Volcán de Lodo: Colombian Pudding Joy

This one goes out to all my USCA-Lothlorien friends, and should most likely be completely ignored by my concerned and longsuffering mother.

All right then, old elves: remember those crazy days at UC Berkeley, when you lived with 65 of your best friends in the cooperative haven of Loth? Most specifically, remember Pudding Joy? (For the unitiated, Pudding Joy was an utterly bizarre tradition wherein, if memory serves correctly, we spread Saran Wrap all over the basement, covered the floor with gallons of pudding mix, and slid blissfully all over the place just because we could. Admit it, you all did some pretty weird stuff in college, too.)

I had thought that, alas, those days were behind me, but no! Today I went on a tour of the Volcán de Lodo--a mud volcano located in a mangrove forest about 45 minutes from Cartagena. It´s just about the weirdest thing I´ve ever seen or done in South America (keep in mind that this is coming from a person who´s eaten guinea pig and drank beer made with fermented human saliva.)

The bus takes you to the foot of the volcano: from there, you climb up a bunch of steps to get to the mouth of it, which is a sandy plateau around a burbling vat of tepid gray mud. You climb in wearing a swimsuit, and the locals massage the mud all over you in exchange for tips; supposedly, it has no less than 51 minerals and all kinds of healing properties. Once you´re well and entirely covered with mud, you can float around for as long as you can handle it before rinsing off in the mangrove swamp.

Words cannot describe how utterly, wonderfully, batshit insane the whole experience is, start to finish. You´re not quite swimming, you´re not quite standing, the bottom´s a couple hundred feet down and yet it´s utterly safe and quite relaxing, actually, once the cognitive dissonance wears off. It´s like a kinder, gentler, Spanish-speaking Pudding Joy.

Made an excellent final blowout for my week in Cartagena: tomorrow, I´m flying back to Quito, and then Sunday morning, I´m off to the States. It´s been a great experience, and there´s always more to see next time!

Too Tired to Blog: Picture´s Worth a Thousand Words Edition

Out late last night salsa dancing with Scottish people. Embarrasingly enough, I grew up 15 minutes from Mexico, but they dance a hell of a lot better than me.

End result: too tired to blog properly about the events of the day. Instead, have some pictures.

Random pretty church, somewhere in the old town.

Feeding the pigeons outside of Plaza de Bolivar.

Old street signs, Palacio de la Inquisicion (not shown: dozens upon dozens of replicated torture instruments, each captioned with the disclaimer that this particular torture instrument was NOT used in Cartagena).

Fancy church stuff. Monastery de Santo Domingo.

Islas de Rosario: Wow, That´s Poky

I went on a group tour of the Islas and Playa Blanca, one of Cartagena´s most beautiful beaches, yesterday. It was fabulous--mostly vacationing families from all different parts of Colombia, with a handful of tourists mixed in. The boat was enormous, with about 70 passengers: the guide divided us into two teams and pitted one against the other in a variety of insane challenges in order to pass the time while sailing to the Islas. Started harmlessly enough--what are the names of the four archipelagos closest to Cartagena, etc. Soon escalated into ¨which side of the boat can collect the most towels in 15 seconds or less¨, followed by the same drill, but with bikini tops instead, followed by a game in which each side of the boat used the bikini tops and towels to dress up one male contestant as a beauty queen. For the record, my side of the boat kicked ass--seems like the folks from Cali are fiestier than your average Colombian. And yes, all towels and bikini tops were very diligently returned to their rightful owners afterwards.

The Islas were gorgeous: we stayed on the main one for just an hour, so people who wanted to could visit the aquarium. Everyone else took a swim, which leads me to the Public Service Announcement portion of this post: if going to the Islas, you MUST bring the thickest water-safe shoes in the known universe, as the islands were formed from a coral reef a few thousand years ago and Mother Nature hasn´t gotten around to smoothing things out just yet. Beautiful, yet ouchy. And that´s not even accounting for the fact that the most adorable tiny sea urchins crowd the rocky part before you get in the water. I also saw what I thought was a sea snake, but it turned out to be a harmless (but intriguing) Tiger Tail Sea Cucumber.

The main event, beach wise, was next: Playa Blanca is a breathtakingly beautiful beach on the island of Barú. The water is a clear, glassy turquoise, and warm as a bath. It rained in the afternoon, so I had the strange experience of swimming under a dark sky, with the water I was swimming in at least 30 degrees warmer than the water that was falling on me. It was great.

Tommorow, the second and final tour experience: some crazy mud volcano an hour away from Cartagena. Supposedly, you can swim in that, too, but I don´t think it´s quite the same.

Colombia: We PROMISE PROMISE PROMISE not to hurt you, okay?

Hello from Cartagena, which is a really storybook-beautiful old city on the Carribean coast.

Much against the wishes of the US State Department and my family, I´m spending a week in Colombia. I´ve flown here from the sprawling, happy chaos of Quito, and it´s really kind of heartbreaking how little fuss one ought to make about most of Colombia in comparison to the kind of fuss most folks have been making. Me definitely included, I confess: just as much as anyone else, I´ve absorbed a lot of the stereotypes over the years.

Flying into Bogotà, I had a bit of a paradigm shift. Looking down from above, the areas around the main city look as if drawn with a ruler--all tidy little boxes and neat lines of streets. The airport is clean, safe, and busy, with well organized shuttles between the different terminals. Flying on Avianca, one of Colombia´s main airlines, I got a free newspaper to go with my juice box.

This country feels its own reputation more deeply than I imagined, and is working desperately to change it in a way that strikes me as both touching and sad. The national tourist comission has developed a new slogan: ¨Colombia--the only risk is not wanting to leave.¨ (I'm guessing that ¨Colombia: Bombing Airplanes is SO twenty years ago¨didn´t go over quite as well.) And, according to my newspaper, the national government just spent a crapload of money to install giant fiberglass hearts in DC and New York--inscribed with positive statements and new statistics about Colombia´s increased security.

Hope it works, because what I´ve seen so far makes Cartagena, at least, a very attractive place for travelers. The city dates back from the 1500s, and much of it is exceptionally well-preserved given the heat, humidity, and frequent pirate attacks. (The last issue, for the record, isn´t a threat anymore.) Buildings in the main city are beautifully, brightly painted, and there´s a leafy, green plaza every few blocks or so to help walkers escape the heat. The air is sweet with baking bread from dozens of panaderías, and a light wind cuts the humidity a little. Before coming here, I heard that Cartagena was swarming with moneychangers and sketchy folks trying to sell junk to the increasing number of tourists: haven´t experienced anything but the mildest attempts so far. Streets here are narrow and rather lightly travelled: most everybody seems to walk, sometimes straight down the street in the road, which is more or less safe since the vehicular traffic is so slow. Partially, I think, because ¨vehicular traffic¨in the historic center includes dozens of horse-and-buggy contraptions for tourists: yesterday, I almost got stuck between a horse and buggy on one side and a mobile arepa (corn pancake) stand on the other.

There are handfuls of travelers here and there, but not many: I stayed last night dead-set in the city center and will transfer tonight to a more tourist-oriented part of town. I´m hoping to find a good group tour of the Islas de Rosario ( a marine national park outside of Cartagena), and also to check out a bit more of the city.

Better sign off now if I want to get lunch: food here has been a challenge, mostly because it´s just too damn hot to eat. The juices, though, are delicious: although I have no idea what it looks like before you stick it in a blender, lulo is my new favorite fruit.

Interlude: Donuts

This one goes out to my good friend Matt, a donut afficianado who has also enjoyed travel in South America. However, it seems that he went to the wrong country. I don´t recall him mentioning that Peru was especially fond of donuts. However....

Ecuador tiene la donut para ti.

And the airports of Columbia have not one, but TWO donut chains to choose from!

Quito: It´s Not So Bad After All

I´m a changed woman. Finally had a day in Quito which was actually, my gosh, a lot of fun.

The excitement began on the bus ride back from Mindo, which was initially looking rather unpleasant, as the entire bus was crammed with people well before I got on. I wasn´t fancying the idea of standing on a bus for 2 1/2 hours, but got lucky. An Ecuadorian noticed my bag tag (I still have the Project 2006 tag with the curb cut on my travel backpack): turned out, he was an occupational therapist in Quito, and one of the main people who´s trying to organize OTs in all of Ecuador to standardize practices and distribute materials. Who knew enough about the ways of the Bus that he talked us both into the mini-seat behind the drivers, so we could converse about assistive technology without slamming into the windows and falling over during sudden stops. Membership has its priviledges! Bridgett, I got his contact info: he knows we may not be able to do this, but if we´d like to, he can rally most OTs in Pichincha province for a day of training: from there, he thinks they can spread the word to other facilities and provinces.

Once I arrived in Quito, I spent a nice afternoon in La Mariscal, where I found a fabulous little cafe which serves iced mochas the way iced mochas are meant to be served: you take your espresso, you add your chocolate syrup, and then you drop a whole bunch of ice cream into the glass. Oh, yeah.

But the true secret to a pleasant day in Quito involves leaving La Mariscal: after lounging awhile in the cafe with Spanish magazines, I had a few hours to kill before sunset, so I finally went to the Panecillo. Also called the Virgen de Quito, this landmark is an enormous stone angel at the top of the city. I went for the view, but stayed for the...kite flying! It was awesome: every weekend, I guess, dozens of Quiteño families schlepp their kids up to the Panecillo, where there´s also a mini amusement park/carousel, and on windy days, people sell kites for a buck each. End result: locals running around the hill above the city, throwing crappy kites into the air and struggling to keep them aloft. Kites get tangled, people bump into each other, and everyone is laughing and yelling advice.

After the kites, there´s still fun to be had. For a buck, you can go inside the Virgen´s head and climb to the top, where the views are even better. There´s also volleyball to be watched, terrible souvenirs to be purchased, and other travellers to meet--especially if you find yourself at the top of the tallest hill in metropolitan Quito half an hour after the last bus rolls back down the hill. Had the good fortune to start chatting with two expatriates (one from England, one from Peru) and another traveler from Germany: we were able to get a truck ride down for thirty cents each, and then I joined them for dinner. Every now and again, it´s nice to speak English for hours at a time, and they were great company. Introduced me to the phenomenon of couch surfing, which is actually a very highly organized form of travel in some parts of South America: there´s an internet group that you join, and it allows you to connect with locals who are interested in hosting travelers in their homes. Don´t think I´ll be doing that (you can breathe now, Mom...), but it seems like a nice option for people who are more extroverted than I am.

Alas, I didn´t get back to the hostel until almost midnight, which means I am now attempting to function in Cartagena on three hours of sleep. Taking it easy today, mostly checking email and scoping out future hostels (the one I´m at gets way too much street noise): we´ll see what adventures await once I´m rested!

Mindo: It´s Very Coat out Here

Hello from Mindo. Hey, that rhymes. Actually, almost everything in Spanish seems to rhyme with ¨Mindo¨; as one of my inexplicable pet peeves is accidentally saying things that rhyme, it pisses me off that a) Mindo is beautiful b) many people ask me what I think of Mindo and c) the Spanish word for beautiful that comes to my mind first is ¨lindo¨.

It really is quite pretty here, though; Mindo´s located in the cloud forest, a couple hours away from Quito but in all other aspects a completely different world. For one thing, it´s a lot warmer: my friend Andrea was confused last year when someone told her that Mindo was very ¨coat¨(¨abrigo¨), which seems to mean that being here is warm, like wearing a coat. Everything here is slow and laid-back, locals reclining on plastic chairs outside their houses and watching it all pass by.

Alas, there´s not as much going on here as the locals might like, because the one-two punch of swine flu and economic crisis has knocked out a lot of tourism. I had my hostal entirely to myself the first night, which was a little disconcerting as it was way off the main road in the middle of the nowhere. El Descanso is a beautiful, beautiful place, but I switched out the next day. I´m now in a place whose name I can neither spell nor pronounce (Kascafesu?), a fairly new addition to the Mindo scene custom- built for an American ex-Peace Corps volunteer and the man she married in Ecuador. They seem to have a thing for stonework: it´s kind of like living inside a pizza oven. But very comfortable, and folks are quite friendly: I´d recommend it.

It´s been an entertaining couple of days. I went tubing on Friday with a couple Americans. It shattered all my illusions of calmly floating, Huck-Finn style, down a peaceful little meandering stream: basically, you´re riding the rapids on a raft made of inner tubes tied loosely to each other. Highlight of the trip was definitely when one of the tubes simply popped and deflated against a rock; sometimes, it´s best to NOT understand it when one guide says in Spanish that the raft´s a piece of crap. They did assure us, however, that they haven´t lost a tourist yet, so I had that in my favor.

The night brought Mindo´s main event--the Concerta De Ranas (frog concert)! A naturalist opened a hostería/frog sanctuary a little outside of town, and now puts on a little tour and show every night but Monday. I got there a little early and spent a good long while wondering what to expect--were the frogs, in that moment, putting on little tuxedos? Actually tuning the world´s smallest violin? As it turns out, the naturalist pulls a hapless volunteer/translator from the audience, has his lackies pass out tiny cups of wine, and delivers a long speech about the importance of frog conservation, before playing a recording of various frog sounds, to which the actual frogs respond. He then knows where they are, and leads everyone on a walk around the grounds, pointing out all the different animals he can find with his flashlight and recorder.

It was pretty damn cool: cockroaches larger than your hand, bioluminescent bacteria, adult frogs not much bigger than a human fingernail. The forest is an incredible system, and it´s amazing how much life you find if someone tells you where to look.

Today, I visited one of several mariposarios (butterfly gardens), which was equally fabulous. My favorites are the blue morphos--huge, clumsy things that flop around as if drugged by their own weight. On the outside, they´re a dull brown, with spots to trick predators into thinking they´re owl eyes--when the wings open, though, there´s often a shocking flash of bright blue. It was good fun spending an hour or so watching them.

And then, onwards and upwards to the cascada (waterfall). Was a bit nervous when I discovered that the path to the waterfull started with a tarabita, or cable car: basically, you pay a guy a buck, stick yourself in a cage, and he pushes the cage over a rope across the river, because bridges are for sissies when you hike in Ecuador. Decided to go back the non-terebita way. The cascada, as it turns out, was yet another pay point/adventure destination: just for you, mom, I declined the opportunity to first zipline through the forest, then toboggan into the river. Settled for a nice, easy walk instead: it was quite pleasant.

Got back in time to pick up my laundry: now, all that´s left to do is enjoy a nice dinner (I now know that ¨tilapia¨is an entire, fried fish with eye sockets and tail, so I think it´s all downhill from lunchtime!) and get my last night of non-city sleep: tomorrow, off to Quito and then to Cartagena!

Local Color #5: ¡Hablamos!

Writing this from Mindo, an undoubtably fabulous cloud-forest town about which I can write absolutely nothing right now, since I got in after sunset and haven´t really done anything.

Instead, I bring you another happy little tangent about daily travelling life in Ecuador. This one´s in honor of the dumbass college kid I experienced yesterday in the Mariscal, who was pontificating about his (very scant) knowledge of Spanish in order to pick up chicks. Sample: ¨Did you know that, in Spanish, they don´t ask you what your name is? Instead, they ask you ´what do you call yourself?´ Interesting, don´t you think?¨

As insufferable as the young lad was, he does have a point. For me, Spanish is indeed a source of endless fascination. Every year, I start off by thinking that I´m almost thisclose to fluency, and every year, reality kicks me in the seat of the pants.

This summer had an especially inauspicious beginning, as I began my first day in Guayaquil with cable TV. I understood perhaps 5 words out of the entire morning newscast. Ever-patient Raul reassured me, once my Spanish lessons began in Cuenca, that he can´t make heads or tails of the costeña Spanish either: it´s much faster and looser than the Andean dialect.

Which is, damn it, more than fast and loose enough in its own right; most of the time, I have enough of a basic sense of what folks are saying to nod at the proper moments and make a comment every now and then, but I honestly have no idea what I agreed with the taxista about this afternoon. He was either in favor of, or deeply against, something having to do with the will of the people: since he was willing to put the meter on instead of ripping me off, I gave his little rant the benefit of the doubt.

Another source of countless Sonia errors is the cognado falso: the word or phrase that seems so much like something in your own language that you appropriate it wrongly and look like a fool. The most famous of this is probably "embarazada", which only means ¨filled with shame" if the shotgun wedding doesn´t take. As I grow in my knowledge of Spanish, I´m moving a bit away from this trap, but an equally pernicious one is the Spanish word that seems like another Spanish word: for some reason, these usually seem to be food related. Over time, I have learned that a road beautification project will NOT actually turn Ambato´s main square into a giant bowl of seafood stew (garnished, of course, with popcorn and plaintain slices), and that cheese is often handmade, rather than married. Papas con librillo does not entail throwing a book at a dish of potatoes, although it might taste a little better if it did.

In my opinion, the absolute best Spanish phrase used in Ecuador is the phrase ¨no más¨. Literally, ¨no more¨, this seems to get tacked on top of almost any command, direction, or suggestion, in order to soften it up, make it politer, or turn it into a little endearment. ¨Siga no más¨is the correct response to anyone´s ¨excuse me¨, indicating that the speaker is more than happy to move out of the way. It´s most commonly added to words for ¨pass¨, ¨take¨, and ¨stop here¨, but sharing a hotel room and bathroom with Gladys introduced me to the new variations of ¨brush your teeth no más¨ and ¨watch tv no más¨, which are actually exhortations to continue with toothbrushing and channel-surfing.

And now, I actually need to internet no más, as it´s time for bed. Tomorrow: I randomly made a contact who is friends with the local special education teacher, so I´m going undercover for Project 2010 (don´t worry, Bridgett--tis a mere fact-finding foray, because I´m curious how things operate when the volunteers aren´t around. Won´t say a word about what our group´s been up to, or breathe a hint of promise about what we could possibly do down the road.) Should leave me with plenty of time, though, for the more touristy diversions that Mindo has to offer: butterfly watching, cloud-forest hiking, and, supposedly, the most fascinating frog sanctuary known to modern man!

La Mariscal

All right, this one goes out to all of you who just don´t think you can handle South America. What would it be like, you wonder, to be in a place where no-one speaks English? Where you´re the only white face for blocks, and you stick out as a tourist? What will you do without oreos and pancakes, without 80s music and crappy beer? (I admit, probably no one of that mindset is reading my blog--please allow the rhetorical flourish).

Well, my friends, put your fears at ease. I bring you...Gringolandia.

La Mariscal is a district of Quito´s New Town which is essentially a cross between Spring Break and Burger King. It´s almost entirely geared to tourism (including the well-loved Happy Gringo Travel Agency), and is usually crammed wall to wall with Caucasian 20-somethings out for a good time. Every other building is a hostel: the rest divide themselves more or less equally between hip restaurants, lavanderías, night clubs, and souvenir shops.

I imagine it´s a reassuring way for travellers to dip their toes into the Ecuadorian waters before plunging in. Personally, I use it as a pit stop--a place to catch my breath, use a decent internet connection, wash everything, and move on. Because there are so damn many hostels, quality´s high for the better ones, and I have to admit that a pancake or two is never a bad idea. I´m staying the night at Posada de Maple (a cute converted semi-Victorian hostel on a city block which is literally NOTHING but cute converted semi-Victorian hostels), and then heading off to Mindo. I was a bit anxious about the trip from Ambato to Quito, as the Powers that Be have re-organized mass transit, building two bus terminals way out of town to replace the one terminal in the center of town that I´m more or less familiar with. Needn´t have worried, though--as with so many things, the grand opening has been delayed a week after dry-runs showed that they weren´t quite ready (evidently, the new terminal needs both electricity AND light to function at its best). As a result, everything is back to normal until further notice (and probable delay). ¡Víva la hora Ecuatoriana!

Even if I had needed to cope with a shiny new terminal, I most likely would have been just fine. It was sad to have to say good bye to Gladys, who has been an absolute marvel to work with, but she sent me off under the wing of her equally formidable sister. Who accompanied me to the exact finest seat of the exact safest bus to Quito, sternly admonished the bus crew to ¨not mess around¨with my suitcase, pointed out that the exact finest seat was ideal for watching the cargo hold below at every stop to make absolutely certain that the suitcase didn´t get messed with, and sent me off with the warning that I was, under no circumstances, to accept ¨ni un solo caramelo¨(even a piece of candy) from strangers. Excellent advice, gratefully taken.

And with that, I think it´s time for pancakes. Hope everyone in the states is doing well! I´d love to hear from you all, either through email or by comments on this blog--I´m surrounded by gringos right now, but I just don´t know any of them!

IM in yr Ecuador, eating all yr PETS

It´s time to come out of the closet: I am no longer a vegetarian. Last Thursday was the absolute low point: I ate three different animals in the space of 2 hours.

The phrase ¨when in Rome, do as the Romans do¨ dates back to the experience of St. Ambrose, in the fourth century--even back then, visiting folks had to tweak their own actions to better fit with cultures that differed from their own. For St. Ambrose, that meant not fasting on days when he would otherwise have fasted, because he didn´t want to offend the locals with his piety.

Much like St. Ambrose, I have found it necessary to eat things at times when I´d rather not eat them. Last week was marked by graduation ceremonies all over the country, and I joined Gladys for a celebration in Salasaca. Salasaca is an indigenous community fifteen minutes out of Ambato, well known for the people´s skill in weaving and distinctive traditional dress. The community is beautiful and tightly connected: I felt lucky to be able to spend time there.

Most meals, here and in many parts of Ecuador, begin with bowls upon bowls of mote, which is dried white corn that´s been boiled until soft. You scoop the kernels up with your fingers, sometimes dipping them in aji or salt. While we ate, a flock of chickens put on a little show for us, fighting over long cords of intestines that had been tossed aside by the women making lunch: there was something cannibalistic about it, but the chickens probably thought they´d found the best worms ever.

Hungry? Me neither, but I got served one of the more prestigious bowls of soup--with a whole chicken breast floating in it. Declining that would have been the height of bad manners, so ¡buen provecho, vegitariana!

Ah, but there´s more! Second course was another plate of mote, a nice little salad, and a healthy helping of whole roast pig: as Project folks can attest, the whole roast pig is a special event (this one had, evidently, been trucked in from a town that was even more skillful at pig-roasting), so you know what I had to do.

Piece de resistance: alas, we had to go just when they were breaking out the cuy. Cuy, for the unitiated, is nothing more and nothing less than guinea pig--in the highlands, this animal has been eaten for centuries. Some say it has medicinal properties: there´s a ritual where a shaman rubs a live one all over you before killing it, examining its entrails, and diagnosing you accordingly. That was NOT going on in Salasaca that day, thankfully. But just when you might think it was safe to go back in the water, just when we were leaving before the cuy got served, the hostess presented Gladys with a cuy-to-go bag. So of course, I had to try it.

Believe it or not, my adventures in carnivorous-ness left my stomache utterly unscathed. The irony of it all is that I´ve only been sick once: from the healthy, well-made, vegetarian cooking I did with Gladys yesterday. You just never know what´s gonna flip the switch, I guess.

Huambalo!

And now, from the Project standpoint at least, the main event: today, we visited the center at Huambalo.

Alas, it was a low attendance day: heavy rains make it hard for many kids to get there, and others were off somewhere else with siblings who were on vacation. Still, though, there were many of our favorite familiar faces, and hugs and hellos sent out from everyone. Miguel is 17! Santiago can sit up unsupported! Andreaita has MUCH better trunk control! Impish little Maria is almost a young lady now, though she still has the same mischeivious grin. Norma´s doing very well, and would very much like to hear from Andrea and Stacey.

And wow, look what they´ve done with the place. A cluster of new rooms has sprung up in the land behind the main building: they´re halfway done with a swimming pool and gymnasium. There´s play equipment everywhere: in what I´ve come to see as a typical Ecuadorian ¨¿por qué no?¨exuberance, this includes a slide in the dining room. Gladys is working with the director of Tungarahua´s association for people with disabilities to nudge the center towards a micro-enterprise (baking and selling bread)--even without that, director Monica has her hands full.

The photos we did two years ago are still front and center in the therapy room, and everyone had warm wishes to send Stateside for you all. Tilden folks, the book donations were very well appreciated: I couldn´t get a picture of the kids with the books, though, because the teachers are going to figure out distribution between the classrooms later.

And with that, alas, my work is done here. Everything, everything, EVERYTHING but Huambalo is closed for the summer, and Gladys has to work at her son´s business because he had to go to Quito for a spinal operation. Bridgett, we´re in well under budget and we have plenty of good leads to go on for Project 2010. Miguel´s mother did use the command, not suggestion, form for opining that we ALL need to be in Huambalo next year, but of course, time will tell.

Busapalooza 2009 : Imbabura et. al

Spent last weekend scouting out the province of Imbabura, in the northern highlands of Ecuador, for sites and organizations which might be interested in collaborating with the Project next year.

Ibarra, the provincial capital once known as the La Ciudad Blanca because of its beautiful white buildings, has lost a bit of its luster over the past few years: I have never in my life seen as much graffiti as there is to be seen downtown. The parks, though, are still gorgeous and leafy, and many of the historically significant buildings are very well maintained. We stayed in a nice little hotel with truly awful interior decorating, including a hideous lit-up nativity set in the stairwell. (In Ibarra, it seems to be Christmas all year long, as one poorly-stocked supermarket still offered red and green tissue boxes, and I saw at least one little kid dressed in a Baby´s First Christmas romper.)

However, Ibarra has one thing that makes up for everything else: la Señora Noemi, head of the local association for folks with disabilities. She is an absolute force of nature: works five days in the downtown office, spends her weekends taking the bus (ah, the bus...) to canvas the outlying communities, is known by absolutely everyone in sixty miles, all directions, and has utterly changed the way people with and without disabilities view the participation of these folks in work and in school. She hates, hates, HATES welfare, has developed truckloads of microbusinesses so that the people have other options, and thinks the world would be a better place if we shut down all the special ed schools and went totally full-inclusion. (For our first two days in Imbabura, Gladys and I were utterly baffled as to why Noemi kept whisking us off to things that weren´t special education centers: as it turns out, she´s worked actively to keep most kids with special needs OUT of the centers and in regular schools.) She´s managed to link rural communities to urban universities, so that folks in the middle of nowhere are now learning from the media department about how to run a radio station, and is now working on developing a tilapia farm. And it almost seems patronizing of me to say this, but she´s done all of this as a blind Columbian woman in a machisto Ecuadorian culture.

All of Imbabura, actually, has been an inspiration to me. We visited the community of Salinas, in the Chota Valley: this area, settled by the Afro-Ecuadorian descendents of former plantation slaves, has historically been the Ozarks of Ecuador: a beautiful, peaceful landscape where almost everybody suffers because nobody has enough. The director of the pueblo´s Junta Parroquial has utterly transformed the place: it now has a community center, a youth orchestra, a chocolate factory, and a gastronomical center, and they´re working on developing community tourism. In sharp contrast to the city, the walls are as clean as if newly painted: someone dropped their suitcase once while climbing on the bus, and found it, untouched, in exactly that spot the next day.

Then there´s Pimampiro, a middle of nowhere little Andean town that´s managed to build a sparkling swimming pool complex, including a sauna and Turkish bath. They´re using the admission fees to subsidize physical therapy and rehabilitation, and using the office as a community training and gathering space.

People often think of what I do in Ecuador as something noble, an act of giving--a difficulty, a sacrifice. The honest truth, though, is that coming to Ecuador helps me connect with how incredibly selfish and simple my life can get if I don´t take care of it: how easy we have it in most parts of the US, and how few excuses we really have for not making more of ourselves and our communities. Every time, I´m inspired by the people I come in contact with, and I try to bring a little of that back with me.

Local Color #4: The Bus

Hello from Ambato, which is perhaps the least touristy city in Ecuador, as pretty much everything with Deep Historical Significance (TM) was utterly distroyed in an earthquake during the 1940s. It´s actually great to visit, because you get a much purer sense of what Ecuador is like when the gringos aren´t around. I´m in an internet spot at the Casa de Cultura while Gladys has a meeting with the Provincial Government.

Getting here, however, was definitely less than one third of the fun. It´s not Ambato´s fault, but I will now forever associate it with the 8-10 seemingly interminable bus rides I´ve been on in the past five days, as we´ve scouted out the services for folks with disabilities from Azogues to Imbabura. First, seven hours from Cuenca to Ambato; then, 3 hours to Quito, 3 hours to Ibarra. A veritable Fiesta Del Autobus to see what´s up in the rural communities outside Ibarra (correct answer: some pretty impressive stuff), little side trip to check out the lodging in Otalvalo, and finally back to Ambato. And now that I´ve more or less canvassed the territory, let us all be thankful that the organizations are willing to come to US next time, and never, never speak of it again.


Ah, the bus. Forever in the memory of all but the richest travellers, the South American bus experience is definitely worth having. In the states, it seems like bus travel´s a fairly lost art: you´ve got your shoddy, desperate Greyhound, and a handful of hippies on the Green Tortoise here and there (for the record, they do an excellent little Yosemite loop, if you have a chance to take it.) In Ecuador, long distance bus travel is IT: the country is small enough that pretty much anywhere has a 1 day route to pretty much anywhere else, it´s cheap (about a buck an hour), it´s straightforward, and it´s easy to do.


Bus travel also offers a great diversity of on-board entertainment (which is good, because there´s no way in HELL you´ll be able to read your book on the bus). Allow me to present you with a list of your options:

• You can shop. There are, more or less, two kinds of bus vendors. One fills his arms with homemade goodies and walks quickly up and down the aisles, chanting the name of the product like a monk (secos secos mira mira secos calientitos secos secos secos mira). You can get everything from ice cream cones to biscuits, fried fava beans and empanadas; the dodgiest of all, in my opinion, is the ever-present baggie of chicken or goat stew. The second kind of vendor is often more obnoxious, but sometimes more entertaining: he or she spends several minutes recounting the misfortunes he´s had in life, appealing to the goodwill of the people, and then passing up and down the aisles putting candy in everyone´s hands before ranting about the excellent quality of the candy and exhorting everybody to buy it. Most don´t end out buying it, but the majority of bus travellers are polite enough to accept it (¨sin compromiso, amigo¨) the first time around. You know how people say that money´s the dirtiest thing ever, because it´s constantly passing from hand to hand? At least they don´t sell money with the intention of people eating it. Every now and again, though, you get a product worth having or a presenter with true novelty value. I still have an excellent little pen that has a rolled up 2008 calendar stuffed inside of it, and fondly remember the candy seller who first spent 2 minutes loudly complaining about his inability to attract women, then stuck a two-inch nail up his nose.


• You can dine. In the US, the consumption of anything beyond water is universally frowned upon. Here, you´ve gotta eat that bag of chicken soup before it gets cold.


• You can salve your conscience with acts of charity. Pretty much every stop features a person with either a visible physical disability or a picture of a relative with same, asking for limosnas to buy medicine or tend to daily life. Most recently, we all had the opportunity to buy sticky pieces of poorly-wrapped candy from a women who said it was either sell this, or sell her body on the street.

• Your heart can benefit from aerobic exercise. I won´t mince words: bus travel is scary at times. Overall, it´s exceptionally safe when you compare the number of accidents to the number of busses in operation, and truly sketchy companies do get shut down. Bus drivers are undeniably skillful at what they do: the challenge, for the passengers, is that they´re also insane. I was chatting last week with a group of special education folks in Paute: one suggested that it might be a good idea to do psych exams on bus drivers. Another burst out laughing: ¨nobody´d pass, and then we´d all have to walk everywhere.¨ Complicating matters for gringos, I think, is the paradigm shift between driving here and driving there. When I´m a passenger in the States, there are sometimes moments of ¨whoa, make sure you see that¨ and ¨perhaps a little slower¨, but in general, I feel safe because what I´m thinking matches what the driver does. Not so here, because the system is so entirely different that at times my brain seems to run parallel to how the driver is thinking about the road. I´ve discovered that the sweet spot of a bus is in the front-to-middle: not so close that you can see the road in front of the driver, not so far back that the accumulated bounciness of the bus on the road jiggles you all the way from Cuenca to Quito.

• Sometimes, you can birdwatch, especially on market days, when sacks of chickens accompany their owners to the seat in front of you.

• You can often enjoy the cinema. Thanks to the 1 Dollar Black Market DVD phenomenon, dozens of movies are on offer on busses. Typically, they tend heavily towards the action/adventure genre, and the very specific subgenre of truly awful shoot-em-ups from the eighties and nineties. Often in the past, I´ve wondered how, exactly, a person became a star: what hideous things did they do to reach the top. I can now tell you that many, many people were discovered by managers who saw, in a stupendously terrible action/adventure/horror movie, a glint of raw talent in a yet-undiscovered actor. Thanks to the Ecuadorian mass media (gotta include the cable TV in Guayaquil), I can say I´ve seen Katherine Heigl, Kirkwood Smith, and that allegedly hot actress from House well before the masses found them. Those are the advantages of the bus DVD. Disadvantage? Sometimes, when the bombs are flying at 2:00 am, it´s hard for this gringa to seperate truth from fiction: the velocity of the bus is already scaring the bejesus out of me, and now it seems like we´re under attack. The absolute worst was last Thursday, when they were showing Proof of Life on a night bus that had already broken down once and run over a dog. The movie is all about Americans in peril at the hands of Ecuadorians--for a moment, I connected entirely too well.

Ah yes, the final activity. Lest I forget...

• You can date. I don´t recommend this one, but the solo extranjero is often subject to a wealth of interest by the locals, many of whom know at least one person who´s looking for love and a visa to the States. I have not yet gotten to the point of speaking about my fictitious, jealous husband, but I do know that many of us do this at times.

Okay, Gladys´ meeting is over: off to the market now, to get stuff for llapingachos. I´ll write more when I get a chance about what we saw and did in Imbabura, and tomorrow...Huambalo!