Frankly, I wasn´t even aware of what the currency was in Ecuador. After picking up my backpack and wandering around the baggage claim area a bit, and feeling a little dejected finding my lock cut off by Ecuadorean immigration authorities, I realized the currency must be the dollar. A visit to the ATM confirmed this, as it spat out a bunch of fresh greenbacks into my hands.
Ecuador is a different world. All of my travels in Latin America have taught me that the indigenous culture was the minority, an often overlooked group of people in societies dominated by white Spanish blood.
The view from the cab on the way to my hostel proved that I had finally reached the Andes, the land once dominated by great native indian societies, the Incas being the most well known. Here the indian culture is king. It is a nice change.
I think Americans often think everyone south of Texas is a dark brown color and eats spicy food (i.e. like in Mexico). Actually I know this is true, because I used to be one of those people.
The dynamics of race and color in Latin America are much more complex than that simplistic outlook. Latin America is full of descendants of white Spanish colonizers, mixes of indians and Spanish blood, black Carribean peoples, and everything in between.
Physically, the indigenous have a very distinct look. They are almost always short, with dark brown skin, straight hair, and a rounded face.
In demeanor, almost without exception, indians are a reserved people. They walk with a characteristic slowness, as if they already know their fate and their is no need to rush, paying little attention to the random gringo passing by. I would learn more about the indigenous during my next week of travels.
Ecuador is cheaper than Colombia, and Panamá for that matter. It was in a conversation on the San Blas islands off Panamá that I first realized the change in prices I would see during this trip. ¨Oh it´s just gonna get cheaper and cheaper for you,¨ said a random Aussie to whom I had explained my route, traveling from Panamá to Bolivia over the course of roughly three months.
And so it is getting cheaper. In Colombia a room in a dormitory would cost me around $10 a night. Here in Quito, almost without fail, I have been able to find private rooms, with a private bathroom, and hot water for around $8 per night.
When faced with the option of paying $6 for a dormitory or $8 for a private room with bathroom, without blinking I choose the option for a private room. The hard-core backpackers almost always opt for the dormitory, anxious to save a buck and often looking down on those with more ¨expensive¨ tastes. And so I have left their ranks without looking back. I was never that into roughing it anyway. Heck...I´m on vacation.
Food has gotten cheaper too. Breakfast and lunch at a local family establishment cost between $1.50 and $2. And we are talking full, sit-down meals. Lunch almost always includes soup, meat with rice and vegetables, and a natural juice drink. I have no complaints about Ecuadorian cuisine.
Whereas in Colombia I was paying out roughly $40 a day for room, board, transportation, and other expenses, here in Ecuador I seem to be living quite well for $25 a day. A guy could travel for quite a while at that rate of spending...and so I will.
My first two days in Ecuador were spent wandering around Quito, the capital. The weather there was pretty cold due to the city being situated in the Andes at around 2,800 meters (9,200 feet) of altitude. I enjoyed walking around the old city, but in general my time in Quito was pretty unremarkable.
From Quito, I headed to Baños, a small tourist center in the mountains under the shadow of the active (recently very active) volcano Tungurahua. There I found another decent room and spent a couple of days wondering around the town and the surrounding hills.
Baños is an adventure tourism hub, full of advertisements for rock climbing, gliding, bungee jumping, rafting, and other random adrenaline-rushing sports.
I bypassed all of that, still marvelling at the fact that I had my own private room, and opting to read a book and turn in early. The highlight of Baños for me was a four hour hike up a mountain to try to catch a glimpse of smoking Tunguragua, which gave me some great views of the valley, but no sight of the volcano due to the cloud cover.
The town of Baños.
Riobamba, without a doubt, has been (and continues to be) the highlight of my time in Ecuador thus far.
On Sunday I took a bus from Baños to the nearby of city of Riobamba. I had coordinated my visit with a friend, Emily Webster, a Peace Corps volunteer who I knew from Costa Rica that had extended a third-year in Ecuador.
Emily (shown at the start of page) is living in Cacha, a set of indigenous communities in the mountains about 10 kilometers south of Riobamba. She has been there about 8 months in the community, working on environmental conservation initiatives, and a range of other things.
I had contacted Emily about three months before, letting her know I would be traveling in her area and would love to meet up. I wasn´t going to miss an opportunity to have an authentic in-country experience visiting a Peace Corps friend.
Fortunately, Emily was receptive to the idea, and so we coordinated our rendevous in the Riobamba centro across from the train station.
After exchanging hugs and some catching-up conversation, Emily showed me around Riobamba, the regional hub. It´s a fairly nice city, with around 250,000 people. As we toured the city, we ran into a group of American medical students who were in the area providing assistance to some of the local indigenous communities for a month during their summer break. Emily was familiar with them, and they were to pop up time and time again during our next few days.
Getting dark, we finally hailed a cab to take us out to Cacha. It was roughly a 25 minute cab ride, but only ended up costing us about $4.(again with the low prices)
Over the next two days I was able to get a feel for Cacha, as well as Emily´s lifestyle in her site.
With none of the local dwellings meeting Peace Corps standards for homestays, Emily was housed in the local casa communal, or community house. She has running water (although not potable), electricity, a propane gas stove, and a sink (but no shower). On a daily basis, she resorts to cold water bucket showers, and the occasional hot water shower at a home in a nearby town once or twice a week.
The primary language spoken in Cacha is Quichua, a variant of Quechua, the Incan language spoken throughout the language. When I asked Emily if she had learned much Quichua, she demurred and said that she hadn´t learned much. After watching her interact with some of her neighbors that first day, I learned she was just being modest, as I listened to her banter on in Quichua.
The language was fascinating to me. Being a student of the Spanish language, I habitually listened intently to the conversation, but found I understood absolutely nothing. Quichua is from another world...the world before there was a New World.
Emily would always revert back to Spanish after conversing for a little while, her Quichua limitations being reached. The indians spoke Spanish well, and so they would switch back to Spanish with her. Still...I found it amazing to listen to her speak Quichua.
I evened picked up a few words myself. Ashtakamen: See you later. Kayaykamen: see you tomorrow. And mashi, or friend. As the members of her community would invariably ask Emily if I was her husband, or boyfriend, finally coming to visit her. We would respond ¨mana(no), mashi¨.
We had timed my arrival to coincide with an indian activity to celebrate the first day of summer, which was set to take place on Monday. I was told the celebration would include a lot of indian rituals, complex ceremonies, and native foods. Naturally, I wasn´t going to miss this.
We woke up early on Monday and marched up to the top of the hill above the town, following other groups of people headed in the same direction. On reaching the site where the ceremony was to take place, we were surprised by what we found - gringos...quite a few of them.
But not just any gringos, these were some serious hippies, the likes of which I have not seen in all my Widespread Panic / Phish concert going years.
As we were to learn later, the gathering had been announced to religious shamans all throughout the Americas...and these norteamericano-looking people represented different groups in the US and Canada.
Ceremony, with shamans in the inner circle.
But I gotta be honest, to me they just looked like a bunch of hippies.
That really kind of threw me, and while watching the different rituals taking place, I just could not seem to wrap my head around there presence.
Before the ceremonies ended we walked down the hill to a number of food stands that had been set up featuring indigenous foods. Indigenous cuisine is pretty basic, mostly consisting of root vegetables and grains. The medical students volunteering in the area would constantly complain of the malnutrition of the patients they attended to.
There were other sad things happening within the community. Emily had told me how almost all the young adults had moved to the city, and sure enough during my two days I mostly saw little children and older adults. Also, there were lots of abandoned houses in the towns resulting from this exodus, which made for an eerie setting.
On Tuesday, Emily and I hiked up the hillside so I could see the school where she had been doing some work. Our visit coincided with a parents meeting. Emily and I began to work on a world map she had been completing on one of the schoolhouse walls. The start of the meeting was delayed, so many of the parents and kids hovered around us as we worked on the map, then picked up markers and lent a hand. It was fun to see everyone crowding around the map, looking at it with serious consideration.
On Tuesday afternoon we came back down the mountain to Riobamba. It was to be my last night in Riobamba before heading farther south towards Peru.
But then, out at night with some of the medical students, over beers one of them suggested to me ¨Why don´t you climb Chimborazo!?¨ That majestic mountain, the highest in the country at 6300 meters, had been staring down at me for the last few days.
I decided it wasn´t a bad idea. Or that is, after shaking off a hangover the next day, decided it still wasn´t a bad idea. So I consulted a guide, who agreed to take me up the mountain. Tomorrow we have a practice / acclimatization hike, then Saturday we begin our ascent. If all goes well, after a few hours rest in a shelter in the afternoon, we will hike through the night and reach the summit around 6am on Sunday.
So it looks like I will be sticking around Riobamba a little longer.
2 comments:
Tengo celos.
When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. Cheap flights to Quito
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