THE FRESH AIR OF PATAGONIA

October 26                                       

 One of my favorite albums from the 1960s featured the songs of the Canadian folksingers, Ian and Sylvia. Their song, Four Strong Winds, has the line: “and the winds sure do blow cold way out there.” They had Alberta in mind, but if you substitute “down” for “out”, you will have a hint of what it’s like to be near the tip of South America, in the land called Patagonia.  “Four strong winds that blow lonely, seven seas that run high, these are things that don’t change…..” the lyrics continue, as if the songwriters were right here with us.

    The winds put us to sleep at night and wake us up in the morning; winds so strong that it’s hard to walk uphill; winds that blow small waterfalls straight up into the air; winds that keep you away from cliffs for fear you might be blown over; winds that can knock a big Mercedes Benz tourist bus from one lane to the next; winds that buckle the sides of rental cars when the doors hyper-extend; winds so sneaky that they can blow the money out of your pockets.  Whatever else you do in life, don’t ever invest in a toupee factory in Patagonia!

   Yet, despite the winds, Patagonia is a spectacular place. The topography is as beautiful as it is brutal, as inspiring as it is imposing. There is a special feeling here that comes from the sheer size of the landscape.  Even with the winds and the cold I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys big wild places where the works of nature dwarf those of man.

     Patagonia’s notorious coast, which has wrecked so many ships, is also one of the most productive marine environments in the world. We visited a refuge where Magellanic penguins swam in from the sea and then waddled in long processions across a tussock grass prairie towards their burrows where their young waited to be fed. Like the penguins, we have also been eating from the sea, having dined on the many marine delicacies that are common here-fish, squid, shrimp, scallops, and, yes, plenty of abalone. These waters have also played an important role in world history.  Magellan sailed through here in the 1530s, on his way to the first circumnavigation of the globe. Gazing over the straits which bear Magellan’s name, we thought about the Darwin Range and the Beagle Channel off in the distance, where 300 years after Magellan, the HMS Beagle, with Captain Fitzroy at the helm, carried the young Charles Darwin around the horn. They were on their way to Galapagos and a revolution in the way we think about the world. We also learned that the southern-most part of the continent was first christened The Land of Smoke. But a member of the royal family back in Spain apparently didn’t like the sound of the name so he had it changed to Tierra Fuego, The Land of Fire, surely one of the most beautiful names to appear on any map.

     For me, the most powerful parts of Patagonia are those that lie away from the sea, where the land is vast and the views stretch from horizon to horizon, so clean and pure is the air. It’s basin and range country, with a topography somewhat like of the Great Basin in western North America. Wide plains alternate with mountain ranges, to be replaced by more plains and more mountains. But to compare Patagonia to anywhere else is an exercise in futility because the comparisons really don’t compare. Everything here is on steroids. There is a sense of scale and spaciousness that is hard to describe.  The huge mountain ranges, for example,  that rise up quickly from the plains are made of serrated and jagged peaks, interspersed with glaciers, something like Chamonix in France, but bigger and wider and more impressive. There are clusters of towers and spires here that reach high into the sky, dwarfing those of the Dolomites of Italy and the Tetons of Wyoming. Their smooth granite walls, which attract climbers from all over the world, rival those of Yosemite. The plains between the mountain ranges have numerous lakes and playas, some with stately Chilean flamingoes, their pink forms set against the white glaciers in the distance. Some of these glaciers calve into beautiful turquoise lakes, which remind you of the lakes between Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies, except that here ice bergs from the melting glaciers are blown by the wind down the long lake channels out onto the plains.  A huge sky arches overhead, with big white clouds casting shadows as they move over the flatlands. When conditions are right, lenticular clouds that look like flying saucers hover over the mountains.  Permeating all this is a sense of remoteness and wildness that has to be experienced to be believed. Coffee table books give you an idea of what it is like, but only an idea.

   Much of Patagonia is ranching country, with each estancia (ranch) covering thousands of acres. You can drive across these immense plains for hours on end and never see a building.  So infrequent are the estancias, that many of them have their own official road signs, much like a town would in our country. The cattle and sheep that are raised on these holdings put beef and lamb on the dinner plates of Argentina and many other countries of the globe. The lusher, wetter areas support pure-bred Hereford cattle, while sheep work the drier sites. Our visit coincided with the birthing season so there were clean, fresh-minted calves and lambs everywhere.

     The gauchos who tend the livestock have their ancestral roots in the Basque country of Spain and France. They wear berets instead of cowboy hats. The lives they lead must be very hard, working out in the harsh elements day after day, mending fences, branding and castrating, herding and chasing strays. Like the cow pokes back home, they also have their own style of music. We listened to some the other night at a mountain lodge.  It doesn’t sound like Ian and Sylvia, but if I could understand the lyrics, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear a line or two about the Four Strong Winds.       

Mount Fitz Roy in the northern sector of Parque Nacional Los Glacaires near Chalten, Argentina

Estancia Amarga with the Torres del Paine in the background- Argentina

Magellanic Penguins near Punta Arenas, Chile

Guanaco, a camelid relative of the Llama in Torres del Paine Natl Park

The Cuernos in Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

The Puerto Moreno Glacier is about 3 miles in width, 24 miles long and 180 feet in height

Ice Bergs from Puerto Moreno and Upsala Glaciers on Lake Argentine, some 60 miles away

Flamingos on Lake Argentine near El Calafate and the Puerto Moreno Glacier!

    

I THINK I’LL PASS

October 23

     One of the joys of travel is to shed the skin of the city and venture out into the country. Ah yes, leave the crowded streets, the dusty museums, and tourist joints behind. Go out and find the volcanoes, the birds, the people of the land. So, while we were in Ecuador we rented a vehicle to drive on our own-a nice Chevy Luv 4-wheel drive pickup. [For those of you who keep track of these things, yes, they still make (the) Luv here in Latin America.]

     Our little Luv was diesel powered, which made it easy on the pocketbook because diesel fuel here is priced at a very welcome $1 per gallon. The truck was nearly new, clean, and comfortable. Jeri was, as usual, ready with her maps and helpful hints, such as: “Don’t turn here, you fool, it’s a one way street!” and “If you had followed my directions we wouldn’t be lost.” Etcetera.

      Once behind the wheel, it didn’t take long to realize that driving here would be far different from driving at home. Some of the differences where physical- trucks belching out exhaust smoke; small, hard to read directional signs that for some reason come after the junction you needed to turn at; detours that appear spontaneously, aren’t marked, and leave you somewhere you can’t escape from; 3 lanes going your way that suddenly become 1; rocks on the roads, good-sized ones; potholes to make Hawaii proud; lanes that are not separated by painted lines; unannounced road work strategically positioned on blind curves; and some very significant speed bumps.  Some of these bumps (the tallest ones) were unmarked. Hitting one at speed in the Luv, with its stiff suspension, would knock our heads against the roof. As most of you know, I left the states with a full head of hair, “bushy” is the term I would use.  But thanks to these roads, I’m now nearly bald on top.

     These problems pale, however, when compared to the challenges provided by the local drivers, with whom we “shared the road.”  Away from their cars and highways, Ecuadorians are some of the most relaxed, helpful people we have met, but when they get behind the wheel all this changes. A sort of fatalism takes over, it’s almost as if they have a death wish and can’t wait to test it.  This “wish” is most obvious when they pass other vehicles, especially on mountain roads, of which there are plenty. Part Kamikaze exercise, part poker game, ever vigilant, they pass whenever there is the slightest opening. If an Ecuadorian driver isn’t passing someone else, he isn’t happy. And of course, he expects you to pass too. These roads in the Andes are busy with a nearly constant stream of cargo trucks, some large, some small, creeping up the steep, curvy grades at varying speeds depending upon their load and engine displacement. The faster trucks pass the slower trucks, and the cars pass all of them, leaving Jeri and I caught in the middle. The cars, however, are mostly small economy models with small engines, so they have to keep their speed up by tailgating and then passing with their foot to the floor. Some of the situations they get themselves into are not particularly pretty. Passing on blind curves is common. Once we watched withheld breath as up ahead the two lanes of the road were being shared by 4 vehicles abreast, two going our way, and two coming at us. It was not unusual to see cars passing trucks that were passing other trucks. I found myself yelling “Oh, shit” a number of times, which, by the way, is the most common thing you hear from the “blackbox” tapes of airline pilots as they realize they are heading straight into the ground.

     This innate urge to pass, regardless of the circumstances, occurs in a number of other forms. One case involved a fellow who found himself at the back of a long line of traffic stopped at a red light at the entrance to a town. Rather than wait his turn, he simply pulled into the opposing lane, and passed all the waiting vehicles, taking what he thought was his well-deserved place at the head of the line, with half his car sticking out into the intersection at the red light. This so impressed some of the drivers waiting their turn in line that they tried it out for themselves at the next light, one of the most rapid examples of cultural evolution that I have ever witnessed.

     What is amazing about all this is that in 5 days of driving we never saw an accident of any kind -a huge number of close calls, but never an accident. What seems to be a free for all, is apparently a well ordered, working system, with its own unwritten rules based on an accepted code of conduct. I am not sure if I can explain these rules to you since I really don’t understand them, but I will give it a try. (Explaining things that I don’t understand, is after all, what I did for a living for 30 years in the classroom!)

     So, if you ever drive in Ecuador, keep the following in mind: 1. Buses rule. They can do anything they want to, at any time, including running over you. Don’t screw with the buses. 2. Drive offensively because everyone else does. It’s a poker game out there-taking gambles, calling other people’s bluff- it sounds counterintuitive, but it’s the way it is done.  3. Pedestrians have no rights at all. Drive as if they don’t exist. 4. Get on with it! Traffic flow is sacred.  “He who hesitates is lost” takes on a new meaning here. 5. You must always make room for the other fellow, if he has the right of way, especially if he is heading straight for you. But don’t worry about how much room to leave, an inch is as good as a mile. 6. Simply ignore the horn honking. The Ecuadorians don’t know why they are doing it either.

What's In a Name

October 14                           

    This trip to other countries has got me thinking about my own.  I have heard it said that you can tell quite a lot about a people by the words they use. For example, we call Los Angeles, Las Angellas, forgetting that Spain, then Mexico ruled California before our cavalry wrested it from them. One of our quintessential sports heroes, once the invincible quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, calls himself Brent Farve, when the letters on his uniform clearly spell out Favre, a French name by way of Mississippi and his Cajun background. We call the game he played football, overlooking the fact that football is a global game played with the foot, not the hands. Every fall we host the World Series, but  never think to invite teams from other parts of the world, such as Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic,  South Korea and Mexico, all of whom play baseball at a high standard.  We call the Western Hemisphere the New World, even though people have been living here for at least 11,000 years, perhaps much more. Because Columbus had a longitude problem, we call indigenous people Indians, when of course they are Sioux, Santee, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Wintu, Yahi, Chumash, Aztec, Maya, and Inca. It is our habit to call our country America, ignoring the fact that it is only one of the Americas. Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Argentines, and the other inhabitants of Central and South America are all Americans too.

     So, where does all this “America bashing” leave us? As most of you have probably guessed, it leads us directly to the Panama Hat! In a sense, Panama Hats are from Panama because they have traditionally been shipped to other parts of the world from there, but they actually  are made in Ecuador, in the high Andes, near the lovely city of Cuenca. Only a few hundred  indigenous women have the skill and temperament  to make these hats. Each one is made of finely split palm leaves from the coast, meticulously knotted and woven into the distinctive shape of a “Panama Hat.” The tighter the weave, the more expensive the hat. A low end hat can be knotted in a day, but it takes up to six months to make a high end model.

     When we were in Cuenca, we visited one of the four finishing factories there. The hats are woven in traditional native villages outside the city, in the homes of the weavers.  Every week, or so, the ladies place the hats they have knotted in a bag, one atop the other, and bring them to the factory, where they are paid based on the quality of their work. We were lucky enough to be there when these colorfully dressed women were lined up , waiting for their sacks of hats to be evaluated by a kindly looking woman sitting in a chair. She turned out to be the great granddaughter of a Senior Ortega, who founded the company. She looked at each hat, adding it to the nested stacks on the floor.  The weavers filled out the door, to return to their homes where they would make more hats. We then visited various parts of the company, where the hats were carefully bleached, pressed, shaped, and trimmed into the finished product. As skilled at selling these hats to tourists as they are at making them, our guide and her assistant had little trouble convincing Jeri and I that our lives would be much better if we each bought one of their creations. Who could blame us? The walls of the sales room were decorated with photographs of famous people -Lady Di, Frank Sinatra, Anthony Hopkins, Jackie Onasis, Brad Pitt, even Winston Churchhill- all wearing “Cuenca Hats.”

     To wrap up this little diatribe, I could go on about why French Fries and  French Kisses are not French, why Canadian Bacon isn’t Canadian, or why we shouldn’t  refer to the Amish of Lancaster County, as “Pennsylvania Dutch.”  But why ruin a perfectly good story about a hat?

 Granddaughter of the Ortega founder still operating business

Hats are woven by villages and then processed at factory then back out to villagers for shaping

Jeri and I will be the next frames on the wall!!

When Bells Ring

October 2, 2011

We are flying south from Quito towards Cuenta, as one great snow clad volcano after another appears out the left hand window. They are nearly perfect cones, like Mounts Ranier and Shasta, made even more beautiful by the slanting rays of thesetting  sun. I can see why the great Prussan explorer, Alexander von Humboltd, traveling  through Ecuador in the 1700s in search of the tallest mountain in the world, christened  this part of the Andes “The Avenue of the Volcanoes.” Humboldt’s name should sound familiar to most of you Californians because many places in our state have been named in his honor-Humboltd County, Humboldt State University, the Humboldt Trail, Humboldt Peak , to name a few. Down here in South America, the cool waters of the Humboldt Current  moving north from the southern reaches of the continent  that allow penquins to live on the equator in Galapagos.   

Thoughts of penquins and Humboldt  fade away as the plane’s wheels  touch down in Cuenca, the most colonial and beautiful of Ecuador’s cities. Jeri and I are not particularly fond of cities, but Cuenca immediately won us over. Red tile roofs, a beautiful river, narrow streets, peaceful plazas, and a people proud of their heritage and way of life. The place is also full of churches. On the way in from the airport, our taxi driver described the residents of Cuenca in an interesting way. He said they are “very Catholic.” And that they are.  There are 52 churches here, one for every week of the year.  And what churches they are- huge cathedrals, neighborhood chapels, blue -domed basilicas- all very old and beautifully crafted by fine artisans and builders.  Spain, itself, couldn’t be any more impressive.

After settling in in our hotel by the river, I found myself in Cuenca’s main plaza, admiring its plants and people- subtropical trees covered with yellow and blue blossoms, huge Norfolk pines, even azaelas in bloom. Rufous-colared sparrows forage in the trees, as teenage girls walk by in their school uniforms, giggling as only teen age girls do.  It is spring here in the southern hemisphere. Sitting and strolling in this beautiful square is like visiting another time- slow, quiet, and pensive, in a word, civilized. 

I wander over to the corner of the plaza to a flower market where the indigenous ladies are as colorful as the bouquets they are selling.  Bells begin to ring in the tower above, then stop, and resume again.  It says Santuario Mariano above the large carved wooden doors on the church’s entrance. People walking by who do not go into the church cross themselves, then raise their fingers to their lips and walk on. Those who enter do the same, and I follow them in. The narrow high ceilinged space is decorated to the nines with statues and murals and filigree. There is gold ( or gold paint) everywhere. I notice signs listing the times for confession. 

As I wait on a hard bottomed pew, half way towards the altar, the church slowly and quietly fills with worshipers. It is 11 o’clock on a Wednesday  morning, no special occasion as far as I can tell. The audience is mixed- old timers in need of hip transplants, conservatively dressed middle-aged men and women , nuns with downcast eyes, the successful, the poor, the serene, and the sad. There are indigenous ladies with their dark hair covered by bright while shawls, and backpackers who have suddenly found their religious roots. This is a functioning, everyday place of worship, not like the empty cathedrals of Europe, or the churches of our country, locked 6 days out of  7.

The mass begins with singing-lovely women’s voices accompanied by an organ. The acoustics are nearly perfect, and the music settles the audience and focuses their attention.  People in the pews sing along. Up front a very old priest, wearing a beanie and clad in white, is helped out of his chair by a junior attendant, and the service begins. There are many prayers, readings, and what I gather is a sermon. It’s all in Spanish, so I really don’t know what is going on, although I do recognize “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,”  and the frequent use of the word “Senior,” which I presume refers to the Man upstairs. At one point, the priest gives a command and the fellow in front of me turns and shakes my hand. I do the same with the lady to the left, and the couple behind. These gestures seem to be genuine expressions of welcome, and I half expect one of them to say “Namaste,” as they do in Nepal, meaning “I greet the god within you.” It’s now time for communion, and nearly all of the worshipers walk forward to have a wafer placed on their tongue by the priest. Once this is done, the music and singing begin again. Everyone stands and listened, many lost in their own thoughts.  As they leave the church, their face seem relieved of their burdens, ready once again for the world outside.  Below the altar, with its flying angels, and the statue of Jesus suffering on the cross, the priest kneels for several minutes with his head bowed. An hour has passed and the service is over.

 So what do I make of all this? I am not a Catholic, not even a Protestant. Long separated from the hellfire and brimstone of my Baptist youth, the kindest thing you can say about me is that I am a sincere un-believer.  Yet on this morning, in this church, watching these people, I felt something special. Some of you will say it was God, others will say that it was the mood of the place, with its tinted windows and arches and beautiful art work, and the rest of you will simply conclude that I have gone bonkers. What I do know is those beautiful volcanoes I saw from the plane evoked similar feelings. In my view, the churches and the mountains towering above them are all sacred places.

Volcan Cotapoxi roughly 19,000 feet

Flower Market outside El Carmen de la Asuncion

Mass inside El Carmen de la Asuncion

C

Adventures in Mindo

September 22, 2011

My mother is fond of homilies, and she often uses them to make a point. When she felt I was studying too much in high school, I would hear her say, “remember Albin, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” “Love makes the world go round,” is also one of her favorites.

Our recent two hour trip from Quito down to the little west slope town of Mindo made me think of another saying I often heard her use: “Variety is the spice of life.” It certainly is, especially if you enjoy watching birds as we do. Barely the size of Colorado,  Ecuador has some 1600 species of birds.  To put this in perspective, all of the United States has about 900 species. Ecuador has nearly 130 species of humming birds alone; California has about a half dozen.  This means that Ecuador is one of spiciest places on Earth, and the Mindo area is one of its chili peppers.

It is possible with a good guide to see a greater variety of birds here in one week than you would see in a year back home. The cloud forest around Mindo is the key. With pleasant temperatures, rainy afternoons, sunny mornings, and rich volcanic soils, the plants just grow and grow. Tall trees form a dense canopy with all manner of bromeliads and orchids growing on their mossy limbs. Vines climb  toward the sun from a rich understory of ferns and shrubs. Different bird species live in each of these forest layers.  In addition, as you change altitude, the forest also changes, and so do the birds. Go up or down a thousand feet, and you see new birds.

And what birds they are! Besides the mind boggling humming birds, there are many species of parrots, toucans, tanagers, pigeons, doves, woodpeckers, hawks, flycatchers, and finches. The tanagers alone are enough to fill a bird watcher’s dreams.  The late Ted Parker, a pioneering ornithologist in South America, likened watching a mixed flock of tanagers zooming through the forest  to a school of gaily colored fish swimming over a coral reef. There are also many other bird families not found in North America here in the cloud forests of Mindo- Puffbirds, Monkbirds, Nunbirds, Leaftossers, Flowerpiercers, Treerunne rs, Antwrens, Antshrikes, Antvireos- you get the point.

Many of the hummingbird names might seem overdone until you actually see these little gems on the wing, their extraordinary feathers diffracting the light of the tropical sun. Here is a short list of some of the species we saw. Pronunce the names slowly, letting each syllable roll off your tongue-Shinning Inca, Velvet-purple Coronet, Andean Emerald, Green-crowned Woodnymph, Violet-tailed Sylph, Black-tailed Trainbearer, Empress Brilliant, Sparkling Violetear, Purple-crowned Fairy, and Black-throated Mango.

 As you might guess, all these exotic birds are a magnet to eco-tourisst.  This brings us to another of mom’s favorite sayings: “Money doesn’t grow on trees”.  Which, in most cases, is quite true, but here in Mindo it seems that money does grow on trees. The birds bring the tourist, which bring the money, which creates a new economy, which protects the forest, which grows more birds. It is a perpetual motion machine that I hope keeps spinning and spinning.

It really helps to have an experienced bird guide with you in the forest. The birding is really challenging. Even with the tremendous diversity of species, it’s hard to find the birds amongst the leaves and branches in the filtered light. Our guide was Efrain, who was extremely talented at seeing birds when none could be seen, and hearing them when none could be heard. He was also very patient with us. Efrain also had a good sense of humor. When he showed us a male Moustached Antpita, a long legged ground loving bird, with a sawed off tail and big beautiful eyes, I asked him if the females of this species have  moustaches too. He paused for a moment, and with a twinkle in his eye, said, “Yes, but the males don’t seem to mind!”

 Erfrain, who was very bright and well-traveled, told us an interesting story from his youth. He came home from school one day with aches and pains and a fever. His mother knew just what to do and rubbed him all over with a live guinea pig. Just like that, his sickness was transferred to the hapless animal, which promptly died, leaving Efrain feeling fine once again. I could tell that Efrain was not joking this time; he was quite serious. To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this story. I am a natural skeptic and usually do not believe such things. But what if his story is true?

I will close with one more of my mother’s sayings. When she put us to bed at night, she would say: “Sleep well and don’t let the bed bugs bite.” It was just a funny little saying, with no particular relevance, so I never gave it much thought. Not much thought, that is, until Mindo.  It has been four days now since we left that nice little town, with its cozy cabin and the single bed I slept in. I have 18 nice big red marks in various places on my body, each about the size of a baby aspirin, and itching like crazy!  Jeri, of course, is going to write a letter to the owners of the cabin.  In the meantime, would any of you happen to have a spare guinea pig?

Our Casa Divina cabin

Birding in Ecuador

One of many Heliconius we saw

Cock of the Rock

Calling in the birds

Just two pages several pages of Tanagers found in NW Ecuador

Just one of several pages of Humming birds found in the Cloud Forest

Looking back at Quito from Mindo, part 2

September 18, 2011

So what did we learn in Quito? Quite a lot as it turns out, but don’t worry I’ll only mention a few things, just enough to paint a small picture of what we saw.  The Andes, one of the world’s great mountain ranges, runs north to south right down the middle of this beautiful little county, the second smallest in South America. At nearly 9,000 feet in elevation, in an elongated basin between two much taller ridges, sits the capital of Quito. To the west the mountains slope down through misty cloud forests to the coast, 500 miles beyond which lie Galapagos, the islands made famous by our patron saint, Charles Darwin. On the other side of Quito, past a dozen or more towering snow caped volcanoes (some of them active), the east slope of the Andes drops away to the equally famous Amazon Basin, with its jungles of tropical luxuriance and still wild tribes of Amerindians.

Quito enjoys a nearly perfect climate of perpetual spring-sunny mornings which warm with the sun, beautiful clouds in the afternoon bringing showers, giving way to chilly nights. The city is an odd mix of centuries old colonial buildings, not so pretty sky scrapers, and flat-roofed shacks of the poor climbing the hills. The Spanish took over the place a long time ago, in 1534, building the beautiful old town (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site) on the backs of the local Indians and black slaves brought in from the Caribbean. Lovely plazas, arch ways, courtyards, and impressive chapels and cathedrals are the results of their labors. The Spanish also brought a new language and new customs. (Friends greet each other by kissing a cheek.) The city now has a European feel with whiff of the third world.  Its population is a mixed bag, ranging from fair skinned cosmopolitans of mostly Spanish descent, to pure blooded Indians, with a large middle class of mestizos in between.  For the most part, the people are quiet and self-contained, but once you make contact they are quite friendly, even sweet. Indian women wear their traditional fedoras, white shirts and full length colorful skirts. Most of the others are well groomed and dressed conservatively in dull colors. Blue Jeans are few, as are tattoos and mohawks!. An ample breakfast, a large mid-day meal of slow foods, with little in the way of supper, and lots of walking leaves most of the people trim and well-proportioned. The streets are clogged with slow moving cars, many of which are made in China. Pedestrians have no rights, but if you hit one punishment can be severe. Driving here is like playing poker- lots of bluffing and calling of hands. Horns are well, but seldom used, often accompanied by the appropriate hand gesture.

I limp along with my minimal Spanish but Jeri’s facility with this rapid fire language grows with everyday. The locals are wonderfully forgiving of our frequent errors.  We see hardly any other foreign tourists which gives a “first time” feeling to our trip. Taxis are reasonably priced and easy to use, and those of you know Jeri well won’t be surprised to learn that by consulting her map she often tells the driver where to go before he figures it out, proving once again that in former lives she was both a cartographer and a very capable executive.

I will leave you with an astounding fact- the prohibition against using a mobile phone while driving is actually enforced here. When the phone of one of drivers started to ring, he stopped in the middle of the lane on a rural road, turned the engine off, and proceeded with a conversation. I said it was astounding.  Maybe a better word would be sensible.

Colonial Architecture in Plaza de Independencia

Mother Mary with wings on Mt Pontecello

A street Siesta

Our Quito Hotel, Plaza de Sucre

The sprawling city of Quito with Volcanoes in distance

Fridada, a local Ecuadorian dish

Looking Back at Quito from Mindo, part one

September 18, 2011  

I like Jena’s response to The Big Event: “You mean you have only been in Ecuador for two days, and they have already tried to tear gas you?”  Yes, it’s true.

We were up on a hill taking in the view of old-town Quito,  looking at its 16th century Basilica, with its biologically correct iguana gargoyles, when our eyes began to sting and tear up.  First a little, then a lot. What an eerie feeling it was. Something was obviously wrong, very wrong, but we couldn’t imagine what it could be. I tried to diffuse the situation by making a lame joke about Gadhafi making his last stand in Quito, but my efforts were ignored by Jeri and the European couple next to us, who quickly bolted downhill, away from whatever it was that was after us. The locals we passed covered their faces with their arms or sweaters as Jeri’s face turned bright red and our eyes continued to burn. After a rapid descent of nearly two blocks, the symptoms lessened, and just like that, went away. But we still had no idea what had happened.

The answer appeared the next morning in our quaint little colonial hotel when our host explained (with a smile) that the police had been having trouble with rebellious students at the high school near the Basilica and decided to end the problem once and for all by tear gassing them.  

After spending a good deal of my life in a classroom, I thought to myself, what a simple and elegant solution!

The adventure begins

September  12

Squeezed into seats 24 A & B, we are flying east to Miami, into the sun and towards a new adventure.   It has been many years,  years of surfing and tennis in Hawaii, years of gardening and hiking at home, since we have set off on a big overseas trip.  Snow still lingers on the high ridges of Sierra Nevada as the rising sun works  its way over California. The lights are low on flight 552 as we nod off after days and weeks of preparation.  Jeri has earned her rest.  It is lighter now, most of the great basin has slipped under our Boeing 757, a vast expanse of dry lonely basins alternating with rugged mountain ranges running north to south across the American west.  Soon, the Red Rock country of southern Utah comes into view, Bryce and its neighbors magnificent in the early morning light. Over Texas and Mississippi we go, too high, thankfully, to hear the chatter from the tea party below.  

We land in Miami,  a city that has played a pivotal role in my mid-life crisis for it is here, I sent my beloved blue Porshe to begin a new life with a new owner.  Not seeing any sign of the 911SC, we leave the Miami airport terminal, whose major hallway is decorated with fantastic fish sculptures.  On board now we head for the tiny country of Ecuador high in the Andes.  I had read that Ecuadorians valued courtesy and good manners, but it did not sink in until our flight meal was served.  Sitting next to the window on the three seat side of the airplane, with Jeri in the middle, I reached in front of her to take the food tray from the flight attendant, a well groomed latin man in long sleeve shirt and tie.  He left my hand dangling and instead carefully placed the tray in front of Jeri, giving me a little glance. I laughed, as did Jeri,  and the glance turned into a good natured smile.   With arched eyebrows, he pantomimed slapping me on the wrist. Lesson learned.

There will be more to come after we settle in.