Otavalo

Dipped back through Quito and headed straight for the whore house. Now don´t get any ideas. Hostal Sucre, at $5 a night for a double room, rises up above it´s filthy walls and lecherous help based on sheer financial felicity... at least for broke backpackers. Erik sat and picked at his beard in the dirty mirror on the wall opposite our bed as church bells from the Monastery of San Francisco across the street filtered in with the remnant´s of the day´s sun. I´m left to reflect on the enduring institutions of humankind.




Quito loves it´s churches as much as some love paying money for sex. Maybe more, check out the ceiling in the Catedral on the city´s stunning Plaza de Independencia.


We had only a short while in the capital on this pass through. It was a mere layover in the whirlwind of our week, in which we´ll visit four countries. We. Are. Going. To. Four. Countries. In. A. Week. Ecuador to Colombia to Miami to Guatemala. It makes me want to stockpile reading material and do spine stretches just typing about it.


There was another, regrettably short layover in Otavalo, Ecuador. High up in the mountains, Otavalo is home to the most wealthy indigenous community in all of the country. How you ask? A kickass craft market, that´s how! These people can weave. And wear a mean fedora hat. And bargain. I suck at bargaining, but then again I am a gringa, despite my ample protestations. In fact, everyone down here pegs me on the spot as a German, to my endless irritation. I think it´s the statuesque build and big round pie face.


Here´s my second favorite market in Otavalo, where you can find the sweetest, largest bananas you´ve ever tasted. I know there are very few bananas in this picture, but rest assured that entire corners of commerce revolve around sale of nature´s perfect food.

You´ll be happy to know that Ecuador, supplier of about a quarter of the world´s supply, has no less than three kinds of bananas (four if you are not judging their banana-ness on any kind of strict scale). Three kinds of bananas! you say, and yes, to some that may seem excessive. But once you have sampled your standard issue yellow guineo, the tiny baby deditos and the sweet, stalky red banana, then you will most certainly change your feelings on the matter. For those who tend to the more savory end of the banana-scale, we have you covered as well, for here there grow in abundance beloved platanos, or plantains, which I like to fry and smash and fry again and eat with large amounts of salt and salsa picante.

Oh and! There´s a fruit called a taxo that I´ve been blowing up my recent correspondence about that is a cross between a banana and a passion fruit. Small and yellow and filled with sachets of orange, juicy outrageousness. If that´s not worth a trip to South America I don´t know what is.

Back in Bogota for a hot minute, my most favorite city of this whole gypsy caravan of a trip, after a twenty-hour bus ride that somehow morphed into thrity one hours. Ouch. I have a bone to pick with an overturned tractor trailer, lemme tell ya.

And we´re re-entering the United States today! I´m hoping to get a first hand perspective on the economic meltdown, which I hear has college graduates begging in the street and working in the service industry? Horrors. Wish me luck with the culture shock, vale?

Earnestly ducking swine flu, I´m yours,

CD

Canoa

Taking it easy in Canoa. Hammock, big fruity juices, bodysurfing.

This town is nice, the kind of nice that makes me unpack my backpack completly and start pumping restaurant owners about job opportunities. I hear it´s been in the 40´s for the past couple weeks in Portland, so for my web-footed friends up in the Pac NW, suck in the ambient warmth from the next couple paragraphs.

Canoa is on the central coast of Ecuador, with access roads of such low quality that it has managed to escape the tidal waves of gringos plaguing the rest of the country. I mean, there´s tourists out here but the first hostel didn´t open until five years ago. Before that there was only the guys and their fishing boats, rolling out every morning on big logs to the water´s edge to bring in the day´s mariscos and cebiche.

We´ve been hanging for the most part, taking up hammock space in one of the dozen beach bars (read: rasta-colored cerveza and pizza shacks) lining the town ¨boulevard¨. There´s bat caves and possible blue-footed booby sightings on the beach north of town for when we´re feeling like an adventure. I´m covered in a bouquet of bug bites like I am each time I re-introduce my body to the tropics and I could care less.



We have bonfires that Erik attends to with impressive amounts of fidelity that attract bluegrass singing guitarists and flautists. There´s bizarre spikey purple shells that we´re finding on the beach that ache to be incorporated into one of my macrame bracelets.

Actually, we did have one excursion out of town in the week we´ve been here. We headed out to ¨Finca Organica (Organic Farm) Rio Muchacho.¨ Ecuador is well known as a landing spot for eco tourist, that curiously wealthy species of traveler. At Rio Muchacho you can pay obscene (by Ecuadorean standards) prices to stay in a hammock and muck around in pig feces and gray water systems 7 hours a day.

Here is an exercise bike they have hooked up to a pepper grinder. This is an idea I can get on board with.



It was a nice place to visit though. Jesse, our German guide to the farm´s workings, took us by their garden where they´re growing peanuts, passionfruit, hot peppers, pineapples, papayas, rice, beans and coffee. We sampled their harvest liberally and left with a newfound respect for the organic, sustainable system of farming. The sign below details the ground rules for a happy hippy farm. I hope you can read point 2 font.



Basically, here is the gist. Pigs poop. Pig poop drains to hole, where chickens pick through poop. Poop is set underneath guinea pig cages for refination by their mas rico poop. This is then inseminated with plant life, lots of different kinds so the poop (now called fertilizer) is best used nutritionally and rotated about year by year for the same reason. Additional vitamins are added to the soil, not the plant, which grows into food for eco tourists. Eco tourists take care of animal helpers, including Isidro the obese pig and a bevy of excitable guinea pigs. Organic farm!

***
I was really impressed by the number of you who got amped on where that $450 plane ticket is going! I feel loved. Yes, it is to the States! But not to where any of you (I think) are. We´re headed up to Guatemala in a week and a half. Due to the vagaries of our international air travel system, it was cheaper to stop through Miami than to get a direct flight from anywhere in South America. So I´ll be back in the good ´ol U S of A for four days! Total mind freak. They say Miami is the capital of Latin America, and it´s the biggest US city I´ve never been in. Slowly extending my reach around the globe, per usual.

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.