shelly arrives...

I’m really going to have to back up a bit in order to get caught up on all my recent adventures. I guess, I’ll start with the volcano. On January 10th, all the Peace Corps Volunteers were notified that Volcan Tungurahua was starting to act up. This screwed up two sets of immediate plans that we had. First, we were supposed to have a nice dinner that night with my friend SBC and her parents who were visiting (from the U.S….and Mongolia, where her father is currently serving as Peace Corps Country Director). So, she and her parents had to abandon their outing to hike near the waterfalls, check out of their hostel in Puyo and get back on the road to get past the volcano (otherwise they would have been forced to take about a 12 hour detour to get to Guayaquil). Secondly, Jer and I had arranged to hitch a ride to Quito with one of his counterparts the next morning in order to get our mid-service medical appointments. But because we were prohibited from going the main paved road to Quito, we had to scramble to make alternative plans. That meant trying to catch up a bus that night and go the long way to Quito. So, around 11 p.m. we venture out to the bus stop. Around 11:40 we finally catch a bus. Long story short, we don’t get to the Peace Corps office until 9 a.m…by which time we had to rush off to our dentist appointments, get the annual exam (I’ll spare the details on that one) meet with various Peace Corps staff, etc. We checked into our hostel, took a nice long hot shower (only after almost flashing the maintenance man who came to figure out why our water wasn’t getting hot right away. Mystery solved: the knobs were reversed) and then rushed off to the airport to meet Jer’s cousin Shelly and change some euros into dollars (some German-Columbian dude bought a bunch of artesania at the Waorani store and only had euros because none of the banks in Puyo would change them. So, fair readers, even though euros are like the “in” thing right now in rap videos and piggy banks in the U.S., they aren’t really haven’t caught on down here). Shelly’s first taxi ride in Ecuador was one to remember. They dash board had forest green shag carpet and the driver drove like he was on crack. I was almost scared…and I thought I was finally used to the crazy drivers here.

The next morning, after storing stuff at the PC office and one false start (no one sent us a memo telling us that all the long-haul buses had been re-routed to a different thoroughfare) we headed to Otavalo, South America’s biggest and most famous outdoor market. We checked into the Hostal and then hit the market. Shelly went crazy (it’s hard not to) and bought lots of great stuff, including jewelry, art, a handmade wool sweater, alpaca poncho, scarves, etc. I worried that this was a bad way to start out her trip, because this meant hauling all the goods after purchasing them…and well, she didn’t pack very light to begin with. We ducked into a little hole in the wall to introduce Shelly to some typical lunch fare which included a slab of meat, mote, “tortillas” which are sort of like fried corn mush, all covered with a fried egg…paired exquisitely with the typical drink, Pilsener, the National Ecuadorian beer. My purchases were confined to a cool embroidered belt and headband, a bracelet and a scarf to replace the one that I gave to my mom. We picked up some wine, then went back to the hostal to chill out, read and have a glass. We took a break to get dinner and take in some local music. We returned to the hostal for a night cap in front of a wonderful wood fire. We ended up getting into quite an interesting discussion/debate with a Canadian guy and his 18-year old daughter and her punk rock boyfriend. They happened to be the type of travelers that you often run into in places like this (this being a nice, but cheap hostel in a pretty touristy town), people I would describe as self righteous travel braggers. They obviously have money and time to burn…and they like to talk about all the great places they’ve been and how long they’ve been travelling, blah, blah, blah. Well, the teens actually earned some bragging rights for having DRIVEN from Canada to Ecuador. They planned on driving all the way to the Patagonia and back to Canada.. Which would actually be a more fascinating story if the protagonists weren’t so self righteous and frankly naive. And if their dad wasn’t such an arrogant dork. I am being pretty harsh, but he immediately turned me off by grilling me with unfriendly, borderline accusatory questions about the Peace Corps. My personal favorite: “so what skills do you actually have to offer these people?” Before I could really answer his questions, he went off about how much older he was than us… and that he had been to 33 countries…and that he had just been in (fill in the blank with another foreign country…preferably the middle east or southern asia)… and that he was (fill in the blank with some important sounding business.) Oh and that he also worked with the wine industry, he said, as he sipped on cheap rotgut scotch (and, to be fair, while I slurped down cheap Chilean vino). By the end of the night we had worked through our international differences and he actually said in parting, “I really admire what you and your husband are doing with Peace Corps. And I wish you the best of luck in all you do.”

The next morning we had fun re-hashing the high and lowpoints of our long fireside chat with the Canucks en route to Cotacachi, a quaint town just 11 km north of Otavalo. Our guidebook raved about it being a thriving eco-city with a great leather industry (oxymoron?) and Sunday leather market. Well, there were leather shops…one right after another after another along one of the central streets (again, how the heck to all of them survive…see previous blog on my musings of the copycat factor)…but no leather market. The stores themselves were beautifully and thoughtfully laid out with gorgeous (but bargain priced) high-end leather jackets, boots and purses; they looked more like elegant European boutiques or SoHo storefronts rather than the typical hodgepodge Ecua-stores that are the norm. We wandered around the town (which really was tidy), strolled laxidazily through the uninspired Casa de Culturas, peered in the cathedral, and then took a tour of the Museo de Culturas with an enthusiastic and informative local guide. After lunch with the locals we headed back to Otavalo.

That night while Jer and I waited for Shelly to make some phone calls, we met a friendly Ecuadorian guy who struck up a conversation with us. He invited us to check out some music. We thought we were going to end up in a seedy bar, but instead found ourselves in the beautiful central park where the local brass band was belting out some tunes. He said that the band plays there every Sunday night…and that they bring much joy to the pueblo. When asking us our travel plans, he suggested that we consider hiking Laguna Quicocha rather than Lagunas Mojanda, as we had originally planned. He said Quicocha was closer and more beautiful. And that he could have one of his taxi driver friends take us. I think Jer was originally skeptical of my new friend Marcelo (that, or maybe jealous, because he happened to be quite handsome) and worried that he was a little sketchy. Which I suppose he was maybe a little…but he seemed harmless enough. Marcelo told me that had lived in Europe (Antwerp and Amsterdam) for a while, but overstayed his visa and essentially got deported. He had a girlfriend in Antwerp, but although she was beautiful, “she didn’t have anything inside...not like Latina women, anyway.” He has a kid that is 1 who he adores and a girlfriend (and cannot believe that Jer and I don’t have kids…and then proceeds to try to peer pressure me into having kids…with Jer not him of course!) …and then proceeds to ask if Shelly is married and if she is travelling alone. All fairly typical trains of thoughts for Ecuadorian men.

The next morning Marcelo introduces us to his taxi driver friend Bolivar who then drives us the half hour or so to the entrance of Laguna Quicocha (which he said is Kichwa for the place where the cuy (guinea pigs) bathe) and the Cotacachi-Cayapas reserve. Our drive was pretty quiet until the last 10 minutes or so when we revealed we were Peace Corps volunteers…and he proceeded to get very animated. He knew a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960’s and went on and on about how great he was and all the good work he did. Once again, it is these types of moments that make me proud to be part of the Peace Corps.