8 mayo, domingo

So much happening, and so little time to sit down to write a bit about it. Here it is the second week of May already, the rains have stopped and it looks like summer has finally come to Cahuasqui. Crisp cool mornings followed by brilliant blue skies and hot sun, and clear nights perfect for stargazing. Every tractor and every team of draft animals in town is busy with plowing and disking, irrigation ditches are being cleaned out, fields are being planted to beans and peas and tomatoes and peppers, and just about everyone in town seems to be happily occupied with the business of farming.

I am happily occupied, as well, slowly but surely coming closer to the morning when I can wake up in my “new” house on the hill, brew a cup of coffee and sit outside for a few moments enjoying the sun, the breeze, and the view. When people ask me (everyday) “are you done yet?”, my stock response is “falta un mez!” But the months come and go, Don Fernando and I are working hard just about every day, yet it always seems we are still about a month away from “finishing.” Good thing I´m not in a hurry, and as a matter of fact I sometimes find myself enjoying the process of building so much that I´m not sure I want it to end . . .

In addition to the construction, I have finally cleared a bit of land to start a little “huerto” where I´ll plant tomatos, zuchinni, spinach, lettuce, herbs and more. I have started about 500 tomato seedlings in flats, and they´ll be ready for transplanting out in about 2 weeks. I also decided to plant 15-20 more avocado trees, in addition to the 40 I planted last November - when they start producing in about 3 or 4 years they´ll provide a little bit of welcome income. Last week in Atuntaqui I bought a truckload of plants – the avocados, oranges, mandarinas y limon, and a whole mess of flowers and medicinales. Later on a couple of apple trees, and maybe peaches, and I think I´ll be set.

A truckload of plants – what a luxury. For the months of May and June I have the use of a Chevy LUV pickup – loaned to me (in exchange for new tires and some TLC) by my friend Jill Sare, (she writes a great blog at http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Sra-Sare/) who has gone visiting in the US. After 10 days I am already completely spoiled, and I know that one way or another I am going to have to have my own truck. After 4 years of traveling by bus, I am more than ready. What freedom, what utility!

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Now that summer has come I´ve decided that I should get out of my levi´s and put on a pair of shorts every now and again. In the early morning while it´s still cool I pull on long pants, but by about 8.30 the sun is hot enough to change into an old pair of Carhartt shorts that I keep up at the house. One day last week, shortly before the lunch break, I had to hike down the hill to pick up something at the ferreteria, so in shorts, tank top and ratty old cowboy hat went into town. The hardware store was empty, except for Fernanda the clerk and an old lady who had stopped by to visit. The old lady, with a great big smile showing off her one and only tooth, could not keep her eyes off my legs. I finally asked her, “so what do you think of my white gringo legs?” and she smiled even more broadly and said “que lindo, que lindo, your legs are the color of yucca!” This was not exactly a compliment in my book, although she certainly meant it as such, and Fernanda, behind the counter, could barely keep herself from bursting out loud in laughter. The old lady also commented on my various shades of whiteness - “que lindo, your legs are so white, your shoulders are so red (burnt) and your arms are the color of an Indian! Que hermoso!” Sigh . . . there are times I feel like a living and breathing entertainment center.

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13 mayo, viernes

Rain! A much needed day off after a week of hauling and loading and digging and mixing and pouring. I hired 2 “officiales” (day laborers) Juan y Segundo, to help Fernando and I and it paid off. We poured concrete floors in 4 rooms, installed the water and drain lines, cleaned up the piles of dirt and block that had accumulated around the house and hauled up at least 100 wheelbarrows full of arena and another 50 of piedra to have ready for next week. What a difference 2 extra pairs of hands make, and Juan and Segundo have a smile on their faces every moment, no matter how hard the work. For that matter, so do Fernando and I – we are all having a pretty good time up there.

I´m happy for the break the rain provides, it gives me an excuse to drive into Ibarra today and it will help settle in the fruit trees I planted yesterday evening. But with the rain my thoughts return to my problematic roof, which I´ve been able to forget about during these past 2 weeks of dry weather. It´s a flat roof, with just enough slope to shed rainwater, and it´s planked with a very water resistant and very pretty reddish-yellow wood from the coast called “llano”. Turns out though that llano likes to shrink (a lot) when exposed to heat or sunlight, and my roof is opening up a little. I was assured that the wood was good and dry when I bought it in Ibarra, and I kept it stacked for a month before installing, but around here you never know. Kiln drying is virtually non-existent, and someone´s idea of air “dried” lumber might be cut the tree, leave the logs on the ground for a month, cut into planks – listo. Hecho y seco, but not really.

The learning curve in this little project has been daunting, and in the end very useful. How spoiled I was, and how easy it was, in the US, to run off to Requarth´s Lumber Yard or Home Depot, to buy good lumber with standard dimensions, to not have to negotiate every price (“well, how much do you want to pay?) And to know if I need more, it´s always there. Here, if I run short of anything by a few pieces, it may be weeks or months (if ever) before the aserradero has the same wood again. The upshot is, for my next Ecuadorean project, whenever and wherever, I am now far more prepared than I was 6 months ago. Not to say I don´t have a lot left to learn, and I´m still not sure how I´m going to fix my roof, but I reckon I´ll think of something.

Sunday Mornings

13 marzo Sunday morning – Waiting my turn at the laundry tank, which has been occupied almost every minute of every day for the past 2 weeks. While construction proceeds apace at “La Loma” I am living in a small apartment in town owned by Doña Piedad and her husband Don Raul, two of Cahuasquis´ most venerable citizens. They own and farm chunks of land from Cahuasqui up to San Fransisco de Sachapamba, growing traditional crops such as corn and beans, as well as being among the first here to grow asparagus and artichokes. Every morning Don Raul is on his tractor up to San Francisco, and he reminds me a bit of Elder Welch, who many years ago in Yellow Springs, Ohio, extended his middle finger to authorities who took away his drivers license due to poor eyesight by climbing on his tractor every day and driving into town to run his errands.

The compound in which I live used to be the office and residence of the Agricultural Minister for this region, (a post once held by Don Raul and which has long ago been eliminated) and consists of 2 apartments, one occupied by a young woman named Raquel and her 2 children Pato and Maite. Raquel is about 22 years old and “married” to Doña Piedads´ son Oswaldo who is in his late 40´s and due to his work as a truck driver is rarely in town. But lately, late at night, Oswaldo has been parking his truck here for a few hours, then leaving early in the morning, just as the sun rises. I am pretty sure that the result of these late night visits will be that in 8 or 9 months time Raquel will “dar la luz” to another angelito - - right about the time Maite turns about one and a half years old.

In addition to the 2 apartments there is a very small room in the back with a kitchen and bathroom, and next to that a large one room bodega, which up to about 2 weeks ago was empty. At the first of the month I had gone to Tena and Quito for a few days with my son during the last few days of his visit, and when I returned, a whole new family had moved into the bodega – and the laundry tank has been occupied, either by the new family or by Raquel, almost every moment since.

I´d like to get up to the house to work, it´s a pretty day. But most of my work clothes are filthy and Sundays are almost the only opportunity to do washing. While I wait my turn I tidy up the little apartment, and then wash dishes to empty the kitchen sink where, given the circumstances, I wash up several pairs of socks and a couple of particularly nasty ball caps. By the time I finish these few items and get them hung on the line, my neighbor has finished up at the laundry tank and I move in with my 2 buckets of dirty t-shirts, pants, and unmentionables, which have been soaking in soapy water for a day or two.

Very few campo people have washing machines, so “doing the laundry” actually means doing the laundry, standing at the tank, drawing cold water from the tap, soaping up and scrubbing the daylights out of every single piece. For some it can be a 3 or 4 hour ordeal – luckily I have only my own clothes to wash and I can usually do what I need in under an hour. Sometimes it´s pleasant work, but other times, like today, when I´d rather be doing something else, I resolve that once I get moved in to the new house a washing machine will be one of the luxuries I permit myself (along with a refrigerator, which I have not had in my 4 years living in Ecuador). Only a washer, though – a dryer would be way too lujos and therefore out of the question.

There are 2 turtles who live in the wash tank, gifts brought to little Pato from his father whose work often takes him to coastal Ecuador. The turtles spend about half their lives in the laundry tank, the other half is spent in the hands of Pato and his little friends who grab them by their shells and pretend they are battleships or supersonic airplanes. Every time I do my laundry the turtles stretch their necks up at me and with their sad eyes seem to be saying “save us, please save us!” I have jovially suggested to Pato from time to time that hey, wouldn´t it be a great idea to take las tortugas down to the river and let them go for a nice long swim! - - - but Pato, who is 4, squares his jaw, crosses his arms and says “no, this is a very bad idea”. Last month Oswaldo brought home a yappy little puppy, but after only a few days the puppy was gone. Raquel says he was stolen, but I suspect that she did not care much for the whining and yapping all night long (I know I didn´t) and made some “other arrangements”.


20 marzo Sunday morning – Pancakes (pahnkahkes) for breakfast, and “maple syrup” whipped up by boiling together un taza de panela, un poco de canela, y un poco de aceite. It´s not too bad, and the sugar rush lasts almost until mid day. Then a little siesta y un cafecito, and the tank is full again.

As usual, Sunday is laundry day, and as usual I would rather go straight up to the house to work. But duty calls, so I step out the back door with my 2 buckets of dirty clothes expecting to find the wash tank occupied, and to my surprise it is not. Moreover, I am shocked to see a Rube Goldberg style conglomeration of tubes and plastic pipes passing through the window of the bodega and connected to . . . a washing machine!

Yes, my neighbors, my neighbors who I once felt sorry for because I thought they were so poor as to have no choice but to live in a one room bodega, have put in a washing machine. And over the last week they have carried in a big screen TV, a refrigerator, several pieces of very nice furniture. Come to think of it, I have seen no clothes hanging on the line for a few days, my god is it possible that they have a dryer, as well?!? Who are these people? Who do they think they are? We live in Cahuasqui after all, and aren´t all Cahuasquireños hard working and honest but poor as church mice?

Apparently not. I guess Cahuasqui is just a lot like the rest of Ecuador, which is to say a lot like the rest of the world. There´s thems that got, and thems that ain´t got. Twas ever thus . . .

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Cahuasqui has a new internet “café”, and it is actually open from time to time. A few days ago I went down after work to give it a whirl. I took the shortcut to town, which means sliding down the hill at the bottom end of my land on the seat of my pants and hopping over an irrigation ditch. I walked on past 2 or 3 old mud houses, their teja roofs broken and decrepit, sliding off except where the moss keeps the tiles stuck together. I holler “buen provecho” to an old man sitting in a tree eating guayaba fruit. I pass two burros quietly grazing in the fencerow, and a young man on horseback trots by and greets me with a happy sounding “buenas noches!”

A few moments later I leave the dirt road and turn onto the cobbled street to town. It dawns on me that each step takes me out of one century and into another. The internet is open, it´s a little room with 4 computers, and one is available. I am glad to see they are busy, because this means they will stay open more frequently and maybe for longer than a few weeks or months. I take my place and while waiting for the machine to boot up I notice that to my right two of the cutest little 8 year old girls in the world are playing “Grand Theft Auto”, or some such thing, the high school student to my left is doing her homework, and further to my left, at the first machine, a young man is watching video footage from the Japan earthquake. His friend is looking over his shoulder and every few seconds one of them will mutter “increible” or “caramba”, or “dios mio”.

I find I have little interest in the world outside of my own little life at this moment, so I spend only a few moments checking headlines and emails before signing off. Next week, I promise myself, I´ll be sure to write to friends and family, to download news articles to my flash drive to read at home, and to generally be a better world citizen and better person all around. We´ll see how that goes.

Dec. 13

Waiting. Doing a lot of it lately. For the officials from el municipio to come connect the water lines; for los oficiales y inginieros del EmelNorte to string the wires para la luz across the 3 eucalyptus posts I put in weeks ago. And, at the moment, waiting for Carlos, the roofer. Carlos always says 1pm, or 7am, but he really needs to attach :45 to whatever hour he promises. For now, I am grateful for the brief respite, my body exhausted from weeks of some of the hardest physical work I´ve made it do in years, and my brain somewhat frazzled from learning a whole new vocabulary of construction terms and from weeks of making decisions about materials and design.
Despite all the waiting we are making some progress. I am spending money at an alarming rate (and not earning any at the moment,) but I knew ahead of time that this would be the case while putting on the roof, which I think (hope) will be the most costly part of the construction. Carlos is a local carpenter, and he builds very nice and very simple furniture. He also does a more than passable job with doors and windows, and I will have him make all of mine. Roofs, however, are not his specialty, as I am finding out, and I´ve made some major changes in the design of the house in order to get Carlos on his way as quickly as possible without hinting that he seems to not know what he is doing and without hurting his feelings.

All of my roofing lumber (vigas) were cut from a massive old eucalyptus tree about an hour up in the mountains from here by Carlos´ brother Rene. Using only a chainsaw, Rene cuts the vigas to length (3-4 meters) and roughly squares them up out in el bosque. Then he hauls them (80 – 110 lbs. apiece) one by one on his shoulders down from the woods and into the bed of his old truck. He brings them to Carlos´ taller, where they are planed down to their finished dimensions, then loaded back on the truck , and then again on his back, for the trip up to my house. I tried to shoulder one of the shorter pieces and nearly crumpled under the weight. I am a full foot taller than Rene and outweigh him by 50 pounds, if not more. The strength of every man woman and child who is helping me on this project is simply mind boggling.

So, to make a long story short, lumber can be somewhat hard to come by here in Cahuasqui. When mistakes are made or when you find you may have miscalculated, you face either a long wait or a long trip to Ibarra to try and make it up. Imagine my chagrin when Carlos ruined 2 beautiful vigas by erring egregiously in his measurements and cutting the birds´ mouths (with the chain saw) a good handspan from where they needed to be. According to Carlos, to say the vigas are “ruined” is a bit strong, after all “we” can just cut off the bad parts and bam!, good as new - - except of course that they are now rather short and will not serve their intended purpose, a fact that Carlos does not really want to talk about. I tell him that in the US, when I frame a roof, or anything else for that matter, if I make a mistake (and I´ve made plenty) then it is my responsibility to replace, out of my own pocket, the wood I have butchered. His eyes grow wide and his face tightens as he considers what I am saying. I am not asking Carlos to do this of course, because he is poor enough already as it is, but I do take a few moments of perverse enjoyment watching him try to grasp this awesome concept of taking responsibility for mistakes.

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Carlos was to meet me in town after lunch, but he didn´t show. I walked up the hill and found him at the house, working along with his brother Segundo and his son Estefan. There were 2 sets of vigas in place up on the roof, and while not perfect, and really not even very good, they will do. Certainly they are far better than the first attempt made yesterday.

Carlos´ sister-in-law Anita is also working up at the house, helping to clean teja. She has become very concerned about my estado civil (marital status), and claims to be a little worried about my living up here on la loma without a mujercita to cook or clean for me, and to take care of the place when I am not around. But what really worries her are the mumias, fantasmas, y duendes who will come to haunt me every night. According to locally accepted folklore my land and house are up on a tola - - a kind of lookout hill constructed by either the Incans or the Caras. In years past a few pieces of ancient pottery, both large and small, have been found up here, along with a smattering of human remains, including the skull we found within the first hour of our excavations around the house. When I showed the skull to Anita she gasped “dios mio” and crossed herself several times to make sure the evil spirits will stay away from her.

All the rest of us had a nice laugh at her expense, and Anitas´ husband Segundo suggested that I find a very ugly woman to marry, one who can not only cook and clean but who can also keep the ghosts at bay. I told him I would keep an eye out for just such a woman . . .

odds and ends

Odds and ends, in no particular order.

Cahuasqui 5 PM. Oct 31. Up at the house en la loma. It´s a beautiful day, and I´m punching 10 inch diameter holes through the 2 foot thick rammed earth walls to see just how hard it´s going to be to put a few windows in the place. Right now there are none;imagine generations of the same family living in a house almost continuously for almost 100 years and never once thinking “hmm, a window over there might be nice.” Well maybe they did think about it, who knows. Perhaps so many hours were spent outdoors in the daily routine that when sunset came it was a relief to go inside, shut the door and forget about the damned fresh air, the sun, the heat, the cold, and the rain for a little while.

Down below in town the weekly soccer game is in progress, the rivals to the locals having come in by bus from Pablo Arenas or Urcuqui. The sound system as usual is blaring away, and everyone up and down the entire valley is at this very moment listening to “Call Me” by Blondie. I wonder who chooses the music at these things. . .


Ibarra 6.30 AM Oct 1 - The day after the “attempted coup” and I am in the Ibarra bus terminal on my way to Natabuela to work at the hogar de los discapacitados. President Correa has made his triumphant return to the palace and given his rousing and defiant speech, denouncing the striking police and as well his political foes. In the “battle for his release” from the police hospital 4 or 5 young men have been killed, several more badly injured. Correa calls them heroes; he takes no responsibility for the series of events and his own provocations which led to this senseless, and some say choreographed, violence. In Guayaquil, Quito, and throughout the country dozens if not hundreds of stores have been looted, banks robbed, automobiles burned or overturned, etc. etc. Correa, standing late last night on the balcony of the presidential palace - with large screens, cameras and sound systems somehow, mysteriously, already in place - pounds his chest and vows to punish those responsible. . .

The terminal, normally bustling at this hour, is quiet. Wafting sweetly from the overhead speakers, heard only by a few and likely understood only by me, comes a poignant lament from the band REM - “Everybody Hurts.” So true, on this particular morning.



Salinas de Guaranda 1.30 AM Nov 5 - Someone is ringing the church bells. The Padre is out of town, in Ambato, so I figure that one or two of the local delinquents or borrachos are out having a lark and a laugh - but the peal of the bells is so sweet and soulful, totally without malice, honestly one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard. On and on it goes, or so it seems in my half awake state, and before the mysterious bell ringer tires of his folly I drift back off to sleep.

A day later there is an afternoon mass. A matriarch of the town, 90 years old and whose name is unknown to me has died the night before, about 20 minutes before the sound of ringing bells gently roused me from my sleep. And although it is not at all original, I found myself for several days thereafter recalling lines from John Donne “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

November 5 2010
And now, all of a sudden, I find myself back in Salinas de Guaranda for a few days. 150 miles from Cahuasqui as the crow flies, the trip consumes almost 10 hours in bus. Today was a very bad travel day, 2 accidents on the Panamericana north of Quito, and to the south heavy and slow traffic, leftovers from the week of feriados to celebrate el dia de los santos y el dia de los difuntos.

I hadn´t planned to return here until mid or late December, but I received a phone call telling me that two separate groups of potential project funders will be coming from the US and Austria this weekend. So on short notice I very reluctantly left Cahuasqui and made my way here. Hopefully all will go well over the next few days and we will end up with some thousands of dollars to build a few more greenhouses . . .

Talking to the Padre this evening upon my arrival he noted that it might be difficult for me “to have my heart in two places”. I assured him rather quickly that my heart was fully in Cahuasqui, but that it held in it a special and very warm spot for Salinas.

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And it´s true. I´m very happy to be maintaining a relationship with Salinas and my friends and co-workers there. At the same time, little by little, the realization that I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer, o algo como asi, (or something like one) is dominating my thinking. I am ready to move on to building a life of my own here in Ecuador, with a place I can call home and a little piece of ground to take care of. While in the US for 3 months this past summer my thoughts were, almost daily, of mi casita propia, a little garden and a few chickens wandering around on the front porch. I am ready, at the ripe old age of 55, to settle down. At least for a while, anyway.

The life of a Peace Corps Volunteer is a good one, if you take it seriously and make earnest attempts to do the job you are charged with. What exactly is that job, well that´s a good question. For your first 6 months you think your job is to save the world, and for the next 6 months you more or less lock yourself in your room brooding and wondering why you have failed. With luck, on the first day of your second year, you open your door, let some of the mustiness escape, then walk outside and say “the hell with saving the world, I´ve got to save myself!” And then you get to work, and 12 months roll by like nobody´s business and you find yourself ready to stay. Maybe for another 6 months, maybe a year, maybe a lifetime.

Which is more or less what happened to me, except that I really did not sit in my room brooding for 6 months. Although for a while there my consumption of cheap rum did increase precipitously . . .

So I completed my 2 years of service, traveled a little, then returned to Ecuador and got a job here in Salinas, and it was almost like being back in Peace Corps all over again. As much as I like being a “do-gooder” after a few months I began to realize that enough is enough . . . I wanted my own life, my own schedule, and most importantly, work that I had total control over, inasmuch as that is possible. Enough of waiting for meetings that never happen, enough of sitting through interminable meetings that do happen, enough of depending way too much on other people to care as much as I do, enough of just about everything.

Entonces, I bought my little piece of land in Cahuasqui with a house built of straw and mud sprouting from the ground like a great extension of the earth, ready to plant and rebuild, ready for some chickens, a rocking chair and a refrigerator full of cold Pilseners. Ready to eke out a living, on my own terms . . .

And here I am again, in Salinas de Guaranda. Where we all sit around the table together for breakfast, lunch and dinner, talking in Spanish and Italian and French and English about lofty goals and likely impossible dreams. Where a room and a comfortable bed have been set aside for my exclusive use, whether I show up once a month or once every 6 months, and quite frankly at the moment is the closest thing in the world I have to a home, at least until I get my little Cahuasqui house in livable condition.

So maybe my heart really is in 2 places, as the Padre suggested a couple of days ago. And maybe that´s not so bad, after all.
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The US funders, (potential funders that is), have come and gone. Mostly Rotary Club members, they were a friendly bunch of people and I think we might have a chance to make use of some of their money some where down the road. The Austrian contingent arrived on their heels, and I gave them my little song and dance late this afternoon, with a repeat performance scheduled for tomorrow. During my presentations I found myself talking up Cahuasqui, and as my lips continued moving I was startled to hear myself suggesting that perhaps one day they will have the opportunity to visit and consider funding some projects that my friends and I are considering for Cahuasqui and environs . . . Dammit, still acting like a Peace Corps volunteer – and again, maybe that´s not so bad, after all.

24 de octubre

Fever,headache and chills. Just 2 days ago I was marveling at how good I felt, just goes to show ya . . .

Back in Ibarra after a week in Salinas and another week of visiting friends and some side trips outside of Riobamba. Salinas was very cold, and as I was packing light was totally unprepared for it. When the sun did come out it was as spectacular as always . . . but mostly it was cold.

One day while in Riobamba I hopped on a bus to parts unknown, one of my favorite things to do. My destination was a small pueblo called Alao, at the foot of the Sangay National Park. There were no direct busses, so I caught one to Licto, and then hiked the several kilometers to Pungala, where I had heard I could catch a bus on up the valley to Alao. The weather was clear and cool as I hiked down the sendero from Licto to the bridge where it looked like I could connect to the road to Pungala.

After 20 minutes or so of slipping and sliding down the loose rocky footpath I made the bridge, and as I slogged back up the steep highway to Pungala, passing by a small hydroelectric plant and a Catholic sanctuary, it began to rain. Luckily my friends in Riobamba had insisted I take a raincoat with me so I reached into my pack and grabbed the trusty thrift store jacket my son Joe had brought for me a couple of years ago. My god I was glad to have that raincoat! As I climbed the temperatures dropped and the rain poured, and when I arrived in Pungala the only thing I could think about was a cup or two of very hot coffee.

Now, as I have no doubt mentioned before, Ecuador is a country full of friendly people. And on this particular day it appeared to me that the friendliest of them all live in Pungala. I drifted into town, feeling like the first gringo to ever lay a boot on the brick paved streets. Of course I wasn´t, as it turns out a young Peace Corps volunteer from New York City lived there for 2 years back around 2001. I learned this from the first person I encountered in Pungala, after inquiring about a cup of coffee. Mariano is a storekeeper/pharmacist who runs a little botiquin, selling 10 cent bags of snacks, 25 cent bowls of chochos and on occasion an aspirin or two. After first inviting me to stay at his house for a few nights (I thanked him and suggested I would stay with him and his family on my next visit to Pungala), Mariano took me by the arm to the little bakery across the street and ordered la dueña to boil some water for un cafecito. We returned to the botiquin and while we waited the half hour for the coffee to be ready we talked of life and the obvious advantages of living in Ecuador as opposed to anywhere else in the world. Well, according to Mariano anyway, who has never been anywhere else in the world, but who does go to Quito every now and again. Midway through our conversation Mariano pulled out his cell phone and had me call the former Peace Corps volunteer, a young woman whose number was on his speed dial. I did, and left her a rambling message in English saying that I was also a former Peace Corps volunteer who had just happened to wander into town and that Mariano and his family wanted to say hello and that they missed her and hoped she would come visit soon or at least call to say hello . . . I wonder if she did.

From across the street the bakery lady called out to say that at last my coffee was ready and I took my leave from Mariano. La dueña, a very round and pleasant woman, sat me down at a table and brought me my coffee, along with a couple of hardboiled eggs and some rolls. We made small talk for a little while and when I was ready to leave, and to pay, she refused me, saying that this was comida de la amistad, a meal of friendship. I argued weakly, and solved the dilemma by convincing her to sell me a bag of cookies and a few pieces of pan for the road.

I still had an hour or so to kill while waiting for the one o´clock bus to Alao. The day had warmed up and dried up, so I stuffed my raincoat back into my pack and wandered around town, which took all of about 8 minutes. I returned to the botiquin where Mariano and I ate cookies and bread and solved all the worlds´ problems until the bus came.

A weekday bus around noon or 1 PM in Ecuador is not usually where any sane person wants to be because they are very often jam packed with about 100 students, give or take, returning to their homes in outlying communities after a grueling academic day of playing soccer and marching in place. My bus to Alao arrived in Pungala already packed to the gills, with about 25 kids on the roof and 6 or 7 more clinging to the ladder. I muscled my way into the bus, and as we slowly got under way an old woman who had a seat pulled at my pocket and told me that she was getting off soon and if I acted fast I could have her seat. So the moment she made a move to stand up I maneuvered my ass into position, and was ready to violently block any one of the little urchins who had ideas of beating me to the seat. Fortunately all went smoothly and I settled into the seat, opened up my sack full of cookies and bread to share with the 10 or 12 kids nearest me who were plastered together like sardines, and we all headed up to Alao, becoming more comfortable along the way as the bus stopped every 40 seconds or so at some random sendero to discharge a kid or two. I imagine many of these kids had another hour or so of walking in front of them, because until we reached Alao I saw only 2 or 3 houses dotting the rugged countryside.

Alao was cold and rainy, very green and very beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Salinas de Guaranda, except that Alao has the advantage of a relatively large and relatively clean river passing through it. This rio is known for its trout fishing, and someday, when I go back to visit with Mariano and his family in Pungala, I hope to get a chance to wet a line and try my luck.

Almost 3 weeks now since I have been back in Ecuador. I´ve made a few attempts to write something interesting here on the blog, to no avail. And this short entry will not win any prizes, but maybe it will break the ice . . .

Not that life hasn´t been interesting since I´ve returned. A few wonderful days wandering in Quito; time spent catching up with friends in Ibarra, Ambuqui and the Chota Valley; riots by the police; a suspected (and suspicious) “coup attempt”; 9 days I´ve spent volunteering in Natabuela (just south of Ibarra) at a home for children and adults who are mentally or physically handicapped where I cleaned up vomit and shit, spoon fed breakfast and lunch to those who couldn´t feed themselves, changed bed linens, and took the children who were able out for long walks in the countryside, built a small greenhouse and oh yes where I cried a little but laughed everyday maybe as hard as I´ve ever laughed in my life.

Last but not least, I bought a small piece of land called “la loma” in Cahuasqui. There are still a few scraps of paper to sign and a few dollars left to exchange hands, but it´s a done deal. It´s small, only about an acre, with a 100 year old rammed earth house (in need of repair) and 360 degrees of some mighty fine views. In November I´ll get up there for a few days to plant avocado trees and to figure out how to tackle the remodeling project.

Today I reluctantly leave Ibarra, which has regained its standing as my favorite city in Ecuador, and travel to Quito and then Riobamba (formerly #1). By the middle of next week I should be back in Salinas de Guaranda, where I will find out what they have for me to do down there.