Saints and Semanas

I'm back from Cuenca, back at the old familiar L'Auberge Inn in Quito--en la esquina de la Avenida Gran Colombia y Yaguachi, as I've told one hundred or more taxistas during the last month.

Today, Quito seems frenetic and smoggy and boy have I mentioned how sick I am of being stared at? I can't believe there's a place in this world where I can walk around and NOT be gawked at for being tall and white and (relatively) wealthy and female and traveling without an hombre (!Que valiente!) I feel like I have dollar bills sticking out of my ears, Betty Boop lips painted on my face, and a sign on my butt saying "Ask me enough times, and maybe I just WILL buy your stinkin' Clorets! Maybe I'll buy them all! Put you out of business!" Oh the whistling. Oh the hassling.

Alright, alright, I'm beginning to sound bitter. Trouble is, I am. Okay, not really. It's just that I'm really almost kind of pretty ready to go home. Ready to brush my teeth with tap water and eat lettuce when it's offered to me and call people from my cell phone(!) rather than an overpriced cabina telefonica... Of course, as soon as I start fantastizing about my own bed, and shower, and refrigerator, I think of some of the fellow travelers I've crossed paths with on this trip--travelers who will still be hostel-hopping and bumbling through the local public transportation system long after I'm all tucked in, into my jersey sheets, with my down comforter...


I'm referring to people like my Norwegian friend Tore (prounounced TWO-RAH), who is leaving Ecuador for Peru in a few days, just one of many, many long bus rides he'll be making in the next few months (he's traveling for 14 in total). Tore and I met up in Cuenca the other day and shared some lovely moments-- this photo was taken when we were waiting for the bus, in the rain, to take us to a little town near Cuenca that has thermal hot springs. They're totally overdeveloped and you'd hardly know they were natural if you stumbled upon them, but boy-- was it heaven to doggy paddle around in an Olympic-sized pool of steaming water while it was drizzling the way it does every single day during the rainy season in this beautiful country. (By the way, I've had more than one cab driver refer to the weather in the Andes as "como las mujeres"...as in, constantly changing its mind. Ay machismo! Kinda funny though...).

Tore and I also spent some time, on Easter, at the big marketplace where locals buy their produce and herbs and pig heads and things (and, as it turns out, if it's Easter, also where they party like it's 1999 to a band wearing matching polyester shirts and dancing in unison). I had my first negative experience with photo-taking at that market. Boy, I try to be so polite, and I absolutely always ask (if they notice that I'm taking the photo, that is... stealth is better) and people are usually quite gracious, but in this case, I was rejected twice, and rudely at that! Ah well. Supposedly, some people think that when gringos take photos, they're doing it so they can take them back to their countries and sell them for lots of money. Not a bad idea. Just kidding. Seriously though-- you do wonder where some of those postcards come from-- I keep seeing ones that feature indigenous women in the Amazon wearing no clothing from the waist up, and I can't help but wonder if that particular woman is getting a percentage of the proceeds??? Likely not.


Other beautiful, intersting Cuenca moments include my trip to Ingapirca, the most substantial Incan ruin in Ecuador. It was a remarkable sight--but boy, I couldn't stand listening to our guide. It was all so fascinating, truly! And yet, it was all I could do not to start throwing spitballs at my fellow tour-goers. "Booooo-ring!!!" some voice inside me kept saying. And so I kinda wandered off and took photographs and looked for pottery shards. Found tons of 'em-- they were just lying around like discarded cigarette butts. Crazy!


The best part of the day, though, was stumbling upon a Good Friday procession (as part of Semana Santa, or "Saint's Week"), winding through the green mountains, as far as the eye could see. Indigenous families wearing mostly traditional clothing, some on horseback, some carrying rather gory, lifesize replicas of Jesus, walking and walking and walking... watching them from behind was particularly breathtaking--they wear these traditional black hats, which blend into a dark, flowing sea when viewed from afar.

Tomorrow or the next day, if all goes as planned, I'll head out with my new friend Letty (the artisan I mentioned earlier) to the Intag region, to find out how they produce this unique fiber that use to make their crafts. If all doesn't go well, I may just head north, a few days early, to Cotacachi, self-proclaimed "eco-city," where I'm trying to meet with the mayor to find out what it means to be an eco-city. More on that later.

On Saturday, I head west to Manta, where I'll be accompanying my Round Earth journalist friends to visit Panama hat factories. They're doing a series of radio and print pieces on the globalization of Panama hats-- and I'm going to take photos for the web, as well as provide moral support and the occasional wisecrack.

Well, I suppose I may as well bust out the latest news--I made it into Columbia!!!! Whew. Very exciting. Crazy though too-- because for one, I have to race back to the U.S. and visit both coasts to decide where I want to go, and for two, it's preposterously expensive and I have no idea how I'm going to make that happen. I could always sell Clorets, I suppose...

Well, better sign off. I'm beginning to feel like I'm not in Ecuador, and that'll happen soon enough. In the overall scheme of things, after all, una semana es nada!