Cal's Travels

Oktoberfest in Chile!

2012-01-29T15:29:00.001-06:00

In the U.S., when we think of Oktoberfest, we think, naturally, of Germany. German sausage, sauerkraut, maybe some German music, and everything written in a nice, German-looking font. But let's face it, we mostly think of beer. So when I heard of an Oktoberfest happening in the small community of Malloco, a short drive from Santiago, I was happy to find out that here, too, Oktoberfest means beer.

Apparently, la Fiesta de la Cerveza, in Malloco (read: Beerfest) started years ago with the restaurant pictured here, Der Münchner. Indeed, the first thing we saw as we climbed off the bus from Santiago was the colorful front of this German restaurant, with the beer festival happening essentially in its back yard.

When I say "we," I mean a group of English teachers like myself and other friends, all understandably curious about the very promising, long list of Chilean breweries that would be present and serving many varieties of their hand-crafted beers. Upon arriving at the bus terminal, we discovered many, many buses with the words "Malloco: Fiesta de la Cerveza" scribbled on the sides. Presumably, these buses would be making round trips all day long, shuttling partygoers to and from the capital and the party. Just how many people would be there?

Once we had paid the 5000 peso admission (about $10 US. Chile, defying the long held reputation that Latin America is a cheap place to travel, can be pricey), we wandered past several rows of stands selling commemorative steins, hats, and various things to eat. After a few minutes of this, we began to wonder, where was all the beer?

But then the path opened up into a wide, dusty field encircled completely by beer vendors. Literally, dozens of breweries. And at that hour, right around lunchtime, there weren't so many people at all. So we went straight up to one of the first breweries that caught our attention and made a purchase. Dark, delicious and cold beer. Not your typical commercial pilsener; that day, there would be none of that. No. Nothing less than microbrew, at its flavorful finest. We split up, some of us dedicated to enjoying our first pints in the shade, and the others striking out at once, intrepidly in search of the next cupful.

You see, we were not limited to one successful formula for enjoying an extended afternoon of sampling so many uncommon beers. With the next several hours as full of promise as they were, the temptation was certainly there to enthusiastically take down a few pints in rapid succession.

Clearly, there were many festival goers who were doing just that. But after an education at Ohio State University, my personal rate of consumption had been tempered by years of experience, and most of those in our party had clearly learned similarly.

Rather than make the mistake of indulging with wanton abandon, then, only to be met with a physiological compulsion to sleep in the later afternoon, we chose to make our second beer purchase only after a shrewd sampling of as many different beers as possible. Because of the relaxed atmosphere brought on by the low turnout at this early stage in the day, most of the sellers were happy to talk at length about their beer, their philosophy, and to give out free samples of an ounce or two of each beer they had on offer.

We spent a good couple of hours in this regimen of socializing and sampling, staying out of the relentless midday sunshine as much as possible under the cool shade of the canopies hanging over each stand. It was in this way that we learned that the overwhelming majority of the many breweries in participation that day hailed from central Chile. I didn't hear of any coming from further north than La Serena, and not many came from much further south than Santa Cruz. With the reputation of southern Chile as being the major beer producer that it is, that bodes well for future sampling as we begin to explore places like Valdivia and Puerto Varas. Tasty!

Time passed, and a second pint was finally purchased, with the benefit of a well-informed knowledge of what was available. Moving in reverse, having started with a stout, my second beer of the day was an amber ale from a brewery I had never heard of before, and may well not hear of again until Fiesta de la Cerveza 2012. But it was the one that stood out in my mind as having the nicest hop profile so far, and that was what I was going for that afternoon.

Meanwhile, the festival was filling up, and the beer stands were heaving with spirited clientele. Thankfully, that didn't mean that the vendors stopped giving out free samples, but the time for idle chit-chat was over. Interactions with the bartenders became terse and to-the-point:

Bartender:¿Cuál?
Me: La negra.
B: ¿Grande o pequeña?
M: Una muestra, nomás.
B: Vale.

Deciding it was time to take a break from the crowds, we opted to have some food and some time to relax in the shade. In the search for a place to sit down, we walked past the obligatory carnival section of the fairgrounds.

Incidentally, the little wheel behind the red tower is one of those contraptions that is designed to send you spinning along multiple axes at the same time. The weekend before at the same event, a young man who had likely had too much to drink, decided he would stick his legs through the bars of the cage he was locked in for his safety while the ride was in motion, and his feet caught on the center axle, snapping his legs at the shin. He died in the hospital a couple of days later. Not surprisingly, that ride was not in operation the day we went. Alcohol and carny rides are never a good combination.

After a nice break, we launched back into our methodical sampling of virtually every beer on offer at the beer festival. More stands were visited. More beers were tasted. Another pint was purchased, by me. This time, it was an IPA, the only one I had found the whole day. It was from this brewery, if I remember correctly. A well-crafted IPA is one of my favorite beers, but in the US amongst microbreweries today, there seems to be a tendency to load the beer up with a quantity of hops far in excess of what an IPA traditionally called for. The one I tried that day was well hopped, but not to the extreme like some of the "double IPAs" you can find. I wanted to bring a bottle home with me, but at the end of the day this brewery became somehow elusive, and I couldn't track it down.

When all was said and done, we had tried beer from just about every brewery available that day, over the course of five or six hours. Drinking at a moderate pace for that much time doesn't get you drunk if you do it right, but it was like a shift at work, and left us physically exhausted at the end. The bus ride home was a rowdy one, us standing in the aisle with crowds of Chileans chanting hymns that all of them knew and none of us did. Were they singing about politics, or football? Instead I focused on the number of beer stains noticeably visible on the white shirts of many of the people seated around me. Perhaps the people were on this bus and not behind the wheel for their own safety, and for the safety of others.

My personal bill for the day was 5000 pesos for the entry fee, and about 1500 pesos for each pint, 3 in total. Plus food, and another 700 pesos or so for the bus ride each way. Let's put the grand total at around 15,000 pesos, that being about $30 US. I'd do it again next year. Who's with me?

On top (and inside) of a mountain

2011-12-26T19:31:00.002-06:00

Way up a winding road heading into the cordillera de los Andes from the town of Rancagua, south of Santiago, lies the town of Sewell. Its setting on a steep mountain valley, the sheer and snowy slopes flanking it, the colorfully painted buildings that comprise it, its rich history as a copper mining town, all of this make it an attractive destination for tourists. But if you come, don't plan on spending the night. Sewell is a ghost town. Today, no one lives in any of its buildings, and the road that leads you here is closed to all traffic, save that going to and from the nearby El Teniente, the world's largest subterranean copper mine. Save also tour vehicles like the one parked in the bottom left of the photo, full of tourists like us, seeking a day trip different than your typical wine tour or run for the beach.

The road to Sewell led directly through the facilities of the mining operation. I, probably like most people in the world, had never been on a tour that featured a copper mine before, so I took a lot of pictures along the way. Some areas, with the blue, yellow and red theme, and unusual architecture, imparted a whimsical sort of Willy Wonka's copper factory impression.

Then you round the bend and see something like this. Toxic pools, grey concrete buildings under ominous cloud cover, with barren land all around. That's what you expect massive mineral extraction to look like. Our guide delivered an endless set of statistics and explanations surrounding Chile's copper industry, and told us that it would be impossible for a mining operation on this scale to not have an impact on the surrounding environment. At the same time, while Chile has worked hard in recent years to diversify its economy, the exportation of copper remains its single largest source of revenue, and without it, the country would not enjoy its current level of development and prosperity. So don't expect El Teniente to close any time soon.

In addition to selling copper, Codelco - the government-run mining company responsible for El Teniente's operations - also runs tours. In fact, not only did our tour lead us around the facilities. After passing for several kilometers through this kind of industrial landscape, we donned the hardhats and orange reflective gear required by law, and drove straight into the mine itself.

As I mentioned before, this is the biggest copper mine in the world, barring open pit mining. Chuquicamata, an open pit mine in the north of Chile, is the 2nd largest such mine in the world, matched only by Bingham Canyon Mine, located in Utah. To give some perspective, since Chuquicamata was opened over a century ago it has cranked out some 29 million tons of copper ore. In its own right, El Teniente produced more than 418,000 tons of copper ore in 2006 alone.

I've been within the man-made bowels of the earth once before, when I walked with my family a hundred meters or so into an old gold mine in Zaruma. This particular winter's day in Chile, we drove more than 6 kilometers into one of this mine's many tunnels. We were merely scratching the surface, so to speak, of the vastness carved out beneath the ground. Not a tour for the claustrophobic. This particular leg of the tour can be bypassed for those who'd rather not go into the belly of a mountain.

As this hand-drawn diagram indicates, there are some 7 horizontal levels of tunnels dug into this mountain, each at a different depth, each counting on gravity to bring materials down first from their respective mines. From there they are carted to the white apparatus indicated on the right, where they are ground up and dropped down to the level where they can be loaded and driven out from the valley below.

It turned out that the white apparatus in question, known as a chancado, was part of the tour. In layman's English, we might call it a crushing machine. The room that houses it reminded me of the place where they filmed the final scenes of Terminator 2. The crushing device itself looked like a big electric orange juicer, with ground up rocks rather than orange juice pouring down from the spinning blades into a long vertical shaft leading below. You'll have to be satisfied with my description to conjure up an image in your mind, but I will include a photo of the cavernous and seemingly endless hole in the ground, leading down to the lowest depths of the mine.

In addition to demonstrating the many levels of the underground complex, this photo also reveals the horrid air quality to be found beneath the surface. It took me a couple of takes to realize that the odd interference in each photo in this room was the result of infinite particulate matter reflecting the light from the flash.

Otherwise unseen, but definitely noticeable from the chalky taste in your mouth, this is the stuff that ultimately ends up clogging the lungs of many career miners, leaving them with a case of silicosis after years and years underground. That mining is hard on your respiratory system is well known, but seeing and smelling it for myself gave me a more visceral appreciation for the hardship that miners must go through to make their living. Unlike them, I could go home, rinse off the dust from my body and breathe easy the next day.

Besides the chancado, there is also an underground casino. But before you start thinking that these miners can gamble away all their hard-earned income before they even see the light of day, I should mention that this term has a far different sense in Chilean Spanish than it does in English. Gambling casinos are known in Chile, but the majority of the places you'll find bearing this name fall under the category of what we'd call a cafeteria.

After this picture was taken we saw the casino for ourselves, and had lunch there. Besides the lack of windows, it was your typical working class mess hall. Soup, rice, meat, sauce, salad, drink. At least, that's what we saw people eating. The lunch for tourists ran about $10 more than the regular cost of the tour, which seemed a little steep for what you get. We brown bagged it.

After lunch we took off our dusty helmets and orange jackets and made our way up to the highlight of the tour, which was the abandoned mining town of Sewell. The first stop on the guided tour was a museum housed in one of the most well-maintained buildings in town. The top floor was certainly the best - if most unlikely - exhibit, housing a collection of copper items from around the world. Copper sextants, copper helmets, copper weights and measures, all beautifully preserved. And, this copper Ganesh. It's interesting to note that while Chile is one of the world's major exporters of copper ore, little of it is refined here into pure copper, or manufactured goods.

So it is that the copper used here in Chile may have come from Chile, but chances are it then got shipped as ore and then sent to Asia. From there it was refined, shaped, included into any number of electronics or other such product, and then shipped out around the world, including back here, to Chile.

This irony is not lost on those in the copper industry of Chile, but when the established infrastructure and cost of labor is such in Asia that finished products can be churned out for far cheaper than here in Chile, there is no economic incentive to do otherwise. In that light this exhibit, with its collection of artistically crafted copper sculptures, antiquities and other bemusing curios, stands as a microcosm for the curious situation that many countries like Chile find themselves in.

Rich in resources but lacking a tradition of manufacture, we find an economy chugging along nicely on the export of raw materials, but all of the added value that comes later from the finished product earns profits abroad. I don't know if it was Codelco, with profits from its copper business, or some other entity which bought the fine pieces we pored over that day. And for a fine price I'm sure, judging from the condition of the pieces. But whoever the owner may be, they're making some added profit from the trickle of tourism coming to Sewell and this museum, so we've got some locally added value after all.

The rest of our tour took us around the snowy, wind-blown streets of Sewell. Our guide mentioned one story after another to reveal the curious lives of miners and their families, stranded so far from civilization up here in the middle of nowhere. Founded in 1904, everything was brought in on a train, including the miners, and once here they couldn't expect to see anything else for months on end. That set up the typical situation of the company town, where the mining company owned and operated everything. Once the road to the mine was built, the mining company began phasing out life in Sewell in 1977, which means that there are plenty of people with memories of life in Sewell.

Indeed, since the tour, I've happened to mention to a few Santiaguinos that I was there. Santiago is not so far from Sewell and El Teniente, and the mining industry is such a big part of the economy that a couple of the people I've told have mentioned that they remember their early childhoods in Sewell.

As you can see from the photos, the weather conditions at this altitude are extreme, and in the few decades since its abandonment and substantial dismantling, the elements have taken a major toll on the remaining buildings. Now an UNESCO World Heritage site, efforts have begun to restore what's left of the town. However, many of the structures which have been at least partially restored have already suffered a new round of damage from the long winters and the subsequent effects of significant snow accumulation.

Apparently, plans are in the works to bring some full time employees to the town in order to run an on-site hotel in one of the finer buildings, allowing tourists to spend the night in the ghost town of an old mining encampment. Does that sound like fun to you? There's even an old bowling alley...

Built on such a steep hill, Sewell was composed of many levels, both geographically and socially. Here, on the concrete plateau between flights of concrete stairs, we can see an abandoned schoolyard where dozens of children of miners must have once played. Further up the hill, and now mostly dismantled, were the well-appointed homes of the English-speaking managers and executives of the mining operation back when it was a foreign holding.

While these wealthy expats would have enjoyed as many amenities and comforts of home as money and the limitations of the time would have allowed, the miners themselves were housed with their families in small rooms stacked up in big apartment buildings like the ones seen here. The difference in the quality of life of these distinct socioeconomic strata would have been very clear, according to our guide.

Nonetheless, the local miners were afforded a quality of life far greater than at other mines, with enviable salaries and benefits. Today, the miners can still apparently expect a fair salary for the hard work they do, and most of them live with the modern comfort and nicer weather of the city of Rancagua in the open valley far below.

That leaves Sewell behind as a nearly lost relic of Chile's past, rescued from ruin and now enjoying what could be the beginnings of a nostalgic renaissance. Standing in the icy air of a ghost town like this one, a colorful oddity amidst the grim machinery of a huge industrial project, puts you in the middle of several levels of contrast. If you ever go, you could even try and count them, like counting the stairs on the way up the hill.

In search of snow

2011-11-27T19:10:00.001-06:00

This year was the first time I had experienced a real winter since 2007. I gave winter a miss during my years in Ecuador, which has what is colloquially referred to as a winter, describing the part of the year you might call the rainy season. I suppose people from different parts of the world have different concepts of what winter looks like. For me, coming from Ohio, I could never think of it as being anything less than icily cold, cloudy, and often snowy. But admittedly, after a few years in the eternally springlike climate of the Sierra in Ecuador, my personal tolerance level for cold weather had shifted. A night in the 50s started to feel downright cold to me, and I had taken to the Ecuadorian custom of wearing a jacket when I left the house on many mornings that in Ohio, around April, would feel practically balmy.

So, once we came to Chile, and the days began getting shorter, I started to wonder just how cold the winter in Santiago would be. Come July and August, winter had fully set in, and one morning in particular, we awoke to the above scene from our living room window. Every Chilean I spoke to said that this was highly abnormal, and the TV news that day was full of people marveling over the novelty of snow on the ground. The snow never made it to our neighborhood, but in the parts of town lying near the mountains, the snow accumulated, much as it had on the hills you can see from our apartment.

Soon after, we opted to take a walk in a neighborhood closer to the mountains, and while no snow remained on the ground beneath our feet that day, the Cordillera de los Andes loomed nearby, replete with a nice dose of white powder laid down by successive snowfalls.

Santiago is one of few cities its size to lie so close to a mountain range that receives such a quantity of snow, and we were fully charmed by them each time we saw them this winter. Whenever some rain would come down in the city, we would remark that more snow had fallen on the mountains, and made a point to get a look at them to see just how far the snow had reached down the mountainsides.

Having bought a bike for commuting to the various places around town that I need to go for work, I started to wonder if there was a decent place to go riding, to get into the snow in the foothills beyond the city. Fortunately I wasn't the only one thinking like that, and so I had the opportunity to go with my friends Ruth and Stuart into a conservation area known as El Santuario de la Naturaleza, or Nature Sanctuary, as we might say in English.

In order to get there, we rode through several of Santiago's comunas. The metropolitan area of Chile's capital is divided politically into many such areas, each with its own mayor, and distinct look and feel. Starting in Santiago Centro, and then riding along a contiguous corridor of green space and parks through neighboring Providencia, we soon made our way into Las Condes and rode among the many new skyscrapers of Santiago's modern economic heart. Being Saturday, its wide sidewalks were nearly vacant, and we were able to cruise peacefully along streets that during the week are nearly unnavigable by bike for the number of people on foot and in cars or buses.

We then moved into Vitacura, an upscale residential area I hadn't spent more than a few minutes in until that day, and I was struck by the resemblance it bore to countless upper-class neighborhoods you might find in central California, with its mix of modern apartment buildings, two story homes with grassy lawns, and smattering of high-end stores and restaurants, local or international.

After nearly a full hour of gradual climb towards the mountains, we had reached Lo Barnechea, the most rural and perhaps most expensive neighborhood yet. The picture above reveals a glimpse of it. Its rolling hills dotted with bushes, the river valley below, and the occasional rustic estate transported me instantly to the Upper Canyon Rd. neighborhood of Santa Fe, where million dollar homes were not a rarity. I don't know how much homes in Lo Barnechea will set you back exactly, but considering that the only students I've had who live there are both vice presidents in their respective companies, I have a general idea.

The nice thing about places like Canyon Road and Lo Barnechea is that while the real estate might be priced out of the reach of a lowly teacher like myself, there was nothing stopping us from enjoying it in passing from atop our modest means of personal transportation. We wound along some dirt roads that took us ever higher into the hills, passing hobby ranches and wooden farmhouses wafting aromatic smoke from tin chimneys.

It was here too that we finally made it to our first sighting of nearby snow for the day, visible at the top of the hillside to the right. The brisk air full of the pleasant smell of nearby fireplaces made the climb a lot easier, and I realized how necessary it is to get out of the city from time to time, into fresh air and natural surroundings.

I couldn't tell you now what roads we took to get there, but eventually we left the increasingly sparse scattering of rural mansions below us and reached the entrance to the nature preserve. We had to sign in at a wooden gate with a river to one side and a stone guard station to the other. Above us, the dirt road was muddier and the hills steeper than those we had already passed, and the snow lying atop them was lying thicker, too.

The climb never got too grueling, but a persistent pain above my knees started intensifying as we made the climb and eventually I grudgingly had to hop off my bike. It took awhile for me to admit defeat, having ridden up hills far steeper with no problem in the past. Was it the flu I was getting over? The copious wine I had drunk the night before? The lack of physical preparation in the weeks prior? All those things and more, most likely. Once I was down, it felt like my legs were going to buckle underneath me, and a few squats didn't seem to help. But after a few minutes the pain subsided, and fortunately I was able to walk my bike without it coming back.

The same place I finally decided to dismount, a snowdrift. I was like a kid at Christmas. Albeit a 34-year-old one, with a pair of aching knees. Not so bad that I couldn't bend down and scoop up a handful of it for the picture.

We had made it to the snow. If I was going to have to walk my bike from here, at least I had made it this far on two wheels, into the snow. Five years prior, I had ridden my bike through the pink-brown mix of snow and caliche in Santa Fe, when it had dumped a foot on the city in the course of a few hours. I was forced to walk my bike then too, not for my own physical limitations, but for the simple fact that the snow was too deep to ride through.

That was the last snow I had been in, until now. When things come around full circle like that, how can you help but reflect on who you are now compared to who you were then, and all the things that have happened in between? That's what I did, as I shook my legs out and pushed my bike up the hill.

From our perspective, moving as we were along the snow-speckled foothills of the Andes, we were afforded ever more spectacular views of the Andes proper. We were separated from them by a valley, and however high we went along our path, the mountains on the other side would always be higher still, and snowier, and further out of reach. That is the how the mountains dare us, revealing with their sheer presence the next and greater challenge. That day, we were happy enough to enjoy looking at them from where we were as we shared a lunch of sandwiches, tangerines and chocolate chip cookies.

That was not to say that we were done for the day. That first snow drift gave way to more, until the road itself began to be overtaken by ice and slush. We found this shack, ostensibly abandoned, and decided to take a break. In the distance, the Andes unfolded above us in their snow-swept glory. And from an overlook nearby, we were afforded a panoramic view of the city below.

It was truly impressive. Partly because it revealed just how far we had come to be where we were. In the foreground, the open hills and occasional homes of Lo Barnechea. Beyond, the greater and greater density of both the city itself, and the thick layer of smog that obscured our view from the vantage point in the clean air we were enjoying at the moment. None of the photos I took show much more than this murky, yellowish-gray cloud that appears thicker the further towards the horizon you look.

The naked eye could see lots of landmarks of the city in the distance, which we spent several minutes discovering. We could also see how the smog spilled out past the limits of the city itself, laying like a blanket on the entire flat basin beneath the mountains, locked in by them. Which reveals yet another reason why it's important to get out of the city on a regular basis. Especially in the winter.

From there we continued our climb on foot, along a road now fully buried in snow. Judging from the muddy tracks, we obviously were not the first to be up it since the most recent snowfall. Later, we met a pair of Australians, each atop their own personal four-wheelers, taking a break and having a chat in the middle of the road.

Several minutes after we passed them by, the deep silence afforded by the insulating power of a thick layer of snow was broken by the high-pitched roar of their engines in the distance as they motored their way back down the mountain. There are lots of ways to get up a mountain road, and from my personal bias, I have to say that the ones that you can do quietly are best.

At some point on any day trip, the decision must be made as to where to stop and turn back. The road we had chosen kept going up, the snow kept getting deeper, and the wind kept blowing harder. We played for awhile at saying that we would go just one more bend in the road. I for one was waiting for some kind of other milestone, like the initial snowdrift, to mark the stopping point. I didn't know what that might be, admittedly, and in the end, there wasn't one that day. We finally found a place to stop, to sit for a few minutes, to eat and drink. When we got up, it was back down and not up the road that we went.

Along the way we found this black dog, and he followed us on our walk back to the bikes. Once we got on our bikes and began the high-speed, rattling downhill, he kept on following us, joyously matching our speed. He would run ahead, get to a bend, slow down and look back, and then run aside, fall behind, and then back up front again.

Never did he run the risk of getting too close to our bikes and causing an unexpected turn and subsequent crash, and I felt comfortable letting go of the brakes and pushing at the limits of the downhill. Only once did I find myself in the gravel of the shoulder as I underestimated the angle of a curve, forced to come to stop and reorient myself before starting up again.

Looking back, thinking of the various rides I've taken in the Andes of Chile and Ecuador, this one might have been my favorite downhill ride. The visibility, the grade of the hill, the severity of the curves and the conditions of the road all added up to a nicely technical ride that could still be taken safely at high velocity. Other roads might let you cruise with your hands off the brakes all the way, resulting in a fun downhill, but lacking in any great challenge. Others are so steep and curvy that you're riding the brakes the whole time, or the dirt and gravel is so thick and loose that one wrong move can leave your wheels out from under you. This one was a nice balance of all of the above, and thankfully my legs let me do it without any resurgence of my earlier cramping in the knees.

Once the thrill of the downhill tapered off into a gentler finish close to the guard station, our black dog stayed behind, and we all regrouped and recounted our respective experiences of the ride. Then we continued the trip, down from the Santuario, down from Lo Barnechea, Vitacura, Las Condes. The foregone conclusion of food and beer at a restaurant in Providencia, and then our goodbyes as we went our separate ways home for the day. All in all, a fine day on a bike.

The end of a chapter

2011-10-30T09:07:00.002-06:00

I'll be departing briefly from the usual themes presented here, in order to describe the end of an extended endeavor of mine. While riding on Santiago's subway this week, I read the final page of the third and last volume of Eduardo Galeano's Memoria del fuego. On the surface, this might not seem like such a big deal, but in many ways, this series of books has been very much a companion for me during my years traveling in Latin America.

One of the three volumes - along with my even more dog-eared Spanish-English dictionary - has been a virtually constant item in my backpack any time I've left the house, whether to go to work, for a weekend vacation, or simply for a walk outside. In considering what to pack for our trip from Ecuador to Chile, there was no doubt that all three volumes would be making the journey with us, as indispensable as they had become for me. I've learned countless words, phrases, and colloquial expressions from them. Grammatical features that once puzzled me as I first began deciphering the first pages have slowly become familiar to me. But more than that, the books for me have stood as an emotionally-moving teacher that has deepened my understanding of Latin America.

Memoria del fuego is laid out across a total of nearly 1000 pages in its three volumes, presented in the form of short and captivating vignettes. Each short story reveals one moment in history, applying the very Latin American art of the cuento to the task of defining its history. Volume I, Los nacimientos, begins with pre-columbian legends of creation and prophecy, before fixing on the three Spanish ships led by Columbus and his superstitious crew on their way towards the inevitable meeting of two worlds. From that point in1492, the stories march through the long history and expansive geography of Latin America, until Volume 3, El siglo del viento, concludes the series in the 1980's. As I read the stories, I have also moved my way around Latin America, with the books providing insight along the way. Today I will trace this journey through Latin America, as defined by Memoria del Fuego. All the translations in italics are my amateur's own.

As most journeys do, mine began with an idea. As I described in a previous story from a year ago, the idea to experience Latin America started with the immersion Spanish course I took in Oaxaca, Mexico, at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca.

Thanks to our teacher Luis and his impassioned reading of Galeano's rendition of the first landing of the Spanish expedition led by Hernán Cortés on the American mainland, I became fascinated by the story and decided I would find my own copy of the book.

Once back in Santa Fe, I soon discovered the Spanish language bookstore Allá, which had a single copy of the book on the shelf. The owner, Jim, was a kindred spirit in his fascination for Latin America, and his store was a few blocks from where I worked in downtown Santa Fe. As such, in the coming months I learned from Jim a great deal about Galeano, his occasional visits to Santa Fe, and other interesting and tantalizing pieces of wisdom, as I planned a return trip to Latin America.

In the coming months, any time I found myself alone in a cafe or park I was alternating between story and dictionary, struggling to grasp so many new words and phrases. At the time I swore I would commit the 60 or so pre-columbian stories to memory, and so I read each one over and over until I had a rough English approximation that I could relate to whomever was willing to indulge me. 5 years later, I'm not convinced that I've maintained such a sharp recollection of those stories, but if you put me to the test, we could find out...

By the time I returned to Latin America, a year after my first time in Mexico, I had made it through the first section of Los nacimientos and was getting into the initial meeting of the Spanish and the Aztec empire. In a personal milestone towards my goal of reading in Spanish, I revisited the story of Cortés and the founding of the city of Vera Cruz. At the time I was also finding some new places to read, like these:

I had decided to return to Oaxaca, Mexico in order to complete a course to become a teacher of ESL, through an on-site program through the School for International Training based in Vermont.

I got there about a week before the program started, which gave me a lot of time on my own to explore the city and find my preferred places, like the cafes pictured above, or the upstairs patio of the house where I was staying, here on the left.

I also enrolled in another Spanish Immersion course, this time through the institute that worked in conjunction with the SIT program, called Ollin Tlahtoalli. This program started a week after the ESL course finished, giving me more time to explore Oaxaca on my own before the course began.

For me it was perfect timing to return to Mexico while also returning to the same section in the book that I had discovered during my first visit there. Walking around stone buildings and churches constructed during the same time period I was reading about added a dimension to the stories. At the same time, the stories gave a poignance to my surroundings. In the streets of Oaxaca, I read as Cortés marched from the coast towards the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán and shrewdly maneuvered his way into victory over the city. The coming together of two empires, both rising in power, resulted in the abrupt conclusion and supplanting of one for the other. What resulted was there around me, hundreds of years later.

From Mexico I flew to Cuenca, Ecuador, where I began my experience as an ESL teacher. I had found work there months earlier and knew I would be going there before deciding to return to Mexico. In fact, it was a bit of an afterthought and a lucky coincidence to be able to go back to Mexico at all. The director at the school I would be teaching at in Ecuador suggested that I get a certificate to teach ESL before coming. Fortunately I was able to find the program in Oaxaca, which would conclude a few short weeks before I was slated to start work in Cuenca.

As I settled into my more extended stay in Ecuador, and continued poring through my book on the patio of my new apartment, I read about the ongoing exploration and conquest of the territory beyond the Aztec Empire. I read about the Incan Emperor, Huayna Capac, upon whom depend the fields, the water and the people... While he contemplates the sun, Huaina Cápac decides, "Soon I will die."

I learned that Huayna Capac was born here, in the Inca city of Tomebamba. Cuenca was built upon its ruins, which have been partially restored. I also learned that Huayna Capac had expanded the Incan Empire beyond Peru and into parts of modern day Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile. Most likely, he died of smallpox, brought to the Americas by the Spanish. European diseases often moved through trade routes faster than the Spanish themselves, resulting in the Spanish finding a new group of people already decimated by disease.

After his death, Huayna Capac's empire was divided between two of his sons, and the Incan Empire descended into civil war. Atahualpa, one of the sons, defeated his brother Huascar and was marching south through Cajamarca when Francisco Pizarro, the Spaniard, came upon him.

In Cajamarca, Vicente de Valverde, a priest in Pizarro's band of explorers, upon meeting Atahualpa, raises the Bible with one hand and a crucifix with the other, as though conjuring a storm on the high sea, and shouts that here is God... the interpreter translates and Atahualpa, high above the crowd, asks:
-Who told you this?
-The Bible says this, the holy book.
-Give it to me, so that it may tell me.
Atahualpa looks at the Bible, turns it around in his hand, shakes it, and presses it against his ear.
-It says nothing. It is empty.
And he lets it fall.

At this point, Pizarro uses this blasphemous act of dropping the Bible on the ground to launch his surprise attack, capture Atahualpa and hold him hostage in return for the famous Inca's Ransom. Once the Ransom was delivered, Pizarro reneged on the deal and had Atahualpa put to death after all. Only after Atahualpa accepted baptism and the Christian name of Francisco, his conquerer.

The same day I read this story while sitting on my patio in Cuenca, I attended a lecture on the musical instruments of the Inca and the other indigenous people of the Andes. The sounds of rattles, whistles, conch shells and drums, in a culture with no written language, were the means of communing with the divine, much as the Bible is in the Christian world. So, was Atahualpa merely exercising his own cultural means of spiritual communication by shaking it like a rattle and then holding it to his ear like today we hear the ocean in a seashell? Or was he truly challenging this lowly but arrogant priest from his position as triumphant Emperor?

More recently, we have come to Chile, and in the meantime I had progressed into modern times in Galeano's series. This year, as the US remembered September 11th, Chile remembered the military coup of September 11th, 1973. In another coincidence, I had reached the 1970's in El siglo del viento. The themes of this time revolve around the storm of military dictatorships and political assassinations that swept over Latin America, a truly dark time in history that Galeano captures with his unapologetic accusations and intimately told revelations of atrocity.

The series abruptly concludes, seemingly, with the year 1982. Up to this point, you find yourself reading hundreds of stories, one after another, in the inexorable march through time. When the final story comes and goes and no other follows, you are left with the sense that so goes history, one event after another, in such a way that any attempt to chronicle it will inevitably end, and time will still continue, unpausing, unstoppable. But why 1982, rather than some other year either earlier or later? Galeano, in his letter to the editor of the series on the final page of narrative, reveals why not before, or after, I don't know. Perhaps because that was the last year of my exile, the end of a cycle, the end of a century.

Galeano, from Uruguay, left his country in 1973 as it too was gripped by military dictatorship and the killings, disappearances and imprisonments that followed. He returned in 1985, having composed all of his epic historical narrative during his time of exile. These final words, as all his words do, frankly deliver the reality of history, to your heart. This defines Memoria del fuego against your traditional "history book," which itemizes history, catalogs it, filing it and placing it neatly in your analytical mind. In addition, it has introduced me to countless figures, moments, concepts, other books, which the coming years will no doubt find me exploring further. In so doing, these three books will continue close by, having slowly gone from an endless source of discovery to an endless source of reference and light. The book and I know that the last page is also the first.

Pomaire

2011-09-28T16:50:00.004-05:00

Since we arrived in Chile, we've been living in Santiago, its big, modern capital city. In many ways, it's even more modern than many comparably-sized cities in the US, when you take into account the kinds of apartment and office buildings that are going up in Las Condes, or the constantly expanding subway system, for example.

Living in a city like Santiago has been a great experience so far, revealing yet another angle in the multifaceted gem that is Latin America. I've remarked before, surely, on the simultaneous unity and diversity of Latin America. With a common language, history, and certain aspects of both traditional and popular culture, you can visit many places around the region and find common threads. And yet the culture is so varied that you can go from one country to the next and discover the countless details that make each place unique.

Santiago, for its part, represents Latin America perhaps at its most modern, its most globalized. Here, you haven't lost the charm inherent in any given latin culture, but you also find yourself surrounded by all sorts of conveniences, and big business. Fascinating, and overwhelming at the same time. A topic I will certainly explore further in later musings. It will have to come later, for today's story starts here in the capital, but ends up elsewhere.

After a month or so of staying in Santiago, once work was lined up and a regular schedule began looming ahead, we thought we ought to get out of town for awhile. As pleasant as it's been to be in a modern city, both of us come from smaller towns and after awhile, a city this size can start to feel oppressive. Fortunately, once you leave town you go from urban to rural landscapes very quickly, and there are a number of interesting destinations within an hour or two from the city limits by bus.

One such place is Pomaire. It has a very small town feel, with no buildings seemingly more than two stories, and most homes with a small but fertile garden. Many of the houses look to be made with adobe, and either have flat roofs, or sloped and topped off with corrugated metal. Or better yet, with the red ceramic shingles you can find all around Europe and Latin America.

Further contributing to the small town atmosphere is the fact that the people are much more likely to say hello to you as you pass by in the street, and on the day we went, there was hardly a car to be seen on the roads.

There aren't many destinations in central Chile lacking the ubiquitous grapevine, whether it is laid out in countless rows in a commercial vineyard, or spreading along a trellis in someone's backyard. Nearly all the homes in Pomaire seemed to be graced with vines of this latter ilk, and since we found ourselves there in the late summer of mid-February, the grapes were getting plump and ripe, and looking mighty tasty.

Grapevines of this sort add an elegance to even the simplest home. Really, if you're going to grow a garden, why not make it an edible one?

Before going any further, I should mention the main draw of Pomaire, which is its pottery. Here, you can buy simple, functional and beautiful clay pots for use in the garden or kitchen, plus all kinds of utensils. Oven-proof and purportedly even stove top-proof, we've been baking pizzas and casseroles in the ones we bought for the past several months. We haven't risked filling one with soup and throwing it on the stove yet, but every vendor we asked boasted that it could be done.

While some of the shops had attractively designed showrooms, the majority were like this one, little more than an open warehouse. Walking around a store like this, you had to assume that in the next room over the next round of pottery was being molded and fired by members of the same family who was sitting casually in the storeroom with you.

Pomaire is so close to Santiago that it's a popular weekend destination, a place to shop in some rustic stores and get out of the city, much as we had chosen to do. So much so that its unmistakable style of pottery can be found in Santiago homes, up and down the socioeconomic ladder.

When you consider the sheer size of our new big city home and the popularity of Pomaire's products, you have to imagine that this town has potentially churned out millions of earthenware goods over the years. There are dozens of vendors around town, and ostensibly just as many potters turning out the clay merchandise before throwing it in the kiln. Each of them most likely has their own personal touch or specific technique that makes certain products better than others or unique to the eye of the trained beholder. But from my layman's perspective, what we saw from store to store conformed to a signature style that is less individual overall, and more demonstrative of a sort of "Pomaire brand."

If my casual assumption is to be believed, we could go on to observe that the collective selling power of Pomaire's goods must be a well-recognized economic engine within the community, and the local potters may well have collaborated in designing such a recognizable style and functional quality. This would help to guarantee that Santiaguinos keep coming back for more, and rather than one family cornering the market, the entire community benefits from the constant influx of visitors. In other words, grassroots branding. Who needs a corporate logo when you define your product with your own bare hands?

Best of all, it's cheap. We bought an armload of various clay pots and what have you, plus one of the lamps from the shop here, and a liter of local honey. Each item ranged from only $3-$10 more or less. But this also meant that as we made our rounds through the town we ended up spending a decent chunk of money before we were done. We didn't mind; we were in the market for something to bake a pizza in, and a reading lamp. Everything else was more of an impulse, truth be told. But we haven't had any buyer's remorse so far.

The other attraction of Pomaire is the rustic food, baked in rustic clay ovens, and served up in equally rustic-looking restaurants.

We got there too early for lunch, which meant that the bread was just going into the hearth, and the stores were just starting to open. The lady shown here was in the middle of turning her pan amasado around for an even bake just as we walked by, and was nice enough to pose with her modest yet enviable oven for us.

Unfortunately, the bread still had some more cooking to do before it would be ready, and we never got back around her way to try it. Pomaire is also famous for its over-sized empanadas, which can be described roughly as a meat pie. Imagine a potpie, but wrapped up like a calzone, and you've got the basic idea.

I've developed an unbridled appetite for the empanadas they sell in our neighborhood, which are big enough to fit nicely in your hand. The empanadas here were about twice that size. Or at least, that's what we saw as we walked by the restaurants.

We didn't know there were going to be empanadas in Pomaire until we got there, so we had packed our own lunch before we left home, and contented ourselves with a picnic lunch in the park. We didn't feel like we were missing out; it's an easy and pleasant trip out of the city, and we'll be making it again. The next time, we'll try the food. For the time being, we had some nice sandwiches and corn on the cob, and shared our mealtime with a pack of hungry puppies who wouldn't leave us alone. Hence lunch on a bench instead of in the grass, safely out of their limited reach.

Otherwise, we were in Pomaire for the day, so we had time to wander the streets for awhile.

We've been told that Pomaire fills up on weekends, especially on holiday weekends when everyone is looking to get out of Santiago. But the day we went was a sleepy weekday in the summer, so we got to enjoy the town during one of its quieter moments. There were a few tourists wandering around besides us, especially after lunch when the weather warmed up, but as close as we were to the big city, I can imagine how different it could be on other days.

Shopping and eating is what tourists do in a place like this, but for us, having been confined in the big city for more than a month straight, it was nice to simply waste some time in a small town. That kept us entertained for at least an hour or so.

But eventually we made up our minds to call it a day. We had scoped out the things we wanted to buy in the morning, and then systematically bought them up on the way out of town. Once thoroughly loaded down with our weighty earthenware purchases, we found one of Chile's peculiar colectivos, a taxi with a fixed route and a fixed price per destination. It took us to a dusty bus stop, where a bus quickly came along and whisked us along the highway back to Santiago, through some extensive stretches of agricultural land.

If you grew up in Ohio like I did, and if it weren't for the picturesque mountains in the background, you might be fooled into thinking that you weren't in South America at all when you look at a picture like this. But that cornfield and barn are as Chilean as wine grapes, and a visit to the vegetable market in summer here will present you with plenty of sweet corn that's *almost* as good as what you can get where I come from.

While I'm on the topic, I'll also mention that on the four different roads that I've taken out of Santiago so far, each has a revealed a vastly different landscape. The one to Baños Morales took us up a mountain pass that got drier and more deserted the further we went. This one led through the cornfields you see here, and other crops you could find throughout the Midwest. The road to Valparaíso runs past vineyards spread out amongst gently rolling hills. Another, which I'll write about eventually, went along rows upon rows of the fruit trees that comprise central Chile's many orchards. Maybe I saw the trees that will bear the apples you'll be eating next summer?

We've been talking about going back to Pomaire again soon, now that it's Spring. We're all out of the delicious honey we bought, and there's a few more things we could use for the kitchen. We won't see the grapes this time of year, but I imagine there will still be some giant empanadas. We'll be sure to stay for lunch.

Baños Morales

2011-07-27T17:40:00.000-05:00

During our first months here in Chile, we had the opportunity to do some exploring outside the city of Santiago. Rather than take long trips into the far-flung northern or southern regions of the country, we opted to stay close to home, venturing no further than two hour bus rides beyond the city limits. One of the first destinations we chose was a set of hot springs to the southeast of Santiago through a mountain pass known as Cajón de Maipo.

If my map is a good indicator, we were closer to Argentina than we were to Santiago by the time we reached our destination, heading up and up into terrain that to me began resembling the dry landscape of Nevada's deserts, the further we went. After more than an hour on a dirt road through a desert valley, I began to wonder if we were headed for a couple of pools in the sand with nothing else around. We were on a morning bus whose only destination was the hot spring in question, full of other people, and with no return until 5pm that evening. Would we be trapped under the sun all day in a hot pool filled with the several dozen other people on the bus? As we bounced along the dusty road, our little day trip was starting to sound a little less pleasant than I had original imagined. But with no way back until the evening, there was little more to do than enjoy the rugged scenery and wait to see how our destination would turn out.

Eventually, the bus turned off of the main road and up into a smaller valley. We came around a turn, and the otherwise barren landscape was interrupted by a veritable oasis in the desert. This was Baños Morales, a tiny resort town sprouted up from the trickle of tourism coaxed from the city by a couple of little hot pools in the desert.

We got off the bus and began to explore this haven of wooden cabins and trees resembling the aspens of Northern New Mexico. Upon closer investigation, the slender trees had thick, rubbery leaves adapted to retain moisture despite the high desert heat, wind, and lack of humidity. Most of the cabins, predictably, were given over to tourism, each one advertising food, beer, lodging, tourist transport, or all of the above. As we explored, however, we noticed a few houses which were nothing more than homes, probably the weekend or vacation homes of Santiaguinos seeking respite from their urban surroundings.

In addition, there were probably also at least a few full time residents, making a living in some capacity off of tourism or else living independently in homes that began reminding me yet again of New Mexico. I couldn't help but make a comparison with the little mining village-turned-art community of Madrid tucked away in the hills between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Beyond the unorthodox style and decorations of the various cabins, and the arid backdrop that both places have in common, they also share a connection with the mining industry. Madrid originally sprang up from the desert due coal mining, and from the right vantage point, you can see an active gypsum mine in current operation in Baños Morales, if you care to look.

As we walked around, we soon discovered the source of the local verdure. In addition to the town's eponymous hot springs, a source of fresh water graces the hillside Baños Morales is perched upon. It drives the whimsical waterwheel you can see over Nancy's shoulder in the previous photo, and intrigues my daughter, who didn't want to leave once she discovered it. It also makes the town possible, gracing it with trees, green space, drinking water and gardens. I found it incredible that from the desert could come such a gush of water, albeit a relatively small one. Seeing the stark and nearly barren mountains standing over the valley, it seemed impossible for a stream to exist at all.

Until we walked further down the hill, and looked back up the valley:

In the middle of the summer heat lies this beautiful glacier, atop an active volcano. In a sort of environmental symbiosis, we find the glacier giving life to valley below it, and the volcano its mineral wealth. Without either of them the hot springs of Baños Morales wouldn't be possible. Residents told us that fumaroles have been visible above its peak in recent years, and also that some pristine hot springs lie on the slopes of the volcano, existing in a much more natural state than the man-made pools and surrounding facilities to be found in the village.

We were destined for a mere day trip this time around, but that kind of information is all it takes to tempt me into the notion of a longer return. An overnight stop in Baños Morales, followed by an early morning expedition to the volcano, some hot springs, and an up-close encounter with a glacier. Or better yet, a night spent on the volcano itself, which, according to my limited studies of an area map, would appear to be designated a national park. How does that sound to you?

After so much talk about hot springs, I should probably show you the real Baños Morales. Here they are, three multicolored pools in the morning sun. We glimpsed them from above, shortly after our arrival in the village. We decided, based on the lack of shade, that we would try back later in the day. Later in the day, we didn't get around to going back. You might wonder why we would go all the way to a town famous for its hot springs and never get in the water. Maybe it was the hot weather, or the less than crystal clear water. My first hot spring experiences were in New Mexico, which has very nice, translucent pools to be found amongst the most beautiful of wilderness settings. This type of wild setting, I've come to realize, is not always easy to come by.

Nonetheless, in Ecuador I learned to love the murky, steamy pools of Baños de Ambato, and other springs with pleasantly warm water, if not completely clear. The pools of Baños Morales may be just as lovely, and someday, I might find out. Or maybe I'll go instead to those tantalizing waters closer to the Volcán San José. In the meantime, we had a fine time just wandering around town, meeting the locals, and communing with the goats.

A Chilean goat, with her cabra chica. These were two of the many goats to be found wandering around the upper reaches of Baños Morales.

Didn't I tell you? That's a lot of goats. Goats belong in the mountains. These aren't really mountain goats, but they must feel a little closer to the essence of their nature with a glacial peak within sight of their foraging. The dirt road that led us to them continued up the hill, and the name of the road, Calle Volcán San José, would suggest that it leads at least part of the way up to the mountain itself. But we chose the goat sighting to be the limit of our wanderings for that day, as the hour of departure was starting to get closer. We didn't want to miss the bus, so we thought we'd hang around a little closer to where it would pick us up, for the rest of our stay.

This also provided the perfect opportunity to relax in the shade on the patio of a nearby restaurant, and sample the cheap beer options of our new country of residence. Escudo comes by the liter, and is, therefore, for sharing. Chile has other cheap beer options, and even quite a few microbreweries, which was an exciting discovery for me. On other occasions, I will doubtlessly explore such topics, for your consideration. For now, I will go so far as to say that while Crystal is the ubiquitous draught beer to be found at any bar, Escudo is my personal favorite for an unassuming drink at home. And when you're on a patio of a restaurant far from the city and regular delivery of kegs, Escudo is what you drink to cool off after a long day of exploring a high desert town.

It wasn't long before the bus came down the hill and all the people we rode up with began showing up, filing back on to the same vehicle that had taken us here in the morning. In fact, as we walked around we noticed our bus parked behind a building not far from the foraging goats. The driver was inside taking a nap, perhaps, or else enjoying the town like the rest of us. And after a long day of ostensibly not doing much, he was now back to work, ready to take us on the two hour ride back to Santiago. Not a bad day's labor, hopefully he gets enough for it to pay the bills.

As for us, we were happy to have had a chance to get out of the city and into the Cordillera de los Andes for the first time, setting our sights on some of its iconic snowcapped mountains, and breathe some fresh alpine air. Maybe we'll get back there some day, or maybe we'll be drawn deeper into the country's more extreme reaches. It's hard to say. Our time in Chile is just getting started.

First thoughts on Valparaíso

2011-06-30T13:11:00.000-05:00

As many of my readers must already know, my family and I are now living in Chile. We got here around the beginning of the year, even though the stories I've been writing for the last several months have still - until today, at least - taken place in Ecuador. It's hard to believe, but we've been here for half a year already, forming our first impressions and opinions about our new place to live.

We had been planning to move to Chile for quite awhile before we actually came, and all the way up until we arrived in Chile, our target for a new home had been Valparaíso. As such, I spent months researching it on the internet. Looking for jobs. Searching for apartments. Checking out other blogs, looking at photos, and going to Valparaíso's website, which is one of the best I've seen from any city.

The photo above, taken during our first weekend here in Chile, really sums up what I had anticipated for our potential new hometown. Artistic graffiti, gracing the pastel walls of a building perched on a narrow cobbled street that runs sharply down a hill, affording a glimpse of the inspiring blue waters of the bay below. Before we came, lots of people told us that we wouldn't like it as a place to live. It was lovely, but disorganized. Bohemian, but dangerous. Despite all of that, we looked at more photos and contacted more employers, and kept our sights on Valparaíso.

Our first weekend there was our chance to hit the ground running. To take in the sights, to get a feel for the area and also to think seriously about work and apartments. We came to Valparaíso by bus, which left us at the bus station in the only flat part of the city I've seen. Our hostel was in the heart of the city's colorful hills. When in any new place, what better way to get anywhere than to walk? It took us awhile, but our journey to the hostel also served as a nice impromptu tour of the city.

The first half of our walk was through El Plan, this decidedly non-hilly business district near the waterfront. This is where you'll find the concentration of Valparaíso's tallest buildings, and on any day but Sunday (which is when I happened to take this photo), its highest concentration of people, as well. Valparaíso is said to have once been of more importance than the capital city of Santiago, in the days before the opening of the Panama Canal. At that time its port was thriving, contributing to the city's economic growth. Many Europeans also wound up here as new residents, during those times when other cities like New York, Buenos Aires and San Francisco were also booming with immigration. This has led to some interesting effects today in Chile, where many people have English or German last names, for example.

Because of the Latin American habit of naming streets after people, lots of streets have English names too, which then get run through the filter of Spanish pronunciation. That's confusing at best, especially when you're trying to ask for directions. As for some Teutonic cultural references, you can find sauerkraut at many restaurants and markets in Chile, for example. And draught beer abounds, bearing the decidedly German-sounding name of schop. Loan words in Spanish are quickly assimilated into the language's abundant list of suffixes, and so you can get a frothy schop at your local schopería, for example.

The next leg of our little tour took us up into Valparaíso's famous hills. By popular count, the city has no fewer than 42 hills, all spilling over with buildings in various states of repair. Valparaíso is defined by its port, and its prosperity as a city has hinged upon it. But its hills define it every bit as much, governing its shape and design and giving rise to modes of personal transportation unseen in most other towns, as we will see.

Some of the hills, most notably Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción, have become dominated by the tourist industry and the predictable changes that come with it. Beautifully and tastefully restored buildings help draw in tourism, which then brings more money to these neighborhoods for even further restoration to take place. A positive feedback loop that brings about a positive change for a neighborhood. On the other hand, prices go up, to be sure. And some level of authenticity is somehow compromised in the bargain, as a neighborhood transforms from something real into something more of a dream to be sold.

Which then leads us to ask, what is the authentic reality in a city like this? Can it be found in the other hills, in those places still very much unrestored? In some cases, this might mean that you'll find some seriously run down buildings and sketchy neighborhoods. I would imagine that like most cities, you'd have to really spend time there to find out what it's really about. But the layout of this city upon such unlikely geography means that even if you lived there, you'd have to be dedicated to doing a lot of determined exploring if you wanted to see it all.

Unless you're downtown, every street you take winds unpredictably through the hills, and to complicate things further, many of the streets are sewn together by staircases and alleyways spiraling up and around, so much so that you have to wander up or down in order to figure out where they'll end up taking you. A cartographer's nightmare and a photographer's dream. Many houses, like the hostel we stayed in, have their only entrance in an alleyway like this one, making most of them thoroughfares unto themselves with names and addresses.

You would think a town like this would defy motorized transportation altogether, with so many hills, narrow streets and cobblestones. Not entirely true. There are still plenty of cars and buses around. Splitting the difference between the two, there are even taxis called colectivos that work just like buses. They follow a fixed route and you pay a fixed price, and you get on or off where you need to. Try to imagine a bus on some of these streets and the colectivo concept starts making a lot more sense.

The indisputably most unique and iconic way to get around Valparaíso, however, is the ascensor. So iconic are they, so synonymous with the city in the mind of the tourist, that I won't show you a picture of them. The fact is, none of the pictures I took of them were very representative. Instead, I give you an image of the antique wheel that pulled the one we took. We paid a small fee, we boarded the little metal box with windows with a view over the harbor, and up the hill we went. At the top was a beautifully restored lobby where people must have once waited to go down to work from their home up above. Today, the ascensores are mostly for tourism, but they are as practical a form of transportation as ever, and the cost isn't so bad. If you're interested in seeing what they're really like, wait until I write about Valparaíso again someday. Or check them out online, as there is no shortage of photos and videos of them.

Our next image will serve, among other things, to demonstrate that at no point during a visit here are you ever far from the sea, and Valparaíso's port. In the background you'll see three aspects of the port, if you look carefully. In the back right are some military vessels, symbols of Chile's naval history. Over my wife's shoulder is a big cruise ship, lots of which now stop over regularly in Valparaíso along tours of the south Pacific. And finally, behind the cruise liner is the top portion of the big blue workings of commercial port machinery, busy manipulating multicolored containers from ship to port and vice versa. The Panama Canal may have put a prolonged hurting on Chile's historical port, but today's biggest commercial freighters and tankers are bigger than the designers of the hundred-year-old canal ever imagined. As such, massive ships once again plow through the Drake Passage and around the South American continent, giving Valparaíso a newfound relevance as a port city.

No mention of Valparaíso would be complete without talking about the street art that exists there. At the same time, no single mention of Valparaíso's street art is capable of capturing it all. The city is overflowing with graffiti, in every neighborhood and every alleyway. Commissioned or clandestine, and from fine art to random black-paint tributes of adolescent love. I won't even try to explore the the street art of Valparaíso any further than to say that as much as the port, as much as the hills, the art on the walls around the city help make the city what it is. Like the other aspects of the city, the many murals are supremely photogenic. Reviewing the couple hundred pictures I took during our three days in Valparaíso, I now find myself comparing them with my memory of the many things we saw. I can't help but feel like I did a lousy job of documenting our trip. I guess we'll have to go back.

Which leads us to the ultimate question of today's missive. What happened to living in Valparaíso, after so many months of talking about moving there? Rather than going into an even lengthier explanation, I'll say that this has been a fine example of the delicate balance between lofty dreaming and basic pragmatism.

Many of these posts descend at certain moments (as this one is now doing) into indulgence. Imagining a life high up in a green tropical valley, in a cabin on some lost beach, or in a city more romantic than practical. Deep down, the habit of traveling and living in new places rather than just visiting them for a week might satisfy in some way this latent urge I seem to have. Anywhere I visit, my mind begins to turn, entertaining the notion of what it would be like to live in this place for longer.

Then the other side begins to emerge, as these imaginings begin to reveal certain real complications. The mundane concerns of every day life cannot be ignored. And so we have found our home in Santiago after all, where it's simply easier for travelers to settle down and get started. Here, we have discovered pleasant parks and a level of organization I've never seen elsewhere in Latin America. After years of living in less regulated places, I have to admit there's something satisfying about the added structure to be found here. We also have friends here who we met in Ecuador and who have since established themselves in Chile long before our own arrival, which has been a boon to our little family in so many ways.

In the end, I don't feel as though we've settled for Santiago over Valparaíso. Since the day we came, I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I like it here, in this city I had essentially ignored as a place to live. One of the greatest things about traveling is discovery, finding the places you like, and learning from yourself about what places you end up finding yourself at home in. Future musings will no doubt explore such notions in time. For now, know that we have landed nicely, a little to the east of our original target, two hours by bus through the sun-kissed valleys of Central Chile.

One last ride

2011-05-22T14:42:00.002-05:00

In what may be the last entry on Ecuador for awhile, I'd like to share a little more about one of my favorite pastimes, in Ecuador and anywhere I go, really. For me, there's nothing much better than getting on a bike and finding some dirt roads outside the city to ride around on. I don't mind if it's single track in the woods or a country road winding between small towns. Either way, it's a great chance to get out of the city, and to find beautiful places not far from where I live. More often than not, these aren't the kinds of places with anything to attract tourists, and the population of these areas is low enough that there aren't buses that go to them very often. So unless you've got a car (which I don't), the only reliable way to get there is on your bike.

Cuenca is blessed with dozens of tiny villages surrounding it. While you won't find much natural forest nearby the city, there is plenty of farmland and rural community. This kind of low density population means that there is a complex network of dirt roads tying them all together and connecting them to the hub that is Cuenca. For a cycling enthusiast living in the city, it's perfect. You've got countless routes to choose from, and on the weekend you don't have to worry much about traffic. I was never able to find a comprehensive map of the area, and even Google Earth was lacking in accurate imaging of most of it. So I was pretty much on my own in finding good places to ride.

One of my favorite places to ride is the road to Soldados, as I have come to call it. Soldados is a remote village far outside of Cuenca, and the road to get there, as I've been told, was once the way to get to Guayaquil. It runs roughly parallel to the highway that goes there today, and covers many of the same changes in altitude and ecosystems along the way. I've occasionally plotted to make the ride to the coast by that road, but so far, it hasn't happened.

It's a beautiful area that I've written about before. Always green, with very few houses and a constant but gentle climb upward on a well maintained road running alongside a picturesque mountain stream. An agreeable daytrip indeed, which stops whenever you're ready for it to. You simply turn around and go back the way you came, much faster than when you went up.

If you go far enough up the road, you get to some hot springs. They are the reason why I know that the road exists, as the story in the link goes on to explain. I've been back to them a couple of times since the writing of that story a few years ago, by setting out much earlier in the day than I did at first. But even when I have no intentions of making it that far, the road to Soldados has proceeded to become one of my preferred routes when I can't think of anywhere else to go. Predictably, it also happens to tie into a few other roads, a few of which lead to the little town of Baños. Now practically absorbed by the city of Cuenca, that village takes its name from the piping hot spring water that occurs naturally in the area, and has given rise to a number of resorts and spas. The combination of a long ride, a soak in a hot tub and a subsequent cold beer is undeniably excellent. And the ride home, as it always seems to be when you live in a valley, is all downhill.

One of my favorite places for the post-ride beer and accompanying meal is Che's. A much-underrated roadside attraction in the nearby village of San Joaquín, the restaurant serves all kinds of grilled meat, beer and chicha, all best consumed on the outdoor patio. And of course, Che himself.

Never falling out of character, the proprietor sits iconically at the grill when he isn't talking with the clientele. After a beer we once decided to ask him for a photo, to which he responded by inviting us inside for another drink and some conversation. Once indoors, we discovered the main hall, covered from floor to ceiling on all sides by the biggest collection of Che Guevara memorabilia I've ever seen. Featured also in the above is Louis, who can also take credit for a couple of the photos in today's story.

Another ride worth mentioning is the road to Aguilas.

A little further up the highway from San Joaquín, you connect with a road heading up to Cajas National Park from Sayausí. And in that neighborhood is a nondescript dirt road heading up into the mountains, much like any other. This is the road to Aguilas, which I assume is the name of yet another distant mountain village.

But the road to get there is a destination unto itself, one of the many unspoken mountain biking routes for aficionados around town. Any Saturday or Sunday will find it almost entirely vacant of automobiles but bristling with cyclists, either heaving their way up or barreling back down. Much like the road to Soldados, it will afford you many unique perspectives on the gorgeous landscapes that make up the countryside outside Cuenca. From up here, you can even get a good look at the city itself:

But while the road to Soldados is a relatively mellow ride, this one I would call much more technical. That is to say, steeper. Lots steeper. The way up, you're in your highest gears. In order to maintain your resolve, you look down at your front wheel and not up at the indeterminable length still above you.

On the way down, you've got both hands on the brakes the whole time, rattling over rocks and around curves. I'm far from being a professional, but it generally takes me an hour and a half to get to my preferred stopping point from the trailhead, and twenty minutes of blurred scenery to get back down.

The road is evidently a road for pilgrimage as well, if the thirteen crosses along the way are any indication.

A cross alongside a country road is a symbolic reminder that our journeys are sacred, the transformative means to an end that ought to be an end unto itself. Where have your roads taken you? Even in today's world of motorized transportation, modern day pilgrims still often choose to undertake at least part of their spiritual journeys on foot.

Practitioners of Buddhism also speak of something known as walking meditation, to which a pilgrim from any spiritual tradition could relate. By acknowledging this most basic human form of motion as an innately profound activity, the act of moving around by your own two feet becomes suddenly more powerful.

There are arguably far fewer proponents of cycling meditation, but if you ask me, there is an undeniable source of perspective inherent in a peaceful ride along a gentle country road. There's an unequaled sense of accomplishment upon reaching the top of a steep hill without stopping, and an unparalleled exhilaration that you feel at the end of an adrenalin-fueled downhill.

When you have a destination in mind, especially a far-flung one, there's also nothing like making it there after hours of riding.

I was raised Catholic, but I admit I don't usually go to church on Sunday. But Ecuador is a country steeped in Catholic traditions, and so it's not uncommon for a Sunday ride to have a few churches along the way. This one is really far from any towns, and at the end of a side road opening into a large clearing.

It did happen to be Sunday on the day of this photo, but there was no sign of a Mass having happened any time recently. In fact, this place looked deserted, from all indications. Every time I went up the road to Aguilas, I considered trying to take it all the way to whatever Aguilas was, but each trip wound up at this abandoned church instead. At one time, perhaps it was the destination of the pilgrimage for those who followed the route of the crosses on the way up the same road. This particular day, the breaking of bread was not the Eucharist, but rather a tuna fish sandwich, followed by a few swigs of plain water instead of communion wine.

I imagine it will be awhile before I get to see these roads again. The bike in the photo is in storage at the moment, and there are still plenty more country roads in Ecuador I haven't explored yet. Fortunately, I've got a different bike now, and in the meantime, there are plenty of country roads in Chile, too.

Market Day

2011-04-21T19:25:00.003-05:00

One of the things I remember most fondly about growing up in a small town in Ohio was going to a neighborhood fruit stand. In the same part of town where I went to school, and where my dad had a car lot that he ran after work, was a shop run by a man named Tony Catanzaro. I don't remember what he looked like or what kind of a person he might have been. But I do remember the sights and smells of being in a store like that, especially in the summer when the ripest fruit was on the market. I remember the signs with the removable numbers for the ever-changing prices, the fresh samples, and the hanging scale at the cash register that the lady behind the counter would obligingly allow me to pull down and watch the numbers spin around on the wheel.

But mostly, of course, I remember the fruit. The bright colors, the mixture of aromas, and best of all, the taste of it all during the ride home afterwords. The watermelons were maybe the most intriguing for me at the time, as I would watch my dad go about deciding which was going to be the ripest and juiciest. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I recall a time when the knife went into the melon and it actually split open on its own, ripe as it was. Then a huge slice would go on a plate and I would dig into it, spitting seeds and slurping up the red interior with true childlike abandon.

Catanzaro's market is gone now, and today it seems rare to find a place like it. Except in the summer, when you can still find plenty of roadside stands selling fresh sweet corn, peaches, chili peppers and other summertime specialties. The rest of the year, most people resign themselves to the supermarket produce section. Bountiful as it may be, and carefully designed to appeal to the modern consumer, such a place lacks a certain quality that a simple corner store has without trying.

In the US there is also a modern day resurgence of farmer's markets, and many local governments are smart about supporting them in various ways. But in many communities, for now at least, the old-fashioned fruit and vegetable shop seems unable to compete with big grocery chains. But maybe I'm biased, having had the good fortune to get a taste at a young age of such a fine local business, albeit on its way out.

All of that probably has a lot to do with how much I enjoy a simple trip to buy food for the week, in a place like Cuenca:

Cuenca certainly has supermarkets that look and feel much like any in the US, but it also has lots of neighborhood stores like this one. In fact, in towns of any size, and in every country I've been to so far in Latin America, you'll find a no-frills store every few blocks in most neighborhoods. Boxes full of fruit, boxes full of veggies. A scale, and one or two people helping customers and otherwise shucking peas or corn. It doesn't get much simpler than that. In Ecuador at least, you've got to know your product, as the prices usually aren't posted and a fair amount of bargaining is expected. While we were living in Cuenca, we used to feel like we spent a lot if we paid $14 for all of our fresh ingredients for the week.

In our family, the overwhelming majority of our meals are prepared and eaten at home. Like in most households, I'd imagine, our tastes often change over the course of the months. But during our last days in Cuenca, we were making lots of pizza with fresh sauce, and fresh dough:

And once you start making fresh dough for pizza, it seems only natural to start to wonder what else you can make with flour and yeast.

While I tend to focus on baking with salty and savory flavors, Nancy has a talent for turning out desserts. Mmm, cherry pie, with fresh cherries!

Another one of her talents is to turn virtually any tropical fruit into delicious fresh juice, which is as enjoyable for adults as it is for kids.

Another Ecuadorian delight is corn, from which you can make all kinds of dishes. Like tamales, humitas, quimbolitos, chibiles, motepillo, and many others. Or you can just have the Ecuadorian version of corn on the cob, with big white kernels that might not be as sweet as US sweet corn. But they're still tasty, and they make a satisfying popping sound when you bite into them.

We ate a lot of corn at our house, but when you looked out the window, it was easy to see why:

Also featured in this photo is the vine of the gigantic and delicious camote squash, also known as zapallo. It could be considered the big, green South American cousin of the pumpkin. In between the corn grew bean plants.

Corn, beans and squash are colloquially referred to as the three sisters and can be found growing in traditional farms and gardens throughout the Americas. They sustain each other in a perfect three-way relationship: the corn stalks provide structure for the delicate vines of the beans, and shade for the squash. The beans fix nitrogen from the air into the soil, for use by the corn and squash. And the ample leaves of the squash muscle out weeds which would otherwise compete for space in the garden in general. It's hard to imagine packing more growth into that little garden plot! But in my layman's opinion, there is no environment better on earth for a plant to grow than the mountains of Ecuador. The eternal Springtime, and the perfect balance of sun and rain makes for ideal and uninterrupted growing conditions all year, and the fact that these conditions have existed for centuries means that the topsoil is thick and loamy.

From farm to table. And a market in between. That's the way it should be when it comes to putting food on your plate, if you ask me.

Amateur zymology

2011-03-26T11:35:00.001-06:00

I, my friends, am a brewer. I like beer, and I like to make beer. I wouldn't say I'm a pro at it, but I've been doing it off and on for many years. I started brewing in college, and anywhere I've lived for more than a few months, the urge to gather the materials and ingredients necessary to brew up a batch begins to occupy a prominent place in my thoughts. Not long thereafter, the kitchen fills with a sight like the one you see above. An over-sized pot on the stove, filled as close to the brim as I can manage with sweet liquid goodness and topped off with a foamy head evocative of the first sudsy glass I'll be pouring in a few weeks' time.

There are surely plenty of websites out there that will do a better job than I will of explaining the brewing process. And there are excellent manuals on the subject, like the one I use: a beer-stained volume entitled The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. Rather than walk through the process then, I'll instead be sharing some of my own personal experiences with brewing, along with some photos that will hopefully get your mouth watering and mind turning over the idea of trying to brew it yourself someday, if you don't already.

All homebrewers in the US, and therefore all microbrewers there, as well as everyone else who enjoys drinking something beyond commercial pilseners, all owe the fine hobby to an enlightened Act of the 95th Congress which was later signed by Jimmy Carter. Before then, homebrewing was illegal in the United States, ever since the days of Prohibition. During all those years, there weren't many people in North America who were drinking anything more innovative than beers like Rolling Rock, Heineken or Michelob, if they got that far beyond your standard commercial beers.

I imagine during that time the reputation of North American beer was deeply sullied in the eyes of beer aficionados throughout the rest of the beer drinking world, even while the commercial Pilsener style was turned into big business and exported around the globe. Such that one can drink a Japanese Sapporo, Jamaican Red Stripe, Colombian Aguila or Belgian Stella Artois and still be drinking what is essentially the same beer: a light, bottom fermented lager brewed with barley in addition to adjuncts such as rice and corn to thin out the malt flavor of a heartier ale or dark lager.

As I've said in an earlier post, the Pilsener style is great, and especially enjoyable on a hot day. But home brewing offers the opportunity to delve into the much simpler and yet incredibly diverse realm of top-fermenting ales. Without worrying much about the difference between top and bottom fermentation, suffice it to say that top fermented beer is essentially achieved at room temperature, and is thus a low-tech method to make alcohol out of sugar.

Every batch of beer I've made has been an ale, and usually with an assortment of equipment and ingredients thrown together from any source I had access to. The first batches I made were crafted from materials bought at the local home brewers' supply store. When I was brewing North American ales in Ecuador, I did my best to time the batches of beer I made to coincide with visits to the US, when I would bring ingredients down with me, like these pungent hop pellets.

Even with personally imported ingredients, brewing beer in Ecuador always presented its challenges. Virtually every culture in the world is steeped in some sort of alcoholic beverage, and Ecuador's mestizo heritage has each foot in a different mash. But neither of them involve beer. From its indigenous roots comes chicha, a fermented beverage made from native corn. From its history of colonial plantations we have such beverages as rum, which I wrote about before, and aguardiente, which is to rum more or less as moonshine is to American whiskey.

Today, one can still try all of these fine imbibes, and while rum tends to be produced in commercial distilleries, chicha and aguardiente both hale from the same homebrewing spirit as beer does in the US. My weekend bike rides in Cuenca often ended with a stop at a roadside stand selling mapanagua, for example, which is aguardiente mixed with fresh squeezed cane juice and a lime. The gentlemen who sold it to me grew their own cane and distilled their own aguardiente, and each visit brought some nice conversation while they ran the cane through their on-site mill for my drink. Truly, these fellows were fine examples of small batch distilling, and were certainly working within their own element. I, on the other hand, was obstinately dedicated to making North American beer in the tropics, where neither hops nor barley have historically been grown. Before I could even get started, I had to get my equipment together.

The first and most difficult step was getting myself a couple of big, glass bottles.

Once I decided I wanted to brew, I started looking around for these iconic vessels, beloved to home brewers as the place where their beer comes to life, frothing prodigiously with yeasty bubbles. I like having two of them because I follow a two-stage fermentation technique. Such bottles were once used in Ecuador for delivering drinking water to people's homes, but since the advent of cheap plastic, they have become an oddity found in few other places besides traditional drugstores, who have them on display to contribute to their boutique image.

In fact, I found more than a few of them in some such pharmacies, but the owners were unwilling to part with them. Simultaneously, Ecuador's government had enacted a stiff tax on imported goods weighing more than 4 kilograms, and anyone who has had to lift and shake a 5 gallon glass carboy to clean and rinse it knows it weighs a lot more than that. So importing them from the US was also out of the question, even on an airplane, where their bulk and fragility made it prohibitive to bring them aboard as either carry-on or checked luggage.

And so my ambition for craft beer in Ecuador was put on hold, even as my personally imported ingredients aged in what I hoped was a graceful way under refrigeration. Until one day, when I was walking home from lunch with a friend from the coast. I had been telling him about the big bottles I needed, and after lunch we walked by an antique shop he suggested we check out. Inside, sure enough, were precisely two dusty bottles of exactly the kind I had been waiting for. I bought them, took them home, washed them over and over, and was ready to brew.

The only other equipment that presented some challenge to acquire were brown bottles for storing and pouring the beer once it was ready for drinking. Fortunately, while there isn't much craft brewing going on there, Ecuador does have an active beer drinking culture in the form of its beloved Pilsener. It also has a bottle deposit program which has left the country replete with durable glass 22-ounce sized bottles. A big supply of those was all I needed, and Nancy's family had a collection of neglected specimens that I could use. Rather than try to clean out the mold that had grown at the bottom of them, I decided I would just return the bottles one by one for fresh, beer-filled ones, and clean out the new bottles right away once they were empty. 5 gallons divided by 22 ounces is about 29 bottles, and so for good measure I made sure my friends and I drank about 30 bottles of Pilsener in the coming weeks. This left us in good spirits, and with all the fresh and clean bottles I needed.

Now that I review the photo, I see that I ended up with 36 bottles after all. It's always better to have too many than not enough. Also featured in the above is an empty of one one of my favorite North American craft beers, personally imported and consumed for inspirational purposes.

The rest of the equipment I needed was easy to find, and so it was time for brewing, at last. For an amateur brewer like myself, that means a process that includes cracking grains, like the ones you see in the plastic bag. Ziploc and a rolling pin is the way I crack them, short a hand-cranked grain mill as I am.

For the batch of porter I happened to be making, I was using some of the darkest roasted barley I could find, which gives the beer a nice brown/black color and an even nicer malted flavor. Put that together with your malted grains, hot water, and when the time is right, your favorite assortment of hops as pictured above. Then you end up with an aromatic stew that fills the house with a pleasantly sweet smell for the next several hours. And of course, eventually you get beer, which is ultimately the point of all of this.

Once you're satisfied that your beer is well cooked, you fill up one of those big bottles with it. If you're as lucky as I am, you even have an assistant who smiles and holds the funnel.

Once you've brewed your beer, you mostly have to wait. You've stacked up a sugary solution with the natural preservative power of hops, and then loaded it with activated yeast under more or less controlled temperatures. Often overnight, all those natural forces you've set up begin to have their way with one another, bubbling away in a sure sign that alcohol is being coaxed forth from sugar molecules before your very eyes.

But once all that initial activity is over, the beer will just sit there for quite awhile longer, and unless you look closely it doesn't look like much is happening at all. But at the bottom of the barrel you'll see a bunch of thick residue forming, and the idea is to keep your tasty beverage away from it. That's why many brewers, even low-tech ones like me, opt for a two-stage fermentation in which the liquid is transferred carefully to a fresh vessel and the detritus is left behind. This all ads up to invoking yet another scientific principle in your own kitchen, that of the siphon. And that's about all the action you'll get from your beer for a couple of weeks or so.

Until it's time to bottle, which means more siphoning, and also the satisfying task of capping your carefully kept empties. Looking at the progression of photos, it would appear that I had nothing better to do between the various steps in the process than let my beard grow. And after this fateful day, when the beer found its final resting place before its eventual consumption, came more waiting. Once in the bottle, the beer is conditioned. It sits undisturbed, naturally clarifying thanks to the forces of gravity drawing the final remnants of particulate matter to the bottom of the bottle. It also develops carbonation naturally, due to the extra sugar solution I introduced upon bottling. In the presence of this fresh dose of sugar, the last vestiges of active yeast living in the premature beer awaken one last time. It produces carbon dioxide and pressure to preserve the beer for months within the bottle, and also puts bubbles in your beer - again, with time. If you're impatient, you could drink the beer the moment it's bottled. Just throw it in the blender before you drink it, and it will be just as bubbly as a well-finished product. But most brewers will agree that a couple more weeks and it will naturally develop the perfect foamy top, all by itself.

And that's the end of the story. Bottles full of beer are like potential energy, and you get to choose when to unleash it, and with whom. But after all that waiting, you've had lots of time to consider what to do with your newly found powers. Choose wisely!

The long, winding road to Zaruma

2011-02-15T15:45:00.000-06:00

Zaruma. A beautiful town in the province of El Oro, tucked deeply within the green mountains of southern Ecuador. Far enough away from any other major tourist destination to remain largely unknown to many travelers, it took me more than three years of living in Ecuador to finally make my way there. With less than a month left in the country, though, we decided that one last road trip to a place neither of us had ever been would be a fine farewell.

We planned to leave Cuenca on a Saturday afternoon. Time enough to have a quick lunch downtown after Nancy's final class. I had already finished teaching a week prior, and thus we embarked on our trip unemployed and with no particular leads on jobs once we left Ecuador. A potentially ominous beginning to a weekend getaway, and yet neither of us were particularly worried about such things as work. After all, we were now officially on vacation, and what better way to enjoy vacation in South America than to get on a bus and go somewhere new?

The ride to Zaruma from Cuenca begins along the highway to Machala, which we both knew well. I had been as far along it as Girón half a dozen times for various reasons. Nancy had traveled up and down its length as far as Santa Isabel countless times since she was a little girl, in tow as her family made the rounds as young teachers in Ecuador's rural schools in the area. She knew it well enough to begin to sense that something wasn't right as the bus made what I had assumed was a routine stop to drop off and pick up passengers on the side of the road just beyond Santa Isabel. I too began to rouse myself from the half-sleep I had learned to fall into during long bus trips, as I picked up on the nervous tone of an increasing number of voices sounding from around the bus.

I couldn't see much from where I was sitting, but apparently the driver was attempting to haltingly maneuver our bus down a road which had been washed out by a landslide. That's not a particularly rare occurrence in a country built upon mountains of loose topsoil, where it is common practice to build farms and highways right on the open faces of hillsides. Many techniques have been applied to reinforce the roads that twist their way around unlikely geographical contours, but give them enough time and rainfall and sooner or later they'll all go tumbling down the hill.

Apparently, the one we were headed down had done just that, and the driver was obstinately pressing along it. I'm thankful I couldn't see just how close we had gotten to going over the edge, judging from the kinds of language issuing from the mouths of my fellow passengers. Maybe the litany of voices in protest grew to enough of a crescendo to finally persuade the driver, or else we just got too close to rolling down the mountain for his personal sense of safety. Either way, he threw it in reverse and resignedly headed back up the way we came. Until the bus pulled off onto a side road, which was apparently a detour to where we were going. And so we began wheeling our way around this loose dirt path never intended for bus traffic, and I occasionally glanced out the window to see how close we got to the edge.

That road, simply put, is not safe. A look further along reveals at once how steep the hillside is below, and how loose is the rock, sand and gravel making up the terrain itself. The total lack of any sort of guardrail, combined with the traffic coming from the other direction (not pictured) and the haste of the driver trying to make up for lost time will complete the sense of impending death for most people, I think. To say I had never felt at risk on buses in Ecuador would be a lie. But after my first few trips with no incident, I had learned to go along for the ride without worrying too much about my safety. This particular trip admittedly put me on edge, though.

In the end, I found myself thinking the same kinds of thoughts that I always did on what I considered a dangerous bus ride. The bus wouldn't be turning around, and we certainly wouldn't be getting off of it in some show of protest, in the middle of nowhere. And telling the driver to slow down would either have no effect, or would just get him more frustrated. Plus, as I've seen before, there are often passengers on board who thank a driver at the end of the journey for getting them to their destination sooner by driving faster (read: recklessly). And so who was I to add my voice to the speculation already whirling around the bus. When would we arrive at our stop? When would the main route be opened back up? Was this an official detour, or were we headed down an unknown route?

These concerns were soon replaced by new ones, as the bus stopped yet again. Looking out the window, I saw a line of vehicles ahead of us. Several passengers began to get out of their seats and leave the bus to check out the situation, and eventually curiosity got the better of me and I did the same. A quarter of a mile up the road, heavy construction equipment high above the road was busy shoveling tons of dirt and rocks down, directly onto our path. A sight like that made it very clear that we wouldn't be going forward anytime soon, and as I walked back to the bus, a line of vehicles had already formed behind ours. We were stuck where we were. I climbed back on board and curled up with my wife and daughter to the green, flickering glow of a poor copy of a Jackie Chan movie, dubbed into Spanish and showing on the built-in bus TV.

That movie had ended, darkness had set in, and an extended reel of Jackie Chan bloopers had begun before we started moving again. Earlier, I had gotten off the bus once more to check the progress of the road work, and saw that the dumping of dirt and rocks onto the road had stopped, and a new set of equipment had begun clearing it off and loading it into dump trucks. An earth moving operation beyond my understanding. Nonetheless, we were back on our way, and half an hour later we got back onto what Nancy recognized as the road to Machala.

We arrived in Machala that night around 9pm, having left Cuenca around 3. A trip to Machala can normally be made in three hours according to our understanding, and we had hoped to be in Zaruma in about three hours more. But travel plans must sometimes change, and instead of spending our first night in Zaruma, we found ourselves a hotel in Machala and called it a night.

The next day we were back on the road.

The ride to Machala, by any route, will inevitably take you from the cool heights of the Ecuadorian sierra down to the perennially steamy coast. The ride to Zaruma takes you back up the mountains again, albeit not to the same altitude as Cuenca. Along the way you pass through countless villages during that fascinating transition in climate and terrain. Every small town brings a stop, a change in passengers and a sudden wave of vendors with baskets full of homemade snacks and plastic sacks filled to the brim with iced tropical juices. Pan de yuca, pan de maíz. Fresh oranges with the tops sliced off for easy access to their juicy interiors. Corviche, cocadas, papipollo, plátano con queso. And the list goes on. Yum!

So many small towns come between Machala and Zaruma, all of them tiny, squeezed into spaces between leafy banana plantations or else clinging improbably to the side of a mountain, all of them brick and concrete buildings huddled around a tidy town square. So many, that you begin to wonder between naps if Zaruma will be any different.

Then the bus stops again, and people start getting off. More people, until the seats are nearly empty. Finally, you hear the driver say "servidos," and you know you're not going any further, at least not on this bus. So you must be there. You get off the bus, on a street like this one, and you realize that after all, amongst so many other nondescript towns sprinkled throughout the valleys of southernmost Ecuador, Zaruma is different.

Small and remote enough to receive few international travelers busy checking South America's hot spots off the list in their guidebooks, Zaruma is missing the gratuitous tourist shops and hostels. It has still managed to catch UNESCO's watchful eye, who are considering it for admission to its growing list of World Heritage sites.

With some luck it will receive that noble designation while still managing to stay off the tourist's radar, and the next time I go back some of the faded glory of its oldest buildings will have been rightfully restored, without having been turned into the next high-dollar bed and breakfast.

A stroll around the winding streets of Zaruma's historic center carries you through neighborhoods that were never quite like those of other towns in Ecuador. Houses built in a style not unlike those you might find in Cuenca, yet unique for their ground floor portales supported by columns. Plus, they're all made from wood rather than adobe and brick. Cobbled streets rambling up and down hills and sewn together by narrow walkways rather than the endless square blocks of other old Spanish settlements. Maybe there were other places like this in Ecuador, strewn out across hills and carved from wood, like Guayaquil's Santa Ana, but most of those have burned down. But so far, these remnants of Zaruma's past have managed to survive, protected by their isolation and by the stewardship of generations of the thoughtful holders of the deeds to these classic buildings.

Our own stroll around town was led by our stomachs, arriving in Zaruma around lunchtime as we did. I had heard from friends who had visited Zaruma before that I ought to try the coffee, and the tigrillo. Several consecutive semesters of teaching 7am classes turned me into a coffee drinker, and while I was enjoying a respite from work at the time, the need for caffeine still lingered on. We were deep within Ecuador's coffee growing region, and the fame of Zaruma's coffee was second only to Loja's around the country, so I was determined not only to sample it while we were there but to bring some fresh roast back home with me as well. Fortunately for us, every restaurant we walked by had tigrillo and coffee on the menu posted out front, so neither would be hard to come by. The real question was which place to try, and ultimately we decided that location was the key.

We found a restaurant in Zaruma's town square, surrounded by some of its most well-preserved historic buildings and - like every square in every town I've ever visited in Latin America - a church. The service was slow but it was only the second day of our extended time off work, so we were in no hurry. While we waited we observed that the students of the Catholic schools in town appeared to be celebrating their confirmation, as dozens of young people in their uniforms gathered on the other end of the plaza near the church.

Then, our food came, two plates heaping with deliciously chewy steamed and fried green plantains. I love green plantain, and the texture of these was the best I'd tried at any restaurant. On top was a generous helping of cheese melting from the heat of the starchy banana dumplings. So that was tigrillo. On the side was a nice, greasy pork chop. There was nothing fresh or leafy on that plate, nor would we eat anything like that throughout our stay in Zaruma. We got our vitamins and minerals from the fresh juice served with every meal, and otherwise filled up on tigrillo with every meal. The coffee came at the end, and was as strong and rich as I'd hoped.

We didn't get up right away after we ate, but once we did it was to explore the city some more.

We had no real agenda throughout our stay in Zaruma. We knew there were sights to see outside of town, and that you could hire a driver to take you around to them. But we were there to do nothing more than wander around on foot and enjoy being on vacation in a beautiful and quiet town.

Every street was on a hill, and every corner led to four new streets of lovely buildings to see. Some have been ushered into modern times with grace, and a hats-off bow to their origins.

Others sit with their paint peeling and windows broken, revealing with their sheer size a once-portentous purpose, and now waiting silently for one fate, or another.

Zaruma's historic section isn't huge, and the further you get from the center of town, the fewer the historic buildings become, outnumbered increasingly by uninspired, modern cement construction. But eventually we wandered up a road until we left downtown and didn't turn back towards it, opting instead to see where it would lead us. It was our fortune to have chosen a road that led to one of Zaruma's nearest tourist sites outside of town.

We had found El Sexmo, a now-defunct mine dug out in search of gold. Gold is why Zaruma was given royal designation by Spanish king Felipe II in the 16th century, and is the name of the Province El Oro itself. El Sexmo refers to a Spanish system of colonial taxation, in which the sixth part of all wealth exploited from the colonies would be owed directly to the Spanish crown.

We wandered up to the closed gate of the mine - now museum - late on a Sunday afternoon, but the children playing outside assured us it was still open and that we ought to ring the bell. We rang it, and a quiet young woman came down to meet us. While looking at no one in particular and saying softly that it was already after 5pm, she invited us in. We told her we'd be happy to just have a look around, take a few pictures, and be on our way. But as she walked with us up to the main buildings, she told us about an introductory video she could show us, and that we could take a self-guided tour of the mine shaft, if we were interested.

After we had seen the short video and learned about the mine, the woman returned to invite us again to walk into the mine, if we wanted to. We didn't want to impose, and told her we'd just walk around the grounds for a few minutes. After we'd walked around a little, a group of twenty or so university students from Quito had wandered up and were gearing up for a tour of the mine themselves. The woman came back again and quietly insisted that if we wanted to see the mine, we ought to go ahead of them and avoid the commotion of so many people inside the mine. So finally, we took her up on her offer.

We put on the prerequisite rubber boots and hardhat and headed for the mine:

Wife and babe (who didn't like wearing a hardhat), and some college kid.

The mineshaft led half a kilometer straight into the hillside. Or so we were told. We wandered back as far as this mannequin in a hardhat, and decided that once you'd seen a hundred meters of a mineshaft, you'd probably seen it all. Plus, we could hear the troupe of college kids tramping their way noisily into the depths of the hillside behind us, and decided to head back before they caught up with us.

A gold mine in the literal sense, and the reason for Zaruma's very existence and prosperity. Were Zaruma's streets once full of saloons and shoot-outs, like the boom-and-bust towns of the Old West? Chances are it was more of a miniature Potosí, with Spanish criollo nobility trying out their new titles and doing their best to have their mansions built in the latest European style.

By the time we made it back into town, the sun had set and the streetlights had come on. The next night we'd be back home already, and soon we'd be preparing for Christmas and our last weeks in Cuenca. Zaruma was the first of many different kinds of goodbyes we'd be saying to Ecuador in the coming weeks, a chance to travel around some of its beautiful small towns and countryside one more time before our travels took us somewhere new. Traveling gives you a lot of experience in saying goodbye, as it carries you into and out of the presence of other people and places. Never knowing what the future may hold, we often ease the sense of loss we feel from a departure by speaking of how and when we'll see each other again. So it was, that night in Zaruma, that we talked about going back there, someday.

Barrels of Rum

2010-12-26T18:09:00.001-06:00

Anyone standing at the foot of a rack like this, staring up slack-jawed at the myriad of barrels towering above and knowing that each one is filled to the brim with distilled spirits will react in a predictable way, I think. My personal reaction, one shared by the group I was with, was something like, "Damn, that's a lot of rum!" I imagine that's generally the effect that the proprietors of Ron San Miguel expect.

Months before, as I was reading a description of the place, it was undeniably the sheer quantity of rum that caught my attention: "200 million liters of rum in oak barrels." Hmm. There I was, absentmindedly browsing a bulletin board at work as I passed the time during a break in a workshop for teachers at the beginning of our fall semester. It was that day, incidentally, that we were all placed on spontaneous lockdown at the office, due to the news that the national police force was rising up in rebellion against the president. But that, as they say, is a story for another time. Because it was that day also that I hatched a plan to organize a trip for a select cadre of our teaching staff to go and see those 200 million liters of rum for ourselves.

Perhaps an alcohol related outing was not an appropriate one for working professionals to embark upon, or for me to organize. But on the other hand, the bulletin board I had been reading was for our organization's department for US college kids studying abroad. So certainly if university students could be considered for such a trip, older, more mature educators such as ourselves would be fine.

Ever since I was pulled aside during a trip to Isla de la Plata near Ecuador's coast to do some Spanish-English interpretation between our tour guide and the rest of the non-Spanish speaking tourists, I've entertained the thought of organizing tours as an alternative or supplement to teaching English. So as I turned the notion of this trip to Cava Ron San Miguel around in my mind, I decided it would be a decent way to actually see how complicated it is to put a trip together. That, in addition to seeing the aforementioned millions of liters of rum. For this one, transportation and the entry fee at our destination were the only real costs involved, and as such, it seemed simple enough to set up. Since I was a novice at organizing trips, I didn't want to actually make any money at it, so I just calculated the per capita cost for the prices I'd been given, which turned out to be only about $5 per person. You've got to love Ecuador for its low cost of living.

It took me a couple of months to get around to actually making the trip happen. And so it was on a rainy Friday in November that an assortment of English teachers boarded a red tour bus and set off to see all that rum for ourselves.

When we arrived at our destination, we were surprised by how beautiful the location was and how close it was to the city. Cuenca, like many Latin American cities, tends to be pretty dense. But once you leave the city, it's striking how quickly the scenery turns from urban to rural. As such, Cava Ron San Miguel can just about be reached by Cuenca's public bus system for its proximity to town, but at the same time it is situated in a wide open estate with far more green space than building. We were later told that the distillery takes its name from its location, which is on the former grounds of a beautiful old eponymous church, within sight of the building we toured.

As we got off the bus and walked into the dimly lit barrel house, the unmistakable aroma of rum immediately filled our noses. A woman came to meet us and led us up to a platform with heavy wooden tables where we sat and watched an introductory video about the distillery. From there, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we also caught our first glimpse of the many enormous barrels resting in the bodega below us.

There they were, the 200 million liters of rum, aging in their oaken barrels. Numbers that large are difficult for the human mind to truly conceive of. As I tried at that earlier date to reckon with the idea of what that quantity of rum really looked like, the image came to mind of a sight not unlike this one, with big wooden casks stacked up and extending as far as the eye could see in any given direction.

The eye could see far less here, however, due to the low light. As our guide explained, wood essentially breathes, permitting vapors to escape from the aging rum. Hence the undeniably boozy smell as we entered the building. And also the reason for the low lights. Apparently stronger lights, among other things, run the risk of igniting the highly flammable gasses in the air and causing a massive explosion. With such a thought in mind, so much rum resting in silence demands much more respect from the little people walking among it.

And walk among it we did. The "cava" in Cava Ron San Miguel refers to the barrel house itself, a sort of cave if you will, where the rum sits in oak and takes on all the oaken characteristics in regards to color, flavor and aroma. Prior to the aging process, the rum is a clear liquid, highly concentrated and not very palatable. Sugar cane grows best in a tropical climate, and thus all the production of the rum takes place at lower elevations. In the case of San Miguel rum, near the coast. There, the cane is grown, the sweet liquid extracted, fermented, and distilled. Once distilled down into high concentrations, it is transported up to Cuenca and its perennially cool climate. Upon its arrival here, it is diluted with spring water and aged for about two years before being blended and bottled as a finished product.

Many Latin American countries have a geography and a climate perfectly suited for this paradigm of rum production. Ecuador, like many surrounding nations, is hot along the coast and further inland, as the terrain rises up into mountains, it is met with cooler air. Combine this with low latitude and you have year-round warm weather suited for cane production in one region, and nearby an equally predictable climate suited for aging. Warmer, more humid temperatures would wreak havoc with liquor in oaken barrels, causing rotting of the wood and spoilage of its contents. Conversely, cane grows poorly in Cuenca due to the cool weather. Access to both climatic conditions within short distances of one another means that San Miguel can conveniently contract the production of cane along the coast. Rather than shipping tons of raw sugar cane up the mountains, the distillation takes place near the coast as well, so that only the lighter and more compact unfinished rum needs to be transported.

A fine means of production, indeed. And how about the finished product? No tour of a storehouse full of rum would be complete without a sampling.

We were served. None of us were shy about asking for seconds, nor in the case of some, thirds, nor fourths. It was Friday afternoon, and it was raining outside. And our noses had long ago been permeated with the smell of rum, beyond the saturation point. What better conditions could you ask for to sip on San Miguel's priciest imbibe?

Alcohol is a mysterious thing. Throughout time and around the world, it has been devised from essentially anything sweet, and the people who appreciate it must cooperate with invisible natural forces, like yeast, for it to be made. In so doing, we fundamentally transform something like sugar cane into something very different indeed. The process is long and demands our time and patience, as though to temper our enthusiasm upon its consumption.

Perhaps as a result of this question of time, those who are responsible for producing rum and other alcoholic products often have a penchant for the antique, I've noticed. San Miguel is no different. The tasting room laid surrounded by beautifully well preserved relics from the past, like this classic wooden bar. The kind you want to belly up to and enjoy a game of cards or a tall glass. A person with a head full of rum vapor, seeing it empty, is led to wonder briefly over the permanence of the past, gone as it is and committed irrevocably to yesterday.

As our last glasses went bottoms up, we stepped once again into the brilliance of the outside world, more easily perceived as we emerged from the darkness by the fact that it was still cloudy and raining. But that didn't get us down, as we walked over to our final treat for the day, which consisted of bottles of San Miguel rum available at wholesale prices.

To give an indication of what we were drinking, the high end sample we took in the tasting room was available to us to buy at about $7 per bottle, which even at retail prices wouldn't put it up on the same pedestal that some of the more famous rum might sit. Nor will I be bringing a bottle on a plane someday, as I did with some of the finer mezcal I had sampled in Oaxaca. But that day, I don't think any of us left empty handed.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon. If people's faces were any indication, I feel pretty good about my amateur attempt as an organizer of tours. Maybe someday I'll try it again.

One thing I've always been impressed by in Ecuador is that prices are set for the average working individual. Of course there are places and events for the very rich, but for traveling and seeing many of the beautiful and interesting sides of this country, the cost is usually one attainable for local and tourist alike.

A tour at Cava Ron San Miguel, for example, is only $2 per person and our guide mentioned that she's happy to lead families and small groups as well as larger organized tours. Its location just outside the city means that even a taxi shouldn't be much more than $5 more from most parts of Cuenca. From our point of departure and back again, the tour took about 2 hours and left us home before dark, ready for whatever else Friday night had in store. Cheers!

Fusión Andina

2010-11-28T16:40:00.008-06:00

The photo above is a glimpse of one of my favorite restaurants in Cuenca. Tiestos is one of the newest and most popular dining establishments in town. I'd venture to say that if you live here in Cuenca and are known to splurge from time to time on a pricey but delicious meal, you've probably already eaten here at least once. That being the case, if you do live in Cuenca, maybe you need read no further. Unless you want to get hungry. For the rest of you, here's my review of a top-notch restaurant that I'm happy to have discovered along with everyone else in the city.

I've had the fortune to eat at Tiestos twice now with my wife and otherwise fine dining companion. The first time the two of us went, we modestly selected two of the mid-range items on the menu: a half-bottle of Chilean red and of course a shared dish of the restaurant's signature offerings. The centerpiece of any table at Tiestos will invariably be an elevated ceramic platter bearing your choice of thick and tender medallions of meat, simmering in a generous portion of one of many delicious sauces to choose from.

Our first experience there was with steak in a red wine sauce, each steak delectable and cooked a perfect medium per our request. Our waiter, a slim costeño in a Panama hat, presented us our meal with flair, first revealing the sizzling earthenware platter before serving each of us one of the six juicy cuts, and then drizzling them with a hearty helping of the steamy sauce they were basting in a moment before. Ready to dig in, we helped ourselves to a selection of the many accompaniments to the plato fuerte: bread with a variety of spicy sauces and oils, perfectly cooked baby yellow potatoes, mote (read: whole hominy-style corn), white rice, and a sort of round pasta not unlike israeli couscous.

It is in the accompaniments that Tiestos' chef Juan Solano pays homage to his cuencano roots. The sauces, grains and other side dishes are nearly all either variations or direct borrowings from typical Ecuadorian cuisine. The tiesto itself, the glazed earthen platter used to both cook and serve the meal, is a method of preparation which I've seen put to use by street vendors in Ecuador and Mexico alike. Tempered to withstand direct heat and naturally non-stick, these shallow ceramic dishes add traditional flavor to a contemporary meal.

As we savored our tender steak medallions and helped ourselves to more, we also took in our surroundings. Tiestos is located in a historic building in Cuenca's downtown, and that night all three of its thick-walled dining areas were bustling with clientele. When we had arrived there were still a few open tables remaining, but by the time our meal was served all of the dark and heavy wooden tables were full, and the waiting area was already brimming with anticipation.

From where we were sitting we had a view of all three of the dining rooms as well as the kitchen, an open concept in architecture dating back at least a hundred years. Chef Solano made his rounds throughout the evening, spending time chatting with the larger groups but also saying a few non-intrusive words to couples such as ourselves as we ate. As we departed that evening we were both already making plans to try one of the other promising choices on the menu before long.

As we stepped in the door to Tiestos more recently, we already knew that our days in Cuenca were numbered in the low double digits, and that this would be our last chance to dine there. So this time, we decided we wouldn't hold back and treated ourselves to the coveted high-ticket items on the menu we'd been eyeballing from our first visit. We ordered our steak medium rare in a cordon bleu sauce with mushrooms and bacon, a robust offering which was rounded out nicely by the full-bodied, full bottle of Chilean cabernet sauvignon from Misiones de Rengo we asked for.

The steaks were served a smooth and tender medium rare, the red interior lending itself perfectly to the thick and flavorful sauce. Each sip of wine offered a refreshing and bold compliment to the main course. A full bottle of strong red wine may have been an ambitious choice for a couple, and I'll admit that over time the longer-ranging effects of so much to drink may have begun to interfere with our unbiased appreciation of the meal. But looking back, and recalling clearly my empty plate, empty glass and nicely filled belly, I have no regrets.

With our choice made to go all out before we walked in the door that evening, dessert was a foregone conclusion. We ordered a dish called "chocolate temptation," and what we got was chocolate mousse with chocolate fudge on top and a chocolate brownie below. It was served with a generous spoonful of fresh passion fruit, an unexpected inclusion whose tart flavor contrasted impressively with the smooth and rich chocolate. Equally unexpected and impressive was the artistic presentation of our dessert, served atop an edible still life. It was a shame to ruin such a sight to behold, an act made much easier by how tasty it was.

My only real criticism of a restaurant where so much attention has been paid to presentation is that dinner was served with your regular, store-bought paper napkins. You might find this to be a minor point, and such a small detail certainly doesn't detract from the appreciation such delicious food. But from a design standpoint, ample cloth napkins that complemented the colorful Andean tablecloths would complete the experience down to the last moment.

With our first, more humble outing running us around $30 and our second shameless binge topping out at more than double that, Tiestos is reserved as a rare and much-anticipated dining excursion in the minds of ordinary people living in Cuenca like ourselves. Tiestos is located at Juan Jaramillo 7-34 in Cuenca's historic downtown. Its three dining areas offer an intimate ambience and consequently, limited seating. Due to this and its surging popularity, it is usually full for dinner, but they do accept reservations. They serve lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday and are open Sunday afternoons. Whether you are in Cuenca for months or only a few days, a night or afternoon at Tiestos will give you a taste of Cuenca at once modern and authentic.

How I learned Spanish

2010-11-15T11:16:00.001-06:00

Back when I was living in Santa Fe, I discovered Allá, a bookstore downtown that specializes in rare books from Latin America. I would have probably never wandered into its hidden upstairs location if I hadn't first become fascinated by a book in Spanish that I was determined to find.

I first heard of the book during my first trip to Mexico, where I had been on an immersion Spanish course during the summer. Little did I know before leaving that my trip to Mexico would occur during the infamous teacher strike of 2006. News traveled slowly enough about this strike that tourists were still obstinately crawling through the historic center of Oaxaca, attempting to go about their regular tourist business while ducking under the tarps and canopies of the teachers' makeshift campgrounds that lined virtually every downtown street.

The institute where I was studying was just a few blocks from the focal point of the teachers' demonstrations, and one day after our morning classes were over, this sight greeted us just outside the walls of our quiet language school.

The protest was truly impressive, with people marching in a line as far as the eye could see in both directions, and featuring hundreds of signs and dozens of paper mache symbols of what the teachers were rising up against. For someone like me, experiencing Latin America for the first time, I found the energy and the sheer number of people involved to be at once exciting and frightening. One thought resonated with everyone in the small group of foreigners I happened to be standing amongst: this protest isn't going to just fade away. Either they're going to get what they want, or they're going to be forcibly silenced.

In the end, it was the latter that brought the ongoing protests to an end. The first of the government's military responses occurred just a week after this picture was taken when thousands of police entered Oaxaca's downtown area. With the use of helicopters, tear gas, rubber bullets and flame throwers, the protesters were systematically driven out and their lean-to dwellings on the streets were destroyed, effectively wiping out the infrastructure of their live-in demonstration against the state government.

That particular day we still had classes, and within the walls of the institute life felt just about normal, with tea and biscuits next to our notebooks as we commenced our lesson for the day. Our professor Luis relentlessly steered our conversation back to literature throughout our barrage of endless questions about what was going on outside. Despite my own deep curiosity about the teachers and police, a moment came when my interest was definitively captured by our day's reading, and it was at that moment that my fascination with Latin American literature was born.

We were reading about one of the first encounters between the Spaniards and the people of the mainland American continent. 11 ships are burning and they burn too the rebel soldiers that are hanging on the captain's ship. While the jaws of the sea open devouring the flames, Hernan Cortes, on foot upon the sand, grips the pommel of his sword... 700 men in Mexico, towards the mountains, the volcanoes and the mystery of Moctezuma. So went this bold tactical move by one of history's most notorious conquistadores according to the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. As I wrapped my mind around the words of this unfamiliar language, I witnessed fleetingly the unfolding of 500 years of history between the moment we were reading and the moment of the battle outside. I decided then that I wanted to read more from this book we were sampling, and that I wanted to know as much as I could about the long history of the Americas, all the Americas, especially Mexico and the many countries of Central and South America.

With that intention I stepped into Allá bookstore for the first time, and bought Los nacimientos, volume 1 of the series Memoria del fuego. From that day on I didn't leave home without that little yellow book and my fat Spanish-English dictionary. Knowing already that I had another trip to Mexico and a subsequent one to Ecuador ahead of me, I set about studying that book, reading passages over and over until I could understand them in Spanish without thinking about the corresponding words in English.

As it turned out, I don't think I could have picked a better piece of literature for my purpose of studying both Latin American history and the Spanish language at once. Galeano's three volume set begins with dozens of pre-Colombian creation stories which culminate with the founding of the mighty Aztec kingdom and the many prophecies of the coming Spanish Conquest. It then shifts to documented moments in history, beginning with Columbus' 1st voyage and continuing throughout history until the final decades of the 20th century in volume 3. Each moment is a story that stands alone as well as it fits in with the sweeping chronology of the discovery, conquest and colonization of these continents by the European nations, and the subsequent revolutions and development of the distinct countries which color modern maps of the Western hemisphere.

Each story is told as if it were happening in the present, each moment is taken from real history, and none of the stories exceed 3 pages in length. A perfect way to take a basic understanding of Spanish vocabulary and verb tenses and shape it story-by-story into a broad perspective on Spanish language, history and literature. The series has its critics, especially from professional historians who scoff at its brief accounts and lack of detailed footnoting. But Galeano has crafted a work that lies somewhere between non-fiction and literature, and also provides one or two primary sources for each of his hundreds of historical cuentos. For someone like me, a novice when it comes to Latin American history, I've found countless reference points from his stories which I can further explore when I choose to. More often than not, I let these moments in history sift through my mind and am content with the fact that when I need to know more about them I can pull these books from the shelf and reacquaint myself with the story. Then I can investigate further, either using the references Galeano provides or by simply punching some key words into a wikipedia search.

Hats off to Eduardo Galeano. As I often find from truly good literature, a good story hooks me from the first line. I've also thought that life is too short for too much fiction and daydreaming. In a series that contains hundreds of stories drawn from the real history of the world, I get hooked by these first lines over and over again. To leave you today, I give you my pale translation of the first lines from Volume 1, a veritable Genesis story in what could be considered a kind of Bible of American history and prehistory:

The woman and the man dreamt that God was dreaming of them. God dreamt of them while singing and shaking his maracas, enveloped in tobacco smoke... and together they will live and they will die. But they will be born again. They will be born and they will die and again they will be born. And they will never stop being born, because death is a lie.

The straight and narrow

2010-10-30T17:00:00.008-05:00

For the last in this series recapping our August visit to the US, we find ourselves on this road, a well-maintained bike path cutting through the green summer woods of Ohio. This unassuming but tidy sliver of pavement has run through my hometown for years, but it wasn't until our recent trip that I actually had the chance to get on it and check it out for myself.

I've been an avid bike rider since I was a kid. I can still recall the hours that I spent in abandoned construction areas in my neighborhood with a BMX bike and a couple of friends, tearing up and down the dusty paths that gave me enough momentum to go flying off the many hills built up in the clearings between the trees. As I got older, I graduated to a mountain bike and started taking longer trips all around the city. The simple act of going from one side of town to the other and back using nothing more than my own legs gave me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, far greater than the intangible reward of a high percentage on a report card, for example.

Once I was old enough to drive, I got a car and pretty much left the idea of bike riding behind, up until a day at the university when I was driving home and got plowed into head-on by another college kid making a left turn. He was apparently too eager to get to the party around the corner and didn't bother to look before he went. Neither of us had been driving very fast but the impact was still enough to have torn up a lot of what was under the hood of car. Enough so to have resulted in the other guy's insurance company declaring my car totaled and cutting me check for its value. I spent a few days considering what kind of car to get next, before ultimately deciding not to get one at all. Instead I bought a new bike and used it to get around Columbus for the next year or so.

In so doing, I rediscovered the youthful joy I had once derived from going from place to place under my own power. I also found a new satisfaction in cruising around the college campus and beyond on a warm sunny day, experiencing the urban environment without the filter of windshield and motor. I made the most of both sidewalk and curbside lanes on the road to maneuver through heavy traffic as I pleased, and found new single track and new hills and mounds to get a mountain-biking fix every now and then. There were also days when I'd be out and far from home and the sky would open up with an unrelenting downpour. On days like that I'd ride home with the spray from both tires pelting me front and back, quickly reaching that saturation point where it didn't matter anymore how much it rained because I was already soaked.

Today in Cuenca, I'm back in that place again, car-free and leaving it up to my own feet, my mountain bike of the moment, and public transportation to get me around and out of town. During those rare times when I do find myself in a car, I can't help but feel like I'm buckling into an amusement park ride. It was with that frame of mind that we visited the US recently. At the same time, by virtue of our cross-country trip and the desire to see many parts of Ohio while we were there, I was behind the wheel of a car for the first time since I left the States some years ago.

I even had a bike waiting for me in Santa Fe, but due to lack of space in the car we drove across the country, I ended up giving it away at the last minute to the Chain Breaker Collective, a non-profit dedicated to getting people on two wheels in Northern New Mexico. I was happy to be able to give the bike away to a group like them, but sad at the same time to say goodbye to that particular bike. I'd had it for over 10 years, and even though it had been slowly rotting as it waited for me in Santa Fe, it was the only bike I had in the States, and I had been hoping to get out and do some riding once we got to Ohio.

Fortunately I was able to borrow two bikes while we were there after all, and so Nancy and I were able to get out and do some riding together. Plus, on a few different mornings and afternoons when little else was going on, I took the opportunity to finally get on that trail you see pictured at the top of the page.

Once I was on the path, I discovered that I had entered Ohio's veritable Highway 1 for bikes (and other forms of non-motorized travel). A quick look at the map posted at the trailhead revealed a growing network of such trails. Years ago, many of these trails didn't exist, but they are slowly beginning to link up, incorporating already existing paths within cities and connecting them with long stretches such as this one, between towns. Maybe in a few years, it will be feasible to travel from one State to the next on your bike, using strictly these designated bike paths.

Projecting yourself into such a future, you can begin to imagine a new sort of cycling trend emerging, one in the same vein as an intrepid hike along the full length of the Appalachian Trail. On a bona fide network of interstate bike trails, one could take a tour of any given region of the US, visiting its respective cities and national parks. You could camp each night if that were your angle, or you could stay in the hostels or roadside inns that had sprung up to accommodate all the traffic passing through.

Such is the vision of the Rails to Trails Conservancy. By taking land once set aside for our nation's deteriorating system of railroads and carving out a 8-10 foot wide stretch of pavement along the easement, you create an affordable bike trail that runs along a relatively flat and straight path. And since defunct railroads exist throughout the country, a comprehensive project to establish such trails along enough of them would lay down the foundation for an interstate transport system to rival Eisenhower's in its scope, but for nowhere near the same pricetag.

With some luck, we'll have something like that to look forward to. In the meantime, I made it as far as one town to the south and one town to the north of my home in Springfield. My first destination was to the south, none other than Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Once I had jumped on the trailhead on the north end of Springfield, I followed the trail over an old train trussel. When I was younger, I thought these things were just a way to take a dive into the river below...

Later, the trail led through Springfield's rusty industrial district, and also within sight of my old church and elementary school grounds:

Next I rode through downtown Springfield, past the old Marketplace building you see on the left, and then headed into the south end of town. Here, the trail spills out onto residential neighborhood streets before picking up again as a separate trail south of town.

Once out of town, the trail makes a straight shot towards Yellow Springs, through the woods and cornfields of rural Ohio. One fundamental difference between riding in the high mountains I've gotten accustomed to in recent years and the low country of the Great Lakes is of course the expansive stretches of flat land you'll find in Ohio. Another important difference for a cyclist is the bugs. Ohio in the summer is rife with insects, and sunglasses are a must even on a cloudy day, unless you want to pick bug guts out of your eyes while you're riding.

Between Springfield and Yellow Springs, you ride for many miles along a flat course girded by trees on both sides. With the sound of leaves and locusts in your ears and the uninterrupted line of the bike trail unfolding endlessly before you, you reach cruising speed and just keep going. And then all of a sudden, the line of trees breaks and you're in a new town:

The Yellow Springs station. Once a true train station, the rails are gone and its original purpose has given way to a rest area and information center for cyclists. With a public restroom and drinking fountain, as well as endless brochures and a map of the bike trails throughout the area, this is indeed a welcome center for all those arriving to town by bike.

Yellow Springs is a college town, a liberal enclave and a tourist destination well-known throughout the area. It's a preferred destination for me because it has the great combination of good restaurants and one of my favorite forests, Glen Helen. And yet, in all my life I've only this one time gotten there under the power of my own two legs. And it took me just over an hour to get there from my doorstep on the north side of Springfield, and that was with all the stops I made to take pictures. Not too bad!

This trail, I'm told, can be taken all the way down to Cincinnati and the Ohio River. That particular day I contented myself in having made it as far as Yellow Springs, as dusk was already setting in by the time I got there. But I was buoyed by the feeling of empowerment I got from connecting these two nearby communities by bike power, and vowed to do it again as soon as I could. And on my way home, as I was pummeled by a new salvo of nocturnal insects, I decided that one day soon I'd follow the trail to its northern terminus in Urbana, the community north of Springfield.

And sure enough, it wasn't more than a week before I took off spontaneously one morning, determined to make it to Urbana. I originally planned to ride as quickly as I could to Urbana and back again, just to see how long it would take. But then I found a sign for Cedar Bog, a state park preserving a small segment of what was once a huge swamp covering a large portion of the State. I hadn't been there since I was a kid and I couldn't resist ducking into the woods and having a look around.

Upon entering the park, the sight that greeted me was this fine tree standing at the entrance to the forest, and a wooden trail carefully laid out atop the marshy wetlands underfoot. I'm not sure if it was meant for bike traffic, but since it was Labor Day and there was no one around to tell me otherwise, I decided it would be alright.

It turned out that this wooden platform extended throughout the park, and I was able to coast along the length of it as I explored. The park, while relatively small, covers several different ecosystems, including some open meadows and a nicely shaded forest with a river running through it. Along the way I learned from the various signs that some 25% of Ohio's plant species can be found within the park. I also learned the fine shades of meaning between a fen, a bog and a swamp. If you're interested in such things for some reason, I'd be happy to share.

After I had gone all the way around the park without ever actually having set foot in it, I got back on the trail and followed the railroad into Urbana.

Quietly emerging from the vast fields of central Ohio into one of the countless small wooded towns poking out from the sea of yellowing cornstalks is a normal, everyday task when you do it in your car. In fact, passing through a town like Urbana often means a resigned foot on the brake and a prolonged wait at a series of traffic lights before thankfully speeding back up to 55 and punching the cruise control back on again.

But when you do the same thing on a bike, when the first sign of the ubiquitous water tower or church spire signals your triumphant entrance into a new town, you first feel the satisfaction of having traversed a wide open space in order to get there. Then you see the place through a new set of eyes, ones bare of the glass and metal filter that often rob us of the real experience of being in a new place. There was also something about riding around the streets of Urbana that brought back the many memories I'd had in that town. At the same time, as I stumbled upon neighborhoods and alleyways I'd never seen before, I felt as if I was experiencing it for the first time.

When traveling, whether it be cross country or just across town, you'll see more in an hour on foot or on your bike than you'll see all day in your car. Likewise, a five mile trip across the countryside or urban landscape under your own power and out in the elements will reveal more about that place than hundreds of miles will grant you when you're behind the wheel. Don't get me wrong, our trip this summer would have been impossible without the various cars we used to get around. But I was happy to have also gotten the chance to experience my old stomping grounds once again on a bike, because that's how I got to know them in the first place.

That's nice!

2010-10-17T15:27:00.004-05:00

As many of you know, we were in the US in August. It was the first time there for my wife and daughter, and only my second visit home since coming to Latin America over three years ago. My first time back during that time was for just two weeks, and happened more than two years ago, already. Some people talk about being away from the US and then feeling culture shock all over again when they got back. I never felt like I had any kind of "reverse culture shock" or anything like it, myself. In fact, it was really easy for me to adjust to being there again. But knowing that I was there only for a visit, and being there with someone who'd never been there before, these things helped me see the US through a different set of eyes than I had before I started my extended stay outside of its borders.

I also had the opportunity to engage in one of my favorite aspects of international living, which is to take a look at certain things people (including myself) take for granted as they go about their daily lives in their respective countries. I'd say that in any given country, there are certain things that people do as a society - usually without thinking consciously about them so much - which work really well. Then there are things that they do which really don't work so well, but they do them anyway. Mostly because from their perspective, that's just how things are and even if it's annoying, that's life. So I'd like to spend a few photos and paragraphs today looking at three institutions that I see in the US which I highly admire. Institutions we have the fortune to take for granted in the US as always being there, which may not be the case in many other parts of the world.

The first on my list will be beer:

The carryout you see here is in Columbus, OH and was never more than a short trip from any of the several apartments I lived in there. Inside, you can find dozens of high quality imported and domestic beer and wine. There are dozens of other locally owned carryout stores like this one throughout the city, and a comparable number of local bars with plenty of good beer on tap. There are so many of both in a college area like this one that an easy-going college kid has no reason to ever doubt in the reassuring ubiquity of some tasty imbibe.

Many people don't know that we owe today's deluge of microbrew varieties to Jimmy Carter and the Congress of his time. In 1978 an amendment was added to a federal tax bill that permitted the making of beer and wine at home with no need for registration or taxation. When Carter signed that bill, a time-honored industry of American craft beer was revived in the US. What had been a web of costly legal overhead costs which all but prohibited amateur brewing became a wide open opportunity for anyone to try it out with very little investment. Many of those amateur brewers, once satisfied with their unique and delicious creations, decided to go professional after all. 30 years later, we can enjoy the many fruits of their labor.

Today, we are enjoying a renaissance in craft brewing made possible by that small detail in a tax bill. It's ironic that's all it took to bring it back, considering the veritable golden age of brewing in the US was cut short by a full-out 18th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919, known popularly as Prohibition. Looking at Columbus again as an example, today there is still a part of town known as the Brewery District, which prior to Prohibition had been the home to five local brewing companies begun by German immigrants. Before the waves of German immigration and the widespread national embrace of their brewing styles, Columbus and the rest of the US had been drinking English-style ales. Personally, those are my favorite. Today's blending of American barley and hop varieties with traditional English ale styles is as good as it gets.

In Ecuador, in comparison, there is a woeful dearth in beer options. Ecuadorians love beer, especially their Pilsener querida. Right on the label of the iconic 22 ounce Pilsener bottle (meant for sharing), it says ecuatorianamente refrescante, paying homage simultaneously to national pride and the beer's refreshing quality on a hot day. I'll admit, especially when it's nice and sunny, or if I'm eating seafood, I do enjoy a Pilsener. But there are few other beers around to be had, and those that do exist closely mimic that same commercial, light lager style that you can find repeatedly from any given country throughout the world. Red Stripe, Corona, Budweiser, Molson, Foster's or Tsingtao, every country's got at least one. Don't get me wrong, that style is fine for the right occasion, but some other options would be very much welcome.

Needless to say, after two years straight of largely doing without, during our trip I made a point to sample many different styles from different parts of the country. From 2nd St. Brewery to Marble in Santa Fe, from Rogue in Oregon to Red Tail in California. Goose Island from Chicago, Great Lakes from Cleveland. And bigger names like Fat Tire and Sierra Nevada.

I was so hot on the trail for beer that I even stumbled across an extended swath of wild hops:

I thought they were hops when I saw them, and some comparisons with photos of the real thing prove (as far as I can tell) that these are, indeed, hops. So what were they doing growing out in the wild? Seeing as how hops are not native to North America, I can do no more than speculate that the area I was in might once have been planted with hops in order to supply breweries, and now their progeny stand in silent tribute to the days of brewing past.

Whatever the case is, someday, if I'm living in the States again, I'll go to that place, cut me a viable switch from those vines and perhaps revive a strain of hops forgotten by the ages.

One thing I will say in defense of Ecuador's brewing industry is that it still operates under the very pragmatic system of the bottle deposit. The deposit here is 25 cents a bottle, quite high compared to the 10 cents that Michigan requires, especially when you consider the difference in cost of living. Let's say you have empty bottles in your house. You go down to the store with your empties and exchange them for full ones, and that way you don't pay the deposit. Each store, in turn, has cases of empties that they swap out for full ones with the distributor. Easy, simple, and it prevents waste. Most conspicuously within the city, where you don't see broken glass all over the place as you often do in the US. The thick bottles look a little roughed up on the outside from going through the bottling process over and over, but they're fresh on the inside!

Our second consideration for today is the parks system.

There were a number of things that I was looking forward to as I anticipated our trip to the US, and one of them was a walk in Glen Helen. Located just outside of Yellow Springs, Ohio, it's technically part of Antioch University.

In high school and college, I spent countless days and nights wandering around that place with various friends or by myself, often bearing witness to things no less than magical. The quintessential trail through the green forest for me will always represent the simple joy of being alive and in nature. I'm endlessly thankful that there are places which are left to be forest in a world full of cities and planted fields.

The parks we visited were forests. They were also manmade lakes:

Surrounding this reservoir outside of my hometown is forest, a disc golf course, and a meadow of wild flowers and grasses designed to recreate and preserve the wild meadows that once blanketed the extensive wetlands now drained and given over to cornfields throughout much of the State of Ohio.

Parks are also grounds for historical reenactments, such as the Fair at New Boston, which I hadn't visited since I was a kid.

This Fair recreates the time of the early independence and expansion of the United States beyond Ohio and the Great Lakes. My interest in history only grows as I get older, and this reenactment was an enjoyable way to spend a day at one of the many green spaces outside of my home town.

One of the smallest but most beloved of the parks we visited was Iuka Park:

It's a small, slender sliver of green space running along a ravine through Columbus. It runs past the nicest of the many apartments I lived in during my college days, and was the setting for some laid back Sundays and fun parties for a couple of years. I imagine it still is, for the people living there today. I was happy to see that the massive slice of tree trunk I had rolled up onto my front porch and called a table was still where I had left it.

I was also happy to see that some permanent garbage cans had been placed throughout the park, as litter was a serious problem in the park when I lived there. Which was inevitable, since there were places to sit and eat, but nowhere to discard your waste back then. Once I had even gone around town and taken some public garbage cans from areas of town which I thought had enough already, and planted them in the park. I called that Robin Hood tactic "urban osmosis." For a few months, someone even came periodically and collected the garbage from those cans, but then one day the cans were gone. The day we visited, the sky was blue, the grass was green and the park was clean. Still a fantastic place to spend an afternoon.

My last praise of the day is for our libraries, universities and other educational institutions.

This is the Columbus Library. As the banners say, it was voted the Library of the Year for 2010. It's been repeatedly ranked as among the best libraries in the country. Above the front door, it reads, "Open to All."

I have great respect for our libraries. They are an easy thing to overlook, and lots of people don't really use them very much. I went with my mom to the library all the time when I was a kid, both in my hometown and in Crestline, where her parents lived.

When I moved to Columbus, I discovered the extensive public library there, and the many modern services it offers. Music, movies, and an advanced system of requests and holds allowed me to find just about any book, album, film or TV series I could think of and have it delivered to the library branch in my neighborhood, for free. I even received an email message telling me my request was ready to pick up. US citizens enjoy countless privileges, but our virtually unlimited access to knowledge and culture via libraries is perhaps one of the greatest among them.

The Ohio State University, besides being a first rate institution of higher learning and a virtual city within the city of Columbus, also has an incredible library, 11 stories in height. Here's a view from the top:

We spent an afternoon exploring Ohio State. I lived for seven years in the campus area, and now it's been about eight years since I moved away from there. The campus area and its surroundings have changed a lot since then, seeing the construction of many new buildings and facilities, and the revival of some classic ones. One great improvement to the library is the 11th floor. I used to go up there during long breaks between classes, as it was always quiet and offered views like the one you see here. But at the time it was a functional floor of the library, full of flickering fluorescent lights and dusty stacks of books, with a utilitarian desk situated in each window well.

We rode the elevator to the top floor during our visit, me with the intention to show Nancy the view. Little did I know that this level had been remodeled into very comfortable observation deck, complete with wireless internet, overstuffed chairs and couches, good lighting, wooden floors, and big desks for studying, providing an excellent space for the appreciation of the panoramic views of the campus. This change echoes many of the tasteful changes made around the area, in my opinion. The new buildings do their best to look modern and blend in with the older structures around them at the same time. Attention has been given to outdoor space and pedestrian traffic, as well as to the "live-work" concept that has needed to be reinvented in the US after decades of overly assertive zoning codes. There is also room for local business rather than strip mall after strip mall of parking lots and big box franchises. Those parts of town certainly exist and continue to expand in their sprawling way, but the new growth in the more central parts of town reflect a paradigm shift in urban planning that I hope can take root throughout the country. In short, Columbus has seen some tasteful improvements in the past several years, and has remained one of those cities I consider to be a nice place to live.

Another place I always enjoy visiting in Columbus is the Franklin Park Conservatory.

Located in the middle of a big city park, itself in the middle of one of the more stately of Columbus' older neighborhoods, it is a gigantic greenhouse and a sort of zoo for plants. While one can feel sorry for animals stuck in a cage or artificial habitat, as long as a plant gets its requisite amount of light, heat and nutrition from its soil and what have you, it will be content to be where it is. Hence this conservatory makes for a happier place for a gardener and animal lover like myself to visit.

The conservatory is divided into several habitats, including a desert, a jungle and the Pacific Islands. It also has a great palm tree house which reminded me quite a bit of the outdoor gardens along the river in Guayaquil. There's a bonzai exhibit which features a little tree much older than the US Constitution, and a current outdoor exhibit of carnivorous little pitcher plants. A truly remarkable place for kids and grownups, if you've never been.

Ohio, like much of the United States, is blessed with nice parks and educational places. They often operate in conjunction, such as this Conservatory in Franklin Park, or Glen Helen and Antioch University. That seems right, as education leads us naturally to a place of peace and quiet, and it is peace and quiet that provokes a thoughtful state of mind. I hope you'll think of such things as you go to the polls in November, for example. While omnibus spending packages often go without a popular vote, parks and schools always seem up against budgets hinged upon the public whim. Maybe you have kids in school or maybe you don't. Maybe you use the parks and libraries, or not. Either way, there is something very important about knowing that they're there, and that they define our country in a remarkable fashion. I hope I can take my grandchildren to Glen Helen, to the statue of Horace Mann in the tall grass, and then take a walk in a manicured field in front of this beautiful Antioch building with them, full of the enthusiastic young and old.

High desert dreams

2010-09-25T23:14:00.003-05:00

During our trip to the US last month, we visited our friends Andy and Amanda on their wide open land out in the northern New Mexico countryside. While there, I bore fleeting witness to this gentle unfolding of the Ortiz Mountains. These mountains were once the backdrop to a four year chapter in my life, and to have them spreading out before me once again revealed at once the distance and nearness where New Mexico now sits for me.

At that moment, as four of us walked around together, it occurs to me that each of us were walking a different path. Nancy and Tamia found themselves on a trail they had never seen before. Andy was casually walking along the same territory he might venture out upon on any given day. As for myself, I was passing through a place I had once considered close to home, and was now taking in everything I could during our brief tour.

The day before, we had met Andy and Amanda on the other side of another mountain range, the Jemez Mountains. The Jemez are a long stretch of mountains lying some 30 or 40 miles west of where I was then standing, and along their north-south run there aren't many more than two or three ways across by car. To pull off such an unlikely rendezvous, we had set out from Santa Fe, crossing the Jemez range from their northern end. Andy and Amanda, living further to the south, chose the way across from the mountains' opposite extreme. And where did we meet, but a secluded set of hot springs tucked away several miles in from the highway.

Despite being so far from the beaten path, quite a few other bathers were present that day, and after we had enjoyed a nice soaking, and intense hydro-massage from the gush of hot water issuing forth from the source of the springs, we decided to adjourn to a more private place, a meadow further down the hill.

There, we communed awhile and sipped Rioja from the bottle. Then, as dusk began to set in, we made our way back to the highway and took the long drive to Andy and Amanda's land.

The ride back was punctuated by bouts of curiosity as to what we had all been up to for the last few years. I won't say that there were quite enough hours for the whole story to be told in the roundabout fashion it was revealed, but I'd like to think we all managed to get into it deeply enough for the time being what it was. Once we got where we were going, it was very much nighttime and past our collective bedtimes. Our hosts showed us to their guesthouse and retired up the hill, and we didn't bother unpacking before we climbed up into the loft bed and were asleep.

The light of the morning gave me a better glimpse at the guest house I had stayed in two years prior. In the meantime, it had evolved in some noticeable ways:

Our guest lodging for our stay is a one room strawbale house. It's an ongoing project carved out by an extended community of contributors who each come to the land when they can to further its development.

The first time I stayed there, (if I'm remembering well) the interior still revealed the straw walls, and the loft bed was one of the few furnishings.

Upon our recent stay, the tree mural on the left wall and a further layer of mud plaster were two of the changes to the outside. The inside had gotten some plaster as well, and was now graced with a little woodstove, a wash basin, and also a desk furnished with a reading lamp, accompanying guest book, and some light reading by Joseph Campbell.

Another practical inclusion to the project is the water cistern:

Since our friends live off the grid, they look to the land - and at least as often to the sky - for their resources. A big part of that means water collection. Every roof on their land provides that much more square footage of area for capturing the rain and funneling it into storage. As you can see, the slightly slanted roof directs water into a downspout leading to a cistern.

Lamentably outside the frame of the photo here is the destination of the overflow tube, a spiraling rock garden which (I gather) allows the water to be absorbed into the ground gently, contributing to the well-being of some nearby plants without causing undue erosion. The ladder and other building materials laying about will further illustrate the work in progress that is the guest house.

Before I go any further, I'll make a short aside to elaborate more on Ampersand. A name for both their land and their project, I might say that it describes their own personal manifestation of sustainable living, and the countless, conscious ways of considering their daily lives in order to achieve it. While they draw deliberately from the past work and research of other people on similar paths, the beauty of such nascent projects as modern sustainability is that they're wide open to creative innovation, and many of the details you'll see are very much their own.

Amanda and Andy acquired their land about seven years ago, not long after we met. I recall their inaugural party on the land as a starry night illuminated by a campfire and righteously like-minded people. Since then I've been lucky to spend many days and nights on that land, and while each time has been unique and distinct, I can't say that there's been a single time I've done so that hasn't felt incredibly memorable and powerful. I hope you'll take the time to look at their website which I've linked above, especially if you hold sustainable values and live or plan to be in New Mexico. There, you'll see plenty of specific goals and projects going on. Here, I hope I can present a complementary narrative that comes from my own interaction with my friends and their vision.

And so, delving back into our time on the land, we climbed the hill from the guesthouse and made our way up to their place. I was anxious to see it, as my most recent memory of it was of a home still very much under construction. It had walls, floor and a roof, but they were all still in the rough stages of completion. But what we saw that morning was unmistakably a well-lived home:

While this picture doesn't capture the full scope of the exterior of the house, which is even more striking seen from the front, it does reveal some of the functional aspects of the design. If you look to the right, towards the rear of the house, you'll see the solar array that provides electricity to the home. It's tilted so as to have maximum exposure to the sun's rays, much like the leaf of a plant. And even more like a green leaf, these solar panels follow the sun automatically as it crosses the sky, thanks to a passive hydraulic tracker driven by the heat of the sun. An elegant system guided by the very source of energy itself.

If you follow the line of the roof back towards the solar panels, you'll see a tube leading to another cistern, this one much larger than the one pictured above. The water collected there is diverted for all water uses: washing, bathing, and gardening among them. And for drinking water too, after passing through the attractive and functional filter/dispenser found in the kitchen. Water for the shower is first heated, through a solar water heater that operates naturally through the principal of thermal siphoning. Cold water naturally descends into the heater, while heated water naturally rises up into the shower or any other hot water source when the faucet is opened.

A portion of the garden can be seen above, several plants growing in containers. An in-ground garden plot is around the front of the house, in front of a cold frame greenhouse. Those plants are irrigated with greywater flowing from the shower and sinks from within the house, and additional water is provided from the cistern as needed. I won't go into too much detail about these kinds of things, as it's all nicely laid out on their website. But suffice it to say that an edible desert oasis can be yours, with no more than rainwater and the right kind of thought and determination.

That morning we had breakfast in their lovely home, and afterwords took a trip into Madrid, a nearby village like none other. As it was for a time my first contact with humanity whenever I left my own little patch of high desert solitude years before, it was interesting to see it again. Once a coal mining community, it was rescued from its fate as a ghost town in the 60s and has risen again as a sort of art community, at once reclusive and open to the public, and defies simple definition.

We stopped in to visit the community garden, managed and maintained by a small cadre of gardeners including Amanda. On the way through town I noticed that while I could still recognize the most successful businesses - the coffee shop, the bar, the general store and some of the more prominent art galleries, namely - many of the shops had changed hands and been renamed, repainted, and born again. All in all a look down the main drag revealed a town largely unchanged from the one I'd had in my mind's eye, though, which was nice to see.

Then, a trip down to the garden.

When I left the area, it was more of an idea than an actual garden, so seeing how it had taken shape over the course of a few years was great. We collected some peas and a couple other veggies but the garden was, much like northern New Mexico generally seemed to be at that particular time, overrun with mosquitoes!

While they only seemed to come out at night everywhere else, these mosquitoes were raging in broad daylight. We did our best to ignore them at first, and then to actively try to keep them off us at any cost. But soon we realized that we were fighting a losing battle, and our only chance at avoiding more itchy welts was to just get out of there. Which was unfortunate, because the garden was a pleasant addition to the Madrid community and I'd hoped to relax there for awhile in the shade. Maybe next time!

Afterwords, lunch at a new and highly recommended restaurant in town, across from the bar. Great sandwiches, well-peppered grits, and best of all, microbrew beer. I couldn't help but have a couple of those.

Back up on the land, Amanda was done working and by all reckoning it was cocktail hour. We had all the ingredients for some homemade margaritas, and so margaritas we made. And took them down to the wash for some arroyo bocce ball.

Arroyo bocce has, over the years, become one of my favorite traditions associated with Ampersand. One not to be missed during any visit. Indeed, on a prior trip there, a friend sustained considerable injury to his arm during a hike among the sandstone rocks and cliffs in the area earlier in the day. Nonetheless, he soldiered through the pain and blood in order to nobly take aim at the elusive little pallino target later in the evening.

That particular day was a more leisurely outing, and we played until the evening had set in deeply enough to prohibit proper visibility. At which point we adjourned up the hill and prepared for a tasty dinner.

Back at the house, I noticed that the floors were especially clean, to which Amanda replied offhandedly that she had mopped. But aren't they earthen floors? I asked. Indeed they are. Made entirely with natural materials and simple earth being among them, the floor was poured with mud, smoothed out and then allowed to dry and crack. The cracks were filled in and smoothed over again and again until an even surface was achieved, and then sealed with beeswax and linseed oil. Making it proof against a wet mop, and great to walk upon with your bare feet and toes.

We were to be joined that evening by Carl, a common acquaintance of ours. I hadn't seen Carl in many years and his visit that evening was a great surprise. The fact that he brought a cooler full of nothing less than several home brewed beers made the evening that much more excellent. In fact, the beer happened to be a light one put up in green bottles, giving it a resemblance to something like St. Pauli Girl, but with a creamier mouthfeel. Perfect for the end of a hot day in the desert.

That night, spring rolls were on the menu, and we were all on board to roll them up.

Or rather, on the floor. What better place than on your own hands, knees and backsides for dipping your fingers into raw, local food? Having twisted up some burritos and what have you in my time, I greatly enjoyed the natural cling you get from a wet spring roll wrapper. And they went well with the beer.

I can't remember what I was on about in that picture, but I'd like to think it was relevant, somehow. Amanda was certainly giving me her attention, but whether she was truly interested or just indulging me is an open question.

Indeed, that night was full of bold gesticulating and cracking wise. Some music was played. And all around, good times were had. The hour came for Carl to leave, and when he did, while that screen door you see in the background was left momentarily open during his exit, a truly incredible quantity of mosquitoes flew in the house.

A sort of mosquito slaughter ensued, us swatting and wondering over the unlikely number of pests that had gotten inside during such a brief opportunity. At one point Andy put his ear to the screen and was amazed at the subtle buzz that could be heard outside. If you were quiet, very quiet, you could hear the insect menace swarming out there.

Eventually, we needed to say good night and go down the hill. We endeavored to make a quick exit once the screen door was opened. We rushed down the dark path, determined to get home without a bite. But then, we glanced up and saw what every city dweller in the world becomes entranced by when he visits the countryside. Stars! So many of them. I knew how it was, I'd lived there before. But that was a beautiful night sky. Starstruck, if you will, we indulged in several minutes of shamelessly staring at it. Sure, we sustained some welts for it, but we had no regrets.

Down the hill and in the guesthouse, we holed up for a good night's sleep. The next day, Andy and Amanda had business on the road up into Santa Fe, a convenient excuse to drop us off back in town. And so that morning, we shared a car ride and a good bye. That trip was full of hellos and goodbyes, every day. Until we meet again!

When I met Andy and Amanda years before, I felt a certain kinship with them immediately. At the time, I had a house in the same area and was living out, as much as I was able, a similar vision. Seeing them again, in addition to being a great time spent with good friends, gave me the chance to see how we've all grown and evolved during those years of knowing each other, too.

Every day, our minds are filled with vague and random ideas, taking shape from the influences around us. When something worthy comes to mind, we might be moved to dedicate ourselves to it, and begin making choices that bring our lives closer to that vision. And then, over time, we might stay with it, or find ourselves compelled to move more into other directions. In my life, I can see how my own focus has shifted from that intention of sustainability, for example. At one point, it was a primary goal. While it's still something I value, I can see how it has, in my daily practice, moved to the periphery in lieu of things like travel here in Latin America, and all the things that have come with that. I love the choices I've made, and I'm happy where they've brought me.

I see my friends on their land, where they took what was a temporary dwelling and a campfire out in the country, and built it up into a home and learning place built with their own hands. That's what you get when you dedicate yourself for years to the same vision. I have great respect for them both, above all for that dedication. Every day they can wake up surrounded by what they've realized of their dream so far, and take satisfaction from that. For my own part, I still have a long way I want to go, but I can say that the fruits of my choices over the past several years bring me satisfaction, too. Being able to express myself in a new language, and understand the people of this continent when they speak. A few years ago, I couldn't have said that. Whatever your vision is, to whatever you may dedicate yourself, take pride in what you've done, be thankful for where it's led you.

Back from the homeland

2010-09-11T20:33:00.003-05:00

Just as this blog has started getting hits from GO! Overseas as being a top blog for Ecuador, I took a month off from writing. That's because we spent the month of August in the US, visiting family and friends, and traveling a good bit around the country, too. And to further vex anyone in search of some good travel stories from Ecuador, the next couple of months will be all about the United States, as I recap our trip last month. But, if you're in search of those kinds of stories, all you have to do is go back to previous posts, starting with this one.

So to kick off my triumphant return to writing after a month's hiatus, here's a photographic summary of what we got into while we were gone:

One of the things I had been looking forward to about being back in the US was the beer. Good, honest, craft beer. And as I was happily surprised to learn, our first of many hosts had gotten into homebrewing since last I saw him. So it was that our first night in the US was spent in Albuquerque, playing obscure board games and drinking delicious, dark beverages.

Our trip, as you may have gathered, began in New Mexico. I had lived there for several years before I turned my sights to Latin America. Long enough to have accumulated lots of earthly possessions, many of which I had left there. And long enough, too, to have gotten to know some great people, whose good taste and generosity led to such things as us staying in bedrooms like this one:

Good friends opened up their homes to us to spend the night and their front lawns for me to sell off my personal belongings in a good, old-fashioned yard sale. They also drove us around endlessly. Once, we even drove here, where some of New Mexico's nicer hot springs flow.

As hard as it was to leave the beautiful State of New Mexico behind us, the time came to get into a rental car and haul what was left of my personal possessions back to the land of my birth. We chose a route north, through northern New Mexico's countryside.

We drove through Denver, where we spent the night with another kind friend. And then, we made the big push across the Midwest, on the way back to Ohio. Along the way we drove through corn fields. Lots and lots of corn fields. And to our surprise, a big wind farm. In the State of Kansas we saw the biggest collection of windmills I've ever witnessed, and while places like California and Texas are better known for their wind farms, it makes sense that Kansas, smack in the middle of tornado country, would be getting in on the game.

And finally, after two days of driving cross country - and thanks to the generosity of so many, our only night spent in a hotel - we made it back to Ohio. This trip marked my first time behind the wheel of a car in three years, and while it was fun for the first few hours, the novelty had worn off long before we got where we were going. Once in Ohio, we were able to unpack our bags fully, and relax at last with my family.

The weeks there will always stand out in my mind as a time spent in places at once familiar to me and new for my wife. It was her first visit to the US, which meant the first time seeing many things the average American takes for granted. Big back yards, a multitude of grassy parks, and the expansive Lake Erie were among the things that were impressive to Nancy, and so we made sure to spend time in all of them.

It was a great trip, and we had a great time. Up until the last day, when the time came to say goodbye to my family. After spending several weeks together, it was easy to forget that our time was limited, after all. But even when people are perennially close, geographically, I suppose it's still important to remember that time will always be limited, and that we always need to make the most of the time we have.

And for now, I'll leave it at that. There's plenty that I haven't included here that will make it into the next few posts, and even more that is just as nicely shared among ourselves and our loved ones. But the bottom line is, it was great to be home!

Cochapamba

2010-07-28T20:24:00.006-05:00

Early last year, I found myself standing alone on a brisk morning, on a nearly deserted street downtown. I was surprised by how empty the street was, as Calle Tarqui is a major bus route through Cuenca's center. The street is one of the few that provides access to downtown from the city's newer section, and the layer of black soot covering the street's crumbling, once-stately buildings reveals the burden of heavy traffic it has endured, even at times when there's nothing going on.

So what was I doing on a melancholic avenue, so early and devoid of people? I was awaiting a ride up to a small community far outside of Cuenca, although I had no idea at the time precisely where I was about to be taken, or that I would soon be blessed with high mountain scenery like this:

All I knew, as I peeked into cobblestone patios through keyholes and cracks in dilapidated wooden doors, was that soon a curly-haired professor would emerge onto the scene and give me a ride to an undisclosed indigenous village. Or at least, that was what I was hoping, as the minutes ticked by.

At the time, I was attending an indigenous culture class at the University of Cuenca, with a few of my friends and coworkers at CEDEI. Our teacher, Julio, was as knowledgeable as he was vague about certain details the rest of us considered important. We all knew that he was full of valuable information, but all the same we often left class wondering exactly what we had learned that day. Was it that, as teachers ourselves, we came with heads full of pedagogical hangups that blocked us from fully absorbing all that was presented to us with open hearts? I'll chalk it up to something like that. For truly, our teacher presented a vast amount of information about Ecuador's many indigenous groups, which left me scribbling constantly in my notebook to take it all down.

In addition to university survey-level lecturing for initiates like us, he also presented to us videos which ranged in scope from indigenous political rallies to illustrations of Andean cosmovision. Most intriguing for us, we were also promised some field trips, where we would visit communities and experience the life and culture there firsthand.

The first such expedition, prior to the one I hoped to embark upon that day on Calle Tarqui, is probably what was filling my head with doubt as I waited. One day in class, we were told that there would be an indigenous dance celebration in Cuenca's Coliseum, and we were invited. Well, that day, I showed up a little late, and my classmates had already ventured into the Coliseum before I arrived. As it turned out, there was no indigenous dancing to be seen, but rather some sort of big Christian prayer event. That was fine and all, but decidedly different than what we had come for. Repeated calls to Julio's cell phone left us consistently with his voice mail, and after some time hanging around outside, we called it quits and went for smoothies.

What would unfold for me this morning then, as I loitered about and watched the traffic begin to roll inexorably onto Calle Tarqui? Not even my classmates had shown up yet. Had I missed something? A text message from Eric indicated they were on their way. And then, moments later, Julio rolled by in the passenger seat of a white pickup truck with an extended cab. Behind the wheel was another Ecuadorian, and the backseat had just enough room for myself and my two other companions for the day. Minutes later, the two said companions Eric and Eva walked over, and we were on our way!

And yet still, we weren't sure where we were going. Julio, engaged primarily in conversation with the driver, was decidedly short with his responses to our many questions about the day's events. We drove up and out of town, through Sayausí, then, through Cajas. Time went on as our backseat conversation rambled from one topic to the next. We crossed the continental divide, and began the stomach-churning descent towards the coast. We were on the road to Guayaquil, but how far would we go? Would we be visiting a coastal indigenous community? That sounded interesting. But we began speculating just how and when we'd be getting back, if that were the case. Thoughts of my wife, pregnant and indulging of my absence that day, began to fill my head as we wound our way further and further down.

But then, still many miles and vertical meters from the coast, the truck pulled off the highway and began wheeling up a dirt road. The landscape, still high up and much like Cajas in its windswept, shrubby mountain way, reminded me over and over of northern New Mexico with every similar type of vegetation or scenic vista I saw. This new road carried us far up, regaining much if not all of the altitude we'd lost. For several miles there were no houses, nor farms, just wild páramo landscape. Then we began to notice a house here and there, and then more, until we had entered the community of Cochapamba.

What you see pictured here could be considered Cochapamba's center. Indeed, this smattering of adobe buildings, the church, and schoolhouse shown in front of the few tall trees, comprises the densest portion of human habitation for miles and miles.

To compare a community like Cochapamba and another indigenous community which I've mentioned here, Ñamarín, reveals many dramatic differences. One of the more obvious ones, due to its remote and inhospitable location in the often frigid páramo, is size. Miles up an unforgiving dirt road where buses are unlikely to pass with any frequency, Cochapamba finds itself at a degree of isolation you don't often encounter, especially within a few hours of a major city like Cuenca. But then, Cuenca didn't have paved roads leading to it until the 1960's.

Far from being a perfect system, Ecuador's government has nevertheless attempted to guarantee that even remote communities like this one have access to education. While there, we were asked to speak to a group of students, who ranged in age from 8-16 or so. Their teacher was a young lady from Cuenca who was tasked with coming to teach in Cochapamba on weekends. She was paying her dues as a beginning teacher, like most teachers in the public school system, by teaching for some time in rural communities. While most teachers ultimately choose to come to the city once their level of experience permits it, this system ensures that these communities do not go forgotten, and that their young people have the opportunity to at least a basic education. It also harnesses the youthful enthusiasm that the young teacher here embodied, and that beginning teachers the world around always seem to have.

My wife's parents, also teachers, spent years working in such communities as well. Nancy's formative years consisted of life in various small communities as remote as Cochapamba, although ranging from cold, high altitude locations to much lower, tropical ones near the coast. Her parents are full of stories from those times, like riding on horseback in order to arrive at a rural community in the mountains, where they would live for the next several months. For their part, they have both chosen to remain involved with education in rural communities, with Nancy's mother still working as an elementary teacher at a school not far from Cuenca, and her father going frequently to supervise schools in another community two hours from town.

Also owing to the extreme altitude and climate, the people of Cochapamba will always be limited in what kinds of agricultural products they can produce, as well. With the prevailing temperatures at such an altitude, potatoes are and probably always will be a primary crop for the people here, for example. While there, however, we met a man named Walter, who was something of an informal leader for the community. He spoke to us of a funded project to expand the size and scope of the community's agricultural production, and took us on a tour of what they were working on.

Here, we were shown the linchpin to any serious agricultural project, the irrigation system. This simple reservoir, consisting of a small basin lined with waterproof plastic, is fed by a small pipe tapping a natural spring. This provides water security in times of drought, for crops and people alike. This kind of grassroots waterworks project goes a long way in demonstrating the simplicity and integration of a community agricultural project.

At the other end of the pipe, you can see one of the places where that water goes. Once collected into a clean, man-made pond, the water can then be funneled into any number of hoses running to various sections of planted land. What once ran down the hill untapped can now by harnessed to irrigate a wide spread of fields.

Since the pool is uphill and the fields down, gravity is the only force needed to get the water where it's needed, and the turn of a valve is the only human input necessary to turn it off and on. A simple, inexpensive and effective irrigation system, indeed.

Of course, not only people and plants are counting on a reliable source of water:

Water is also important for home construction. As in many traditional communities in the Andes and throughout much of Latin America, adobe is a common building material. As you may know, adobe consists of three primary, plentiful ingredients: earth, straw, and water. These are mixed together, formed into bricks, and allowed to dry before being laid into the walls of buildings, like this one:

Here we've got at least two generations of buildings coexisting, the older one not quite having given way to the newer.

But of course, one of the most important recipients for Cochapamba's water are the plants. In the foreground is a plot with a variety of medicinal herbs. Walking the perimeter is Walter in the lead, with Eric and Eva trailing dutifully in line. In the background, a planted grove of pine trees.

Here we can see at least two forces at work. One, the medicinal herbs, is a relevant consideration for a community so far from the city and associated medical care. I've found Ecuadorians in general - even city dwellers - to be more knowledgeable about herbal remedies than your average person from the US, for example. But in a rural community like this one, where modern medical care is a rare event, most likely reserved for true emergencies, this kind of garden is a sort of insurance policy.

The other force, a plantation of pine trees, provides a source of lumber not only for this community but potentially for sale to other communities as well, as Walter explained. Yet again, a significant agricultural addition to the more traditional staple food crops one would expect a community like this one to be coaxing forth from the land.

In this case, a controversial one as well. Páramo, an ecosystem existing only at high, equatorial altitudes, provides a unique habitat often surrounded completely by warmer systems below. As such, páramo climates like this one harbor a high level of endemic plant and animal species, which are suppressed by the acid content in the bed of needles quickly built up around the base of introduced pine. Such an artificial transformation of the native landscape has effects not just on the wildlife, but on people as well. One of the important qualities of páramo vegetation is the regulatory effect it has on the watershed. In an area with intermittent rain, the local flora has the ability to absorb and retain moisture like a sponge, and then release it at an astonishingly consistent rate despite the fluctuating level of precipitation. This has clear effects on groundwater levels in times of drought, and flooding of rivers in times of high rain. It also prevents erosion on steep slopes due to runoff. Pine trees do not share these qualities, and out-compete local flora in the ecosystem.

In small scales like this one, perhaps we're not talking about big changes. But further down towards Cuenca, one can see massive swaths of hillsides completely given over to tidy rows of pine trees obviously planted by human hands. That ambitious project is consuming large portions of natural habitat, and has predictable consequences locally and further downstream. Walter, throughout his description of his community's project, gave great attention to the concept of sustainable production. Let's hope that future generations take that idea equally to heart.

Some very reassuring evidence that they will is embodied in Walter's home:

A beautifully handmade adobe building, Walter's home has dedicated space for high school-level education within the community. Here, Walter conducts classes and hosts outside teachers for the young people in the community, taking the government-funded schooling a step further.

Pictured here with another teacher from Cuenca, Walter was inviting us to speak with a small group about our impressions of the community and some insights that we could share from our own. An appropriate topic, given the title written on the sign in the corner: Intercultural, Bilingual High School, La Paz.

While we spoke with Walter, his colleague, and their students, his family was busily preparing lunch downstairs in the kitchen, where we joined them:

And so we shared a meal and conversation with the kind and eager people of Cochapamba. After visiting a community like this, and then pulling out in a truck back down the long, winding dirt road that leads to the long, winding highway far below, it becomes clear that such a visit is a special occasion. A true opportunity to share what you have with people from another place. Walter, as an articulate spokesman for his community, demonstrated this with his smile and his invitations for us to contribute, to learn, and he hoped, to return someday.

For our part as fleeting visitors, I hope that my recollection of our visit to Cochapamba, more than a year later, will in some way show the appreciation I have for these people living simply and humbly, close to the Earth. And, in lieu of a second visit still unrealized, may these words and photos, shared with you, represent a return to that beautiful, high mountain place in my mind, if not in person.

Expanding the scope

2010-07-13T11:07:00.002-05:00

As some of my regular readers may have picked up on by now, recently I've endeavored to take what began as a haphazardly updated travel blog and publish on a regular, monthly basis. After about a year of consistently managing to publish that often, I've decided I've got it in me to begin writing twice a month. At the end of every month, I'll keep writing longer pieces, with the same narrative focus on places we've been and interesting things we've seen and experienced. Around the middle of each month, I'll be adding a new sort of feature, probably much shorter. With these, I hope to share some more personal insights into living in Latin America. These might be general reflections, some actual experiences out in the city, or, as is the case for our debut feature today, a review of some creative product of Latin American culture.

Here in Cuenca, I've got the privilege of being able to stay home every day with my daughter in the mornings, while my wife goes to work. She comes home for a lunch that I've prepared, we catch up for a short time while we share our meal, and then I go to work in the afternoon. I come home to dinner prepared by her, we enjoy our evening together. And, with some interesting variations here and there, so it goes with our quotidian life.

And, while our daughter is still young and not walking around and getting into everything yet, I find myself with the time to pursue lots of hobbies around the house. Writing, reading, studying and playing music. And also, on many mornings, goofing around for hours on the internet. Over the course of the past several months, I've stumbled upon lots of websites I enjoy, and quite a few that emerge from all over Latin America.

Like Arte Callejero. Here you can find loads of graffiti from the streets of cities around Latin America and other parts of the world. At the bottom of the page you've got an itemized list of cities, artists and graffiti styles, which assembles an instant collection from the website in one click. Having lived briefly in a city known for its quality spraypaint, I clicked on Oaxaca to see what was there. I was surprised to see that many of the pieces I'd taken pictures of myself were also there on the website, like this one:

(this one is my rendering of the same stuff you can find on theirs. Don't want to step on any digital toes.)

On the left side of the page, you get links to other websites dedicated to street art. And if you follow the blog regularly, you get a new update just about every day. Usually they put up images, but occasionally they share a video, like this one, which went up a few days ago:

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This video is all over the internet. And now, it's here, too. The Italian artist who created it worked on it for a year or more, and at least part of it was filmed in Montevideo and Buenos Aires during a South American tour which lasted several months. Definitely take the time to let it load and watch the whole thing. From my perspective, it's the little details which make it superb. The audio, the flashes of pedestrians, the interaction with the urban landscape. All of that led me to watch it a couple of times already.

The internet, almost completely unfettered by the borders that confine us geographically, can provide endless glimpses into foreign culture. More than ever, people can experience international culture in ways limited only by their tenacity in seeking it out. Type any concept in the world into a search engine, and chances are, somebody has already put it online. Sometimes you just get a few lines of text and some lousy pictures, and other times you find a site well geared to showcase the material it's there to represent. Now that you know they're out there, maybe you'll find some time to play around on Arte Callejero and Blu's website as well.

Baños, revisited

2010-06-27T12:36:00.003-05:00

I've written about Baños before. It was where we went when Nancy and I took our first road trip together, spontaneously between Christmas and New Year. And more recently, it was where we unexpectedly spent our nights during our trip to Ambato for Carnaval. During that recent trip, Tungurahua, the iconic volcano that hovers above the steep slopes along the edge of town, was gently billowing a white plume of smoke:

In the last several weeks, however, Tungurahua has taken to erupting more violently. As you can see from this photo, which was not taken by me:

As we'll see later, Baños is famous especially for its thermal baths, which are fueled by the same stuff that is blowing out of the top of Tungurahua presently. And so, in honor of this town which is currently experiencing all the effects of a nearby erupting volcano, and in honor of the good friends I went there with last year, we'll take one more virtual tour of Baños de Ambato. This time, seen through the collective eyes of four travelers: Eva, Eric, Clint, and myself, on a weekend road trip. So enjoy, as I once again probe the depths of my long term memory.

I suppose the first thought that comes to mind from that trip was getting off the bus and coming face-to-face with two immigration cops. You see, as the United States may begin experimenting with soon enough, starting with the great State of Arizona, Ecuador's government reserves the right to detain those who look like they don't come from around here, and ask them for their papers. The two officers that stopped us were friendly enough, and we all conveniently had the appropriate documents on hand. One of the men collected them from each of us and took them to a nearby copier for their records, while the remaining man in uniform hung around and tried to make small talk with us. Officer #1 returned, gave us back our IDs, they both shook each of our hands in turn, and were off. All in all, a five minute run-in with the law, and we were back on our way.

Nonetheless, such an experience can be jarring, and has the potential to rub a person the wrong way. But I learned years ago that these kinds of situations are best passed smiling, nodding and trying not to do or say much more than for what is asked. Incidentally, all told I've had three encounters on the street with Ecuador's immigration police in as many years, and all of the experiences were handled expediently and amiably by the officers involved. Were we profiled on the basis of the color of our skin? Probably. But according to the CIA Factbook, some 90% of the population of Ecuador lies somewhere between mestizo and full-on Native American, so I guess we were pretty easy to spot.

After discussing such points as we walked through town, we made our way to our lodging for the weekend. At $5 each per night if I remember correctly, it was a great deal, and put us in a room made for a group of four travelers: two bunk beds, one hot shower, and opening onto a covered patio with free internet, a fireplace and a self-serve fridge full of beer and bottled water.

Add nearby patio dining to such a place to stay, and you've got a set of happy campers.

In fact, there were a number of good places to eat in the vicinity. The place pictured to the left was an upstairs patio with plants and panoramic views of the valley, and delicious stacks of pancakes with fruity yogurt on top.

Also highly recommended in Baños is Casa Hood. Run by a long time expat from the US, it's been on the backpacker's radar for so long that you hear more travel stories in English there than you'll hear anything in Spanish. The wait staff is comprised of locals, however, and while the menu is loaded with options ranging from Hummus plates to Asian stir-fries, the backside (or is it the front?) of said menu is printed dutifully in Spanish for when locals or tourists from Ecuador or around South America make the rounds here as well.

It's well worth mentioning that Baños, being the haven for travelers that it is, has stepped it up quite well with its dining options. From ubiquitous rotisserie chicken and stands selling the town's hallmark fresh hard taffy, to early hour breakfast nooks selling pancakes with cane syrup and bacon rashers, I'll say it now: for a town as small as Baños, it beats Cuenca by a long shot in terms of dining options for travelers.

With a comparable number of backpackers and other travelers heading through Cuenca, one could do well taking a page from Casa Hood's book, for example: great hours, a big and diverse menu, an honest book exchange, movies projected daily, and stacks of board games for all ages. A place like that just begs for people to hang out for hours on end, and to keep ordering just one more item off the menu as they do. All the while, contributing to an atmosphere that simply builds upon itself for the next group on its way in the door. In many towns and cities in Latin America, at least one entrepreneur, either local or extranjero, has seemed to have picked up on just that kind of formula and run with it, with great success. It surprises me that someone hasn't yet done it in Cuenca, but it's never too late.

Having now written twice about Baños de Ambato, I really should get around to the thermal baths themselves. They are, after all, what put this town on the map since long ago, although there are probably plenty of tourists who head through Baños today without ever soaking in the pools on the edge of downtown. They're priced so well and offered up so piping hot, though, that it's really worth it to check them out.

On this trip, we went a couple of times. First, we took a soak in the evening, when there are fewer people. At that hour we were directed to a smaller pool which was full just about to the limit of personal space, without quite going over. There, we took shifts sitting on the built-in benches along the edge of the circular pool, which left you about up to your neck in hot water. Whoever wasn't occupying the coveted bench seats we had claimed was standing in the center of the pool or perched along the edge, soaking their feet.

That night, the water was really nice, just a few degrees above body temperature, warm enough to stay in for a good long time without getting cold, nor overheated. That being the case, stay for a good, long time we did. During that time, we observed that there was a pipe at about 3 o'clock, from our perspective in the circular pool. And at that precise spot, there was a woman who was basking in the hot water as it poured forth from the source. It must have been a pleasant experience, as that water would have been hotter still than the water in general circulation throughout the pool. It would have also given her a gentle aqua-massage from the water pressure, I would imagine.

All I can do is imagine, however, seeing as how, during the good long time we spent there, she was already in her place when we arrived and was still there when we left. That was her spot, and she wasn't leaving it. While she generally spent her time with her back to the source of the water, she occasionally turned around and dunked her head into the water as it issued forth, sticking her face into the flow, and as her body language indicated, truly getting into it at moments like those. So it was that our casual observation of this woman's interaction with the source of the thermal water was impressive enough to have imprinted itself definitively on our minds for the duration of the weekend. "Tapping the source," and "communing with the source" became the allegorical reference points for our trip, used effectively to explain many other concrete and philosophical happenings as our journey in and around Baños continued.

Of course, we were also impressed by the hot water itself, and resolved to be back again in the daytime. Clint, who had spent months living in Baños previously, knew that the freshest, hottest water was to be had first thing in the morning, and that at such a time there would be fewer people, as well. And so we set our alarm and were walking back along the road to the thermal baths as the sun was rising. From a block away we could already see the steam rising into the cool air from the raised pools, and it was a race to get changed, to take the prerequisite shower rinse before entering the pool, and jumping in.

The morning pool was a larger one, and at the time there was hardly anyone there. But there would be no jumping in. To jump into that water would be something like a lobster jumping willingly into the stewpot he'd be cooked in. Instead, one was compelled to either gingerly ease into the piping hot water, or just making a go of it and trodding in all at once. But jumping, that would be enough to stop the heart of a weaker man, or at least to make him scream like a girl.

We likened water that hot to being akin to exceedingly cold water. It took some psyching up to get into all at once, and once in, it was equally difficult to stay in for very long. Unlike very cold water, however, it was incredibly pleasant to get in for a few minutes, and then get out for a couple more to feel the cool, fresh morning air, and then get back in again, and then back out. Such a process could be repeated endlessly if it weren't for things like pancakes and bacon. And it was for such things that we finally got out.

By the time all these people got there, the water had cooled down enough to where you could just stay in, eliminating the necessary ritual of getting out occasionally before you got cooked.

Also revealed in this photo is the waterfall careening mistily down the mountainside in the background. Unlike the water in the pools, that water is just regular, ice cold mountain water. And also unlike the water in the pools, it's white and fresh-looking. Just why is the water in the pools that slightly unappealing brownish color, you may ask? That's because it's loaded with minerals. In addition to coming out from its volcanic source at very high temperatures, it also has the distinction of having a very high mineral content, which adds to its appeal for those seeking a therapeutic bath. Here's a summary of the minerals that have been isolated from a typical water sample, as posted above the pools:

As you can see, the concentrations of minerals are listed as milligrams per liter, not parts per million or anything like that. So some of these concentrations could be considered to be significant. I have no idea how much contact with hexane and/or substances soluble in hexane is therapeutic for the skin, for example. A soak in that water sure is enjoyable, though. But I wouldn't drink it!

The other portion of our trip left us on the side of a highway, seeking transport down the mountain. As you'll see, while Baños itself is at an high altitude and cool climate similar to Cuenca, a quick ride down the road towards Puyo will see the scenery change rapidly towards the tropical. On the way down, you'll also see people engaged in many different modes of transportation: rented bikes, four wheelers, the inevitable bus, and in our case, people clinging to the back of a pickup truck.

Well, at this point there was no clinging yet. The road out of town begins as a straight, downhill shot, with great views of the surrounding countryside. We were able to enjoy the ride casually enough along that leg of the trip.

But as the journey continues, the road begins to wind around, and occasionally through, the mountains:

Note that this tunnel, burrowing ominously into the depths of the hillside, is just one lane. Some briefly illuminated glimpses from within the interior darkness are to follow.

It's been awhile since it happened, but when this picture was taken, I seem to be remember thinking about what that roll bar would do to my smile if we came to a sudden stop. You will also notice the color of the hand in the foreground. An effect of the nearby flash, or a true white knuckle experience?

But we went through that tunnel, and all the tunnels between Baños and our destination, with no real trouble at all. And what was our destination? We were bound for the pailón del diablo, which you might call the Devil's Skillet. But before I get to that, we'll spend some time in an area we stopped at further up the hill.

Here we were on board a tarabita, a dangling cable car that you can hire to get across the river valley you see beyond. On the other side of the valley from the highway there is a small system of hiking trails to explore, which we wandered around for an hour or two.

One path led down below the engine station that drives the cable car, where we got a different perspective on some other people enjoying the same ride, which also gives a good look at the car itself.

In addition to some easy hiking, the trails also pass by some people's homes, many of which are given over to restaurants with their own little trout ponds. Introduced trout abounds in the wild in the mountain lakes of Ecuador, and people have acquired a real taste for them. So many enterprising folk have dug out their own little trout farms, complete with separate ponds used for raising the fry:

These little fishies, much like ourselves the day before at the thermal baths, enjoyed an environment kept relatively fresh by a little pipe that constantly fed clean water into their little pond. And as we had witnessed back in Baños, there was one ambitious individual in the trout pond who was trying to tap that source of water, wriggling with all abandon right up in the spout of moving water. It became clear to us then that a theme was emerging.

After seeing such a profusion of trout all around, we were moved by our empty stomachs to stop at one of the restaurants offering pesca deportiva, or that is, sport fishing. But a look at the water in the upcoming photos reveals that there isn't much sporting at all about catching fish in such a little pond, where the swirling mass of trout seize instantly upon anything resembling food. My own sport fishing experience lasted all of a few seconds. First I dunked my baited hook into the living whirlpool of fish:

A tug on the line, and up came my lunch:

Within a few minutes everyone who'd be partaking of fresh trout had done the same, and while it wasn't much of a challenge to get the fish out of water, it still provided some entertainment. We had a seat at a table around the corner, ice cold beer was served, soon to be followed by our fried trout. And then, good times proceeded to be had, by all.

Enough about fish ponds, you might be saying to yourself. What's up with this pailón? I was just getting to that...

The pailón del diablo is a really big waterfall. Ecuador, so blessed with majestic mountains and lots of rain, is home to countless numbers of waterfalls, big and small. And this is one of the big ones. I mean, it's no Niagara Falls or Cataratas del Iguazú, but it's pretty big.

I had seen it the year before, on my previously mentioned first road trip with Nancy. And I was happy to return, remembering the nice hike down to the falls, which takes you through some nice, natural, tropical scenery, and also the awe-inspiring falls themselves. And once there, it was interesting to see that they had built a little corridor through the cliff side that led right up and even right behind the surging torrent of water as it spills down. Walking along the slick rocks, ducking down under the low ceiling, buffeted by the ubiquitous spray coming off the falls, we were able to get up to the little cave behind them, and take pictures:

From the high vantage point of the falls, you are afforded a nice glimpse into the warmer climate the short ride down from Baños will leave you.

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, such a landscape comes pretty close to my mind's eye-view of what Ecuador was going to be like, before I ever actually saw it. Tropical hills, dripping with moisture and vegetation, cut through by mountain streams and kept eternally warm by the sun along its equatorial course.

That, among many other things, is Ecuador. It's also big banana plantations and little potato farms, tiny grass huts and centuries old cathedrals, the disdainful rich with their ancestral names and properties, and humble country people with their hands, feet and knees proudly in the soil.

For now life and employment has me firmly rooted in the city, and wherever I live, it would seem that into the foreseeable future, cities are where I'll be living. As content with that forecast as I am, may there be, some day, a place for me in the tropical mountains.

Such are the thoughts that cross my mind when it is granted a brief moment to glimpse a natural panorama and time to reflect upon it. But for now, such moments are still few, with life back in the city between. And so we made our way back up the hill, in the back of a pick up:

Ñamarín

2010-05-31T00:21:00.006-05:00

The name baffles the tongue, upon reading it for the first time. And once you figure out how to say it, you might ask yourself, just what is Ñamarín?

To call it a village might not be quite accurate, because most villages I've been to, as tiny as they may have been, were built more densely than here. But the collection of homes scattered around the hills outside the community of Saraguro, in the province of Loja, have a palpable unity greater than what can be achieved by simply building houses close together.

In Ñamarín, many of the men, young and old, still wear their black hair long. They usually have it tied back into a braid, and covered with a high, black, narrow-rimmed hat not unlike one your grandfather might have worn. Like many of the men living in and around Saraguro, they also wear the distinctive black pants, the legs of which not quite reaching the ankles of the fellow wearing them. More often than not, a blue dress shirt, covered by a black vest - and on colder days, a black jacket - completes the Saraguro man's traditional garb.

That the men who identify themselves culturally as indigenous Saraguro maintain their traditional clothing is, in and of itself, a feature that speaks of the kinship felt amongst the people of the area. Even the chola cuencana, the archetypal country woman to be found in and around Cuenca, with her unmistakable colorful pleated skirt, white flowing blouse and white "Panama" hat, has no easily identifiable male counterpart. At least not as far as his clothes are concerned.

The Saraguro woman, for her part, is also easily identified: by her long black skirt, often embroidered along the bottom, by her usually white, long sleeved blouse, and topped off with, like the men of her community, what we norteamericanos might think of as a Prohibition-era black fedora.

Long before I visited Ñamarín for the first time, I had become acquainted with Saraguro culture primarily because of their distinctive clothing. As I made my obligatory visit to Vilcabamba as a newbie to Ecuador, I recall having noticed the traditional clothing of the people as we rolled along a dusty road of the town of Saraguro itself. Later, having made the connection with that particular style of indigenous dress, I began to pick up on it as I wandered around the streets of Cuenca.

It's truly incredible how in our minds, we make such clear distinctions amongst groups of people based purely on their clothes. A police officer, a doctor, a military man, or a clergyman is instantly labeled as such by what he (or she) is wearing. In Ecuador, ostensibly since centuries ago, groups of people have been long identified by how they dress. Even today, a trained eye could trace any traditionally-dressed individual back to her specific region strictly by recognizing her distinctive outfit. Interestingly, in the cities as well there is an unmistakable connection between the uniforms of working professionals and which bank or other institution they happen to work at, as much as there is between the mobs of school children spilling off the sidewalks at lunchtime, and their corresponding educational center.

The sociologist would be better suited than I at analyzing what it is about Ecuadorian culture that has rendered country and city folk alike to be so notably tuned in to what might be referred to as "the culture of the uniform." Who knows, maybe someday I'll hit the streets of Cuenca with a camera and do my best to document it myself.

As usual, I digress. Because the real purpose of this month's message to you all is to share our trip last November to the home of José and Juana Cartuche.

It is largely thanks to the hospitality of this couple that the name Ñamarín means anything to someone like me, who would have otherwise sped by it on a bus heading south to more popular destinations, too fast to notice the sign with the puzzling name.

Several years ago, as José explained to me, a peace corps volunteer came to work in his community. She lived with his family, and her work - and her stay with them in general - helped them to formulate their plan to become hosts for travelers, and to build the infrastructure to make a stay here attractive to people from outside their community.

Today, they have built Inti Samana Wasi, which is to say in Quichua, "the place where the sun rests."

And, as José said to us, his guests are like the sun, who come to his home to rest briefly, before continuing on their journey.

This heartfelt explanation came to us at the beginning of our two-night stay, and as we spent time with them, as they shared with us all the meals that Juana prepared, they both proceeded to show us the heart behind the name they've given to their lodging.

When I had spoken with José on the phone to let him know we'd be arriving, he told us that he'd meet us down at the highway, winding through the valley below Ñamarín. Not really knowing what he would look like, I remember sitting on the always-crowded bus heading to Loja, barreling noisily around the hills, when I happened to glance out the window across the aisle to see the flicker of a man's face, there, and then gone.

That had to be him! So we quickly gathered up our things, ourselves, our baby, as we hollered to the driver to stop the bus. Our fellow passengers helpfully joined in the litany of voices, and a man in the front seat pounded on the door separating the driver's cabin from the rest of the bus. A lurching stop, the stumbling of the passengers standing in the aisle, a flurry of feet and baggage, and we were soon deposited on the dusty roadside.

And there, downhill, the man stood stoically on the embankment, still waiting. We made our way back down the road, met the gentleman who was indeed to be our host for the weekend, and made our way up the steep hill into Ñamarín. José informed us on the walk to his home that another couple would be staying that weekend as well, and that we might know them. Sure enough, an hour after our arrival, Rachel, a new teacher at CEDEI who I'd just met the month before, and her boyfriend Nelson from the tropical town of Mindo outside of Quito, came walking into the Cartuche's little patio where we were hanging out.

The patio, framed on three sides by the small buildings that make up their home and lodging, and on the fourth by José's organic garden, is set up with nice wooden benches and two hammocks, a perfect place to relax and read in the sun. The garden, a mix of herbs and vegetables, supplies Juana's kitchen with fresh ingredients year-round, thanks to Ecuador's high altitude formula of predictable sun, rain and mild temperatures throughout the calendar year.

During meals, as we all sat around the wide wooden table, being served soup ahead of big steaming main courses, all of us guests spoke prolifically about whatever came to mind. José would eat, and listen, and Juana would smile and ask us if we wanted more. As he was occasionally compelled to do so, José would ask us a question, or provide his opinion, or share a story. But usually, he just listened to us, as I began to gather he must do with most of his guests. In this way, beyond the travels that he mentioned he had taken to such places as La Paz, Bolivia, he gleaned what be of other parts of the world, and the chattering people that came from them.

And in this way, in his silence, I cultivated my respect for this generous member of the community from which he came. From time to time, he would suggest a walk that we could take from his house to various nearby destinations. The first walk we took, by far the most leisurely, led us along the main road through the community of Ñamarín itself, and the beautiful mountains that frame it, and shelter it.

We observed that the majority of the homes in the area were built from adobe bricks, and topped with the traditional red ceramic roofing shingles known as tejas. To see an adobe home in other parts of Ecuador that I've visited, even in the countryside, is usually to gaze upon an old, old farmhouse. But here, many of these adobe buildings were clearly newer, and some still under construction. It was refreshing to see a place where natural building methods were still seen as a perfectly logical way to make a home.

During our walk, Nancy also pointed out how there was no loud music playing, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise on a walk along a country lane, one would think. But go to the countryside around Cuenca, for example, and you'll see where many families from the city have bought a cheap slice of the outskirts of town and built themselves a concrete mansion or perhaps a simple country villa. Either way, such families love to go to these weekend vacation homes and have themselves an all-day party, with loud music to go along with it.

In Ñamarín, this was fortunately not the case. These homes were far too distant from any city to make for a regular weekend getaway. The people are here because this is where they live, and their weekend pastimes bear few resemblances to your typical Ecuadorian city dweller on a country excursion. Granted, we still saw groups of teenagers playing soccer or volleyball, much as you would around Cuenca. But these kids were distinct from their urban counterparts in the noticeable lack of accompanying party music, as much as they were for their black pants and ponytails.

The next morning over breakfast, don José recommended another hike to us, up to a little waterfall. It was easy to find, and we'd easily be there and back before lunch, he assured us. So we made our way up there, Nancy, Tamia, and I, along with our new friends Rachel and Nelson. This was Tamia's first real trip out of town, and our first time taking her for a walk on a steep trail. But Nancy had rigged up a handy sling out of a long scarf made from durable fabric, and just like that, our then three-month-old was along for the ride.

Before we took this trip to Ñamarín, Nancy and I knew that we'd have many road trips in our future. Not only for our own enjoyment, but also to Guayaquil, for example, where we'd be taking care of official documents for our dual-citizen child. We thought a short trip like this one would let us know how Tamia would do on a bus ride, and just being outside of her ordinary routine. Plus, we decided that it would be a good chance to get her accustomed to such an experience. Fortunately, our little daughter doesn't seem to mind being on the road at all, as a look back a couple of months, at some of our more recent trips, will show.

The picture to the left, incidentally, also features the edge of an open cave that overlooks the steep, deep valley issuing forth from the little waterfall only a few steps beyond Nancy's shoulder. Before running down the valley and into the rushing river a thousand feet or so below where we stood, it passed through a small, natural basin which would make for a handy place to bathe.

We had to imagine that at one time, many people must have done just that. Here one would have had the very fortunate combination of a high, wide cave for ample shelter, a source of fresh water for drinking, an accompanying natural pool, and the protection of a steep, narrow valley, well visible from the cave itself. It wouldn't have been a bad place to spend some time in the days before indoor plumbing.

The thought crossed our minds to take a dip ourselves in that little pool, until we tested the waters with our hands. Maybe it would warm up more as the day went on, but at 10 am, it was cold, cold, cold. The heated shower back at José and Juana's would be just fine.

And, after some time hanging around the cave and waterfall, and trying out a few dead-end trails, back to the Inti Samana Wasi we went. We had another delicious meal, we talked José's ears off once again, and he kindly recommended yet another trail to hike, this one far up into the mountainside that Ñamarín was settled upon. Rachel and Nelson got a head start on us, as we spent some time relaxing after lunch. And after awhile we three headed out once again, into the community and then, up above it.

Our hike took us quickly out of the community and up into the countryside. Like many mountain hikes in Ecuador, this one took us from small patches of forest, through high mountain grazing pastures, and also to the inevitable potato patch at unlikely altitudes. While the trees were nothing like old growth, nor did they seem to be native species to my layman's eye, the sense that we had reached the edge of a wide expanse of secluded mountains took hold on us, as we looked out onto uninterrupted views of wooded hillsides all around.

It is, upon facing a sight like this, that some deep-seated recess of my psyche comes forth, filling my mind with the fantastic realization that I could wander endlessly into the scenery. Some primal craving for wilderness left unsatisfied by too many years in cities, which provokes the urge to let civilization fall away behind me and lose myself in the mountains' embrace.

If I ever do give in fully to such callings, may I at least do so with a good head start in the early morning. In this particular case, with dusk on the way and my young family at my side, the archetypal lure of the woodlands wasn't too hard to dispel. Its legacy that evening was, during the walk back down, my vocal insistence on a return trip with sleeping bags, tent and camping stove some day in the future.

With some luck, such a trip might be possible. Later, over dinner, as I further articulated my wonder at the beautiful sights at the top of the hill far above us, José told me that he could arrange for guided multi-day excursions either on foot or horseback into those very open spaces we had witnessed. It sure would be fun. If any of you out there are interested, let me know. With some outside influence like that, I could be pretty easily persuaded.

That night, our hosts had arranged for a youth dance troupe, who were learning some interpretations of traditional Saraguro ritual dances, to present some of what they had learned for us. After dark, many young people from the community began arriving at our lodging, in successive waves. While many of the kids were too shy to say much to us before or after, while they were dancing they were clearly having a good time and being themselves.

In all, they presented several dances for us that evening, with don José himself providing explanations of the significance of various movements and concepts that were represented in what we saw. The dance you see to the left, as he told us, takes place in a circular pattern to illustrate of the cyclical nature of life, and of time in general, according to the indigenous Andean worldview.

I recall hearing a similar interpretation from a guide, regarding some symbols I had seen on old Aztec ruins outside of Oaxaca, Mexico. Apparently the circular, cyclical nature of life was not lost on that particular group of indigenous Americans either. But then, anyone living close to the Earth would begin to pick up on such things, with time and thought enough given over to them. For those engaged fully in the rhythms of the Earth, it must emanate naturally in all sorts of creative expressions. It's only those of us who find ourselves separated by degrees from natural cycles who need telling, or at least reminding from time to time by people kind enough to share.

After the performance, one of the dancers learned that our daughter shared her name, and got a chance to hold her. We learned that in this community, Tamia was a very popular name. Which makes sense, being that we had borrowed it from Quichua for her to use.

We shared a warm thanks with all of the dancers, who went back to being shy and smiling. They made a pretty quick departure after their performance, and soon after we were in bed for the last time of our short visit.

It's worth mentioning that like most of the houses in Ñamarín, the Cartuche family has built their home and lodging with adobe bricks, and made a point to make the walls double thick. This design lends itself to appealingly deep windowsills, rooms which stay cool on sunny days and warm on chilly nights, and a general sense of being cozy inside the ample walls with natural stucco finish.

So needless to say, we slept well during our two nights under warm blankets and thick earthy insulation, and awoke each morning to sunny skies.

We shared another delicious breakfast with our hosts, and all too soon we were saying our goodbyes, and making promises to return. Indeed, we still hope to pay this couple and their fine community another visit. If you're in Ecuador or intend to be, you might like to do the same!

Manabí

2010-04-25T12:37:00.019-05:00

We recently found ourselves with a couple of weeks of vacation, and knowing that our free time had come when most of the rest of Ecuador was still at work before Holy Week, we decided to head down to the beach and beat the crowds.

I honestly haven't spent too much time on Ecuador's coast. But when I have made my way down from the Sierra, I've never been disappointed by the Province of Manabí. Our last trip there was to the beach towns of Puerto Lopez and Ayampe, and I've got fond memories of both places. There's always the temptation to go back to a place you know you love, but then again, Manabí is a huge province, and it boasts just about a third of Ecuador's entire coastline. We had gotten to know only the southernmost tip of what Manabí had to offer, and so we chose to make our way much further north this time around.

Of course, in addition to our destination being several thousand feet below Cuenca's high valley, it's many, many kilometers to the north as well. Add that to the fact that there is nothing like a direct road connecting Cuenca and any of the beach towns we had in mind, and you've got yourself a lengthy road trip. And unless you've got a car, which we don't, that means you're taking the bus.

Bus trips around Ecuador have been a main feature of much of the blogging that you, my loyal readers, have read plenty about. My wife Nancy, myself, and at this point, even our baby girl, we've all been on our share of long bus rides. Seeing as how we enjoy traveling around quite a bit, we were glad to learn that our daughter could handle being on the bus for many hours without causing much fuss. Until our most recent trip, however, all of our bus trips had been around the Sierra, and we were a little concerned that the heat and humidity of Ecuador's coast might present some problems for her that weren't present in the cooler mountain rides we'd taken before.

I'm happy to report, however, that our daughter, despite sweating far more than either Nancy or I, seemed to mind the many, many sweltering hours of stop and go travel far less than we did. In fact, this trip revealed far more about my own limitations as a traveler than our daughter's.

You see, any trip to the coast from Cuenca necessarily implies a dramatic drop in elevation. This particular trip took us through Guayaquil, and the most direct route from Cuenca to Guayaquil first takes you from Cuenca's modest, springlike climate, then up into Cajas, with weather often feeling much more like a day in February for my readers in the US. The Cajas leg of the trip also features the most stomach-churning twists and turns, which ultimately lead you winding down, inevitably through cloud-forest conditions (read: heavy fog) before plunging you into the eternal Summer of the coast.

All in all, we're talking about about an 8000 foot change in elevation in a short time. More than enough to get your ears popping. In my case, however, I was fighting off the last few days of a head cold, and something about the congestion in my sinuses also meant that my ears were far less able to release pressure than normal. The fact that our ears, nose and throat are all connected is well-known, but little had I ever had to think about it until I came to realization that I had a pressure building in my inner ear, and all the ear-popping tricks I knew weren't working. With nowhere to go, the pressure quickly became acute, until a loud and painful pop finally sounded in my left ear. The right one kept on aching dully until we got to Guayaquil, about 90 minutes after the descent. That also had the effect of everything sounding as though I had my palms pressed firmly over my ears. I heard my own voice mostly through the vibration it caused in my own head, and only the lower frequencies of the outside world seemed to make it through.

That night in Guayaquil, as the pressure in my cranium slowly matched that of the world around me, my ears regained their normal capacity for hearing. Or at least, my right one did. I'm no doctor, but I suspect that I did some damage to my left eardrum when it made that loud popping sound, because for the next three days all noise entering my left ear sounded as if I were hearing it through a blown subwoofer. Periodically throughout those days, as my ears would naturally pop, I felt like I was mildly re-injuring my already damaged ear, and it would go from sounding closer to normal, to going back to that blown-out, rattling sensation. The good news is, before the end of the trip my hearing had returned to normal. And, I know now not to take any trips that mean big altitude changes when I've got a stuffy head.

Once in Guayaquil, our next stop was Manta. Home to a former US military base and located five hours north of big, sprawling Guayaquil, the map revealed a long, straight stretch of highway leading there, interrupted only by the small city of Portoviejo. The trip out of Guayaquil took us near the edge of the port district, where metal railroad boxcars were stacked up several stories high, waiting for their next trip on a big cargo ship. We also caught a glimpse of Guayaquil's less-seemly neighborhoods, consisting of concrete block and wooden shack homes on leafy hillsides, garbage spilling down ravines along the city's unincorporated extremes.

Outside of the city, we were treated at last to the tropical countryside:

I think Ecuador's low, coastal interior is one of the most beautiful and diverse ecosystems you can find. There are wetlands, mountains, deserts and cloud forests and jungles all within a few kilometers of one another. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to spend as much time exploring the national parks of Ecuador's coast as much as I would like, but once Tamia can begin carrying her own weight, maybe we can start checking them out a little more. Until then, some glimpses from the roadside will have to do.

The mix of open countryside and small agricultural communities you see here are the hallmarks of a ride through Manabí, as much as are the many roadside stops in countless dusty towns where the locals hop on the bus briefly to sell. Water, juice, bread. Corviche, pan de yuca, empanadas. And big, juicy oranges, with the tops sliced off and peeled down to the white albedo, which are made for tidily squeezing every last drop of the sweet juice into your mouth. Yum!

Of course, each stop means an ebb in the cool breeze which blows in constantly through the windows while the bus is moving, and the moment the bus loses momentum, the heat and humidity instantly creep in, reminding you that you're sitting at sea level, right on the Earth's sweltering middle. A ten minute stop in a small town, with tasty fresh fruit to keep you cool and refreshed, isn't so bad. But at the grimy bus terminal of Portoviejo, where our bus stopped inexplicably for more than an hour at midday, the wait began to take it's toll on our patience. With little outside of the bus besides a seedy bus station, dusty metal vending booths and some dusty palm trees scattered around the black asphalt, we chose to wait out the layover in our seats.

The long wait didn't seem to bother our little daughter, as sweaty and sticky as she was. Nancy and I on the other hand, knowing we were only an hour from Manta once we got back on the road, were both taken aback by this long stop. The never-ending line of vendors moving along the bus aisle went gradually from a source of welcome refreshments to an annoying array of people to say "no, gracias" to.

My Catholic upbringing has instilled in me the sense that there is a place called Purgatory where we atone for our sins. In a departure from the traditional belief, I've come to the conclusion that Purgatory is a place on Earth, and if you can endure long stopovers with grace and keep your cool throughout the experience, you have paid some penance for your past transgressions.

Finally the bus got back on the road, and it didn't feel like long before we were in Manta.

Manta has a population of around 200,000 people, and its economy is driven largely by its status as a port city. Tuna fishing, canning and shipping is a big part of its revenue, although more and more people are beginning to come for the wide and long beaches that lie on either side of the port district. Including us. Our main destination wasn't Manta but Canoa, which laid still further north, but after five hours on a bus, we decided it would be nice to get a hotel near the beach and see what Manta was all about.

So we got off the bus and made our way out of the small but bustling bus terminal. It turned out we were just a couple of blocks away from Manta's Malecón, which refers to a seaside path made for walking and enjoying some shade and the nice views. In this case, however, we had arrived in Manta just in time for the renovation of their Malecón, and so it wasn't as pleasant of a walk as it could have been. Nevertheless, there are still a number of parks to be found along the sea, along with some informational maps to help you keep your bearings. While these maps were conspicuously lacking the "You are here" feature, we were, after some triangulation, able to determine that we were a modest walk from the nicer of Manta's two beaches.

Manta, unlike many of Ecuador's smaller beach towns, doesn't seem to have too many hotels right along the sea, nor were there signs advertising lodging, nor people trying to convince you that their hotel was the best option. Once we found our way to the beach, with all our bags, we still hadn't seen one hotel. At this point we were ready to find a place, any place, to stay for the night. Preferably in time to get down to the beach before sundown and enjoy a few hours before going to bed, waking up and making the push up to Canoa.

In the end, we picked a random street to wander up, in hopes that some accommodations would present themselves. Luckily, we did find a hotel, albeit a far nicer one than was really necessary for our purposes. The rooms were essentially vacation apartments, complete with a small but functional kitchen. There was even a private garage down below for the security of your personal transportation. Not the rustic cabin setting I was accustomed to staying in when I came to the beach, and at $30 the price was a little high, considering we wouldn't be there long enough to take advantage of many of the hotel's comforts. But, after so many hours on the bus, we were happy to have found a comfortable place to stay, and since we planned on leaving on an early bus out of Manta the next morning, the fact that breakfast on the patio would be included was a convenient bonus.

We unpacked, relaxed for a little while, and then headed down to the beach. Halfway down the stairs I remembered something I wanted from the room, and on my way back down I saw that Nancy and Tamia had found a nice place to sit in the grass and wait for me:

We ended up not being too far from the beach after all, and once there we found it to be almost devoid of tourists. While there was some development along the shore, it didn't encroach excessively onto the sand, and there were many spaces set aside for gardens and palm trees. We got there in time to roam the beach from end to end, and then we found a nice place to watch the sun go down.

There are few things better than watching the sunset on a tropical beach. Before you churns the vast sea, above, the changing sky, and behind you, a continent that holds more mysteries than known places. If you have a woman next to you who loves you as much as you love her, and perhaps a small child seeing such a scene for the first time in her young life, you could truly want for little more.

And then the sun goes down, and it gets dark. An old man plays guitar in the sand and sings pasillos. After a few songs, a younger man selling smokes and candy pretends to steal coins from his overturned hat, and then gives him a cigarette. The music is over, and we recall the strip of restaurants further up the beach.

A seafood dinner washed down with guanabana juice and a cold beer. One last walk along rows of palm trees, sand and tropical flowers. And the walk uphill to our hotel, shower, and cozy bed.

The next morning we awoke in time for a big breakfast to be served on the second story patio of our hotel, and then we packed and made our way back to the bus terminal. We bought tickets for a bus departing in an hour, and found one of the nearby parks we'd passed the day before, to watch how a morning in Manta unfolded.

We were surprised to see dozens of men hanging out in the park, seemingly with nothing to do. The demographic was mid thirties to mid forties, male, able bodied, and idle. Were they truly unemployed, or would they be heading off to work sometime later? Manta seemed like a bustling enough city that there would be jobs to go around, but something about the stance and camaraderie amongst the circles of fellows standing around the park implied that they were geared up for a long day of not much to do.

Well, one can speculate and people watch for only so long when you've got a new beach town to go to. We soon got on the bus, and were on our way to Canoa, which lay further still up the coast of Manabí, four hours by bus. Including another stop over in Portoviejo. Seriously? It seemed as if every bus traveling along the central coast of Ecuador was destined for an extended wait in this town. I'm sure it's a nice enough place, but from the bus terminal it didn't look like it, and if it does have anything worthwhile to offer the traveler, we weren't too curious to find out.

Beyond Portoviejo was a truly beautiful stretch of green hills, big trees and wetlands. Our trip took us away from the coastline as the road wound through hilly countryside, and back again near the town of San Vicente, a fishing community with big beaches and small houses. Beyond the palm-lined beaches and fishing boats, one can see across the calm Bahía de Caraquez, to a narrow peninsula from which rises a popular tourist town named for the bay itself. Our guide book said it was a nice place to visit and a common destination for beach-bound Quiteños.

The fact that we were now much closer to distant Quito than we were to Cuenca weighed heavily on our travel-weary minds. As our four hour trip was stretching into five hours and counting, and as our bus settled into a prolonged stop in San Vicente, as it had in many other towns before it, and as the town of Bahía de Caraquez sparkled invitingly from across the bay, I was sorely tempted to suggest that we hop off the bus and stick out the remainder of our trip here in this quiet fishing town. After all, we'd heard you could get a boat over to Bahía for only a couple of dollars, and we'd be there in 20 minutes.

As if reading my mind - or more likely, the weary looks on our faces - the ticket collector on the bus assured us that we were almost in Canoa: "Ya mismo llegamos." I'd come to learn that ya mismo can be interpreted as a duration of seconds or much, much longer. But before we could vacillate our way off the bus, the engine cranked up and we were on our way. And indeed, 15 minutes later we were pulling onto the sandy streets of Canoa.

Our original plan was to stay in Canoa for a day, and then head back down to Bahía de Caraquez and stay there as well. But our one day in Canoa stretched into more. We found a hotel with a small pool with nice, warm water:

We played cards and watched the sea at a beachside café:

We took an afternoon on the beach and drank beers under a canopy:

And otherwise, we just enjoyed being in a lazy beach town. Canoa is a surfer's haven, and the locals are content to collect what cash they can from the young travelers that flock from the world around to their little town. After so many hours on a bus, we were in no hurry to leave such an easy place to be.

I originally chose Ecuador over other countries I had considered as places to work, largely because I liked the idea of a mix of mountains, Amazon, and beaches. I've never had a home close to the ocean in my life; as the crow flies, Cuenca is by far as close as I've ever lived to a coastline. Having lived here now for three years and been to the beach a grand total of four times, I can say with certainty that we're still far enough away to make our beachgoing ventures few and far between. So when we do get there, it's nice to have no urgency to get back.

When the time to go finally came, and we walked over to the town's one bus stop, we were happily surprised that a bus was pulling up just as we got there. And, as it turned out, it was a nice one. Air-conditioned, spacious seats, and amazingly, even though the bus was pretty full as it pulled in to Canoa, there were two open seats for us as we climbed on board. We had planned to hit Bahía de Caraquez on the way home, but I suppose we'd gotten our fill of the beach already, and having found seats on a cool, comfy bus heading all the way to Guayaquil, we couldn't bring ourselves to get off it as it reached San Vicente a few minutes later. That little town on the bay will have to wait for another time.

It took us three days of travel to make our way up to Canoa at the beginning of our trip, but we made the push home in one day of dedicated marathon bus-hopping. So it was that we were having breakfast on the beach in the morning in the shade of leafy almond trees, and carry-out pizza in our own house for a late night dinner, high and cool in Cuenca, far from the surfers, the ocean breeze, and the hot, tropical sun. The trip itself was a blur of long naps, Portoviejo, homemade snacks from the coast, the sprawl of Guayaquil, and an unexpected tire change in the crisp air of Cajas.

As we went to sleep that night, snuggled up into the warm bliss that is our own bed after so many nights of hotel rooms, it was hard to believe that in the morning I had awoken early and watched the sun rise from a hammock a stone's throw from the Pacific. But that's how it had been. And until we go back again, those are the kinds of thoughts that cross my mind when I think about Manabí.

Life is a Carnaval

2010-03-26T18:52:00.005-06:00

As those of you who read this blog regularly have probably interpreted by now, the theme lately has been one of holidays. That's because for a few months straight, it seems as though the holidays celebrated in Ecuador come one after another. Carnaval, perhaps the wildest of them all, is amongst the last in the string of festivities, before the devoutest of Ecuadorians settle into a prolonged period of subdued reflection, and the rest just go back to business as usual.

To call Carnaval a religious holiday doesn't quite explain it. Of course, since some version of Carnaval is expressed in so many countries around the world, and each with its own long history, it defies a tidy explanation. Ecuador's own modern manifestation of Carnaval can be traced back to a fusion of indigenous and Spanish traditions, although today's revelers have taken it into yet other directions. On the indigenous side of the story, various local cultures celebrated some version of what the Inca would have called the Pawkar Raymi, which is to say, the festival of the blossoming. Such celebrations featured the ritual throwing of water and flowers, in order to invoke the primal energy of flowering and rebirth.

The Spanish already had their own Carnaval celebrations, which happened to coincide with the indigenous festival. That's really no coincidence, when you consider the fact that holidays around the world have taken shape around the many, universally recognized lunar and solar events every year. European Carnaval is of course an event which takes place prior to Lent. Before beginning forty days of personal sacrifice symbolic of Jesus' own tribulations and crucifixion, Europeans wanted to have a good time. So they began a tradition unto itself, where open revelry became as ensconced in the calendar as Easter did. Easter falls always after the Spring Equinox, and Jesus' death and resurrection represented the ultimate Passover lamb, that Jewish holiday which, in turn, is tied with the Spring Equinox, and is itself representative of the rebirth inherent of the beginning of Springtime.

Here in the Andes, the local cultures too were able to recognize the mystery of the Spring Equinox and celebrated accordingly, and when the Spanish and indigenous cultures collided, so too did their holidays, fusing together much as the people. Today Latin America is unified in part by its mestizo culture and heritage, and also by holidays drawing from both sides of the Atlantic.

What does that mean for Carnaval in Ecuador today? Mestizo teens, hurling water balloons. At each other, and often, at strangers. And while Carnaval is technically observed beginning the Friday before Ash Wednesday, the water balloons start flying not long after New Year's Day, and reach a crescendo the day before Lent begins. The final days of Carnaval find many Ecuadorians on the street, openly wielding water hoses in front of their houses, barrels and buckets of water raining down from terraces above, and drive-by water balloon attacks. Young women and obvious foreigners seem to be preferred targets. If you're blonde or a woman, that means you'd better watch out, and have a good sense of humor, every time you're outside, for several weeks. Even the best sense of humor can begin to wear down after several unexpected dowsings, and an afternoon at work at a language institute employing several dozen foreigners begins to look pretty soggy during the last days before the Carnaval vacation.

This year, like the previous two years I've spent in Cuenca, left me fortunately dry. But then, I've been thoughtful about how I get around during the first months of the new year. No bike rides, first of all. Those wait until Lent. A walk downtown is best avoided, and if you do need to go downtown, you'd best walk towards the flow of traffic, and better yet, on the driver's side of the street. You see, the driver, being occupied with driving, can't very well toss a balloon at you. Furthermore, choose a route without many residential homes, where kids like to hang out on the 2nd or 3rd story terraces. Does this sound excessive? Perhaps, but not if you'd rather stay dry. Anything short of that and you'll get hit, at least a few times. I guess in total, I've been hit by one water balloon in Cuenca, during the one bike trip I chose to take last year.

That's not to say I haven't been a target. Upon leaving Cuenca, my luck always seems to run out. There was, for example, the case of my first Carnaval trip in Ecuador. That left my friends and I all covered in water and spray foam, as you'll see towards the bottom of the link. Last year we opted to stick around and celebrate with Nancy's family, which culminated in a family reunion in Biblián, roasted guinea pig dinner, and the ritual smearing of dry corn starch all over everybody's hair.

"Why corn starch?" you may ask. This, too, seems rooted in indigenous tradition, where the taita inti, or father sun, was chosen at the beginning of each Pawkar Raymi. Today, they instead refer to taita carnaval, and anyone can be Father Carnaval if they've got white hair from all the corn starch. If you've got a beard like me, you're even more of a target. Best of all, after you get the white powder thrown in your face, you're supposed to say "thank you."

This year, we decided to venture out of Cuenca yet again, heading up to the community of Ambato and the surrounds. Ambato is distinct in its Carnaval celebrations for at least two reasons. First, throwing water is prohibited. That sounded good to me. Second, and even more intriguing, was their famous parade, known as the Fiesta de las flores y las frutas.

Before we got to Ambato, we'd had quite a few arrangements to make. This year, Carnaval weekend and Valentine's Day happened to coincide, which left many of the hotels in the area full, far in advance. In fact, of the several hotels in Ambato we tried to book, all were full but one, which had doubled its prices and demanded a minimum two night stay and a 50% deposit to be made in their bank account three days before arriving. We didn't like those conditions very much, so we got a fresh list of hotels in the area from Nancy's sister, who works at a travel agency. The first place on the list that we called indeed had vacancies, and put us down for a night with no further strings attached.

So Nancy, Tamia and I got on a bus and headed for Ambato. 30 minutes from our destination, we thought it would be a good idea to call ahead and get the exact location. Which revealed that our hotel was not in Ambato at all, but in Baños de Ambato, a different community altogether. That put us in a dilemma. On one hand, Baños is a nice place, and buses went back and forth along the 40 minute route between towns very frequently. On the other hand, we had planned to spend our time between Ambato and a few small communities on the other side of town from Baños.

In travel, and in life in general, we can rarely predict with any accuracy what our experiences are going to be like until they actually unfold. Attempting to do so will often leave us disappointed, and worse, blind to potential opportunities that arise, but which we never foresaw. Traveling, then, is often an exercise in being flexible, and open to new experiences. We hadn't planned to stay in Baños, but after a few minutes of weighing our options from our bus seats, we opted to stay there after all with the hotel we had reserved, rather than wander into a city unknown to both of us, with no place to stay. When we arrived in Baños, we discovered that our hotel was located literally across the street from the bus station, run by teenagers, and with lousy rooms but very nice views:

Nancy and I had spontaneously spent our first weekend together in Baños, and so now, two years later, it was fitting that we return there spontaneously with our baby girl and wander its streets yet again. It definitely brought back lots of nice memories for us both, and despite the Carnaval revelry, it ended up being a relaxing time for us to spend another weekend there.

Punctuating our visit to Baños of course was the main purpose of our trip, the Fiesta de las flores y las frutas. The morning after our arrival, we woke up early and got back on a bus to Ambato. A quick city bus ride downtown left us a couple of blocks from the epicenter of the celebration, and a long line of people in the middle of the street.

"Why the line of people?" we asked a stranger at the end of the line.
"To cross the street," she told us.

Well, it must be worth crossing a street like that, and so we did. And this is the sight that greeted us:

We didn't know what the Fiesta had in store for us yet, but we were sure by now that it was worth seeing, judging from the dense throngs of people packed into the long, wide avenue. Every sidewalk was packed, and above, so were all the balconies and rooftops. Along the side streets, people had parked their trucks, and people were packed onto them as well. The street itself, as far as you could see in either direction, was filled with walkers, including ourselves, all trying to find a place to sit down.

We chose to go right, and look for a place. Any open seat we came across on the sidewalks was already claimed. After going down about ten blocks, we could see the first float off in the distance, coming our way. And in front of it was a line of police officers, who formed a wall and drove all those left in the street forward. We had little choice than to head back the way we had come, and with a stroke of luck, we found a couple of empty seats. Or that is to say, a man found us, and then sold them to us for $2 each. Apparently, each store owner along this street has the coveted opportunity to sell sidewalk space in front of his shop, and after seeing the number of people who were now facing the ultimatum of having a seat reserved or getting off the street altogether, two dollars seemed like a fair price to pay. We also happened to be on the side of the street which still received the morning shade, and there was a bucket of iced beer for sale right behind us. Here's a glimpse from within the crowd, which may help to illustrate our good fortune in finding a nice place to sit:

And so, happy with our location and view to the street, we settled in with a cold beer and enjoyed the show:

Here you see one of many floats featured in the parade, most of which followed the recurring theme of a beautiful woman throwing flowers or soft fruits into the crowd, accompanied by a float constructed almost entirely of flowers and fruits. Here was featured a donkey made of delicious purple capulies and orange uvillas, and standing on a sort of cake made from black olives, as far as I can tell.

Between each float came a retinue of dancers, each with their own costumes:

The last photo is el diablo huma, whose history can also be traced back to indigenous traditions. His image pertains more to those of harvest than of rebirth, but nonetheless, we saw plenty of diablo humas during the Carnaval weekend.

And, a glimpse at a couple more floats:

The parade was lots of fun. One thing which characterizes Ecuadorian celebrations for me is the outpouring of creativity and community support. Like the viejos of New Year's Eve, like the parades of the Day of the Innocents, Ambato's fiesta de las flores y las frutas are celebrations where you'll see few tourists, as well. These are events that are produced by Ecuadorians, not with the intent of commercializing their traditions for the sake of tourist dollars, but simply as an event which truly represent local expressions of culture. While Carnaval has its roots in old traditions, this fiesta represents a newer turn, and one that clearly has lots of community support.

I was also impressed by the sense of order throughout the parade. From the line of people entering the street rather than a chaotic mob, to the police calmly ensuring random people didn't intermingle with the dancers and floats, we were treated to clear, uninterrupted views of the parade from our comfortable, bleacher-style seating. When events run smoothly, we often don't think much about how they would look without good planning, but in this case it was clear that many of the details of the event were carefully thought out beforehand.

Once the parade ended, in came vendors with their carts of snacks and drinks, and in came the carioca. Carioca is a company which, as far as I could gather, is based in Greece. They produce all kinds of children's products, mostly school products, but also canned, spray foam. As often happens with brand names, the name for a popular product becomes the household name for the item itself, and the word carioca in Ecuador means "spray foam." Another modern spin on Carnaval, carioca is an increasingly popular way for people to play Carnaval, rivaling or surpassing water balloons in some areas as the delivery system of choice for Carnaval mayhem.

As we got on the bus out of Ambato's downtown, Nancy took a direct hit, a thick dose of foam right on the backside. Then, from our bus seats, we witnessed the ensuing carioca-fueled Carnaval games. We were fortunate that carioca was absent from the parade itself, but as soon as the parade ended, the carioca was on, like donkey kong.

Back in Baños it was more of the same, although the general law of the land there seemed to dictate that if you have a can of carioca, you only strike others with their own cans in hand. This sort of honor among thieves was respectable, and it allowed our little family to relax in the park in Baños with no fear of random foam attacks. If there is a lack of photos to back up these stories, that's because I still wasn't willing to take the chance of exposing a camera to 10 year olds wielding cans of foam. So you'll have to take my word for it.

The one moment I can document was on a chiva ride we took to Baños' scenic overlook. A chiva is a colorful, open-air bus, and these played salsa music at high volume as we careened up the mountainside. While the carioca was normally reserved for those actively participating in Carnaval, chiva passengers were considered active participants, and I had a seat right on the edge of the bus, so there was no avoiding the madness that ensued. We received the brunt of the onslaught at the top of the hill, where the road was lined with chiva buses about 20 in a row, and the narrow dirt road meant that the only way out was to pass by them all. Here's our only glimpse of the action:

Outside of this unfortunate incident, we stayed clear from the carioca, even as it went flying all around us. Actually, while I wasn't happy about getting sprayed at the time, our experience on the chiva wasn't so bad. I've got my opinions about the toxic, artificial chemicals inherent in that foamy stuff, as well as what must happen with all the empty cans after the holiday is over, and I'm sure you can guess what those opinions are. Moreover, given the choice, I'd rather take a water balloon in the back of the head than to have that weird foam in my hair like a heavy dosage of mousse. But when you deliberately choose to go to a place with a reputation for using that stuff, you have to accept it for what it is, I suppose.

At least in the moment. But such excess leads one to think about how so many holidays are marked by some sort of overindulgence, from Christmas gift-giving to Thanksgiving gorging. Is there a way for people to engage in the creative urge that holidays inspire, without putting even more burden on the planet? In between our sacred days are the times for reflecting on holiday expressions, both symbolic and real, that can truly sanctify the turning Earth, which is, directly or indirectly, the inspiration for all our holy moments.

March of the Innocents

2010-02-27T17:34:00.003-06:00

The times around the New Year in Ecuador are marked by so many parades, festivals and celebrations. Pase del Niño, El Año Viejo and Carnaval all seem to come one after another. There's one more party that ought to be added to that list, one which many visitors to Cuenca will miss if they aren't in the right place at the right time.

Fortunately for me, I happened to stumble upon it the first year I was here, having no idea what I had found. One January evening, intending only to meet my friends after dinner, I walked down the Bajada del Padron from my old apartment downtown, towards the river Tomebamba. And there, across the wide expanse of Avenida Solano, were countless teenagers all dressed up like the denizens of hell. Hmm. Demons and ghosts, horns and pitchforks, and everyone dressed in black. Among them, floats rolled along, as big and ornate as those you would see for the Pase del Niño. But instead of the homages to the baby Jesus that are famously paraded at Christmas, these were garish and infernal, like a Macy's Halloween Day parade.

Only later did I find out that I had witnessed the Day of the Innocents. At the time, I was happy enough knowing that I wasn't the only one confused by my surroundings. I somehow ran into my friends, who were as astonished as I was by the improbable spectacle, and together we wandered up and down the boulevard to see more. Avenida Solano, ordinarily a main thoroughfare of Cuenca's car traffic, had transformed into a mix of parade, concert and county fair. While the avenue itself was given over to the parading masses of young people and their accompanying devilish floats, the tree-lined boulevard along the center was jammed with spectators and vendors of cotton candy, fried pastries and marinated skewers of meat. The crowd itself was dressed up as well, every other person wearing what would be Halloween costumes in the US. Also, oddly enough, many teenage boys had gotten a hold of girl's uniforms from any of the countless high schools in Cuenca, and were walking the avenue shamelessly in their stuffed bras.

Along the edges of several intersections, big stages had been set up, and from them, live music at high volume lended itself to the milieu. Add to all this a throng of spectators so thick that navigating through it was impossible without pushing your way through the tangle of glow-in-the-dark horns, latex monster masks and schoolgirl outfits, and you've got yourself a party, albeit a weird one.

That particular year, we were satisfied after a lap around the main concentration of people, floats, and costumes, and went on our way. Later on, I got myself informed on exactly what it was I had witnessed. The Day of the Innocents, commemorating the day in which King Herod ordered all children under the age of two to be killed, has manifested in Cuenca into a real non sequitur of a celebration. Originally a sort of April Fool's celebration in which people played pranks on one another, it has lost much of its emphasis in many parts of Ecuador. In Cuenca, however, it has become a big parade. The trick-playing is still a part of it, with men dressed in drag, spontaneously kissing other men who aren't in costume. I haven't gotten a good explanation for the costumes, but one's imagination can fill in the blanks. My own has led me to believe that King Herod's wicked act is manifested in the Halloween-style portrayal of those many innocent souls all lost in some sort of limbo.

Last year, rain got the party off to a late start, and after some time waiting under an umbrella, I gave up looking for a repeat of my previous experience and went home. 2010, however, found our little family ready for the big event. Avenida Solano being on my current walk home, I was able to see that the party was already getting started on my way back from work. At the house, Nancy had put together a patchwork of costumes for each of us, including my sister-in-law Lourdes, who works in our neighborhood, and our little niece Giomara.

Here they were, in their respective outfits. Breaking a bit from the tradition, perhaps, our daughter was a lion, Lourdes a giraffe, and Giomara a drop of water. My wife, for her part, was someone in a curly, black wig. Were she to have turned around for this picture, you would have seen the true brunt of her costume, namely the sign taped to her back: respeto al peatón. Which is to say, respect the pedestrian. Fortunately, tonight was a night for walking, as this normally busy street was closed to all but foot traffic and floats. My own costume fit more tidily into the traditional spectrum, which I suppose I'll include further along.

As their route home on the bus was currently blocked by the big party in the street, Luli and Giomi accompanied us until the other side of the celebration. Along the way we got our first taste of this year's parade.

This year's parade had a decidedly multicultural theme, with the demonic of two years ago giving way to pagan traditions from around the world.

And of course, no Ecuadorian parade would be complete without some sort of political statement:

What does it mean? As usual, I have no idea. Parading around the ring for la lucha libre were scantily clad women representing various newspapers around Ecuador, if that gives any insight. Beyond that, your interpretation is as good as mine.

Día de los inocentes, taking place just days after el año viejo, is just as full of larger-than-life displays as New Year's Eve (which, incidently, is highlighted in the next entry down. Or, for your convenience, here). Where does all the energy come from? Within a week you can see two massive outbursts of the creative urge, one spread around the city and the other concentrated in a parade along just a few city blocks. Part of the explanation comes from the prizes awarded. For both this and el año viejo, there is a cash prize of a quantity unknown to me. But for the sheer size, and number of entries, one must assume a return on the investment is possible.

Amazing what a little endowment for the arts can do. Maybe only one or two win, but dozens play, all for the public's entertainment. And, much like my experience of two years before, there was plenty of public around. For several blocks, walking was a true exercise in patience and tenacity. It seemed as though half the city had crammed into this boulevard, and however wide it is, it was still full and overflowing. It makes one wonder what happens to all the little plastic cups and paper plates after the party's over. And for that matter, the floats themselves. For the New Year's effigies, at least, the tradition itself solves much of the clean-up issue. Burn it! But in the case of the Innocents, there's no fiery sublimation in store for the pagan figures, and once they've been paraded around, one must assume their day in the sun will have come and gone.

But don't despair. A closer look at many of these floats reveals that they are made of mere cardboard! For all their showy colors, they will, by virtue of their humble biodegradability, go back from whence they came.

And so it was for us, in a metaphorical stretch. Many a picture had been taken, many a presentation seen. We witnessed everything from ancient cultures at the height of their respective glories, to Michael Jackson (not pictured) dancing with Carlos Crespi. We even ate some street food. After all of that, I was ready to walk home, take off the itchy false beard, and call it a night. So far, the new year is off to a good start!

Burn the old year down

2010-01-28T11:44:00.006-06:00

I was glancing at the calendar yesterday and realizing that we're already in the home stretch of January. In scarcely a week it will be February and 2010 will be well underway.

Here in Ecuador, where the sun rises and sets at virtually the same time all year, and the only distinguishable concept of seasonal change is the greater or lesser chance of rain, it's easy to lose track of the passage of time. January, April, July, October, these are all months that have, for me and most Northerners, historically meant drastically different weather, clothes, activities and sights. But now that I'm working on three years here along the Earth's waistline, these months are quickly becoming just names. It's January? A casual walk around town today or six months from now look and feel virtually the same for me. Every day means a chance of sunshine in the morning and a chance of rain in the afternoon. And every day is, no matter where you live, a chance to tread thoughtlessly along your routine or a chance to do something new.

There are those individuals and groups of people who believe, much as I do, that every day is sacred, and that holidays aren't really any holier than any other day. I reflect on that even more here, where today is as much like it was on this precise day of 2008 as it is to a day in March, or June, or August. Our concept of a calendar is the only thing, after all, that lends some sense of familiarity to July 21 of this year to the day of my birth, 32 years ago. If we didn't play Leap Year tricks with the month of February to balance the calendar with the Earth's actual revolution around the Sun, by now my birthday would have slipped into a time more like the beginning of August, and by the end of my life, my birthday would be inching towards autumn.

Despite all of that thought, or perhaps due to it, I have come to love one particular Ecuadorian holiday more and more, each year that I observe it. Because, in an irreverently ceremonial way that for me knocks the wind out of any codgy or self-important significance, Ecuadorians take everything from the past, put it on display for a few hours, lump it all into a paint-and-paper-mache pile, and at precisely midnight on New Year's Eve, burn it.

Bueno. As you can see, this moment was clearly not midnight. And, upon closer examination of the effigies here being burned, they are not paper mache. I guess the New Year is also a good excuse to get rid of some old clothes. This particular scene took place on the terrace of CEDEI, my place of work. Through the smoke you can see a man from accounting, his face belying the general sentiment one feels upon watching things burn. We all enjoy that, somehow, deep down.

In the background you can see the ring of 8 chilean pines growing at the center of Parque Calderón, and to the right, the blue domes of the new cathedral and the symbol of Cuenca.

While these effigies burn, everyone exchanges New Year's greetings. One of the things I respect the most about Ecuadorians is how inclusively they treat one another. Upon entering or leaving a circle of friends, acquaintances and unknowns, each person will make a point to shake hands or kiss the cheek of every man, woman or child present. That's true even in a party with dozens of people, which can take some dedication, and several minutes to do. Not ideal if you're trying to make a quiet exit, I suppose. And which also leads us to the riddle:

If 9 Ecuadorians are saying goodbye and each going their separate ways, how many individual hand shakes/ cheek kisses take place? That is to say, each person says goodbye to every other person, once and only once. The first correct answer wins you the prize of your choice, within the limitations of my personal income, and international shipping.

While we're on the subject of my CEDEI New Year's experience, lets take a moment to look at what New Year's traditions mean in Ecuador. You might be wondering, for example, what the significance of these effigies is all about. In the case of the CEDEI party, there were two effigies, each of which represented one of my coworkers.

Here is Eduardo, with his respective effigy. Can you see the resemblance?

These effigies represent the old year, and by extension, the year to come. Those individuals and events, both beloved and despised, get equal treatment. When a hated figure gets burned, all the negativity of surrounding it goes up in smoke, and we all symbolically choose to forget and let go of it, with the hopes of a different unfolding of events in the coming year. Likewise, a loved one is burned in order to erase any negativity from the previous year for that person, as a blessing and toast for the new year.

Many people make their own effigies, fashioning humanesque figures out of old clothes, balled up newspaper and cheap plastic masks. That was the case here at CEDEI, and as you will see, with my wife's family. But as with any celebration, there are those who make a business of it.

Stacks of pre-fab, $1 masks, with bodies stacked up behind ranging in prices, starting at $1. So for as little as $2 you can get your effigy right on the roadside, with a mask loosely resembling your preferred victim/honored guest, ready to burn. (As a side note, my observations have revealed that the masks are usually removed just before the effigy is set on fire.)

But, if you're really dedicated to the occasion and want to burn something more memorable, there are much more costly effigies to be bought, upwards of $200 in value. Here are a few images of the higher end effigies on the market:

I think this is supposed to be Presidente Correa's brother...

And so, much as we from the US roam usually-empty lots seeking the perfect, freshly cut pine tree small enough to squeeze into our living rooms for the Christmas holiday, on New Year's Eve you'll find Ecuadorians out looking for the perfect symbol to set on fire, come midnight.

But, as I mentioned before, many people, and often entire families and neighborhoods, prefer to fashion their own effigies. The quality and size of these range from life-size to much, much bigger. And, since an organization awards a prize to the best creations on display, some of these effigies become part of much larger, allegorical panoramas, on profile all afternoon. That is, until the magical New Year's hour when they, like all New Year's effigies must, get lumped unceremoniously into a heap, doused with some flammable liquid, and get torched

Nancy, Tamia and I planned to spend New Year's with her family, who would be making an effigy of their own. But we agreed to take a detour downtown and see what kinds of displays were going up. My curiosity had been piqued on my way home after the CEDEI burning, by sights like this:

Remembering my first New Year's experience in downtown Cuenca, I was eager to see just how this big head would be incorporated into the larger display. And indeed, once we made it back downtown, this tell-tale, disembodied head had found itself atop a larger-than-life body:

If you don't recognize it, it's now resting atop the grey-suited gentleman on the center right. I'll confess I wasn't able to read between the lines very well on this presentation, but my overall experience has told me that these kinds of panoramas typically paint a tongue-in-cheek critique of Ecuador's political scene. Even a brief look at this small country's politics reveals an often chaotic process of governance, and every year, much as in any country, after all, there are quite a few controversial political decisions. All of this provides plenty of fodder for the locals to poke fun at.

In other cities, it's often been left to graffiti artists to portray political criticism on the street in a creative way. Here in Cuenca, I'll admit that the quotidian street art is pretty lackluster, in general. There are some notable exceptions, but the overwhelming majority consists usually of black paint, a one sentence message, and little or no poetry or style involved in the presentation. But perhaps that is made up for to some extent by the explosion of creativity that unfolds in the streets on this day.

Much later in the night, Nancy, baby and I emerged once again into the city - now piled into the family Volkwagen with the rest of the Macas family - to see how some other displays had shaped up throughout the evening. We had to drive around for awhile to find anything very interesting, something that her family lamented. Apparently in previous years, there had been much more community involvement in their own neighborhood. Even in my own two years of prior experience, I found this year's presentations to be fewer and further between than the first, glorious experience I had. I have a theory regarding that, but you'll have to wait for the next blog to find out why.

In the meantime, I will say that we did stumble upon an interesting presentation, one that demonstrated that it isn't just politics, but life in general, which can be the target for some of these creations:

I don't quite know what it all means. But here there is featured a live actor amidst the paper mache surrounds, roasting two paper mache guinea pigs. This particular display included a number of live actors who contributed to the show, mainly in the form of a paper mache marching band. The overall theme appeared to be a sort of traveling carnival, with a number of sideshows and 4H-style animal husbandry. I'll leave you to paint your own mental pictures. I can't give away all my photos for free, after all.

As I may have hinted at before, I like my Ecuadorian New Year's panoramas to be on the sinister side. After all, if you choose a negative theme to put on display, and knowing that people will experience them in the dark night, let's really take them to the dark side. Perhaps this is also connected to my experiences with another pagan fire ritual that I love. Zozobra, in Santa Fe.

The last display that I stumbled upon was, in fact, just two blocks from the home of Nancy's parents, and it might have been my favorite. It wasn't the most beautiful or well assembled, but it did best represent the gory sort of imagery that I'm talking about:

It also well illustrated the political overtones that any good New Year's panorama ought to, in my opinion. If you can't make out the details, here is a bus, having just run down a poor, innocent (notice the white clothing) pedestrian who was just trying to use the crosswalk like any good peatón should. For some background information, 2009 saw the arrival of "intelligent" traffic lights in Cuenca. They are supposed to measure the quantity of traffic and vary the length of each green light accordingly. They also feature a crosswalk signal, complete with a chirping sound for the blind. The city also launched a campaign of painting new crosswalks along many of downtown's main intersections, and even sent out university students to regulate the flow of motorized and foot traffic, aiming to make pedestrians cross at and only at the crosswalks, and to prevent cars from stopping in the middle of the crosswalk at a redlight, as often happens.

Predictably, nothing has really changed. Pedestrians still cross the street wherever and whenever there is a break in the traffic. Cars still stop in the crosswalk. And, occasionally the crosswalk signals aren't even in sync with the actual traffic lights, which could very well send a pedestrian out into moving traffic.

Much as happened to our poor effigy pictured above. The sign on the dead, bloodied walker says "CHUCH," which I intepret as Chucha! emulating the Cuencano tendency to clip the final vowel (which is, incidently, a publicly accepted expletive hailing back to an indigenous word invoking the female anatomy.) Here I reckon the final vowel was clipped even more abruptly by the sudden end of his life.

Hanging at the top is another sign, explaining the theme of the display: "Traffic Lights. Most intelligent. Made in China." Haha. The underlying idea that I took away from the scene is that being in a hurry kills people. In fact, in the United States, cars kill more people every year than guns do. So this year, let's heed the message. Take it easy, and try not to go very frequently to places we can't walk to, my friends.

Let's end our New Year's story back at the Macas family home. Nancy's father prefers to make the effigy a family event, and so each year they get together and commemorate a family member in effigy form. This year it was the youngest generation who was represented. Our own daughter Tamia, and our 6 year old niece Giomara. Tamia was a bit of an afterthought, in fact, so she took shape as two pieces of paper cut into humanesque form, stapled together, colored, and then stuffed with newspaper. Giomara took a more typical shape of old clothes stuffed with newspaper and topped with a head made from balled-up papers. Black yarn was glued onto the head, a face drawn on the front, and listo.

Here are the two honored guests of the evening, next to their effigies:

At the midnight hour:

And, for those who are curious, here's how the bus -themed party down the street turned out.

Looks like fun. Complete with a story-high blaze and what from a distance looks like pagan fire dancing.

Our own celebrations were more mellow. We each ate our twelve grapes in order to receive twelve years of good luck ahead. We raised a toast to the new generation honored with the recent fire. And, it wasn't long before Nancy and I decided to make our way home with Tamia.

So it was that our daughter witnessed what New Year's is for the first time. I'm glad that the images before her eyes were ones that might, over the years, reveal to her the same layers of meaning that they are beginning to reveal to me. In each effigy and subsequent fire is revealed a tradition both ancient and modern, pagan and secular, non-assuming and grandiose. It's a symbol of human creative energy, always renewing itself by the simultaneous remembering and shedding of the past.