Sin Ropa

Erin and I took a delightful repast this past weekend to the ecotourism hotspot of Mindo, about two hours northwest and downmountain of Quito. A beautiful little village in a valley, surrounded by lush forests on all sides, and perpetually enshrouded in clouds, giving it a "lost world" appearance, not unlike Rivendale.

Through the magic of time travel, it is now Saturday morning the 22nd of March and we are slogging up a very muddy road towards Las Cascadas, a series of waterfalls...

The view is terrific, the weather is cool and misty and therefore perfect for hiking, but goddam there are way too many cars on this road. It is Semana Santa (Easter) weekend, and that means every single Quiteno with a car has left the city for the weekend and apparently headed for Mindo. Ecotourism merely means the setting is beautiful. It says nothing about how the setting is to be enjoyed. 4-wheelers roar bye, families spend the entire day inside their car looking out, and everyone stays in summer camp-style lodges, one of which even has a huge water slide. Definetely not my idea of ecotourism, but then neither are the National Parks.

We reach a cable car that crosses the gorge in front of us, watch all the walking-averse hop aboard, and we promptly descend a solitary jungle trail to the river below. Solitude disappears as we cross the appropriately sketchy bridge at the bottom and rejoin the masses. But then we reach a cascada (waterfall), and the noise of crashing water drowns out everything else.

I love water. It brings out the kid in everyone. I strip down and dive into the pool, swimming as fast as possible straight into the pounding torrent, only to be spat out immediately with a full mouthful of water. Just below the main plunge pool is a natural water slide. There is a rope that descends along with the chute. I attempt to cautiously lower myself down the slide with the rope, but I'm sucked down immediately, get spun around underwater, and frantically surface. I'm fine, but my hands are rope-burned and I've lost my indomitable bandana which gives me special powers. Nuts. I recall my father's advice (he once lost something important in the surf of Hawaii, but rather than despair, he spent 10 minutes searching for it, and somehow found it), and start to search all the nooks and crannies of the pool. Perseverance is rewarded with luck. The bandana has caught on a snag, and I happily retrieve it.

There is a kid, a teenager, tentatively eyeing the chute as we dry and dress. Like myself, he begins to cautiously descend with the rope. I lean over and holler at him not to use the rope. "Es seguro, no necesitas la ropa, es mejor sin ropa" I say, pointing at my hands and attempting to demonstrate that it hurts to hold onto the rope. The kid gives me a very weird look and backs off. A couple minutes later, he tries again, and again I insist its perfectly safe (Es seguro) and he should not use the rope (sin ropa!). He gives me a really weird look, takes of his T-shirt and goes down the chute. I get momentarily nervous, but then he pops up all right.

Erin and I resume our conversation in Spanish, describing to each other how we are putting our clothes back on. "Vamos ponernos nuestra ropa." Ropa? That means clothes. Woah. I just told the kid to go down the slide naked. No wonder he thought I was a crazy gringo. Like crazy gringos, we laugh uncontrollably as we imagine just what was going through this kid's mind as I insisted he take off his clothes before going down the chute. As we leave, we hear him instruct his little brother, "Sin Camiseta", to take off his shirt before going down.

More pictures to come. Freaky spiders, cool plants and snake!

http://picasaweb.google.com/haroldwershow Hit this up for tons of pics from Ruco Pichincha and Mindo!

It´s all so clear now

Woohoo!! There was sun, real legit sun, all weekend long. Now I can finally stop complaining about the weather. Waaaaaaa-waaaaa-waaaaa, I hear the waaaaaaa-ambulance coming, I must´ve dialed Whine One One.

Anyways, a number of things have become quite clear to me. I made a classic mistake in my last post. Overwhelmed by all the newness of Quito, I could do nothing but compare it to Central America. First of all, that´s about as logical as winding up in Ottawa and comparing it to Florida and Georgia. Second, I made the fatal error of completely ignoring context. My travels in Guatemala and Nicaragua were almost exclusively in small towns and rural areas. I spent a grand total of one week in the two capital cities combined, over the course of 5 months of travel. Yet in Ecuador, all I have seen is Quito, and really all I have seen in Quito is La Mariscal. La Mariscal is inhabited by high-flying Quiteños and foreign tourists galore. La Mariscal has far more in common with NYC´s East Village than it does with a small village in rural Nicaragua. So please ignore any and all comparisons I have made between Quito and Central America, for they are pure bullshit.

Interestingly, this sort of mistake is quite common in anthropology. I´ve been reading Charles Mann´s 1491, a fascinating look at the Americas before disease incapacitated civilizations whose grandeur often surpassed those of Europe and Asia. Mann gives an account of an anthropologist by the name of Holmberg who visited a remote region of Bolivia (the Beni) in the early 1900´s. The peope he found there (also called the Beni) were truly living like savages (or if that offends you, hunter-gatherers). They had no agriculture, pottery, weaving, buildings or any of the other things that are thought of as hallmarks of civilization and culture. They were sickly, weak, hungry, cold and wretched. Holmberg observed all this, and concluded that they had been living an ahistorical life since Pleistocene times. The first thing that had ever happened in their lives was his observations of them. Turns out he should´ve investigated the context of the Beni´s suffering. Just a couple decades before he arrived, their entire civilization had been wiped out by an epidemic. Further investigation found widespread agriculture, cities, massive public works, religious institutions, etc etc etc. An interesting anecdote that applies to many aspects of life, especially when one encounters the new and unknown.

Life in Quito es muy tranquilo. Tranquilo is by far my favorite Spanish word, as it means chill, except you get to draw it out to emphasive the chillness. Traaaanqeeeeeeeelo, todo es tranqeeeeelo. O tranquilEEEEEEEEE-seemo. Erin Noble and I are living in an apartment, we´re super close to all the action in Quito. There is a family that lives off and on in the apartment as well, a few adult daughters our age and La Mama, who is possibly the most hilariously overdramatic person I have ever met. We have Spanish school during the day, explore the city during the afternoons, and find amusing ways to study at night, such as playing chess or getting wasted (in Spanish, of course). Despite all the english in this text, I am actually speaking almost exclusively Spanish, which is incredible. I have a terrible time coming up with synonyms in English as a result.

Yesterday, we climbed Ruco Pichincha, the volcano that towers over Quito. It was an excellent adventure in all aspects. We made a new friend along the way, we got hit with a snowstorm as we ascended the peak, we didn´t fuck up in any meaningful way, and we finally got out of Quito. My first time out of the city since I arrived!! As I aspire to talk about rocks in every post, I will mention that I did collect a few likely samples, but did not investigate them thoroughly, due to the deleterious effects of altitude and exertion on the geology portion of my brain. First order observations...they are volcanic. That goes for almost every rock in Ecuador. I´ll scope them out tonight and report back.

Good news!! Erin has a camera, and uses it to take pictures. While I have long espoused the superiority of mental pictures, as they cannot be stolen and are very unobtrusive, they are surprisingly difficult to share. So, I will soon be posting some very sweet pictures of Quito, La Mama y la familia, Ruco Pichincha, and of course Erin and myself having the time of our lives. Picture blogs are more fun to write and to read!!!

Que vaya bien