Las dos marias

New Years Day

Jeremy and I get up early to catch a bus to Latacunga where we were planning to meet a few friends before heading to a crater lake called Laguna Quilotoa in order to hike. Jer and I caught a 7 a.m. bus headed to Quito, which would pass directly through Latacunga where we were to meet our pals. Two unusual things happened en route. One, the ayudante (bus driver’s helper) was a woman, one of the few I’ve seen here. And two, the bus wasn’t going where it said it was going. Or at least as far as was advertised. As the ayudante made her way through the bus to collect the bus fare, she asks us where we were going. After we replied, she basically said, “Well, we may not go there.”

What? Why? I had been worried about irregular bus service on New Years Day…chuchaqui (hungover) or still drunk busdrivers not showing up to work… or maybe half finished road projects blocking access… but this was definitely a new one. So why? I ask

“Because we don’t have enough passengers,” she said.

Huh? I looked around the bus. All the seats were full but two. Sensing my skepticism, she yells to the back of the bus, “Who is going to Quito?” No one says anything, or they were ignoring her. “See? No passengers to Quito. We’re just going to go to Ambato. You’ll have to switch buses there,” she says as she hands us our change for the suddenly abridged bus ride. Despite this supposed proof that they didn’t have enough buses, I still cynically suspected the driver really was chuchaqui and just wanted to end his day early so he could party with his pals.

Luckily, switching buses in Ambato was relatively easy, although it did force me awake from a nice little nap. We got off our bus and got on another headed to Latacunga. There wasn’t much traffic on the roads, so the buses flew. We arrived in Latacunga a full hour ahead of schedule. Jer and I decided to walk around town to kill some time. We happened across one of the city’s big marketplaces which was slowly coming alive with activity. We walked through an area that had stall after stall after stall of shoes. It is a fact that never ceases to amaze me about Ecuador: the copycat factor. As you drive into Puyo or Banos, you’ll see stall after stall after stall selling cana (sugar cane) products (mostly pieces to suck on and cane juice) and guayaba sweets. Hardly a diversified product line. Along the riverfront strip in Puyo, every little bar and restaurant offers volqueteros, a fun, local food concoction. You can’t get them anywhere else in town, but every place along the river sells them. In the town of Pelileo, dozens and dozens of stores sell jeans. How do they all survive? I don’t get it. Okay, I digress….back to my story.

We meet our friends Jay, Roger and Roger’s two kids who are visiting from Ohio at the bus station. We get on a very old bus headed toward Chugchilan where we would be staying. The fare was only $2.50…so we anticipated the route being around 2 ½ hours. I sat with Roger’s daughter, Tia, for the ride. Tia is a student at Wright State and spent eight months in Chile last year studying and volunteering. Chile is near the top of my list of countries I want to visit in my lifetime (sooner rather than later) so I had lots of questions for her. Our conversation rekindled my fascination with the country and set in motion (at least mentally) my plans of visiting maybe at the end of our service. I’d love to travel with another couple to check out their wine country and Patagonia (who’s in???)

Our bus slowly creeped up the steep, narrow dirt roads that hugged the mountainside. Tia and I had a few freakout moments where we reflexively grabbed the seats in front of us to brace ourselves when the bus came dangerously close to the edge of the road, which is to say the edge of a very steep cliff. Visibility was limited as we literally were driving through the clouds. It was surreal. At one point the bus stops and everyone is told to get off. We climb over bags filled with potatoes, grain and other produce and gather near the group of Kichwa clad in typical dress, which is to say the women have brightly colored pleated skirts, brighter colored fringed shawls wrapped around their shoulders and the baby or toddler they are carrying on their back, multiple gold necklaces around their neck and felt hats adorned with peacock feathers. The men wore thick woollen ponchos. As they filed past us, I note that they have a distinctive smell that I associate with damp wool and freshly turned soil. Not unpleasant, per se, but distinctive. Trabajadores. As we assembled in front of the bus, we watched in awe as the bus driver whipped out a tool and basically started hacking into the mountainside in order to make the road wide enough for the bus to pass. The other side of the road had totally eroded away and was not really wide enough to drive on. As we waited, a little boy around 4 years old climbed partway down one of the banks, dropped his drawers and started to take a dump.

We were eventually given the signal that it was safe to get back on the bus. We made it past the narrow part in the road, but not without everyone holding their breath. We kept asking Roger how much further until we get to the community. His pat reply was “20 more minutes.” This little game went on for a couple hours. Finally, we pulled into the town of Chugchilan almost four hours after leaving Latacunga. It was completely cloudy and misty as we walked to the Cloud Forest Hostal where we would be staying the next two nights. We had a few beers, played some Espeed Escrabble with the crew (read the ScienceKing blog for more commentary on the games) and turned in early for the night.

The next morning we ate breakfast, then caught a ride in the hostal owner’s truck that had the longest truckbed I’ve ever seen. He threw a mattress and a thick pleather couch cushion in back for us to sit on, which was very kind because boy was it bumpy. The morning was almost totally clear; just a few puffy clouds in the bright blue sky. The view of the valley from the truck bed was absolutely incredible. The mountains were a patchwork of different shades of green. The hillsides then dropped off steeply forming jagged cliffs that plunged down into a deep valley. Off in the distance we could see a couple snow capped volcanoes, the Ilinisas. It was simply stunning.

As we rode, we watched women in typical dress working in the fields of potatoes, onions, chochos and myriad other crops. The slopes of the hillsides where they planted were staggeringly steep. The verdant green landscape was interrupted periodically with small specks of brilliant colors. Surrounding each humble house were bright skirts, shawls and sweaters strewn out on bushes drying in the sun. Few homes had actual clothes lines, and even those that did, didn’t have clothes pins to prevent the clothes from blowing off with the frequent gusts of wind. Most families pragmatically used shrubs or the ground itself to dry their clothes. Roger’s son remarked that he felt he walked into a National Geographic magazine. We saw women trying to direct small herds of sheep, women hoeing the steep fields with babies strapped on their back, families leading llamas loaded down with sacks of potatoes. While we gaped at the landscape, kids along the route gaped at us and waved their hands enthusiastically to greet us. Some unsuccessfully tried to chase the truck to catch up with us. The kids didn’t have coats. Rather, they were bundled up with what looked like multiple layers of thick wool sweaters. They all donned little felt hats which only partly shielded their chapped red cheeks from the wind, cold and brutal sun.

The truck dropped us off at the entrance to Laguna Quilotoa, a breathtakingly beautiful lake that lies in the crater of an extinct volcano. It is definitely up there, at around 3,800 meters, which adds to the breathlessness. The laguna is a brilliant emerald green and is surrounded by jagged cliffs and a few sandy saddlebacks. After many photo moments, we started our hike back to the town where we were staying. It seemed like most of the trails were narrow paths worn by the farmers walking between their fields. There were several points where paths crossed, leaving us scratching our heads wondering which way to go. We almost had a mutiny within the group when we got to a point where we felt lost and we were divided about deciding which path to follow. Although Roger had hiked the trail before, we got to a place where he didn’t recognize where we were. He offered to reduce his “guide fee” by 50%. We stopped by some small hobbit houses with thatched roofs to debate which way to go. Three kids came out to gawk at us, one of them with a plastic bag inexplicably on his head like a hat. Two young boys wanted us to pay them to guide us. Roger’s stubborn, stingy streak came out and he rebuffed their offer. They then asked us for money anyway. I wanted to give them some, but my companions were sticklers about not giving out money.

The hike was a lot of fun, I’d have to say it was definitely a top 5 lifetime hike. Our self guided tour led us through a narrow, claustrophobic crevasse, through dried up gullies, across small streams and along some really narrow hillside paths. Along the route, we had to squeeze past a variety of animals that were essentially parked on the path, including a horse, a donkey and a pig, which all added to the adventure. As we neared a small village, we heard a kid strumming traditional Andean tunes on a guitar. Later, we heard the lilt of a trumpet being played in the distance. When it stopped, we applauded and yelled to the group of people assembled in an open field to ask them to keep playing. At one point we needed to make a strategic decision on which trail to follow to get back to the village. As we stood and contemplated our options, two young Kichwa girls approached us and offered to guide us. Roger balked at first, but after some ribbing from his kids to go for it he finally gave in. After some negotiating, Roger agreed to pay them $1 each to guide us. They took off down the path we probably would not have instinctually chosen. We followed their flowing skirts and whispered giggles. At stopped at a beautiful lookout point, and I asked the girls what their names were. The first one said Maria, and then whispered to the other to say Maria, too. I sensed that they were lying. Oh well. “The Marias” as we called them, walked at quite a little clip, which was amazing given their footwear—black leather shoes with little wedge heels. I had good hiking boots on, but still my toes felt cramped from so many hours of steep downhill trekking. I can’t imagine doing it in dress shoes… Finally we got to a point were Roger was confident he knew where we were and how to get back, so he paid “The Marias” and then they headed back along the path in the opposite direction.

Most of the first four hours of the hike was descending into the deep green canyon. Eventually, however, we had to make the steep ascent to the road to Chugchilan. Not long after starting our climb back out of the canyon, however, it started to rain. The last 40 minutes or so of our hike in the rain was not nearly so pleasant, especially for poor Tia who was sick. I somehow got a second wind and kicked into a higher gear. I didn’t want to stop because if I did, I feared I would get really cold. Going uphill kept my heart rate going despite being wet. Jer, Jay and I booked it back to the lodge where we hung our dripping clothes by the wood fired stove and got warmed up and waited for the second wave of hikers.

That night we played more eSpeed eScrabble, introducing some other guests to the our addiction. We also were treated to a little show by some local girls who did a traditional dance for us, which was entertaining. At the end of their routine, they dragged a bunch of us to dance with them, which was funny and cute. After dinner, we played Texas Hold’em and my beginner’s luck of winning was ground to an abrupt halt. I played with real poker chips for the first time, which I blame for some of my illadvised betting. I had previously played with scrabble squares which all had equal values. Having chips that were suddenly worth 2 – 4 times that really screwed my strategy (not that I really had much of one before). I lost to a somewhat arrogant and annoying player which made my loss all that much harder to take (again, read scienceking blog for more game details). Despite this minor setback, it was a really, really, really fabulous trip.