a town so small that the bus didn’t even stop and we almost missed it and ended up in Los Arcadias. Fortunately, we passed the hotel that we planned on staying at Hotel Ayamtaic:
and managed to stop the driver and hop off and walk pass a stream into town:
My first impression of Guayzimi was roosters and children and homes that would be considered hovels and shanties in America. Guayzimi is a small town surrounded by mountains that is not even in the guidebook to Ecuador. Neither is Los Arcadias or Cabinas Yankuam (our rainforest lodgings).
Our plan was to walk around town, eat dinner at the hotel and then crash so that we could get up super early to meet our guide who would take up to Cabinas Yankuam. But in one of those fortuitous and odd circumstances, we passed by a very tall Caucasian male with bright red hair who was heading off to play soccer with some Guayzimi adolescents. He looked at us shocked at the sight of fellow Gringos in town. Apparently, since he first arrived in the town as his Peace Corps station, he has seen no Americans pass through. This is probably why half the town was staring at us like we were utter aliens. We were. Saula, our host in Loja had advised we stop in this town prior to Cabinas Yankuam to save money—we had no idea that it was this remote.
After Ryan and I explored the town and Chris, our new PeaceCorps friend played Soccer with the locals, we met up and decided to cook dinner together. We bought vegetables, cheese, yogurt and flour at the various markets (very small tiendas), all along presenting us to the locals who were happy to shake our hands, though slightly confused by this custom. Then we met Chris’ host family who were thrilled with the sight of three gringos in their abode and happy to show me their cuy collection:
They raise guinea pigs. These aren´t even half of them.
It was really pretty exciting to see the inside of one of the many houses that I had fixated on, mostly struck by the simplicity of their lifestyle.
They constructed their own house, grow their own crops, raise their own food—when they eat chicken—they buy a whole chicken and slaughter it. This is where they wash their clothes:
A family of five, they sleep on three wooden cots with no mattresses. And they seem to be very comfortable. It’s an entirely different lifestyle in this part of Ecuador. No hustle and bustle of everyday life or constant seeking of self-actualization or goal-oriented ambitions. They simply are and don’t apparently often question their position in the world—geographically or otherwise, nor do many of them apparently much consider the outside world. Chris was telling us how his host mother didn’t understand why he couldn’t speak Spanish. Until his arrival, she had thought it was the only language in the world and that everybody spoke it. She thought there was something wrong with him because of his failures to communicate with her. According to him, many of the people in the town couldn’t tell you where America is, or even locate Ecuador on a map. And they spend most of their days after making ends meet, hanging around with their family and playing sports. It felt like a sort of Utopia.
There are apparently other foreigners in town—an Austrian philanthropist, I am told is responsible for much of the education system and other amenities. There is also apparently a strange German man who is panning the river for gold. And there apparently is gold, though most of it has been mined along with the oil. It is an area extremely rich in resources and from a scarred mountainside in the rainforest, exploited for this reason.
Chris taught us how to make tortillas out of flower and oil, and we had what he called pre-cheese (cheese that is in it’s state right before it officially becomes cheese), and an amazing yogurt that you drink out of a glass. There was also a lot of cilantro and grilled vegetables.
By 10 pm, Ryan and I were exhausted from our travels, hugged Chris goodbye, and then went off to sleep.
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