mi maleta

Our friends Krista and Caleb have came and are long gone already… it was a whirlwind trip for them…spending a day traveling from Alaska to Ohio, another day traveling from Ohio to Guayaquil and yet another day traveling from Guayaquil to Puyo…via Quito and Tena. Now those of you that know anything about the geography of Ecuador are asking yourselves WHY would they fly into Guayaquil if they wanted to get to Puyo… It is like flying into Toledo when you want to get to Portsmouth. Okay, that is not a very good comparison, but you get the idea…it is not quite the closest major airport and it subjects the traveler to several extra hours of an already lengthy trip. Well, the short answer is that they got a good deal on the flight and they couldn’t change it to Quito without paying a steep fee… All of this wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal were it not for the fact that main road from all points west and southwest of Puyo was closed. And we are talking totalmente (that is Spanish for ‘totally’ --- pronounced with a valley girl accent) closed. As in washed away. Gone. As in there are NO detours…well, none at least that would support cars. Where I grew up in the flatlands of Northwest Ohio, detours might involve driving a country block around the construction …or getting short, scenic tours of such metropolises (or is it metropoli?) of Rimer, Cairo, or Vaughnsville. Here in Ecuador, however, our “detours” are a little different. In this case, travelers were offered two equally unpleasant overland options: A) Going about 350 kilometers out of your way, which would add a good, say, eight hours to your trip… or B) getting off the bus where the road was out, hiking two hours up over a mountain pass (mostly uphill both ways, of course) hauling all your crap, and then hope to catch a bus or thumb a ride with someone willing to give you a ride into the next town. This would be all fine and good if our friends weren’t hauling so much baggage.

“Why did they bring a bunch of baggage,” you wonder? Uh, well, that would be my fault. You see, they were toting 25 extra pounds of my crap in a suitcase. But not just ANY suitcase. They had the famous orange suitcase. It was my grandma’s bright orange vinyl suitcase from the 70’s. You know the kind that has little feet rather than wheels…. Yeah, that kind. This particular suitcase has probably traveled tens of thousands of miles around the world with various members of our family over the years. It has history. For as long as I can remember, anytime someone in our family talks about taking a trip, we jokingly ask if they are going to take the orange suitcase. It is also the suitcase that our family offers to guests when they find that they have more stuff to carry back than what they came with. We offer it because we say we don’t care whether it came back or not. After all, it is pretty ugly. But like a boomerang, the orange suitcase always comes back somehow. And I have to guess that some of us in the family are a little sentimental about it, because we associate it with MawMaw. Seeing the suitcase brings back fond memories of her and thoughts of past adventures in far flung places. This time, the suitcase brought us gifts of joy from home…including an early anniversary gift for Jeremy: a cordless drill. It even has a working reverse (those of you who follow his blog will get the reference and understand the importance of this tool. If you don’t, be sure to see his entry on DATE) He was like a little kid at Christmas.

Okay, enough about the suitcase. What about the detour? Which way did they go? Two roads diverged in a yellow woods… Well, if you answered option C, you are correct. They ended up hopping a flight from Guayaquil to Quito, then getting on a bus which took the northern route to Puyo… It was still a hellishly long trip (the bus segment alone was around 7 hours I think) but it was the best option. They arrived in one piece, in good spirits…and of course with the orange suitcase.

We packed a full schedule of activities into their 49.5 hours in Puyo. They got to see many high points including: a great guided tour of the local Ethnobotanical Park, experiencing the sensory overload of the Sunday market—which, much to their delight, there was an abundance of venders offering grubs this week. We ate at our favorite restaurant, El Jardin; we got a private tour of an incredible orchid preserve, climbed up into a 10 story tree house; explored “caves” and got dive-bombed by dozens of bats; met a local guide in the bed of a truck taxi; we gave them the unofficial tour of our offices, the Waorani handicraft store, and where we buy our bread, our chocobananas and other staples of our existence here in Puyo. We introduced them to dumptruck ceviche and Pilsener beer...and we also led them on a long hike in a futile search for Cabeceras de Bobonaza. I am not even sure what it is or what that means, but we were assured that the views at Cabeceras de Bobonaza were fab and that we were in fact walking in the right direction. It turns out we were, but we were misled as to the distance (12 km instead of 2…) We weren’t exactly prepared for that long of a hike, so we turned around after an hour and a half or so. So, we did not get to see the spectacular views of the river valley as we had hoped. But we did see some cool birds and butterflies and when we got back to Puyo, we saw a dog nursing two kittens in the middle of the sidewalk. (See link to photos, at left). Our life list of exotic wildlife was now complete.

It was a fun-filled two days in Puyo…