Thursday (10-30-2008). Loja. Parque Jipiro. The Circus!

After Ryan returned from class, we decided to pull ourselves out of the rut we had fallen in for the last two days and get the heck out of the house. So we bussed to Parque Jipiro, a really lovely local attraction filled with miniature constructions of famous world-wide buildings.











We meandered around and played with the park equipment.



And went paddle-boating!





No, seriously Ryan—SMILE.



(That’s better.)

And bird watching.



This is how a flamingo drinks:



Afterwards, Ryan taught his class and I continued my study regime.

When he returned we taxied to the CIRCUS! …
Really, a one-tent, one ring attraction with virtually no animals. The tent was held up by bamboo poles and the bleachers were flimsy beams of woods tethered together by ropes. The majority of the show was a clown act by a man dressed in large shoes, and baggy clothes but no other traditional clown attire. He primarily performed a stand up act, drawing in audience participation from the children. This was of course in Spanish and very difficult to understand. Jokes are particularly difficult to translate and at times Ryan was just as confused as I was. Also, it was insanely cold. The highlight of the show was the acrobatic acts interspersed between the clowns. These were brief but very impressive acts of contortion, rope-dancing and human-stacking. It seemed to be a family act and at one point they balanced a very very young girl and what appeared to be a child of two years of age (at the most) at the top of their stacked human chain. This would so have never flown in America. There were a few acts involving dogs, including one that was dressed up as a white Siberian tiger. This might have been more convincing if the head was not very clearly that of a stuffed animals attached to the head of a dog. So, yeah—the circus was just lame enough that we didn’t stay until the end. That was mostly due to the lateness of the hour and the cold. Also, the clown was a little too insistent on trying to sell us some light toy. We had to wake up early the next morning for Vilcabamba.

Tuesday (10-28-2008) and Wednesday (10-29-2008). Loja

Tuesday and Wednesday were primarily consumed by rabies panic with the occasional trip to Sendero for hot chocolate and fruit crepes with ice-cream and other such comfort foods. Even though we had been told that the dogs were vaccinated, we weren’t convinced and the stress was enough to put us both on edge for two days. During this time, I studied a lot of Spanish and focused on updating the blog. I also at one made an attempt to learn how to crochet with the result turning into what could be a small misshapen hat for a walnut. All efforts on my latest play collapsed with the laptop, which we took to a computer store to have it looked at. Lady, the technician and one of Saula’s friends helped us put Ryan’s harddrive onto another computer and save our irreplaceable rainforest pictures.

On Wednesday, we went back to the doctor and had our wounds cleaned and looked at again. All was well and between classes Ryan went back to the house with Nester to talk to the owner of the dogs. They guaranteed him that the dogs were absolutely vaccinated as there are many young children that live on the hillside. At this point he felt reassured enough to forgo the rabies shots entirely. We decided to move on with our lives from there, but it was two days in Loja hardly worth writing about. I blame the dogs.

Monday (10-27-2008). Attacked by a pack of dogs (I wish I was making this up)

It started out like any other morning in Loja with the exception of the brightness of the sun. We decided this was the perfect day to hike the mountainside to a castle-like structure that sits at the peak. We walked through town and up a hill, pass a wooden gate to a public park filled with woods and the path that would take us to the castle.

Further up the hillside, we reached a clearing at the edge of the woods. Our journey had hardly begun, but we stopped at a scenic view overlooking Loja.

That´s when it happened.

OUT OF NOWHERE A PACK OF SEVEN VICIOUS DOGS—TEETH CLENCHED AND GNARLING HURLED TOWARDS US. Ryan slowly backs away, hoping they would calm down. I follow. It was one of those moments that in retrospect your mind rambles over all the other possible moves you could have / should have made. But it was in the moment. And it happened fast. Before my heart can skip a beat, we´re surrounded. I feel the sting and deep pressure of a dogs fangs clamp around the back of my thigh. We keep moving, the dogs tearing at us. And in an action straight from the words of a worse-case scenario guide and the advice of our newfound Peacecorps friend, I stop. I turn around. I start yelling. ¨BACK! BACK,¨ My arms flail wildly, throwing imaginary stones.

Suddenly we´re at the edge of the road and the dogs like ghosts have disappeared.

But they weren´t ghosts. They left evidence. A nasty bruise peppered with puncture marks on the back of my thigh and an inch and a half long rip down the back of Ryan´s leg, straight through his jeans and into his flesh. Amazingly, despite the bruising, my Hailey-made hemp pants had protected me from further damage. There was not a tear or a mark on them from the incident. Praise hemp.

We were shaken, probably not in a way unexpected from two people who had just been attacked by a pack of vicious dogs in a developing country. We aborted our mountain hike and headed back, visibly on edge with each bark from the many dogs that fill Loja, from pets to strays. For the next hour, after cleaning our wounds, on Ryan´s iphone we googled the symptoms of rabies and researched as much as we could about its frequency in Ecuador. The good news is that it is uncommon in the Sierra (the mountains where we are situated). We also learned that a year ago most of the dogs in Loja had been vaccinated for free. This gave us hope. We also assume that the dogs that attacked us weren´t wild, but owned by a very paranoid family in a nearby hovel and had been provoked by us entering their territory.

After lunch, Nester, the patriarch of the household that we are staying with drove us back. A stick in hand, and in a very badass move that we questioned the wisdom of, he walked into the woods. But the dogs were entirely gone and we couldn´t locate any of the people who might be their owners. We were told by a man at the bottom of the mountain with his own fair share of barking dogs and free range roosters that they would be returning later that day.

Nester drove us to a clinic where a doctor cleaned our wounds, applied an antibacterial ointment and bandaged us. The environment was sterile enough and the bill only came out to a total of $5, anti-inflammatory pills included. I was spared the possibility of rabies shots because the fangs hadn´t pierced through my pants. Ryan was a lot less fortunate and could only mutter ¨Hay siempre algo¨ (¨There´s always something¨) as he was informed that if the dogs aren´t vaccinated—he will need the shots. No good. Muy mal. The shots in this country are a lot different than in America and if he gets him here, he may need post-treatment from then when he gets back to the states.

With this in mind, he went off to work. That´s when the harddrive crashed on his computer and we thought we lost all our rainforest pictures. Suffice to say, we are both somewhat disenchanted with today. Despite our awesome adventures in this country, at the end of this evening—we were both thinking of home.

UPDATE: Nester talked to the mean-spirited lady with the attack dogs and she says they are vaccinated. This is good news.

UPDATED UPDATE: Ryan and I are not 100% confident the lady was telling the truth. Rabies is always fatal and has no cure once the symptoms begin. He may just get the shots anyway. The good news is that he has a connection to an American version of the treatment and it only entails five or six shots in the arm and not 20 in the stomach.

Sunday (10-26-2008). Machala, Very Disturbing Moment at Puerto Bolivar, Jambeli

Javier´s race was in the somewhat distant town of Pasaje, so we had to choose between four hours of watching cars zip by or going to Jambeli. So under Javier´s recommendation, we dropped our bags off in a secure room at the Loja Ejecutive bus station (a feature we had no clue was an option) and his friend, another fast-driving race-car champion dropped us off at Puerto Bolivar.

$2.40 roundtrip a person got us each a ticket on the taxi boat that drives back and forth from the port to the beach. Despite the less than sunny weather everybody seemed to have the same idea. At least, we thought they did. At the edge of the dock where we waited for our ride, a huge crowd had accumulated. We couldn´t imagine how the 40 passenger boat could possibly fit that many people, so we edged to the front in hopes of getting a seat. As the incoming boat neared, the crowd became a bit antsy. A strange excitement filled the air. That’s when we noticed how many were holding cameras, searching for the perfect angle for some grand moment that they seemed to be anxiously awaiting.

Javier had mentioned last night that the president of Peru was in town. We assumed he must be about to dock. The sudden presence of police-officers pushing the crowd aside to clear a passageway seemed to confirm this fact—but something didn´t sit right. And as the boat docked, an acrid smell came with it and a large black plastic bag with something stuff jutting out at odd angles inside of it. The police lifted it onto a metal platform and carried it through the passageway. The smell and the crowd followed in an expressionless procession. No remorse, no tears. It just was. They seemed to hold no connection to the victim except a morbid curiosity. It was one of the strangest acts of voyeurism I have ever witnessed in my life.

Later we learned that it was a man that had drowned five days ago and had washed up on the shores of Jambeli earlier that morning.

Somber and disturbed, we boarded the boat with the few remaining members of the crowd.
The shuttle boat:

Ryan struck up a conversation with a man carrying a bucket of fish and I watched the scenery. The journey across to the island was not half as long as the journey through the canal that cuts through center of it, but this part was filled with awesome sights and hundreds of cranes that sat atop of trees and caught birds in the river.



Ryan´s new pal, the man with the fish, invited us to dine at his restaurant that he ran off the shore and so we followed him. He placed a bowl of coastal plums in front of us and we enjoyed our freshly prepared seafood, all of which had just been caught. The man who runs the establishment has nine sons, many of whom contributed to the morning´s catch that we now consumed as part of our meal.

Coastal plums:

They also had these adorable cats:



Away from the main playa, the beach was not half as clean. We walked the shore discovering everything from barnacles on milk cartons to numerous very large dead turtles and porpoises in both the skeletal form and the freshly dead.




We also eyed the natives’ wooden homes surrounded by coconut groves.

This rancid sight didn´t stop us from taking a dive into the cleaner portion of the beach where most of the people swam. There was limited sun but the heat was becoming oppressive. In this part of Ecuador, the hottest season is in December.

We ventured back to Puerto Bolivar and made our way via taxi to the bus station where we caught our bus back to Loja—a very long drive through the mountains that despite the darkness still revealed riveting scenery. Everything felt different on the way back to Loja. I am not sure why.

Saturday (10-25-2008). Machala

After a quick desayunos (breakfast) of grilled cheese sandwiches with soft-boiled eggs, coffee and carrot juice we checked out and caught a bus to Machala, a coastal town. It hardly blew our mind as a tourist attraction, but it offered a lot as far as understanding the local culture and served as a great coastal antithesis to Montanita. Machala is mostly a port town near Jambeli, an island with a beach located forty minutes away via boat.

Javier, Saula´s 20-year-old nephew picked us up at the Azuay bus station. He´s an auto-mechanic with his own company, a university student and a racecar driver. We went from Machala to Ciudad Verde, a town just outside of Machala where he lives, making a pit-stop at his lot so that he could pick up ¨Chelita Linda,¨ his car that he would be racing in tomorrow:




Then we drove through a small town filled with concrete and wooden hovels where the residents work their individual garden plots.


This is where Javier and his co-workers began work on the trailer that would transport Javier´s racecar to Pasaje where the race was set to take place.



Machala is the commercial center for a province known as El Oro: the banana capital of the world. Most of the big money banana companies work out of Ecuador because unlike Columbia where 90 percent of the workers are unionized, very few in Ecuador have followed suit, leading to cheap labor and much exploitation. Exportadora Bananero, Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte are the kings of this land Apparently there is a lot of child labor on the plantations but we only brushed by them on the bus and didn´t enter far enough into the labors’ territory to confirm that detail.

But the children of Ciudad Verde seemed to be enjoying their childhoods:




Next, we headed to Puerto Bolivar, a prime spot for seafood and the local international port where most of the bananas and shrimp in Ecuador are exported. The boardwalk (really the cement-walk) is lit up at night with carnival games, bounce-houses for children and local artisan shops. The street is filled with discos and rows and rows of Picanterias (seafood restaurants). Javier took us to his favorite and treated us each to a heaping bowl of calamari, shrimp, clams, crab and bass. I stuck to the safer seafood sauce special rather than ceviche because I didn´t want to risk raw seafood with a stomach that felt littered with mines. We enjoyed our meal with a sunset, limonade and beer.




Puerto Bolivar can be a bit sketchy after dark, so we picked up Javier´s girlfriend and drove around town for a while checking out the sites. This wasn´t just normal driving. We were with a racing champion; there was much acceleration and sudden braking involved. Finally after a hairsplitting spin around town, we hit up a disco called the Hydra located in the center of Machala. There we drank more beer, played pool and danced for the rest of the night.

Friday (10-24-2008). Cuenca.

We began our day with a brief river walk and then made our way to Calle Largo, to one of the few bookstores selling books in English to pick up a guidebook to Ecuador that Chris had in Guayzimi. The bookstore is run by an American couple; prior University professors in the states who decided to retire in Cuenca and open a bookstore to serve the travelers of South America. Most of their texts are shipped from the states, but many are exchanged from various travelers. As a result they have a lot of interesting intellectual reads such as the ¨The Story of Language¨ a book on linguistics. I was able to exchange my copy of ¨A Winters Tale¨ that I had just finished for an annotated fire-damaged copy of ¨Heart of Darkness¨ with scholarly notes in the back. It seemed fitting, given our recent jungle experience.

Then we hit up Barranco, a Panama Hat factory and museum.

There we learned the history of Panama Hats, which are actually a notorious misnomer. Panama Hats are not made in Panama. They are made in Cuenca, but were exported by Spanish entrepreneurs to Panama in the 1800s. During the building of the Panama Canal, the workers used them because of their light weight nature, their durability and their ability to keep out the tropical sun. If you buy a genuine panama hat anywhere, it would have been finished in Cuenca. They are made of the woven fronds of the toquilla palm which grows on inland coastal hills, particularly in Montecristi. The fronds are split by hand, boiled and bleached. As they shrink they roll into the strands that are used for weaving. These are brought to Cuenca where they are woven into hats and pressed into their shape.

Inspired by both their rarity, the process of making them and the fact that we were in Cuenca and the sun was really beaming down, we decided to sport Panama hats for the rest of the day. I found one that fit my head instantly that I really liked. Ryan had his pressed and made on the spot. In Cuenca they range in quality from standard (about $15), superior ($25-$50), fino ($50-$100) to superfino ($100-$500). This will apparently cost three times that in North America. We walked away with the standard.

We also had time to check out the Mercado which is like Reading Terminal Market but much much more extensive with racks of meat.

They also sell Panama Hats there but they are actually knock-offs.

We had lunch at Moliendo around the corner: a very inexpensive Colombian restaurant with an incredible variety of food.

I had a cinnamon shake with this very colorful dish:


Like my new hat?

This is Ryan in his new hat and jacket:

Next we went to Banco centro where we learned more about the various cultures of the indigenous tribes, whose ways of life really fascinate us. We were particularly interested to learn more about the Shuar because of our close encounter with them in the rainforest. Apparently hallucinogenic drugs are a huge part of their culture and are given to infants immediately after their birth so that they can encounter their spiritual guide who will lead them through life. They also (before it became illegal) used to create shrunken heads.

It was a part of their justice system mostly involving retribution for murderers, but also involved a ritual process with a specific mythology attached. Now that this practice has been outlawed, they use shrunken otter heads to enact the same ritual. Muy interesante.

Our museum ticket also got us into Pumapungo, an archeological site that contains what is thought to be the foundation of the Inca site of Tomebamba, which supposedly was comparable to Cusco.



They also had some wicked cool shrubberies.

This used to be a terraced garden:

We wandered around and then meandered through their garden: a horticultural wonder inspired by the different medicinal herbs and plants of the Inca, with each plant containing a tag on it explaining its healing properties and origins.




There was also an aviary with tropical birds.


The Inca apparently believed that they were descended from the Macaw.

Also, there were llamas!



Hooray llamas.

Afterwards we explored some pretty brilliant cathedrals:



Evening began to settle in and it started to rain. We found shelter in a Chocolate café and warmed ourselves with hot chocolate with café liquor (coffee liquor), a sandwich and a humita.

The extreme sugar content of a meringue shell that we bought at a panaderia (bakery) had kick-started my appetite and so we went back to Moliendo to sample more of their menu items and to have a few drinks. I don´t really remember what I ate, but I know it involved quail eggs and that sugarcane brandy = an instant smile. The Reina de Cuenca was playing on the TV (Cuenca´s annual beauty pageant) and as we hit our second beer, two guys with a guitar came in and began to play. We were disappointed when they stopped three songs later, but they invited us to Habimis, where they would be playing the pipes.

We headed over and ended our night sharing a pistachio hookah, while watched them play while two very lovely and talented belly dancers danced around us.

On the way back to the hostal, this store kind of cracked me up: