pave the Rainforest, Misahualli, Ecuador (Jul 2006)

I fell asleep last night listening to the rain plinking steadily on the roof of my breezy cabana, smiling at the sound but also hoping that it would stop before morning. I am, after all, in the middle of a no-shit rainforest, so it is a happy surprise to wake up to clear skies dotted with fluffy clouds. The horizon over the flagging treetops is blue, but a different kind of blue than the sharp, clear air of the mountains; it is hazy and soft somehow.

My hygiene habits have adjusted on this trip, I no longer shower in the morning. There’s no point, as I will immediately set out to get as dirty as possible stomping around exploring, so despite the slight sense of being off-kilter from not following my morning routine, I pull my hair back in a ponytail and spray myself liberally with my precious 100% DEET. It is the most toxic insect repellent commercially available, and I can feel it tingling and stinging into my pores. I throw the bottle in my bag, anticipating relayering myself with poison at some juncture, I am paranoid in my assiduous application of DEET and it’s worked so far, no malaria so far, in fact I have watched lumbering giant mosquitos circle and fly away from my probably melting skin.

After breakfast, I go with my guide to get geared up. Unlike most others here, I am traveling alone, so I get a guide all to myself. He gives me wading boots, encasing my legs in sweaty rubber up to the knee. Already my hiking boot plan has failed. Off we go, and we are doing this a little differently because I’m not a tour group, instead of having a dedicated jeep for our adventures we will hitch a ride to our first trailhead, and it will be a combination of buses and walking afterwards.

The jeep drops us off after a short ride on fairly well-paved roads, and off we go to the Sacred Waterfall. We climb slowly up a rough set of steps set into the muddy hillside, stopping every few minutes so that my guide can show me a plant or flower and explain it’s medical uses. The day is starting to heat up, and the sweat beading all over my body is mingling with the DEET and creating a slick layer of poisonous, dirty sludge. We are just beginning our day.

We go on, stopping less now as we move into the taller trees. The path is not too steep, its not a vertiginous climb, but it is a river of mud still steaming off last night’s rain and it goes straight up, the rude steps of the first section have fallen by the wayside. I slip with every step, clutching at branches and roots as the rubber waders slide treadless in several inches of glop. Every yard of progress I’ve made has been tempered by a foot of sliding, and I am getting dirtier and sweatier and wondering how the hell my guide proceeds with such sure footing, I am stepping exactly where he is and yet here I go sideways and only catch myself from a complete face-plant by thrusting my hand down into the mud. I ask him to slow down, I am panting too because the air is so thick and humid, some rain would be nice right now this is a rainforest where’s the damned rain?

We reach a smoother section, there are some actual stones sunk into the mud on this stretch, some rough indication that this is something other than a wild pig track that humans have adapted to their own purposes, and not that well. My boots are caked with mud, making every step heavier and now I’m carrying my own treachery on my shoes, sliding on the stuff stuck to the bottom even where the ground has traction. We reach a stream and the path ends, will we go upstream or downstream along the bank until we reach a bridge?

How foolish of me to think that there would be a bridge.

My guide leads, the path, it would seem, is to wade upstream for several yards until we reach a break in the foliage on the other side. I am mud all the way up to my thighs, and smeared down my naked arms as well, I have much earlier ditched the long loose layers recommended for jungle weather and also keeping mosquitoes off, it is too fucking hot for that. Rivulets of sweat have traced lines of cleaner skin through the muck all over me, and there are smudges of mud on my face as well where I wiped my brow without thinking of the hand I’d thrust down to save my balance earlier. I am gamely following, teetering against the water’s current and gingerly picking my way step by step in the river, not stepping stone to stepping stone mind you. It occurs to me to wonder, what happens if I fall and, say, sprain an ankle or worse? Is that what it will take to get a helicopter in here to get me out of this jungle hell? Who am I kidding, the closest heli is hundreds of kilometers away, the only way I am getting out of this jungle is the way I came in, sprains, breaks, cuts, and venomous bites be damned.

I stagger and lurch from the water, clumps of mud still clinging to my waders. Oh look, it seems there’s a small hole in the left one, as evidenced by the sloshing wetness covering my foot. This is just getting better and better. There must be a different path out of here, we aren’t even at the waterfall yet but surely we won’t have to backtrack down this path, there’s probably a wide paved access road on the other side and he is just taking me up this way for an authentic experience.

I lean against a tree, panting a little bit, and am torn between wiping the crud off my skin as best I can or adding to it with another layer of DEET. My guide has a slight amused smile, I snarl up at him, “Ever heard of asphalt?! It’s great! You pour it, and then it hardens and it stays that way and you can walk on it ALL THE TIME.”

“Oh, but this is the easy path! Everyone takes this path, groups with senior citizens and small children come up this way, this is easy, very easy.”

I glare. “Easy? Easy? Easy for you, but how about I take you to New York and drop you in Times Square and leave you to navigate the subway to meet me in Tompkins Square thirty minutes later.”

I don’t think he realized how frustrated I am, he backpedals and agrees soothingly that yes, this is easy for him, this is where he’s from but it would be hard for him to be where I’m from. And we are almost there, really. He promises.
One last set of muddy steps, up and up and up, and finally a rickety gate, we have reached the waterfall. Oh no, we have reached the access path for the waterfall, my notion that we had been on the access path was foolish indeed. At least it’s downhill now, but treacherous, treacherous, steep stone steps slick with moisture and I am going very carefully, and we are wading downstream this time it is old hat by now I just want to get to the waterfall, I cannot imagine a greater pleasure right now than plunging into a cold pool of water in the midst of the moist forest and I think I understand why it’s sacred now.

There it is, beautiful manna from heaven, water from a rock, and I tug and yank and pull the rubber prisons from my feet and only then realize that I have forgotten my bathing suit.

La Turista Perdida, Cayambe, Ecuador (Jul 2006)

I can’t sit here forever, so I push up, bracing backwards on my elbows to take the weight of the pack that’s discommoding my center of gravity. I feel more than hear the prrrrr of fabric separating as I do, oh this is just getting better and better isn’t it? Now not only am I thoroughly lost on an unmarked track of a road somewhere in the Andes, not only am I out of water and pantingly dehydrated in the thin altitudinal air, alone and having left no trail of breadcrumbs literal or digital by which my vulture-gnawed corpse may be eventually tracked down and returned to my grieving parents, oh no that just wasn’t going to be quite enough—now I have a giant hole ripped in the seat of my pants. I am tempted to fall right back down to a defeated seat on this rock wall again, but unfortunately that won’t change any of the relevant details here and now I risk having rocks poke at my newly exposed skin through the brand-new ragged tear, so upwards and onwards I suppose, the choices are limited to say the least.

The day had begun so well, too, I should know by now to mistrust auspicious beginnings. Although actually, now that I am contemplating it in the leisure of this entirely lost moment with only my thoughts for company on an abandoned road, the auspiciousness of the day’s beginnings were dubious at best, it’s all relative. Leaving Otavalo in the morning after the market, I had aimed for the market in the next town over, Cotacachi. My guidebook has told me that it’s the second-best place in Ecuador to buy handmade leather goods, and it’s a lot closer to my planned route than the first-best place so I am on a mission for a lovely leather handbag, or perhaps a belt, or I don’t really know but I certainly want to come away with some manner of trophy or prize, something about which I can modestly say, “Oh, I just picked it up at the leather market in Cotachi...oh, a little town in Ecuador…it was about $15, I think?” when I am complimented on my unusual and lovely accessory.

Leaving Otovalo, then, and early early, both to hit the market right when it starts and presumably snap up the best or most unusual products and also because I have planned a rigorous day for myself, after the market I am to head back south towards Cayambe and then switch buses to the Hacienda Guachala, where I want to arrive no later than 2pm so that I can go horseback riding up to the old Incan ruins and be back before dark. Arriving in Cotacachi, early early and I get off the bus, the station is a bit outside of town away from the main square and for a market day I’m surprised how few people are on the bus with me. I pull out my guidebook and orient myself on the sketched out map, the town square is that way and up, of course its uphill, everything is in these Andean towns and is there any particular reason why they couldn’t build a town in a valley, or on a plain perhaps?

Through deserted streets with shuttered windows, I am the only person around and all the shops are closed. I find a tienda with it’s beaten tin shutter propped open on a stick, buy some cigarettes and some water. I ask which way the market is, I fail at this spectacularly but the dessicated old man manning the tienda knows where I’m going anyway, why else would I be here? He confirms that I’m headed in the right direction and eventually I arrive at the main square, the heart of the market. Or at least, it will be at some point today, but right now I have the park to myself, sharing only with a few pigeons and one of those old men that gravitate to the main square of any city or town to contemplate the Spanish colonial façade of the church that inevitably presides over any Latin American city or town.

I sit down on a bench, contemplating the Spanish colonial façade of the church presiding over the square. Smoke a cigarette and I am trying to appear as if this is exactly what I intended, arriving at this deserted square, maybe just to look at these giant plaster statues of garishly painted farmers, it reminds me of Paul Bunyan statues for some reason, folk heros. There’s probably a story associated with this oversized diorama, but I don’t know what it is and will likely never know, the old man on the bench could probably tell me, such stories seem to be the prerogative of the old men in the square but I don’t understand enough Spanish to hear this story or any other he may have.

Still just me and the pigeons, and the old man and the church and the diorama, and now someone is pulling up a wheeled cart covered with a frayed blue tarp. With a couple of deft gestures the cart becomes a pop-up craft stall, and the woman starts hanging leather handbags and trinkets on hooks studding the thin poles holding up the top of her stall. I give her a few minutes to set up and then casually sidle over, touching everything lightly and not speaking, pretending that I am one of a swarm of people evaluating one of many vendor stalls. My pretense isn’t going so well, and I’d like to just buy something and then get on with my day and get out of here but there’s nothing here I want, the handbags are all diamond patterned leather with a fringe that I don’t like and furthermore I saw these all over the market at Otovalo yesterday, I want something different, something the tourist groups swarming yesterday’s market couldn’t get there because they didn’t know to come even higher up to this town today, I want the prize, the reward for my superior knowledge and planning and this booth doesn’t have it.

Back to my bench, then, and oh here comes another tarp-covered cart and the magician’s touch that makes it a craft stall, and as I feared it is all the same things, that is the way of these markets the world over, everyone selling the same products and all competing to sell you the same trinket, buy it from me not her. I sidle over anyway, what else am I going to do here, touch everything gently, smile and step away. I am running out of time if I am going to keep my day’s schedule, and I decide that getting to my horseback ride is more important that waiting for these vendors to trickle slowly into the square to display their identical goods, and didn’t anyone tell them that markets are supposed to start at dawn?

I leave the square empty-handed, walk down the cobbled street back towards the bus station, downhill this way at least, the sun coming higher over the mountains and now the town is starting to wake up, there are sweepers in the street and the shop windows are rattling open, maybe here but no it’s those same diamond-patterned leather bags and so I move past and return to the terminal, and board my next bus, on to Cayambe, this goes smoothly too so I am on track so far. We rumble down the mountain and around the curves, it’s about an hour on the bus and then arriving, I’ve looked and my book tells me there’s no central station and the place I’m aiming for is a little off the track, there’s no direct bus anyway, I’ll have to catch another bus and then get dropped at the closest access point and walk, and I am trying to make this connection fast I can’t afford to get stuck waiting for a bus for two hours if I am going to end my day on a mountain pony so I jump off the bus in Cayambe, according to my book I need to go two blocks to the right and then one straight ahead and then I’ll be at the right local bus so I walk fast and see a bus right there, it’s about to pull away perfect timing but have to make sure it’s the right one, I shout “Guachala?” The bus tout responds in rapid Spanish, I look at him blankly and point at the bus and ask again, “Guachala?” and he nods his head while rolling his eyes and I climb on, third bus of the day down and I am on my way and almost there.

The bus is supposed to drop me off right by the equator, there’s a little monument there proclaiming the belly of the globe and we pass it on the road, I tug at the tout’s sleeve and ask the question with my eyes, it’s more eloquent than my Spanish. He nods, he knows what I’m worried about, this isn’t the right place. He asks me a question, I guess trying to confirm exactly where I want to go, I understand only “Guachala” so I say “Si, la hacienda Guachala,” my guidebook said the bus drivers would understand where I wanted to go. It’s an old hacienda or farm estate that’s been reimagined as an eco-hotel ranch in the heart of the valley and it’s the only place a gringa like me would be headed. My research indicated that I could take a taxi from Cayambe, or alternately take a local bus, this one that I’m on, and ask to be dropped at the access road, from which it would be an easy one mile walk to a clearly marked sign. The bus tout and I have now conferred several times and agreed on “Guachala,” so we are all good to go and he shouts to the driver to stop a few minutes later, he’s given up on talking to me since sign language works better and points at me, and then the dirt road that is branching off to the left, I step off the bus and ask one more time, “Guachala?” pointing to the indicated road, just to make sure one last time that we’re all clear, he nods and rolls his eyes again “Guachala” declarative and certain, and then the bus pulls away.

It’s a crisp, clear day, middle of the summer but pleasantly cool high here in the mountains, and the road across from me is invitingly shaded by tall trees on both sides. My directions say I can take another bus the rest of the way, but it’s only a mile and it’s a beautiful day and early too, before noon and I am right on schedule, I am sure I can walk it before a bus would come anyway and it’s a better story to “hike” in to this hotel as that is definitely how I will tell this story, with no mention of the bus option. There’s a bounce in my step, I adjust the straps on my backpack and make sure my water is handy, I only have about half a liter left but its only a mile and I’ll be at the lovely hacienda soon, I cross the road and set off down that shaded road feeling a little bit like an adventurer from a fantasy novel.

A beautiful day and walking down a pretty road, and not steep uphill for once just a gentle rise. I walk for a while, I’m not really keeping track of time yet. I know it should take me about 15 minutes to walk a mile but everything is a little harder here at high altitude so it may take me longer, I make sure to keep drinking water, hydrating is important. There’s a fork in the road, to the right it continues on and to the left there’s a gate, could this be it? But my directions don’t say to bear left, and this gate doesn’t have a sign and there’s supposed to be a sign and I’m not sure if I’ve gone far enough yet, I pause for a moment, indecisive. Wait, perfect, I see three people walking down the road towards me from beyond the gate, I wave and shout, “Donde esta la hacienda Guachala?” pointing first towards the gate, and then towards the branch off to the right. They look at me warily and then shout an answer, I don’t understand so I ask again, “Guachala? La hacienda Guachala?” And they nod to each other and then point up the right branch, I smile and wave a thank you, adjust my pack on my back and continue on up the road, still stepping lightly and confident that I am almost there.

The road is climbing more here, the uphill is a little steeper and the trees have petered out, the sun beating directly down on my head. Off to my right I see a giant plastic tent thing in a field, looks like an agriculture project of some kind, there are four of them in a row and that is definitely not a hotel ranch and I keep going. The road is getting rougher, the ruts deeper and with fist-sized rocks cropping up occasionally, I haven’t seen a car or a bus yet and I’ve been walking for a while now shouldn’t there have been a bus by now? But there hasn’t been, and those people told me I was going in the right direction so onwards and upwards, and I see a gate off to the left, it leads to those giant plastic greenhouse things it’s not where I’m headed but there’s a man in rubber waders by the gate, he’s leaning on it laconically watching the approach of the tall blonde with a backpack out here where there are no other blondes with backpacks, and as I approach I stop, leaning on my knees for a second and panting a bit, “Donde esta la hacienda Guachala?” He looks at me blankly for a second, I know I asked that question right but he seems confused, I ask again, “Guachala?” And he nods, a little abruptly as if startled, and confirms, “Guachala,” but doesn’t indicate a direction. I ask again, “Donde?” pointing both ways up the road, ahead and then back the way I came although I know it’s not back there I would have passed it by now and there’s going to be a sign. He nods again, says “Guachala,” and points up the road, I am still on the right heading so I wave my thanks and continue on.

I keep walking, the road worsening and sun growing hotter, I take my last sip of water and something has definitely gone wrong here because even allowing for altitude slowing me down I have walked far more than a mile and I know it, but everyone keeps telling me that the Hacienda is up this road, from the guy on the bus to those people by the first branch to the dude in the waders so I’m not sure how I went wrong but I did somehow, and I am sweating and tired and this bag is heavy, maybe I should just sit down for a minute but there’s nowhere to sit down out here on this empty road other than in the middle of it, despite the lack of traffic I’m not quite comfortable doing that so I continue on. A few minutes later I see a low rock wall to the right, loosely stacked and then it looks like covered with chicken wire to keep the wall a wall rather than a pile of rocks. I’ll just take a little break here, take stock and evaluate my options, which really means take a moment and pretend that I have options.

I sit down, don’t bother taking my pack off I’ll just have to put it back on and if I lean back a bit the bottom of my pack rests on the wall too, just take a minute and get my breathing back to normal and I really wish I had more water but I don’t. So nice to sit down, and I consider my options, I could just stay here, sitting comfortably, until a car comes along and, except there hasn’t been a car for the hour I’ve been on this road so that is probably not going to work. I could backtrack the way I came, back to Cayambe and then get a taxi I guess, but that would take the rest of the day and I know I’m close, I know it, I followed all the directions perfectly and Guachala is somewhere close by it must be, probably just a few more minutes up the road and I know they’ll have water there. Whenever I get there. So I take a deep breath and stand up and then that prrrring sound…

I stand there, swaying a little. I consider crying, hey look I do have options, I could cry or not cry, it’s nice to feel like I have a choice of some kind. Crying, however, would just mean that I would be a tired, crying tourist, lost in the middle of the road and alone and still not at the Hacienda Guachala or knowing which way to go, which doesn’t really progress me much towards the goal of being a non-crying, non-tired tourist seated in a comfy chair at the Hacienda Guachala which has to be somewhere around here, it has to be. I decide not to cry, for the moment, although I am reserving the right to cry later if I deem it necessary or helpful in any way. I adjust my pack again, this time trying to pull it lower to perhaps conceal the rip in my jeans a little bit, as if there is anyone out on this godforsaken road to see it anyway. I continue on in the same direction, if I am lost, which I am, I am at least going to commit to being lost, I shall be as thoroughly lost as it is possible to be, despite the fact that I have that sneaking feeling that the Hacienda Guachala is probably right in front of me and lit up with blinking lights and neon arrows and I have just somehow managed, with all of my considerable talent of being oblivious, to not see it.

Around the curve and then Eureka, at last, I see something off to my left that looks like a driveway and not to an agricultural tent, there is a bona fide fountain there I have found something! I am not ready to quite believe that I have found the Hacienda Guachala, there is no sign but this is by far the most promising thing I’ve found on this road yet. There’s a middle-aged woman near the driveway, she sees me approaching and pauses, looking at me curiously, and I stagger up, panting, and ask, “Esta la Hacienda Guachala?” Her face smooths a bit, “Si,” and “Oh thank god I thought I’d never get here,” speaking English now because I know the people at the Hacienda speak English, I emailed in my reservation a week ago and they are expecting me, but her face is crunched in confusion again, she didn’t understand me and does not seem to have any expectation that a tall blonde tourist will wander in off the road, this must not be it after all and we try to exchange information but it’s not working very well, she can see the defeat on my face though and stops, says that she will get her daughter.

She steps away and calls in a clear, ringing voice, I am familiar with that tone, it’s how my mother used to call me and my sister home when we were playing out in the countryside where we grew up. A moment later and a young girl runs up, she’s about twelve or so. She has a quick conversation with her mother in rapid Spanish and then turns to me where I am swaying with my knees locked, and asks “What are you trying to find?”

“La Hacienda Guachala.”

“This is the Hacienda Guachala.”

“The hotel?”

“Aaaah!” We are having a moment of clarity here at last, and there is another rapid exchange of Spanish and then, “It is on this road,” I was headed in the right direction the whole time go me, “About five kilometers,” you have got to be kidding me there is no way I can hike another two and half miles up hill with this backpack and no water, her mother doesn’t understand the conversation but sees my face fall and steps in, why don’t I come inside for a moment and set my bag down.

I am not sure this is appropriate and I feel like I’m intruding, a stray wandering in off the side of a mountain, but they are kind and I need to sit down and take my pack off so I follow them into their ranch house. The daughter sits down to talk to me, she is excited to speak English and also to make fun of her mother for not speaking English “very good.” They offer me water, I accept gratefully. They also offer coffee, or would I like some fruit perhaps but I really don’t want to impose and the chance to sit down in the shade and drink some water without my backpack is all I wanted or needed right now. Well, that and to be at the Hacienda Guachala, which I have still not quite managed.

The daughter explains that her father will be in soon, he is trying to sell one of the horses or something like that, and until then we make the obligatory small talk of travelers. She is really excited when she hears that I’m from New York City, so delighted that she delights me too, after all let’s think about context here—she lives on a farm in a remote corner of the Andes and a New Yorker has just walked up to her house to have a conversation in English. She introduces me to their dogs, they are beautiful, and we are still waiting on her father so she insists on showing me the farm, there are llamas and a pond and a stunning mountainscape all around, I could be Julie Andrews singing in the Alps, except that I can’t sing.

We go back inside, her father is done with his transaction and I going to meet Josef. He strides over and shakes my hand, says in perfectly accented and inflected English, “Hi how are you?” This is certainly an unlooked-for boon; it turns out Josef was formerly an English teacher in Columbia. We talk, and I tell him I am from North Carolina originally, explain that I grew up on something similar to their hacienda ranch. At last I learn where I went astray on this misbegotten search for the Hacienda Guachala:

As it would turn out, the entire valley is the historic Guachala estate, and the bus driver dropped me off at the wrong access point. This explains why everyone kept pointing me further up the road, a tactic which I was coming to regard darkly as a malicious prank pulled on the lost tourist, but no; the whole valley is the Hacienda Guachala, and the hotel that I am aiming for is only one small part of it. Josef’s sister in law owns the hotel, or something like that, a cousin or other relation. He offers to drive me up there, I accept but then his daughter interrupts, she had insisted that she would take me on horseback. Josef pauses, and then asks me, “Would you like to go by horse?”

I don’t want to intrude, don’t want to impose, but I really really do want to go by horse and it’s not so much of imposition really when it is making his daughter’s day, as this whole interlude most definitely is. He sends his farm hand to saddle up the horses, they are Peruvian walking horses and we talk horse-talk for a while, the only walking horses I’ve been on are Tennessee walkers, hearing of the Peruvian breed is news to me. He’s not really familiar with quarter horses, which is largely what I grew up riding, which makes sense as it’s a Western US breed by and large, a cross between the Indian plains ponies and the Spanish stallions.

He assigns me to his daughter’s horse, and she runs alongside as we trot up the road, its shaded by trees again and I am enjoying the peculiarly smooth walking gait of this horse, it is subtly different from the Tennessee walker gait, and I am getting my horseback ride after all. We arrive at a hacienda, yes yet another Hacienda Guachala but it’s the right one this time, we’ve come up essentially by the back door and there isn’t a sign if I’d been on my own I might have missed it, well that’s not true if I’d continued on I certainly would’ve run eagerly to any sign of human habitation whatsoever and damn the lack of signage. We pull up and dismount, he is going to walk me inside and make sure that I am solidly landed in my intended destination.

He greets his sister-in-law or cousin or whatever she is, they embrace and kiss on the cheeks, they are speaking in rapid Spanish again and I can’t understand much of it but he gestures to me and says “la turista perdida,” he is explaining that he picked up a lost tourist off the side of the road. I am still pretty tired, but this whole interlude has given me my sense of humor back and when the hotel manager turns to me to greet me I smile and say, “Si, yo estoy la turista perdida,” and we all get a big laugh out of it. Josef walks me in, he takes my notebook and writes down his email address first though, if I run into any problems in Ecuador, if I need any help I should call him. I have a $10 bill folded in my hand, I have read that if people help you you should tip them, I am not sure quite how to do this but I am first world and they are not and they have definitely helped me. I realize just in time though that this isn’t the kind of help you tip for, this is hospitality, it’s different, a tip would be insulting, would my parents appreciate a tip if a stranded tourist wandered up to their house and needed help, no they would not.

As we walk onto the veranda, Josef sees another family eating lunch, there are shouts of joy and surprise as they greet each other vigorously. I learn that these are old friends, from Colombia, they have not seen each other in years and this family just happens to be on vacation at the Hacienda Guachala this weekend, the world is really that small, what a coincidence. Josef bids me farewell, so does his daughter, and I am already plotting the gifts I will send to them when I get home, a “Brooklyn” t-shirt for the daughter and maybe some of my mom’s homemade pickles, appropriate hospitality gifts, I have already given Josef my parents’ phone number and assured him that he will always be welcome in North Carolina, knowing that my parents will be eternally grateful to the man who picked up their dumbass lost daughter in the third world and delivered her to safety, sitting in a comfy chair at the Hacienda Guachala, not-crying, not-lost.

I will wait until tomorrow to ride up to the ruins.

Border Crossing, Ecuador to Peru (Aug 2006)

Cuenca is just as beautiful as everyone told me it would be. It also happens to be really boring, an intensely Catholic city that rolls up the streets at dusk. Oh, it’s lovely to wander about during the day, gawking at architecture and wandering through the museums, but there’s no way it has enough to hold my interest for the next three days before I head back to Quito to fly home.

After three weeks in the Andes, wearing sweaters and demanding extra blankets in July, I am ready for something different, it is summer and I am in South America and I want a beach. Problem is, the closest beach in Ecuador involves almost two days on a bus to get there. Mancora, on the other hand, is ironically much closer—it just means I have to cross the border into Peru.

I’m nervous about this. Somehow, magically, I’ve managed to bump along here in the third world, all by myself and not understanding any Spanish. Ecuador’s good for that, prices are generally fixed, people are generally nice, and it’s generally safe. None of that holds true for Peru, as I’ve heard from travelers coming up north from Macchu Picchu. To compound the matter, I don’t have a guidebook for Peru—I’ve been clutching to my Ecuador Rough Guide as if it is the Alpha and Omega of my trip, it’s filled with notes and color-coded shiny stars and sticky pieces of paper, this has been my Bible for the past three weeks and I can’t imagine venturing into a new place without it.

But it is really boring in Cuenca.

The first thing I have to check is the immunization information—I didn’t need a yellow fever shot to come to Ecuador, and I don’t need one to enter Peru from Ecuador, but I might well need one to re-enter Ecuador from Peru, internet information is a little fuzzy on this and I don’t want to get stuck there when I have a plane to pick up in Quito. The woman at the tourist information booth on Cuenca’s main square assures me that I will be fine. I question her again, she’s not a guidebook but she seems convinced, even though she hesitated at first. If I get stuck in Peru I am going to blame her.

I met some German girls who had come up from Peru a week before, and I borrow their Lonely Planet, wishing all the time it was a Rough Guide, I trust those guides more than the LP. Their guide has two pages on Mancora and how to get there, so I take a few notes on the bus transfers required and write down a couple of hostel names. There are a couple of ways to manage this border crossing, everything seems to indicate that I should go through Huaquillas and there are a couple of transit options. I am tempted to go the total shoestring route, local buses all the way with multiple transfers and a couple of combi taxis in the mix. Now that would be an adventure.

Ultimately though, I chicken out. I am tempting the gods quite enough by striking out from my Ecuadorian safe space, I will take the luxury bus. I have to come back to Cuenca anyway, and I don’t want to take the whole backpack with me across the border, I’m tired of carrying it and also the bigger the bag, the more vulnerable you are, so I buy a small duffel bag in the market and pack for a beach weekend, just a bathing suit, flip flops, towel, and a couple of tank tops. To the main Cuenca bus station and I’m off for the first leg, Cuenca to Machala.

Machala is still in Ecuador, so this is the easy part, we pull into the central bus station and I learn that I have an hour or so until the luxury bus leaves. I buy a quimbolita from a street vendor, I love these things it’s become my favorite bus snack, a dense cornbread wrapped in a banana leaf and sometimes filled with meat. There’s an internet café across from the bus station, so I go over to see if I can avoid backtracking this entire bus route on my way back, maybe there’s a hopper flight from Tumbes to Cuenca, no luck it seems I’d have to fly from Tumbes to Lima to Quito to Cuenca and that’s just ridiculous, maybe if I’d brought my pack with me but I didn’t so I am resigned to busing it all the way back after this little weekend adventure is over.

Time to board, and the luxury bus is really quite luxurious indeed, it’s a double decker with reclining seats and footrests, there are TVs playing movies and it’s comfortably air-conditioned. It’s about twice as expensive as the other options, but the bonus here is that the bus will take me all the way through to Peru, making the necessary border immigration stops, rather than getting dropped off on the Ecuador side and having to manage the crossing myself, then picking up transport on the Peru side. Huaqillas is supposed to be one of the easier border checkpoints but as at any border, you’re vulnerable and exposed and there’s a whole battalion of people hovering to take advantage of that.

We reach the border and the bus stops. I don’t really know what I need to do so I just follow the slightly impatient lady from the bus company, and trail off into the station after everyone else. I’m the only gringo and I get in the wrong line, everyone else is waiting in the line for Ecuadorian or Peruvian nationals and I am obviously neither. The immigration official hands me a piece of paper, it’s in Spanish and so are his instructions, he grimaces at me wearily and waves me off to fill it out after a few failed attempts to explain it to me. I step uncertainly to the side and try to puzzle this out, and while I’m all apuzzled a local guy rushes up to me and says, “I will explain you, I will help you.” He takes it away from me, I was already halfway there with my name and passport number but he insists and I don’t have the wherewithal to reject his insistence, I’ve heard about this happening, he’s next going to insist that I give him money for assisting me but I just won’t, that’s my solution, and I’m just too confused by this whole process to stop him. I wish I spoke more Spanish.

All the paperwork is filled out now and the guy leaves while I get my passport stamped, maybe he was just being nice after all. I leave the office and head back to where the bus is waiting, no such luck here’s my new friend or really jackal as he should be known, or coyote and he is demanding that I give him twenty dollars. I wave him off but he follows, I laugh at his twenty dollar request, it’s an absurd amount of money for this part of the world. He did help me, though, so I give him two dollars just as that slightly impatient lady from the bus approaches, she’s seen what’s going on and she chases him off, guides me back to the bus, stupid gringo.

I’m a little shaken, I thought I was tougher than that but I was wrong, see what happens when I don’t have my guidebook? Thank god I decided to take the luxury bus.

Now that we’ve passed immigration, we have to actually cross the border. We can’t do that on the bus, so they drop us off in the town and point in the direction of Peru; they’ll pick us up on the other side. The area around the bridge is frenetic, merchants and food vendor stalls crunched up on top of each other and sideways in this dusty, hot town with nothing to recommend it other than it’s fortuitous position between countries. I’m meaner than I need to be, probably, as I snarl at everyone who tries to talk to me, tries to sell me something. Over a simple footbridge and now I’m here, I’ve arrived in Peru. I follow my fellow busmates and we board the bus again, the next stop is Peruvian immigration and for the next few hundred meters I am not anywhere officially, I have left Ecuador but am not yet in Peru.

Peruvian customs is much easier, and we get back on the bus and go on to Tumbes. From there I need to find a bus to Mancora, but I also need to get some solas, the local currency, all I have is dollars from Ecuador. There’s a guy on the bus with me and he has already guessed I’m headed to Mancora, where else would I be going on this bus from Machala to Tumbes, if I wanted to go to Lima or Cuzco from Ecuador I wouldn’t chosen a different route, maybe through Villacamba. He speaks pretty decent English and he’s very patient with my non-existent Spanish, I ask him where I can go to get solas and he looks at me, the earnest and inexperienced, perhaps slightly dim tourist, and says that I should go to the money exchanges. This is not terribly helpful.

I disembark in Tumbes. I don’t have a map of this town, no friendly hints as to the best or safest places to change money, and worst of all there are no central bus stations in Peru, the bus companies are all spread out around the city. The city I don’t have a map of. I have no idea where I’ll find my next bus to Mancora.

There are tuk-tuk drivers swarming the bus as we get off, they drive auto-rickshaws around the city as a cab alternative for short distances. I’m overwhelmed and mostly I just start saying “No” over and over again, have to get clear of these parasites. My new bus acquaintance directs me to one tuk-tuk driver, I don’t trust him really but what else am I going to do? I’m at the mercy of these people, I just want to get to my next bus as fast as possible.

I tell my driver that I want to find a money exchange and the bus to Mancora. He drives us around for a while, everything I wanted was probably within walking distance of where I got off the bus but I don’t know that for sure and I don’t know what direction it’s in. He insists on talking to me in Spanish even though I’ve explained repeatedly that I don’t understand. I change some money and then he takes me around to a bus company, he says this is the next bus to Mancora and I really have no choice but to believe him. I made a mistake though, we didn’t agree on a price before I got in and now he’s telling me that I owe him 20 solas, I don’t know anything about this place but I know that the going rate for a tuk-tuk ride in town is about 2 solas. It’s too late now though, maybe if I’d taken him up on his offer to be my Peruvian husband I wouldn’t be getting ripped off now.

I snarl at him, letting him know that at least I’m aware I’m getting ripped off, I may be a clueless gringa but I know that much. He leaves, and now I just want to get out of this place, it’s dusty and dirty and hot and these people suck. I go into the bus station and they tell me the next bus will leave for Mancora in 6 hours. What the hell am I going to do in Tumbes for 6 hours??

I don’t know where anything is here, I could choose to just hover close to this miserable bus company office for the next six hours waiting for the bus that will take two hours to get to Mancora, or I could venture forth all defenseless into the teeming flocks of tourist vultures that nest in Tumbes and try to find another way.

I’m not a particularly patient woman, so I venture forth, keeping careful track of how many blocks I’m going and what turns I’m taking so that if nothing else at least I can backtrack to the six hour wait if I have to. I find a couple of other bus companies, but no one is going to Mancora any sooner than the one I just left. I’m about to give up when I hear a tout shouting, “Mancora, Mancora!” It’s a combi taxi, which means it’s a minivan with people crammed into it, he’s going to Mancora and leaving right now. I go over and ask how much, it’s 6 solas and I climb in. I think that I’m the last one in because it’s so full, but no another two people and their boxes and bags squeeze in, I’m hunched into a corner in enforced fetal position and really damned glad that I don’t have my backpack right now.

We leave a few minutes later, and it’s a uncomfortable two hour drive down the PanAmerican Highway. Pretty though, with the desert-ish scrub out the left window and occasional glimpses of the Pacific out the left. Out of Tumbes at least and now these people seem nicer, I manage to tell them where I’m trying to go and when we get to Mancora at last they make sure that I’m pointed in the right direction to find my hotel, the one whose name I scribbled down from the Lonely Planet guide a few days ago.

I walk in, the hostel is right on the beach. They do have a room available, and I just go ahead and book it for the next three nights, for better or worse I’m staying here. Traumatic enough to get here and I am not going to bother with shopping around for a better or different hostel tomorrow, this place is right on the beach and that’s all I wanted really. I drop my bags in the room and then walk out, sinking into soft sand almost immediately. The Pacific is right there in front of me, and the hostel beachside bar has tables stretching almost to the water’s edge. I sit down, light a cigarette, order a mojito from the waitress who swings by, and watch the sun set into the ocean in Mancora.

Swapping Stories with Strangers in Otavalo, Ecuador (Jul 2006)

I squeeze onto the bus at 6am and quickly appropriate a window seat, sliding my backpack onto the floor underneath my feet. It’s my third day here and I don’t trust my pack out of my sight yet; I’d rather ride for several hours crunched into the fetal position clutching my meager belongings than watch the handlers toss it up on the roof. I’ll be crunched into the fetal position anyway, as these buses seem to be designed for riders with a maximum height of 5’4”. Looking around, I can understand why; I am definitely the anomaly here, my nearly 6’ of paleness contorted as if I’m in a medieval torture device.

My glance is quick, though, and safely hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. I don’t want to make eye contact with anybody, I’m nervous and alone and I don’t speak Spanish and I stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. I stare aggressively out the window as if the dirty bus station is the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my life. It may be my first time visiting the third world, but at least I’m an expert at GO AWAY body language.

The bus is filling up, and the empty seat beside me is bound to be filled eventually. I am rather dreading it, not knowing if I will be sitting next to a woman clutching a dirty child, or a shabby package tied with string, or a chicken, or worse next to a leering man (no taller than 5’4”) with black teeth and dirty fingernails. These seem to be the options, and whoever it is even after three days I know they’ll likely spend the three hour bus ride gawking openly at me. It’s almost definitely not malicious or mean-spirited; if you got on a bus and the last empty seat was next to Sasquatch you’d stare too.

I’m staring out the window so aggressively that I don’t even see the man when he stops at my row. “May I sit here?” he asks politely, in American-inflected English. I start, which rather ruins the image I’ve been cultivating, and stammer, “S-sure.” He is indeed around 5’4”, and settles in with a modern-looking backpack cradled on his lap. No chickens or children. I return to my aggressive staring.

“Where are you from?” He asks, again politely. No gawking, no leering, and his teeth seem to be in pretty good shape.

“New York.”

“The city? What part?”

“…Brooklyn?”

“I lived in Manhattan Valley when I was there.”

“Really? When did you live in New York?” My tense GO AWAY posture is dissolving.

“A couple of years ago. I was studying Performance at NYU.”

Unbelievable. The random stranger who chose the seat next to Sasquatch on the bus to Otovalo is in my field, and it’s a pretty small field with two main schools. I went to the other one, but as we compare notes we determine that we do indeed know many of the same people.

His name is Wolf, which is probably a name he gave himself but isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds in the performance field, where people take on personas and end by living them. He’s going to Otovalo to work with a community performance group on an activist piece, using traditional performance styles and mask puppetry to raise awareness of issues within the indigenous population. Damn, this is interesting.

We talk about Ecuador, too, and traveling. He tries to advise me, saying “Just try not to look like a touris…” and breaks off, taking another look at me. “I know. I’m tall,blonde, and I have a backpack. It’s not gonna happen.” We laugh together.

He invites me to come to their performance workshop that evening; I uncertainly demur. No matter how interesting this is, he’s still a stranger and a male in a foreign country known for it’s machismo attitudes towards women, especially women alone.

The bus pulls in to it’s stop outside of town at 8am. My guidebook is silent on this, I don’t know how to get to the market from the bus stop. Wolf guides me, we share a cab to town and I check into my hotel, randomly chosen from the Rough Guide because it’s right on the main square. We part ways, him to make masks and me to shop, but have agreed to meet for an early dinner or a late lunch, however it shakes out.

Otovalo’s Sunday market is rumored to be the largest on the South American continent, and spreads over more than a square mile. I plunge into the middle of it, dodging the tour groups of fifteen or more that plod together. We’re all tourists, all Sasquatches, but I enjoy a private feeling of slight superiority that at least I’m not wearing a souvenir sun visor and a fanny pack while treading closely on the heels of a weary guide. There are bright tapestries everywhere, and toy llamas, and smoke billows everywhere from grubby hot plates issuing delicious odors of cooking meat that will probably give me food poisoning. Guinea pig is the specialty here. I eat a slice of watermelon instead.

I’m here to shop, and shop I shall. I wander through the same streets many times, the vendors calling out to me in words I don’t understand. I try to keep moving, a permanent half smile pasted on my face and still shielded from eye contact. I start buying things, slowly at first, hesitant. I don’t know what these things are worth, and they’re certainly not going to tell me. I haggle for my first item, a small toy llama. I’m sure I overpay for it, but it’s a mistake that costs all of a dollar and I’m ok with that. I buy more things, jewelry and sweaters and ponchos, bargaining blindly. I don’t even know if I want these things, but even as a not terribly consumerist American, I know how to buy stuff. Americans are good at buying stuff and spending money, one of the few reasons we are welcomed as tourists.

By early afternoon I’ve exhausted the market, but it’s too early to meet Wolf. I drop off my bags at the hotel and consult my guidebook. Wolf had mentioned a waterfall near town, an easy bus ride away. I have time to kill so I decide to walk, noting the directions to “go out of town to the road paralleling the railroad tracks.” This road doesn’t have a name, but then again none of them do. My guidebook says, “You can’t miss it,” although I know they’ve grossly underestimated my ability to miss things. Nonetheless I head out again; I don’t have a sun visor or a fanny pack, I didn’t come here to hunker in my hotel room and wait for someone to tell me what to do.

The sun is brilliant up here, at high altitude in this Andean valley, with rafts of clouds breaking up the sunbeams playing over the landscape. I push back through the market, faster this time, no half smile, and then out trying to find the railroad tracks. I find them, eventually, and start walking up the nameless dirt road, just praying that I have not indeed missed an unmissable road that lies elsewhere.

I’m the only non-native in sight, walking alone up this road, while locals occasionally pass by going the other way. They stare openly, as if to confirm that I’m lost and clearly not anywhere that tourists should be. It’s not unfriendly, though, and it’s still broad daylight and I can turn back and retrace my steps if I need to, so I keep going. Some kids are playing soccer in a field to my left, and a stray kick sends the ball straight towards me. Ten faces turn towards me in unison, expectant grins hovering just out of sight—how great is it going to make their day when the gringa kicks the ball back into the game?

I try, but I miss the ball entirely the first time. The second time I make contact but the ball skews off in the wrong direction. The kids are all laughing now, but it’s not unkind laughter, exultant in a different way; they get to feel superior to this awkward first worlder, and that’s fine with me. I smile and wave back and then continue on.

And on. I see a herd of llamas grazing, which is interesting enough to distract me from my increasing conviction that I’m going the wrong way. Finally I see a steep gravel road branching off to the right, and wonder of wonders it’s even signposted. My guidebook only lied a little bit; I was on the right road the whole time, but this whole endeavor was a little more than a casual 15 minute stroll. I’m not sure whether to blame the book, the lingering altitude sickness that leaves me panting and dizzy, or my general poor physical condition. Whatever, I’m here.

The road leads up to a compound on the edge of eucalyptus grove, and there are signs in Spanish and English telling me that this is a sacred waterfall. I’m not really clear on how or why it’s sacred, and as I spend the next few weeks traveling through Ecuador it seems like every waterfall is sacred in some non-specific way. Maybe it’s something they say for the tourists, so we feel like we’re having an authentic experience. Maybe here in this land of mountains and jungles, streams of clear water falling from great heights are always sacred. No way to tell.

The grove is peaceful, despite the chattering stream of people moving up and down the path. It’s not as crowded as the market was by a long shot, and there are no fanny packs or visors; this place isn’t on the group itinerary. I walk slowly, closing my eyes occasionally to breathe in the crisp smell of eucalyptus leaves. I would never have thought to find a grove of eucalyptus here, associated as it is my mind with pandas in China. When I reach the waterfall it’s pretty enough, but for me the forest has more of an impact. I wander around for a while and then turn back, at least it’s downhill this time going down that dirt road that parallels the railroad tracks. The soccer game is over, and the sun is sinking lower, piercing beams slicing at acute angles across the valleys.

It’s time to meet up with Wolf. Actually, it’s too early for dinner but I don’t care, I’m starving and have eaten only a slice watermelon today and that was before my inadvertent hike. I take a quick shower and wear my new poncho and the red beaded necklace.

We walk through town to a restaurant that Wolf knows, Italian food, oddly enough. There are long, heavy wooden tables with benches and a fireplace, but it’s too warm for a fire. We are the only people there, and the staff welcomes Wolf as a familiar face. There’s a minimum of smirking at the fact that he’s accompanied by me. He recommends a pasta dish, assuring me that it’s safe to eat even for a delicate, pampered tummy like mine.

We talk over dinner, and I explain that I don’t speak a word of Spanish although I can understand some of it filtered through my spotty memory of French. He insists that I should just start speaking it, as much as I can even if it’s only a word or two and that I will learn quickly. In fact, he suggests that we carry on our dinner conversation in Spanish only, that he will speak Spanish to me and I will find that I understand it. I protest that the conversation will get a lot less interesting and a lot more frustrating, and eventually we broker a deal—we will tell each other stories. We’re both trained performers and storytellers after all, this is what we do. He will tell me a story in Spanish, and while I am simply not capable of telling him a story in Spanish unless the whole story is “Que? No se,” I reluctantly agree that I will try to tell a story in French (which he speaks in addition to English, Spanish, and Portugese).

He begins. He is using simple words and pausing frequently, his eyes locked on mine to see if I am comprehending.

“Esto es una historia que mi abuelo dijo a mi padre.”

Confusion.

“Esto es una historia de el padre de mi padre.”

“This is… a story of your grandfather?”

“Sí. Un día el padre de mi padre--mi abuelo--montaba en las montañas en night."

“…montaba?”

“En un caballo, vaya”

There are gestures. “On a horse? Your grandfather was on a horse in the…”

“montañas”

“In the mountains! In the mountains at night.”

We go on this way for the rest of the story.

“Sí. Y él vio una luz. Había una luz. Y cuando él vio esta luz, él montó a ella. Era atrasada y él buscaba un lugar para dormir.

La luz estaba en una casa, y la puerta estaba abierta. Él entró la casa.

Un cadáver estaba en la casa. La luz era una vela al lado del cadáver. Mi abuelo se sentó por el cadáver con la noche. En el amanecer él se fue. Esto era porque usted debe nunca dejar un cadáver solo en la noche.”

That is what I remember of the story, at least, the story of his grandfather riding through a deserted stretch of mountains late at night and seeing a light in the distance. He went towards the light, looking for shelter, and found an abandoned house with a candle in the window and a corpse laid out in the main room. On seeing this, he sat down, and stayed with the body through the night until dawn. This was because it is a custom in the mountains that the dead must not be left alone through the night before burial.

Now it’s my turn, and I quickly realize how much French I’ve forgotten. My story is studded with cursing at myself and occasional phrases of English.

“J’allais… driving?? Crap! J'allais… sur une route. C'était nuit, avant le jour. J'allais à l'ouest. J'étais seul. J'ai vu les étoiles et la lune devant moi, et le soleil derrière moi. J'étais entre le jour et la nuit.”

It wasn’t even a story, really, just a moment I remember, driving across New Mexico in the pre-dawn darkness, alone for miles with only headlights for company, looking into the inky blackness of the night in front of me studded with stars and a sinking moon, seeing the first rays of dawn behind me in the rearview mirror, alone in the place between day and night.

Wolf is proud of me. He invites me to join him that evening, at a party in the local community. There will be a bonfire, and dancing, and they will work with the masks he’s been making. It sounds like an amazing experience, an unlooked for chance to get behind the scenes and to a place where a tourist like me would normally never get to go.

I turn him down. Yes, it sounds amazing, but he’s also a stranger and I’m a stranger here, and I’m tired, and while it would be appealing to get away from tourist things there is comfort there, a sense of protection. I’m not ready for this experience yet, I’ve only been here three days and I can’t even make eye contact with people.

I thank Wolf for dinner, and for the story, and then I go back to my hotel and go to sleep.