Ecuador Adventure: Part 2

I can hear voices shouting and pandemonium going on outside the window of our hotel room. Last night as I stood on our balcony looking down at the intersection below, I watched a stray dog moving through the shadows. There was nobody around. Now, there is hustle and bustle.

The foreign voices are not shouting in anger but they are loud, the way people communicate on a busy street. My eyes are still closed. I’m not quite awake and the bed is comfortable, but I am curious about the shouting.

I get out of bed quietly and cross to the balcony. Henry and Rel are still asleep. I unlatch the door to a rush of sound and I look out onto the intersection of Calle Vincent Ramon Roca and Calle Gabriel Garcia Moreno in Otavalo, Ecuador.

School is starting soon and young girls in matching plaid skirts and high socks race across the street. They are late, bouncing oversized backpacks with cartoon characters.

A busy bakery has a constant cycle of smiling people entering empty handed and leaving with small brown paper bags. The woman behind the counter reads a newspaper in short spurts in between customers.

A jumble of electrical wires is directly over my head; construction workers chisel into a balcony across the street to my left.

A man in a cool hat is hawking newspapers and shouts something I don’t understand from a passing bicycle. A woman gets out of a taxi, says goodbye to her daughter and gets back in it. Huge colorfully painted buses barely make the turn.

Many people are professionals dressed in suits; many are farmers carrying strange-looking tools in the backs of small pick up trucks. There are women dressed in very old looking classic white puffy blouses and black skirts with small white slits running up their legs and a group of teenagers dressed in purple with spiked hair and lip rings.

It’s a far cry from the previous four days spent in Intag. “El Refugio” is an isolated bed and breakfast in the Cloud Forest that Henry’s Uncle Peter is about to open up to the public. We were his test audience of sorts and we graciously enjoyed a trial run. There, we hiked everyday, ate amazing food and were in total isolation. No car. No phone. No e-mail.

The house sits in the middle of a valley, large mountains on either side, so high up that there are literally clouds floating through the trees. We hike with Oswaldo, the caretaker of the property, who walks in front of us swinging a machete clearing the way.

Peter is an avid birdwatcher and for the first time in my life I have a pair of binoculars strapped around my neck and am tiptoeing through the jungle, eyes scanning the trees above, waiting patiently for the flutter of wings or Peter’s hushed voice.

“Up there! Do you see it?”

Here my mind is clear. Sometimes I start to wonder if there is anything going on in New York that I am missing. But I try to dismiss these thoughts immediately.

I sleep well. Soundly. And remember my dreams.

After a delicious lunch, we bid El Refugio and Peter goodbye and begin our trek back toward the airport.

The road is treacherous during the rainy season and I can see places where landslides have washed away and narrowed sections. Our driver points to one of them. “A car went over here,” he says.

I try not to think about it.

We come to a particularly narrow place in the road. It’s raining now and there are a few trucks and cars lined up on the other side, too nervous to pass. It does not look like a good idea.

After a few moments, our driver smiles, downshifts and guns it. The car revs and moves forward and up. I glance down out of my window; I am sitting in the front passenger seat. It is almost straight down. No guard rail, nothing. Just clouds below us. I hold my breath.

The car is making progress but it is also shimming side to side, the tires spinning and slipping. There isn’t much slack. I seriously wonder for a moment if this is the end. I close my eyes.

The tires grab and the car lurches forward. As we pass the trucks, I can see that the drivers are shaking their heads.

We spend the day bargaining at the market in Otavalo. We look through bright sweaters, bracelets, rugs, hats and shirts. Many of the stands have the same cheap manufactured goods but some of them are quite beautiful. I spend all of the money I have left in my wallet.

Glancing through our guidebook later that night we see a small side-note. “Looking for something interesting to do in Quito, go visit an American in prison. It is a safe way to get a look at the seedy underworld…”

We are intrigued and, as it turns out, it will fit into our schedule. We decide that tomorrow morning, we’ll go.