Riding on top of the world

Hostel Izhcayluma, nice place to wake up.

 It turns out that the quarter-century old impressions of a six year old are not necessarily accurate.

Because that was the last time I rode a horse, and I remembered the feel of a large warm animal between my legs but it being a pretty easy, relaxed experience. So relaxed in fact that when asked in Vilcabamba what level of experience I had in riding horses, I answered "intermediate."

Seems so clearly foolish in hindsight, but I figured "hey, I rode camels down sand dunes in the Sahara, horses have to be easier than that, right?"

When we met our guide, Holger, that morning, he asked "are you loco (crazy), super loco, or ultra-loco? I brought two horses for you guys (K and I, we were joined by a German lass named J), one is water, one is rocket-gasolina."

When we saw the horses I was immediately drawn to one, which turned out to be my rocket-gasolina steed, named Lucero. I mounted and felt fine. Then we started trotting and I was highly embarrassed at the prospect of dying that way. Holger looked at me and said "don't hold the saddle horn, that's very dangerous. Both hands in the air like this...and it's good for the abs."

I thought back to everything I knew about riding horses...Maximus in Gladiator saying "I tell my son to keep his heels down when he's riding his horse." Okay Maximus, let's go!

We started up a rocky ravine, Lucero repeatedly falling behind then at my insistence trotting over the sharp stones, but by the time we reached the panoramic views I was feeling much more self-assured, which was good because the views were stunning.

Holger: "Later we'll try to find some lassos."
Me: "Nah, I've already got a girlfriend."
Holger: (looks thoughtful) "Do you want a backup?"
Me: (also looking thoughtful) "Nah, one already feels like too much sometimes."
Needless to say, this conversation was in Spanish, though K understands the language far too well now...





We tied the horses at Holger's family holding, high in the epic hills, and climbed to the top on foot, along meandering cow trails through clouds of bright ladybugs and butterflies.

Someone's clearing land for farming way off in the distance. Hard place to earn a living.

 Up here the horses decided to gallop. It was one of the best feelings I can remember (especially once I managed to put the camera securely away.)

It's an interesting and exhilarating sensation to gallop towards a cliff...trusting that it's all going to be okay.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Helluva place for a date, no?






 

This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken in awhile. Raining in the Andes, with rider... I want to go back!

The Valley of Eden

The German who told us about Vilcabamba was not young. Nor would she be considered old anywhere but a college campus or youth hostel, but we were in the latter. In a youth hostel I'm positively paternal, so in her mid-40s, she was verging on grandmotherly.

It's a weird world, that of the backpacker.

But it's also a serendipitous and miraculous one, and here we were, a few hours into our months in Ecuador, and a lady who looked like she had the experience to know what she was talking about was telling us about the semi-mystical land of Vilcabamba.

"It's the Valley of Eternal Life, people there live to be 140 years old, and that's the average."

"Well...my visa doesn't last that long...but tell me more."

"I stayed at this place" grabbing one of the flyers for Hostel Izhcayluma that would prove ubiquitous in Ecuador "it is beautiful, with great views, friendly people, and delicious food."

Ears perk up. "Food?"

"Yes. Very good food. And cheap. I had a whole dorm to myself for $10, and when I came back the dorm was full, but they gave me a private for that price, just because they're nice."

She waxed on, teutonic poetic, and K and I were both convinced by the time we stood up from the dingy common room couches. We finally made it after five months, and found Vilcabamba and the hilltop Izhcayluma to be even better than she'd said.

The view of the valley was incredible, the fruit salad fresh, and the granola homemade. The overheard language was German, but hey, you can't win 'em all. Just kidding mein freund. (The Izhcayluma is German-owned.)

The town is the perfect size and tourist exposure. They have restaurants but no chains, enough streets to wander but not nearly enough to get lost, and the locals neither stared at us as aliens nor despised us as invaders.

Fine lines to tread, one and all, and I fear all lines are crossed eventually, often tragically quickly.

Already Vilcabamba is edging towards becoming a retirement community for Americans. From the heights we would have a burgeoning town pointed out, described as "puro American, todos...todos. They're building a shopping center."

The central plaza with its chipped fountain, shady benches, and sonorous church bells (god I love Latin America!) was host to ancient locals in cowboy hats, giggling schoolkids in uniforms, and gringo hippies saying namaste to each other and selling handmade soap (which they apparently don't use).

After the beloved almuerzo lunch special, we went looking for the book exchange. Books are a necessary luxury for us, but their weight was proving problematic, and we'd somehow built up a positively expansive backpacker library of four books. Four! What are we, the Library of Congress?

There was the epic thunder one only finds in the mountains as we started off, and halfway there the promise was fulfilled as rain started, a deluge from the start. The streets ran with rivers, and our sandaled feet were rasped with gravel grit under the straps, under the increased friction of wet rubber.

But we found the exchange, dripping on the carpet as we traded three Pulitzer books and a Tom Robbins for old Paolo Coehlo and Zora Neale Hurston. Quite the celebrity transaction, and we dropped a few pounds.

The torrent was unrepentant and determined when we were ready to go, so we nestled our books in my mostly-waterproof bag and run-hobbled downhill, hoping for a taxi. One of the yellow pickup trucks finally pulled up, but the driver took one look at us and said "but you're wet."

I looked back. "Yes."

He grimaced. "The back?"

"Okay."

We climbed in back, arms held tightly to sides and faces squinting in endurance. He took off through town and up the hill to our hostel, the rain like needles on any exposed skin, and our grimaces gave ground to grins as we watched ourselves flying through town in the back of a pickup truck, utterly drenched, in an Andean mountain valley, with a beautiful room and a hot shower waiting for us.

After the wonderfully hot shower I sat above the clearing valley and emerging stars with a big plate of exquisite stroganoff with homemade spaetzle dumplings and a cold beer.

Thank you, German lady. You were right.

A Home for Everyone. Part 3 of 3. The important part.

The first thing I saw upon waking was a stack of board games that were well-meant donations, though I can't imagine any of these kids sitting down to a calm and orderly board game. Maybe when they're older?

For breakfast we had bread rolls with honey, cafe con leche, and colada morada, a sort of warm fruit smoothie, thick, purple, with chunks of pineapple and strips of cinnamon swimming in it that is specifically traditional for Independence Day.

We ate with Nancy, the founder and head honcho of the orphanage and all its various programs. An intelligent and impressive woman, she is dignity with salt and pepper hair, compassion with kind eyes, and is one of the profoundly kind souls that keep the world on its course.

But the future of Hogar Para Todos is uncertain as Ecuador reevaluates its childcare systems, in particular the relative benefits of group orphanages versus a foster-parent system of one or two kids per house. Changing regulations and support could leave Hogar high and dry at any moment.

Meanwhile, they are encouraging a dialogue with other systems and nations, and the murky swirl of international politics has lately put Ecuador on a team with Venezuela and Cuba, so we were joined at breakfast by a matron from that unique island who was there to exchange and discuss techniques and approaches.

The conversation ranged from the relative importance of nuclear families, to substance abuse and its repurcussions, to the looming dangers of a world system based on importing cheap and often non-nutritious foods. Nancy looked out the window and reminisced about only a few decades ago when the view would have been local farms producing food for the nation. Now it's mostly concrete buildings on top of the former fields.

[I have run into this danger in many countries. Is it really a good idea to rely on a system that makes everyone vulnerable to the problems of key individual nations? Especially in an age of climate change? Fish are caught off Norway, shipped to China to be cleaned and boxed, then shipped back to Norway. America does the same with meat, shipping frozen pig carcasses to China and back. What local farm grows Pringles? But I digress.]

After breakfast, Nancy showed us some of the projects she wants to build to improve the orphanage. They are halfway through installing living quarters for volunteers or visitors, which often include the families and children adopted there. She wants to put a sort of infirmary where sick kids can recover in peace, and she dreams of putting in a little living space for single mothers whose partners have run off or are otherwise absent. (They are already trying to do this, but having a safe living space will be an integral part.)

Then it came time to leave, and we went downstairs to say goodbye to the kids.

It was a sea of hugs, smiles, and voices saying thank you and sometimes begging us not to leave. Hugs that the day before had been light and happy were now somehow heavy, not wanting to let go, even though we'd only been able to give them a few hours of friendship. I've left a lot of good places and people, but after only a day, it was already among the hardest I've ever had to walk away from.

G, the young girl with the oral surgery scars, gave us big hugs then ran off, reappearring a moment later with a drawing she had made. She painstakingly wrote on the back (in Spanish) "we love you a lot, from the boys and girls."

Some of our best friends from the day before saw us coming, backpacks signaling our imminent departure, and turned to go the other way.

Then J, my particular little angel-faced sweetheart who rode around on my shoulders in pure goodwill the day before...came up without a smile, giant brown eyes in an expressionless face, and hit me in the stomach with her tiny child fist. A long look and she walked away. She's seen a lot of walking away, I think.

These children understand helplessness, far too well, but we were helpless too. We had no more time to give.

So now for the important part.

Ecuadoran law does not allow direct sponsorship of a particular child, but if you are inclined to help, please contact me for info, check their facebook page (Fundacion Hogar Para Todos in Azogues, Ecuador), or click the "donate" button above and I will pass it along.

In fact, I will match the first $200 donated that way.

There are so very many worthy causes in the world, and I haven't meant a single word of these three posts to be a guilt trip, but after seeing the tangibly important work that Hogar Para Todos does every day for the 28 children living there, plus the offsite people they reach out to help and the local women they employ, and all in a place where even a few dollars buys food and clothing, I hope we can help them a little in turn.

A Home for Everyone. Part 2.

After my lack of success at feeding little Mateo, I wasn't sure what to do next...until the door slapped open with an explosive expulsion of tiny people, arms immediately going around K's and my waists, faces peering up at us with smiles and questions.

"Hello hello, what is your name?" They cried. "I am Luis."

I am Michi. I am Leonela. I am Antonio. I am Anita.

My name does not translate easily into Spanish, so somehow they took to calling me "Javier Loco." Crazy Javier. I can live with that.

The self-conscious awkwardness of our first hour was over, swept away by enthusiasm and exuberance. They hung from my arms, rode on my shoulders, and clung like giant shoes to my feet. I called them sacks of apples, threw them over my shoulder, and delivered them to each other. We giggled for the next eight hours...then looked at the clock to find it was actually about 2 hours.

How do people do this? Having 3 children on my shoulders was fun, and that giggling in your ears is a sublime soundtrack, but (as K has inexplicably started saying) we were knackered!

We took a break in town, ate tamales in someone's garage-restaurant and drank "tree tomato" smoothies. In the chaotic market, where indigena women in bowler hats sold exotic fruit and stern men parcelled out bleeding hunks of animals, we bought three dozen tangerines and a pair of plastic soccer balls, one yellow, one red.

Back at the orphanage a couple hands went for the fruit in my left hand, but every eye went to the ball in my right. An hour later it came back, split in half, while the other ball miraculously survived the day, though I doubted it'd see a second sunset. I tried not to think of the proper ball we'd lost in transit...

The balls were a big hit, but these kids don't need much to have fun. A sheet of imitation lego broken into three pieces served as cell phone, steering wheel, and plane ticket when we "flew" to France. Handfulls of grass bought the tickets, and everyone looked out the window at the giant birds, hoping as I did that they didn't eat planes for lunch.

Throughout the afternoon they took turns disappearing for their baths, returning in pajamas with wet hair to play in the dirt some more before dinner.

There was A, whose behavior problems are occassionally a threat to the harmony of the orphanage. B was addicted to pinching and pulling my leg hair with a mischevious grin (I can't blame her, she has probably never seen a monkey like me) and C who had a penchant for climbing as high as he could on the furniture and jumping off. D got attention by crying, and E took great care of him.

We called F "cookie monster" after she spent the afternoon chewing on the corner of the plastic bag holding her mashed-up cookies, most of which spilled out the open top. We had to give the little imp a nickname as we narrated for each other her capricious swings from sweet-faced innocence to flying-fisted devilry. "Did you see what cookie monster just did?"

Little girls ranging from 4 to 6ish, G, H, I, and J were absolute angels.

G's mouth shows the marks of major reconstructive surgery, probably a cleft palate, but her smile is pure exuberance, a gift no less precious for its frequency.

J rode around for a solid hour on my shoulders, giggling and participating in whatever game I suggested, and at one point chewing on my hair with a placid expression on her face while she grazed that made K laugh out loud, while I entreated her not to go back for seconds.

We slept that night under a Looney Tunes blanket, my head on a Tweetie Bird pillow, and woke to the sound of clamoring little voices and running feet downstairs...

A home for everyone.

Azogues is not in the guide book for Ecuador. A fifty-cent bus ride north of Cuenca, it's a pretty nice place, judging by my minimal exposure, but I don't think UNESCO is knocking on the door.

The ones who were knocking were K and I, on the door of an orphanage named "Un hogar para todos" which translates to "A home for everyone." Through the metal bars of the gate we could see a trampoline, a cracked plastic tricycle with purple pedals, and a few mismatched segments of doll bodies.

An orphanage is a rough place to be a doll.

Our knocks brought a stout woman, hair pulled back in a sensible bun, stains the size of children's streaking fingers all over the bottom foot of her red-striped shirt. She looked at us with polite caution, standing a few feet back from the gate.

"Good afternoon. Yes?"

"Good afternoon. We're...um...here to visit? We're the family of L----? We called yesterday? Is Nancy here?"

K's aunt and uncle adopted two children from this orphanage years ago, and was our connection to it. We were there to deliver some support, see the changes to the place over the last few years, and visit with good people.

Caution gave way to friendliness. As she showed us to our room, there didn't seem to be anyone else around. Just lots of doll crime scenes. She went back to the kitchen to continue making food, but for whom?

In one sunny room we found two severely developmentally disabled children laying on the mat, gazing up at the windows. They had soft smiles and seemed content, except one's face would occassionally contort and emit a blood-curdling scream before fading back into vague happiness.

K and I looked at each other, both with blank faces, rattled, both hoping the other would somehow make it all understandable.

In a small room next to the kitchen we found half a dozen small children, the 5 year olds helping to feed the younger. A row of 4 high chairs against the wall held four tiny boys who peered at K and I with the instinctive interest of the 1 year old, great big brown eyes.

We asked to help, and soon I was trying to spoon rice and small pieces of fish into Mateo, a cherub who preferred standing on the seat to sitting in it, and who was unenthusiastic about lunch. He preferred handing me an anonymous plastic piece of a broken toy, then asking for it back, at which point he'd wave it around before throwing it at me.

I managed to coax two bites in over the course of five minutes, and was feeling pretty good about myself when the blast came, lips blurbling and pieces of soggy rice and fish spraying all over the chair, floor, and me.

I am not a parent. This was a new experience for me.

I persevered, getting another bite in. Airplane noises and swooping spoons were useless, but I snuck a second one in when he yelled. Then, perhaps predictably, came the second blast. Sticky moist rice on my cheek. He was an unfamiliar contraption, and I wanted to beg "how do these things work?"

I did finally get one and a half mini-spoonfuls in before giving up, and letting one of the 5 year olds carry him off into the playground. I set the metal bowl of uneaten food on the table, not sure what to do next.

I didn't have long to wait before finding out...

Contrary, concurrent, and compatible.

We departed Curacao, ready to move on but not wanting to leave. With excitement for the future and reluctance to leave the past, we focused on the present, absorbed in the parallel universe of air travel.

Food meant peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we brought with us, eaten at the zinc tables of the airport's Juan Valdez Cafe. Going to the bathroom meant stepping around the "cuidado, piso mojado" sign and being surrounded by peeing strangers, their belches and odors. Opening overhead compartments meant exercising caution, as contents may have shifted during flight.

One leg at a time, we soon forgot that there was life outside of airports, security screenings, and seats 11A/11B. Please have your boarding passes ready.

But now the horizon holds something other than a line of clouds and a titanium wing; I am again Ecuadorian. I speak Spanish here, and feel unsure when people express something in ways other than I expect them to. I find myself frequently wanting to say "sorry, but all that jibber jabber means 'yes', right?" Particularly on the phone. I've never liked those things.

We used to spend old Dutch money in Curacao, now we spend old American money in Ecuador. Colonialism and imperialism, old and new. We used to drink water from the tap, now we spit meticulously after brushing our teeth with it. We used to walk down cracked sidewalks past rotting garbage...well, we still do that, although now there are no lizards in it.

Lizards are great controls on the cockroach population apparently.

On the island a couple people knew our names, but here no one does. But the average stranger there ranged from brusque to hostile, while Ecuadorians, if anything, are even nicer this time than they were before.

We wanted to hug the cooks at yesterday's breakfast cafeteria, want to adopt the hotel staff here, and when I tried to return this piece of shit computer yesterday the salesman seemed genuinely sorry that he couldn't do it, and helped us submit the required online complaint on his computer. (Think HP will honor its guarantee? We'll see.)

We miss Curacao, its friends, yoga classes, and seaaa breeezes. And we love Ecuador, its frenetic streets, easy temperatures, and welcoming openness.

Missing the past, but happy with the present. One side of the coin is a Dutch queen, the other an American president, but they both come up heads, we win.

Why did that pirate just confiscate my ball?



Mannequins in Cuenca are creepy.

It wasn't until four hours into the day's travel, one flight done, one more to go, that I solved the mystery of all the weird people in the new Bogota airport. Yeah it's a new airport, but why the facepaint, eye patches, and bobbly headbands?

Traveling for long periods you tend to forget things like holidays. Which is too bad, because I normally love Halloween.

In my experience it's not very big overseas though. I only remembered it in 2008 by the one kid in a dinosaur costume on the street in Belgrade, and last year in Belgium its only manifestation was a party whose posters subtly promised a prominence of bikinis in the crowd.

I'd pondered going all-out on macabre zombie makeup and bloodstains, then boarding the plane with an utterly nonchalant lack of explanation. That would have been a better idea 12 years ago though, before airports lost their sense of humor.

All too often they've also lost their kindness, but not yesterday.

Our check-in guy was so damn helpful and friendly that I just sent an email to his company saying so. (Do check-in staff work for the airline or the airport? He had a logo on his sweatervest...)

Then there was the staff in Bogota. They were helpful. Over and over and over and over...

Remember the soccer ball K earned by doing public aerobics in Quito?

It's been with us ever since, in a series of plastic bags on every bus and in every hostel. The plan was to deliver it to the orphanage outside of Cuenca we were supposed to visit four months ago, but we couldn't get in touch with them, so just kept carrying it. We will finally visit the orphanage the day after tomorrow. Two days.

Did you know you can only take a ball on a plane if it's deflated? Otherwise it might explode, scaring the pidgeons we have apparently become when we fly. When we flew out of Guayaquil in August they had a needle in security for just that purpose.

We never did reinflate it in Curacao, despite our oceanic water polo intentions, and it was still flat when we took off from Curacao. In flight it magically reinflated. I understand the lower pressure would make it look full while we were flying, but shouldn't it have gone back to empty when we landed?

I am clearly not a physicist, and the damn thing was too inflated to pass muster in Bogota.

I stuck a paperclip in it but no air would come out. The guard tried a pencap to identical noneffect. They said to send an airline staffperson to take custody of it. The first three ladies made excuses for their laziness, so we tried our gate staff, who sent us to another gate who sent us to another gate where my new favorite person, Ernesto, tried valiently to help us, going back to security with us.

We'd have to check the ball in as luggage, under the plane, which meant going to baggage check, which meant leaving the secure part of the airport, which meant entering Colombia formally, which meant going through customs and immigration, twice.

We did all that, checking my watch regularly reassuring ourselves that I hadn't changed the time zone, so that couldn't have been our plane that just took off. But that's a nervous feeling. It's for a bleeping orphanage, for god's sake! I always feel like orphanages are kind of...corny. Too much. But this time it was real! Orphans! Need a soccer ball!

After 4-5 miles of airport hallways and two dozen staff, we were at the right place...but couldn't check it without its own bag, which they could not provide.

We carried that ball from June until Halloween, dozens of crowded buses, hours of crimped fingers holding it, and we lost it, failed, two days before delivery. Son of a ball-popper.

The silver lining is that 99% of the staff we dealt with was friendly. Bogota just opened a new airport, and they have yet to aquire the cynical bitchiness so common elsewhere. May those yellow sweatervested ushers maintain their smiles for as long as possible.

We'll buy a new ball in Cuenca tomorrow. Coulda thought of that earlier I bet.