Today began much earlier than expected, when I woke up at 4 AM to the sound of the doorbell. I still have no idea what that was about - I heard Isabel and the other residents talking, but couldn´t make anything out, and I thought it best not to get involved.
I went back to sleep and woke up again when I´d planned to, around 6 so I´d have time to finish packing. That was when I hit my first snag of the day: the mystery of the disappearing toothbrush. I remember specifically not packing my toothbrush, because I wanted to use it this morning, yet it had vanished from its cup in the bathroom. It´s not as if anyone would mistake it for theirs, either, because it´s a big white-and-purple electric one, not to mention I´m the only one who uses that bathroom. Roc wasn´t much help - his questions about it made Isabel think I was looking for a hairdryer. Heh. But one of the other residents gave me a new toothbrush that he´d packed as a spare, and really, may a lost toothbrush be the worst problem I have on this trip.
After breakfast and a minature ransacking, Roc and I headed out to the bus station, where we hit another small snag when they wouldn´t let me take my backpack as a carryon, since it was so heavy. Fortunately they gave me time to retrieve my water bottle and some of my favorite books before they locked it in the luggage hold.
The bus ride was something of an adventure. Even though Ecuador´s only the size of Colorado, it takes about 13 hours to get from Quito to the coast, because you have to take lots of winding roads down from the mountains. The bus´s size turned these roads into a roller coaster, as we the passengers were tossed from side to side at every turn. The most exciting part came when I had to use the tiny bathroom at the back - I was thrown from one seat to another on the way down the aisle, and in the bathroom itself I was shaken like the beads in a maraca. As I said to the lady who was waiting to use it after me, "Es una adventura!"
The view made up for it, though. Walls of green hundreds of feet high, with little waterfalls and streams everywhere. Once you get out of Quito, you can really see that Ecuador isn´t a wealthy country - there are lots of shantytowns, and (very) rural markets, with fruit spread out as far as the eye can see, not to mention entire pig halves hanging outside butcher shops. My favorite was the candy store, because I got to see how they make a type of candy-stick that´s very common here: they start with a forty-pound lump of taffy-like stuff, hang it over a beam, and then bring the two ends together and twist them into narrow sticks.
One interesting thing to note is how the livestock change with altitude. Up in the mountains, people mostly have sheep, with a few cattle and horses (it´s quite something to see cows in a pasture that slopes down at a 45-degree angle). Farther down, the sheep disappear and it´s mostly cows, although I did see a herd of horses with one llama hiding in their midst. By the time you´re down in the flat lands, the cows are outnumbered by the chickens, and the horses have been joined by donkeys and mules. I also spotted one lone herd of ostritches.
By 1 PM I was getting hungry, and worried because I hadn´t brought any snacks. We drove into a town with a big sign proclaiming "Bienvenidos a Venezuela!" (Me: "I knew we´d been driving too long."). This was Santo Domingo, where we passengers were herded through a cheap buffet and even cheaper snack store - chicken, pasta, and cookies all around.
By the time we were on the coast proper it was almost dark, and there was an awesome view of a lightning storm over the mountains as we drove along. I was the only passenger going to Puerto Lopez, so for the last hour or so it was just me, and the conductor invited me up to the driver´s section to sit and chat. I´m half-sure they were trying to flirt with me, since a lot of their questions were about whether I had a boyfriend and whether I liked to go dancing, but I stayed professional and tried to keep to topics like my interest in teaching and other traveling I´d done.
We reached Puerto Lopez around 9:30, and I met up with Marianne, the local program representative. When I talked to Roc yesterday, we´d agreed that since I´d be arriving so late, it would be better for me to stay in Puerto Lopez the first night and go to Salango in the morning, so Marianne took me to a hostel owned by a friend of hers, and we agreed to talk more tomorrow. After I dropped off my luggage, I went looking for a nearby restaurant she´d described. It was cute: a tiny family-owned one, where I had fried fish and rice at a card table, and was waited on by the owner´s children.
Even if I hadn´t seen the ocean down the street, I would have known I wasn´t in the mountains anymore, because the air is a good 15 degrees warmer, and I´d guess the humidity is close to 100 percent. There´s no air conditioning in the hostel, but I´ve lived through 12 Maryland summers, and if I can survive that, I can survive this.
Day 19: Where the Water Meets the Land and Says "Hello, Land!"
Either I didn´t put the mosquito net down right or the bed isn´t very clean, because I woke up this morning with a number of insect bites. This shall be guarded against in the future.
Actually, I discovered them the second time I woke up - the first time was before sunrise, when the local roosters serenaded me with an early morning chorus. After a cold shower (which felt good in the heat), I went down to have breakfast in the lobby/common room/patio/etc. Marianne arrived at 10, and we chatted about what my placement would involve, what my previous experience was, and her own experiences and those of past volunteers. Marianne used to be in the Peace Corps, and she´s very much a latter-day hippie, right down to the, uh, personal appearance choices and the slightly-stoned way of talking. In other words, she´s exactly my kind of person, and I think we´ll get along very well.
Just as planned, she gave me the cellphone used by past volunteers (which means it has most of the important numbers already programmed in), and then we drove out to Salango. It´s about 10 minutes by car, along a very dusty, bumpy road that runs through rocky hills and dunes of sand and grass. To my delight, we turned a corner and saw a flock of magnificent frigatebirds flying down the beach - Marianne says there´s a bird sanctuary nearby.
Salango itself is very much a rustic fishing village. Only one street is paved, the (small) houses are of wooden slats and painted concrete, there are chickens and dogs roaming everywhere, and it all smells of the sea. I´ll have to get some pictures.
We met up with Ivo and Fernando, my host uncles, at El Pelicano, their family´s restaurant and gathering spot for tourists who want to go on snorkeling trips. They brought us to the home of Flor, my host mother, and we all sat down and talked for a while. Flor has three daughters: the oldest one is in her mid-twenties and is working as a graphic designer in the Galapagos, but the middle one, Vanessa (or possibly Manessa, I´m not used to the local accent yet) is 17 and lives at home. They all seem like nice, laid-back people, and I hope we´ll all get along. Marianne also took me to see the school where I´ll be working, and to meet the headmaster, Gaston. He seems like an okay guy, but I get the impression that he´s pretty distracted, so I´m not sure how much I´ll be able to count on him.
After finding a phone and letting my family know I´d arrived safely, I spent the rest of the day unpacking and resting from the bus ride yesterday. There isn´t any air conditioning, but the weather isn´t that bad, no more than 90 or so at most. Compared to Easton and Costa Rica, this is nothing.
I had to repair my mosquito net before putting it up, and I think Flor and Vanessa were a bit surprised that I knew how to sew - I told them about how I´d made a lot of doll clothes when I was younger. My bathroom has a toilet and shower, but no sink, so I´ve found myself washing my hands in the shower. Fortunately I brush my teeth with my water bottle anyway, so that shouldn´t be a problem.
Day 20: Mad Dogs and Americans
Flor´s family keeps a flock of chickens in the back yard: a big rooster, seven or eight hens, and a two-month-old chick who comes into the house to beg for food and escape being the lowest in the pecking order. Since they don´t have names, I´ve mentally dubbed the rooster Everett, the three fluffiest hens Peach, Perdy, and Rae Dawn, and the chick Waspinator.
Everett got his name because one of the movies on my iPod is O Brother, Where Art Thou? and he woke me up with a song in the pre-dawn hours, complete with the neighbors´roosters as backup. Since today was Saturday, I went back to sleep, and didn´t get up again until 10-ish. Despite what the info packet said, my shower does not have hot water, but the water it does have isn´t very cold, and as I´ve said, cold showers feel good in this weather.
Eventually we all got up and had breakfast, and I went out for a walk on the beach, camera in tow. It´s a flat, crescent-shaped sand beach maybe 2-3 miles long, backed by cliffs and the village, and stopped at the ends by rocky points. The fishing boats are moored just offshore, and there are lots of kids roaming around, helping the fishermen on shore. As I was going back, one of the local guys came up to say hello and ask about me (I explained that I was a volunteer come to teach English in the school, no I did not have a boyfriend, and no I was not hoping to find one. I´m glad that MondoChallenge has a rule against having relationships with local people, since it gives me a way to end that line of questioning quickly.) In contrast, the other half of the beach is deserted, except for the frigatebirds, pelicans, herons, and crabs.
Around 1 PM I headed back to Flor´s for lunch, and she and Vanessa went to pick up the youngest daughter, 11-year-old Denise. The family has a big collection of movies on DVD (I suspect that at least some of them are bootlegged, but I won´t ask), so at Denise´s insistence, we watched Naufrago, a.k.a. Cast Away with dubbed Tom Hanks. I joked that if they ever made a sequel, it could be about the adventures Wilson had after he floated away - this idea was a big hit.
I like Denise a lot. She´s very bubbly and talkative, and she was intrigued when she learned what I´d said last night about making doll clothes. I agreed that I could make some for her Barbies, if she had the materials.
I picked up quite a sunburn from my walk on the beach, so I didn´t go out for the rest of the day, but after dinner (meals here consist almost entirely of rice, beans, fish, chicken, fried plantains, spaghetti, and tomatoes, in various combinations) the four of us went out to a small carnival that had set up shop a few streets away. We met up with some of Flor´s friends-and-relations and went to various amusements - I managed to win a pack of gum in a dart-throwing game. Vanessa and I went on the ferris wheel, a small and rickety one that I´m not sure would pass inspection in the US, but obviously we survived. By then everyone was tired, and we sat off to the side talking. I had great fun with one of Flor´s nieces, a heartrendingly cute girl about 4-5 years old, whose favorite game was to blow up a balloon, pretend it was a fruit ("Es una manzana!" "Es una sandia!" etc.), and "eat" it by letting the air out. I set her family up for future annoyance, I´m sure, by showing her how to make the balloon squeal and wheeze by pulling it tight when she let the air out.
I just hope I can keep up this kind of rapport with children in the weeks to come.
Photos:
A shot of my room. It isn´t very big, so it´s hard to get a good view.
Frigatebirds outside my window.
Everett and Waspinator. This pic doesn´t really capture how gangly Waspinator is.
Some shots from my walk on the beach.
These crabs were all over the beach. This one´s about the size of an egg.
Cue "Ride of the Valkyries" playing here.
Even in remote Ecuadorian fishing villages, people throw sneakers over power lines.
Day 21: Sailing for Adventure on the Big Blue Wet Thing
Once again Everett woke me before dawn, and once again we all went back to sleep and didn´t get up until late. I´d planned to spend the afternoon going over lesson plans, but around 3, Vanessa ducked in to say that the extended family was going on a boat trip to a nearby beach, and I was invited to come along.
A dozen of us piled into a motorboat owned by one of the uncles, and we sailed to a quiet beach in a cove just around the corner from Salango. I was a bit surprised to learn that not everyone here learns to swim at an early age - Flor, for example, hadn´t learned until a few years ago. We anchored 50-100 yards offshore, and took turns jumping off and swimming around the boat and to the beach. I went exploring in the rock caves, where I saw a largish fish trapped and swimming around in a tide pool - funny. Eventually everyone got tired, and we just sat on the beach and talked. I was asked about why I´d come here, what my life had been like before, and I told how I´d never been anybody very important or interesting, or ever accomplished much, and that hopefully my time here would give me some life experience.
Back at Casa de Flor, I had another adventurous first: washing my hair in a cold shower with low water pressure. It took a very, very long time to get the conditioner out, and I´m still not sure I did get all of it, but I guess it´ll have to do.
I crashed and crashed hard tonight, because I need all the sleep I can get. Tomorrow the adventure really begins.
P.S. I´m going to start posting blog entries by week, rather than one for every day, since it´s unlikely each day will be as exciting and different (to you the reader, anyway) as they´ve been in the past.
