Life in Ecuador

It is Monday morning and I am very sick. Finally we are told that our trip around Ecuador has had to be abandoned because of the natural disater in Baños. The decision is made to head North.

First stop will be the wood working town of San Antonio de Ibarra. I am really enjoying the landscape, but not this country...if that makes sense? My feeling at present is that there are so many places to see in the world, why bother with Ecuador...I am glad I have seen it, but it won´t be on my "list" to come back.

Our base for the next few days will be Hostería Arco Iris in Chota. From the pictures this place looks idilyic, but it is rustic to the point of electrocution in the shower. The rooms are filthy but there is a rural charm as this is definitely off the tourist track and essentially used by locals and as a truckstop here on the PanAmericana highway. The hostel very rarely gets Western guests and I am not tall...but the sanitary-ware here has been designed for midgets.

We spend the afternoon swimming and relaxing by the poolside. This is not the trip I planned but with travel you have to go with the flow. Whilst some of our group are happy lazing around the pool I have a burning desire to see local life. After all, I am not here to drink Piña Colada and laze by the pool...I want adventure, geography and local culture.

By Tuesday morning I am frustrated. I am aware that there have been logistical problems, but our guide told us yesterday that we would be exploring the North. At present, I feel like I am on a bus tour excursion of shopping experiences.

The collective patience of our group is being tested and whilst I am one of the many whose travel plans have been frustrated by what has been happening in Baños, I am also learning valuable lessons about social interaction and human dynmaics. I have never before been part of a tour group and I remain very much an independent traveller. Our tour though is beginning to feel like ´Big Brother´without the television cameras.

In reality what frustrates me is "Latinotime".I am used to keeping to schedules. I have always been prompt and this was only enhanced by my naval training and the five minute rule. I am discovering that in Latin America things may, or may not, happen...just don´t count on delivery.

Once we get going we are out amongst the barren rocky landscape of the Chota region. We are to visit the cultural revitilisation project in Mascarilla. This is much more than a tour of mask making in the still segregated black communities of Ecuador.

It is fascinating to learn about the clay masks and to watch a demonstration of mask making...but I want a deeper experience than tourism.

There are around 40,000 black residents in the Ibarra region who are descended from the slaves brought to South America to work on sugar plantations. The making and selling of masks is a recent initiaitive to try and move the population out of poverty.

The main industry in the region is agriculture and this is traditionally low paid. With the result in 1998 El Grupo Artesanal Esperanza Negra was established. This project awakened an identity that had been surpressed by 300 years of slavery.

The project accepts Western volunteers and as well as creating a new economic future for the town of Mascarilla through the making and selling of art works; the project also offers educational opportunities and cultural exchanges.

Naturally I had to buy a mask and I was thrilled when the ladies in the art store invited me to dance the Bomba - a local and traditional community dance - by balancing a vase on my head.

We then head over to nearby El Trapiche - the sugar cane mill where the locals ancestors worked sugar cane. I learn that a percentage of all the money spent on the artistic output of the community goes to the artist and the rest to enhancing the community facilities of this town of around 2,500 people.

As I journey on I become even more aware, if this is possible, of the very diverse landscape of Ecuador both geographically and in terms of its communities. It is much hotter here in the North than I found on my more southerly visits last week. Climbing up through the mountains it is desert like with dry sandstone banks to either side of our dusty road...but then, we open out into fertile valleys.

On the bus, one of my fellow travellers mentions that I have a lot of pictures with the ´natives´. What strikes me as interesting, is the inherent racism in that statement...had we been travelling through Western Europe the populus would have been described as ´locals´.

As we continue to climb, it is amazing how the terrain continues to change. Trust me, on this journey today I have seen many more than 40 shades of green.

As I journey on, and with time to think, I am aware just how much I liked the people in the black community and just how valuable I feel the project being carried out in Mascarilla is.

We are heading to the ecological reserve of El Angel. As we near our destination we pass fields of people harvesting potatoes. I feel very uncomfortable with this site. Passing, as I am, in a luxury coach; I am witnessing at first hand poverty. In my bag I am carrying roughly $15,000 in cash to pay for the local costs of my project and I am acutely aware that this is more money that these peasants may see in a lifetime. However, as is the case the world over, the farm owners live in luxury as you can see from some of the homes and the very expensive American 4 x 4´s that litter the road.

El Angel is home to thousands of Frailejones plants (Bunny ears) and the most featured animal is the wolf. I enjoy a pleasant afternoon hiking and climbing to a height of 3,800 metres above sea level, here in an area just 10KM from the Columbian border and civil war.

As I descend from El Angel I witness truckloads of peasants with nothing but exhaustion from another day with their back to the sun. I have been amazed at how the fields slope up the hills in a terracing akin to the planting I saw in China.

I think my lesson from this first month in South America will be getting used to Latinotime...which is slow and irregular, I wonder at times if it is going backwards.

Back at the Hostería Arco Iris in Chota, tonight I meet the aspiring young Ecuadorian artist Gaston Cesar Andrango.

I think at last that I might be breaking through the cold touristy exterior of this country. I am finding the people here in the North and off the tourist trail much more welcoming. As Gaston and I discuss his paintings, his forthcoming exhibition in Venezuela and talk into the small hours about art and philosophy, I am inspired by the romance of his work. As a taoist he is a spiritual man and he is full of that youthful vigour that comes from being ´married to your craft´. He produces both visual and physical art and as a dancer he works a great deal in the conceptual field. Before adjorning for the evening I enjoy a private salsa lesson from this talented dude!

Wednesday...Just after leaving the hotel we pass through a checkpoint where the police are looking for Columbians. This is the first of about eight checkpoints we will hit today.

This mornings´shower gave me such a shock that sparks flew from the hanging bare wires. In Europe you would sue the hotel...in rural South America, I am just glad to have water.

We arrive today at Chachimbiro hot pools where we have paid the entry for both the thermal pools and the mud baths. However, we are to find that some of the pools are under renovation and then they want us to pay again for use of the mud from the closed mud pool...this was paid in our entry fee!...I am again made aware of the attempt to rip you off at every turn that is so evident in every Ecuadorian tourist site I visit.

By the way. If you think we have potholes in the road try bussing round Ecuador for two weeks. We are heading for San Lorenzo and the heart of Ecuador´s black community where we are scheduled to spend the night. When we arrive I find that the hotel is much cleaner that the hotel where we spent the last two nights. However, the group refuse to stay.

The people I met in San Lorenzo were very friendly...and I was first of the bus...infact, I was the only one of the bus and mixing in the street.

Maybe it was the inherent racism in our group...who are by no means as WASP? Personally, I was very embarassed for the hotel owner.

Maybe it is just me, but I am much happier in the real Ecuador...but my group on this adventure holiday seem to want a beach resort. I would have stayed in San Lorenzo after all we came to see Ecuador.

Back in the bus we head to Atacames in the Esmeraldas. It is strange, but I feel far less comfortable in the tourist areas and around the tourist sites.

You cannot capture the sights you see with anything but the naked eye. From the mule laden with sticks to the young lad on his bike laden with bottles of water and carrying a live chicken (probably tonight´s meal). I am the eyes of my students.

Nor is it easy to describe your first sight this trip of the Pacific Ocean stretching out just across the fields from where our bus...loud salsa music playing, speeds by as Vincente, our driver, is forced to make it to the coast trying in vain to beat nightfall. As this journey was not part of today´s plan, I am more concerned that we make it at all!

Tonight we will dine with the Columbians in Punto Sabroso...where I return to dine on Thursday!

Thursday Morning... I feel so sorry for the girls in our group. Their toilet flooded during the night and everything (gifts included) got soaked. That said, my rucsac was soaked through in the boot of the bus on last nights journey and ALL my clothes now have water stains.

We spent at least two hours last night trying to find a hotel...just like Mary and Joseph...but in larger numbers. It is not easy with 14 people but we finally checked into Casa Blanca.

This hotel is possibly marginally cleaner than Hostería Arco Iris where my bed was crawling in bugs. My legs and arms are raw with bites and last night was another picnic for the insects.

When I return to the room after talking with the girls I find that our toilet has also flooded. Everyone is now moaning but no-one is willing to accept that we should have stayed in San Lorenzo, in the clean hotel of the black community. This is a wonderful trip and I continue to learn so much about my fellow man. The element within our group who wanted their beach holiday now have it, and still they are dis-satisfied.

I am really amazed by the arrogance of some Westerners who come here to the 3rd world and expect first world treatment. You should be willing to accept the rough with the smooth in a developing nation...otherwise don´t come!...this is not hometown USA.

This morning Carmen and I hire a ricshaw to take us around the town. We visit all areas of Atacames including the church of Santa Rosa De Lima. We visit two schools and attend a PE lesson. At Escuela Atacames we not only visit the school but we collect Nicolo and Morollely the niece and daughter of our driver Orle.

This is what I came to see, the real country!