Learning About Our Surroundings: Ecuador!

Rolled from up north into Quito, the country´s capital, this week and was thrust suddenly into a big, soupy political to-do. Ecuador´s presidential election is on Sunday and if the standard deluge of sign wavers and billboard ads isn´t enough to pull people´s attention fully onto the race for prez, the sale of alcohol has been banned for the three days leading up to voting.

But dearth of booze has been good for my guide book reading. And honestly, after learning about the past century in Ecuadorean politics, I can see why they´d like to keep this year´s election as sober as possible. Although perhaps they´d like to keep an eye on those wacky clergy and the military as well. I shall entitle these findings...

SLIGHTLY HECTIC HAPPENINGS IN ECUADOR´S PAST

- Way back in 1875, President Gabriel Garcia Moreno, an arch-conservative typified by his actions denying citzenship to non-Catholics, was machete-d to death in front of his presidential palace.

- A few years later, in 1911 President Eloy Alfaro is assasinated and his body is dragged through the Quito streets and burned, to much fanfare. Alfaro, the polar opposite of Moreno, had introduced secular education, civil marriage and ended capital punishment in Quito, somewhat ironically given his distasteful end.

-1931-1948: Ecuador goes through no less than 21 different governments.

- Peru´s attempts to claim a vast portion of Ecuador´s land for itself results in skirmishes between the two countries beginning in the 40´s and lasting well into the 1990´s. Relations between the two countries are now normalizing.

- 1950´s and 60´s: Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra is elected to the presidency 4 times. He is deposed by military coups... 4 times.

-1997-2005: 3 presidents are deposed. No blood is shed, a fact that my guidebook tells me Ecuadoreans are ¨quietly proud of.¨

-1999: Hyperinflation grips a hold of the country and the president declares plans to switch official currency to the US dollar. He is deposed by the military. Three days later his sucessor is named and ¨dollarization¨ proceeds unimpeded. They´ve stuck with their own coins however, with the characteristic Latin American penchant for massive small change the size of golf balls.

-Currently we are rocking with President Rafael Correa, a 46-year old economics professor. Correa, the clear front-runner in this weekend´s elections, is doing ¨a terrible job,¨ according to yesterday´s taxi driver.

***

Well, at least Ecuador´s proven it has options. Almost makes you appreciate our US dynasty system of electing our leader. Easier to keep track of who´s up in the White House when you´ve only got to learn a few new names a decade.

Oh, and p.s., I bought a $450 plane ticket this week! Bet you can´t guess where it´s going...

Heart,

CD

San Agustin and The Bus Ride I Wish Hadn´t Happened

Our last stop in the land of Locumbia was San Agustin, a land of green hills sprinkled with enigmatic statues from a lost civilization we know nothing about. We spent our time picking country roads at random to wander down. Day One took us past the front yard of this small, shriveled gentleman


who hijacked our leisurely stroll to share a cup of coffee and fistful of toasted coca leaves. Perhaps you can tell from the ferocity at which he grips my upper arm that he liked us. ¨Te da energia!¨ he said, through teeth stained brown by this most favorite of hobbies.

Refined in a laboratory, coca produces cocaine, but indigenous Colombians have partook for thousands of years as fuel for living. It tastes like hell and you have to periodically spit green sludge (which our ancient friend insisted I do into a piece of notebook paper he held for me), but I will say the mountain paths walked a lot easier that afternoon.

Day Two was spent more conventionally, as far as San Agustin is concerned. We did a muddy country road circuit of the neighborhood´s most famous statues. I got my Mayan horoscope read at one of the sites and I don´t want to keep you in suspense: I´m White Spectral Wind. Mission in life, according to my friends the Mayan? To communicate. The hippie who enlightened me of this new, true nature of mine told me that journalism would be my spiritual path. Loved her.


Here´s La Chaquira, up in the left corner. She is one of the mysterious statues who sits looking out on the deepest, greenest valley you´ve ever seen. She is amazing.

But sadly, even La Chaquira couldn´t give us a visa extension. So, from San Agustin it was south to Ecuador. Easily the worst twenty-seven hours of my trip so far.

Now, I know you come to this blog for your daily shot of gypsy-Caitlin sunshine, but can I tell you that this was the most godawful bus ride of my life? Our ride broke down about 40 kilometers from cell phone reception and then we got stuck behind a fruit truck that had snapped an axle, but these were minor concerns. The first six hours we spent riding our dilapidated short bus down former FARC-controlled jungle dirt road. Our guidebook is from 2004 and it said we´d be going through a permanent road stop run by the guerillas. Erik was particularly disappointed that time had given the Colombian army a chance to remedy the situation, but we still got to share the ride with two machine gun-toting soldiers, who laughed their asses off every time the bus hit a rut and the gringos in the back seat bounced their skulls off the bus´s roof. And then there was the stains on our seat covers...

So as you can see, even we derelict wanderers have our tough days. Hasta luego Colombia, you police-state sweetheart.

Desierto de Tatacoa

We didnt know much about Desierto de Tatacoa. Its not in my Lonely Planet South America, for one, and no other backpackers we d crossed paths with had tipped us off to it. We found a passing reference to incredible star scapes and free camping by an observatory, so we jumped a bus south from Bogota.

After arriving late and setting up our hammocks in the dark, we awoke to this.


This is the Labyrinth, a stunning collection of sand stone rock formations that lies near the mouth of the Tatacoa Desert. I say desert, but in technical terms it is actually a dry tropical forest, according to Juan Tatacoa, our guide who drove us through the wonderland in his wonderfully-upolstered tuk-tuk.

Juan took us to his cousins on our second day in the desert, where he said we could see the natural pools and camp. Orlanda, his cousin, runs a restaurant-bar-farm on the side of a dusty road far out in the desert. Estadero Los Hoyos, as her digs are dubbed, has a little of everything. A little of ducks, a little of goats, a little of cats and dogs and sheep and cows and pigeons and medicinal scorpions and beer and lunch and coffee and children and camping space and posts to hang our hammocks. It was great, but we couldnt sleep past six am because of all the noise the goose was making.

Her family has also dug swimming pools into the sand that are fed by natural springs. We hung out in these desert oaises, completly alone save for the hawks flying overhead



and then ventured further into the ollas, the curving sand cliffs carved by a muddy river into separate living rooms, each with its own array of spiky bushes and patches of cactus friends.


Shootdang, I cant get that photo to flip around- turn your head to the right to get the true quality Caitlin Donohue orientation.

I love cactus. They are like the mushrooms of the desert, look how cute they are! Sitting on a throne formed from dried mud and cliff face I had a bonding moment with the desert. It all of a sudden reminded me of my grandma Rosettas paintings my mom has so faithfully carted with her across the country. Windows onto meses, tough plants with the occasional pink flower, unadulterated beauty that doesnt succor you into shooting a postcard of it. It made me miss... Texas?

Time for a return to the homeland?

Maybe.
Love,
Cait

Street Art Is Not a Crime... In Bogota

So remember when I told you I was a common criminal now? Check out the Bogota graff scene and tell me I had a choice in the matter.

Wild, right? So here´s my tag, courtesy of my artist-in-residence, Erik.

Pretty, right? Hope Mom agrees. Flying high in Colombia...

Villa de Leyva

I´m simply covered in Jesus. We´ve been hanging all week, we´re buddies now.

We´re in Villa de Leyva for Holy Week. It´s a tiny town up in the mountains north of Bogota, one of the oldest settlements in the country and still the proud bearer of all it´s original colonial architecture. The town plaza dates back to 1527 and is the largest cobblestone space of it´s sort in the entire continent. The mortar between the rocks is so worn away that when it rains, navigating it´s a bit like jumping across a stream on river rocks.

Normally sleepy, this place goes wild during Holy Week, or Semana Santa. Rich Bogotans head up for a long weekend and that big cobblestone plaza goes mad with street musicians and drunken teenagers hiding from their grandparents, who wear heavy wool panchos and hang out in restaurants drinking canelazos (hot drinks made with Aguardiente, brandy and cinnamon).

We headed out on Good Friday to the even smaller town of Salchica, where they were having the annual presentation of Semana Santa en vivo! We arrived a few hours early to an empty village that slowly filled, until at noon when the presentation, or play, or Jesus Olympics as I like to think of it, Salchica was packed to the gills with Colombian fans of our boy JC.

For the next five hours (to be fair we ducked out after three- one can only handle so much Christ), Erik and I and thousands of Colombians followed actors in Roman soldier tunics, belly dancer costumes and of course, semi-historically appropriate leather sandals, all around the immediate geographic area.

Forgive me if I butcher these religious references, I have little to no knowledge of the Bible. But the whole mass of us walked a kilometer out of town to the river to watch Jesus baptize the apostles and snipe at the Devil. Then we walked back into town to watch some sort of harem scene with Heron and Salome. Then we walked to the town center for Judas´betrayal and the sentencing of JC himself. The more excited of us ran ahead to the location of the next scene to get the prime seats. We mainly walked.

There were peanut vendors and little old ladies fanning themselves and guys standing on posts for a better view of the Holiness of it all. We don´t have these things in the States, I´m telling you that right now. Check it out, here´s Jesus and his buds on the left (Sermon on the Mount? Again, I know nothing) and about one-twentieth of the crowd assembled on the hill to the right.



The Villa de Leyva doesn´t stop there either! We rode mountain bikes out to El Infiernito the other day, the ¨Stonehenge of Colombia.¨ Well, if Stonehenge was made of ten foot stone penises. The Muisca indigenous people, ahem, erected this place way back when as an homage to the fertility of the earth- a noble motive that did not sit well with the Spanish conquistadors, who dubbed this place ¨little hell¨ because that´s where they figured the penile architects were ending up for their phallic veneration. Prudes... here´s Erik and El Infiernito in it´s full glory.

Onto the Desert of Tatacoa next, after a brief stopover in Bogota to retrieve Erik´s replacement camping hammock (Fedexed by my lovely mother after I accidently melted his original... don´t ask). Tatacoa is meant to have the best starscape in all of Colombia and we´re camping out in it´s arid loveliness.

Til we meet again,
CD

Im Getting Hollered At!

Friends! Hostelling International just threw up a Pura Caitlin shout-out. Check it out, its a Portland based travel website.

http://www.hipostcards.wordpress.com/.

We re like an underground railroad of hypeness, just wait.

Artes en Todas Partes

On a whim, the gang hit the Transmilenio to Zipaquira. The Transmilenio deserves a quick shout out here. It´s Bogota´s ultra-efficient commuter rail system, big long buses that run on their own sections of street and stop only at above ground, subway-like kiosks. They are super and put to shame the busetas, the short buses which granted are owner-operated but can, shall we say, tax the patience of world weary travelers who can´t get a seat and haven´t had to use their sea legs in a while. Bumpy rides, the busetas.

But i digress. We headed out to Zipquira, a small mountain town where Colombia´s salt mines are located to check out the Salt Cathedral. The salt mines here are massive, having been begun long ago by indentured indigneous labor. Honestly, we didn´t learn too much about the mines themselves because the shining superstar of the place is the Cathedral itself.

This, to my knowledge, is the world´s only underground church carved entirely out of a single mineral, our tasty friend salt. You can lick the walls, which we did copiously and whenever the tour guide suggested it. The cathedral is cavernous, with lots of religious iconography lit up by spotlights in neon green and purple. We were creeped out, and awe struck all in one fell swoop.

After the tour, I treated myself to a cappuchino in the underground snack bar next to the cathedral´s nave, and we watched an underground 3D movie featuring the exploits of a robot named 2NACL, or ¨Nacho¨to his friends, also within striking distance of the salt angels and crosses. Clearly, everyone is friends of the Colombian tourism machine.

In other news, Erik and I have become criminals. Inspired by the walls around us, we´ve been stenciling up a storm on the Bogota streets. My piece is a sick macaw that E-Real cooked up for me. Photos of our labors to follow. Oh yeah, photos! I broke down and purchased Camera #4 of this crazy journey south. I can´t travel with some sort of documentation. But you already knew that...

Peace and Love,

CD