[I swear, this is the last one of these for a while – tomorrow we´re leaving the exceedingly pleasant colonial town we´ve been in and heading back out on the road.]
We met Jenny at an internet café in a sleepy little town off the Gringo Trail. I noticed her looking over at us as we checked e-mail, both trying to make eye contact and embarrassed at doing so. After half an hour or longer, I heard her British accent whisper into my ear, ¨I swear, it´s getting worse here.¨ She was, I soon learned, referring to the speed of the internet connection.
Jenny was Central Casting´s idea of a sweet, slightly overweight, well-meaning 70-year old British woman who´d found herself alone in the middle of nowhere. Clearly desperate for company, we invited her to join us on our walk about the town. The more we talked, the more we got the impression that she was alone in England as well as in Ecuador.
Jenny had decided to do some volunteer work and hoped to go to Nepal. She contacted a volunteer organization, and they suggested she teach English in Ecuador. Though she had no teaching experience, she decided to give it a go – particularly as the main appeal of Nepal was its mountains, and Ecuador would offer the same.
When we met her, Jenny had been in the town for two of her three months. But it was clear the experience was not what she´d envisioned. She didn´t say as much – us want-to-be-do-gooders never do – but I have little doubt that Jenny came to Papate hoping to be embraced by the community. After all, she must have felt, she was trying to better the lives of its children, giving them opportunities that the parents never had.
As it turned out, neither the community nor the children were particularly interested in dear Jenny. The first host family that she lived with treated her poorly, interested only in the money that she represented. Similarly, the children she taught – ages 5 through 12, at three different schools – had little interest in English. And although the only foreigner in the town, the larger community ignored her.
We felt bad for her and the situation in which she´d found herself. She spoke almost no Spanish, and admitted that she traveled to a nearby tourist town on weekends in the hope of finding someone with whom to speak. It was unclear if the children had an English teacher before her, and she didn´t know if there would be anyone coming to continue the lessons after she left. Three months alone in the little town, and she´d have little, if anything, to show for it.
To be fair, perhaps a bit of fault rested with Jenny. She had an impressive lack of curiosity in the town where she was living, even though she could have explored it fully in half a day. And although her expectations of being welcomed were only natural, perhaps she shouldn´t have had them. She also should have questioned her sponsoring organization to make sure they would be using her effectively. But I understand how she ended up where she was. You´re looking for an adventure, looking to make a difference, and you take what comes your way.
* * *
Even before meeting Jenny, we´d started wondering if we´d gone soft around the middle as travelers. Whether we´d officially, and irrevocably, slipped into the category of ¨Older Travelers.¨ After all, our eyes had been sliding from the ¨Budget¨ to ¨Mid-Range¨ accommodation offerings put forth by Lonely Planet, and we didn´t try to dissuade them. Instead, we rationalized the transition as costing only a few more dollars.
But then we were put to a test. There was only a daily public bus leaving the eco-lodge, and it was at 3 a.m. The alternative was to hire a private truck. We needed to decide whether we´d again play the part of backpackers and take the bus for $3.50 each, or if we´d succumb to sloth and plop down $60 for a truck. Unable to hold our heads high if we hired a truck, we opted for the bus. But then the travel gods again shined down upon us, and we found three others who were going the same way. For an extra $8.50 each, we all decided to get an extra five hours sleep. Still, as penance, we stayed in a total shithole of a hotel that night.
I´m not even exaggerating about the hotel, it was a pit. But the only other option was ¨fancy¨ ($50 instead of $16) and outside of town. Still, if we had to do it again, we might have gone the other way.
You know how when you wake up in the middle of the night, and it´s dark, and after debating with yourself for a while you decide to check the clock and see just how many hours you´ve got to wait before you can get out of bed? You´re always hoping that the clock will say at least 5:37 a.m. or, even better, 6:13 a.m. Well that night in the dump, the first time I checked the clock it was 11:52 p.m. I couldn´t believe it. Light from the streetlight outside our window – a light we hadn´t noticed mid-day – filled the room. A seemingly huge pack of dogs yelped incessantly just outside our window. It was miserable. But I did have one positive thought: at least when you´re at high altitude, you don´t have to worry about mosquitoes. Still, the consolation wasn´t enough – we´ve gone ¨mid-range¨ ever since, though we´ve already planned out our next ¨budget¨ stay.
////
Okay, enough of that crap – onto fun factoids about Ecuador:
First, they are absolute crazy about ice cream here. That, and unisex barbers. And illegal DVDs. It seems like the storefronts simply alternate between one of the three. Okay, that´s not quite true . . . almost. But how they or the other shops stay in business, I don´t know. Several sell only tiny figurines that we think are for birthday and wedding cakes, others sell combinations of things you´d never think of putting together, and none seem to ever have anybody in them.
Next, the Ecuadoreans are surprisingly fond of herbal teas. Wherever you go, there is a wide selection. And they don´t even seem to look at me like a poor, neutered bastard when I order one.
Onto restaurant protocol: there is one. Unlike the U.S., restaurants refuse to set the table before you sit down. Instead, you sit. Wait. Get a menu. Wait. Order food and drinks. Wait. Get a basket with silverware and tiny napkins. Wait. Wait some more. Finally get your drinks. Wait. And finally get your food. I think it must be a law. Still, I´m not complaining – the food is a lot better than what we got in Guatemala, Honduras or Cuba.
Next topic: nose jobs. There seem to be a lot of them. You would not believe how many people we´ve seen with those tiny flesh-colored band-aids across their nose. So many that we asked one of our mountain biking guides about it. Was it because people didn´t wear seat-belts and cars stopped short? Fights? No, the answer is nose jobs. Like they´ve got something to complain about . . .
Onto hats. First, I want you should know that ¨Panama hats¨ aren´t from Panama. They´re from Ecuador. The misnomer comes from the fact that they were initially exported by Spanish entrepreneurs through Panama. Second, I now own one. Third, I look foolish in it. Fourth, so do the indigenous.
Actually, it´s an interesting thing about the indigenous and their hats. When we got off of our freight train ride (don´t worry, I´ll get to that), it was like a switch had been thrown. All of the indigenous in the south seem to have traded in the northerner´s low felt fedoras for woven grass hats. Some are almost like top hats, others which look more like inverted soup bowls, and some have `antennae` or pom-poms hanging from the front. Also, they´ve traded in the somber dark blue skirts of a few hours north for ones that are now often bright orange. Very curious.
Okay, back to a bit of the ¨summer vacation¨ stuff, then I´m out of here.
First, my last email never got back to our climb to 5000 meters. Lest you think otherwise, we didn´t start at sea level. Instead, we started at 4800 meters, and gained the 200 meters by hiking 600 meters. Though not exactly summiting Mt. Everest, climbing one meter for every three at that altitude is no picnic. I began to understand how asthmatics must feel when they can´t get enough oxygen into their lungs. Annette, of course, didn´t notice that she wasn´t at sea level. She led the five of us up the hill, never stopping once (my ego kept me only 15 seconds behind her, well ahead of the ¨kids¨ we were with).
Lastly, the infamous train ride, which we and 200 of our closest friends did on the roof of five old, rust-colored freight cars. First of all, the ride is somewhat infamous. In fact, part is said to be the steepest train track in the world, made possible only through a series of switchbacks (imagine a ¨Z¨ with all of the lines extended – the train goes too far down one of the lines, then reverses direction and heads backwards down the next line which it also overshoots; it then heads forward yet again, continuing on its merry way). The ride is also infamous for the many times that the train derails. But not the ¨Oh my god, what a tragedy¨ kind of derailment. More of the ¨Oh crap, how much time is this going to cost us¨ kind of derailment.
On our ride, there were two such derailments. This, despite the presence of two conductors on the roof who used hand signals to communicate the track´s condition to the train´s engineer. The first derailment came only 50 minutes into the trip. The track was dry and almost perfectly straight, but when we went over a switch the last car decided to go its own way. I swear, the rear of the car must have been two or three feet off the track, and the wheels had dug up dirt and tore up both railroad ties and metal clamps that hold down the track. I was certain it was the end of the trip. But one hour and fifteen minutes later, we were back on our way – using rocks and metal ramps, the crew got the train back on track. Our second derailment was only a hour later, when a center car fell off the track. That was an easy one, and in only ten minutes we continued the trip.
Now maybe you are thinking: And you were sitting on the roof for all this? Yes, except for when we got down to inspect the derailments. But relax, Mom, there were railings along the top of the freight cars. And it moved very slowly. And, atypically, we weren´t even the oldest ones doing something stupid – there was a busload of Dutch in their 60´s right along side of us. In fact, the whole thing is a major tourist attraction, complete with hawkers who walk the roof of the cars selling drinks, banana chips and candy.
The communities that border the track love the train, too. Kids and even adults waive like crazy, while tourists throw candy to them. It´s sort of like Mardi Gras, without the beads or flashing of breasts. The only other time I felt so much like royalty was in Cambodia, when I was in the motorcade heading from the prison (if you didn´t get that email last year, never mind). I think maybe I could get used to it.
Okay, now I´m really ending this thing.
Best to you all,
Neil
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