Mountains and Memories

A solitary peak, rising from the valley like a soldier’s spear.
Underwater light, reflecting off of and clarifying the coral on the ocean floor.
Granite blocks littering a field like a giant’s toys.
Temples built in honor of gods long gone, still showing the majesty of their creation.
Trails, like snail paths, winding slowly up the mountains before disappearing into the crook between peaks.
Tiny crabs on a black sand beach, dancing across the sand like so many leaves in the wind.

Our amazing sand castle in Puerto Lopez.

We lazed around on the beach in Puerto Lopez for nearly a week, spending Thanksgiving there. We built a sand castle. We made friends with Lola, a town dog who dug up a crab for our amusement and then decided to be our protectress. We took a day trip out to Isla de la Plata, or Island of Silver, also known as the ‘poor man’s Galápagos’ because you can see many of the same animals there for a fraction of the price. We saw lots of blue-footed boobies (and yes, as you can imagine, we had fun with the name!) and black, fork-tailed frigate birds. For a highlight, we went snorkeling for my first time, and I learned once again that fear and reason rarely keep company. (Even with a life jacket and one of the lifesaver rings, I still hyperventilated for 5 minutes or so before Tyler and the guide were able to calm me down enough to put on the snorkel mask. It took another five before I could put my head underwater!) But it was beautiful! We swam with the fish and got some awesome pictures of the turtles, courtesy of Tyler’s waterproof camera. I even managed not to throw up once on our hour-long boat trip out to the island and back.

It was a wonderful place to relax, enjoy the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and even to see truly pristine beaches. A few miles away from town is a national park, with a gorgeous untouched virgin beach, Los Frailes. The black sand is soft and smooth underfoot, and the only things moving besides the waves are all the tiny little crabs making snowballs out of sand. We loved it.

But all that relaxing meant that we were in poor shape to tackle our last adventure, which was my dream vacation up until we reached Ecuador:

Machu Picchu, from the guardhouse overlooking the city.

Machu Picchu.

You know what it is, you’ve heard the stories, you’ve seen the traditional picture showing the city with the mountain behind it. But there are a few things that surprised me when we arrived.

To begin, did you know it’s in the middle of the JUNGLE?!? In order to get there from Cuzco (we took the lazy man’s route, not knowing if there was space to hike the Inca Trail or not), you can either take the hour-long train, or an hour-and-a-half taxi drive to Ollantaytambo. From there to Aguas Calientes, the cheap option is a six-hour van ride followed by a two-hour hike, or you can choose the expensive option, which is the two-hour train. There are no roads into Aguas Calientes, as it is surrounded by steep mountains and river on all sides, with barely enough room for the train. From Aguas Calientes, which is a happy, quaint little tourist trap at the base of the mountain Machu Picchu, you can hike the two hours uphill to the gates, or take the half-hour bus ride at $12 per person.

So, recap: if you go the cheap backpacker’s route, it takes a whopping eleven and a half hours, four of those hiking, to get to Machu Picchu. Even if you take the full-ride, fastest route, it still takes three and a half hours at best. This place is HARD to get to. For those of you who remember when we went to Mindo, it’s a similar climate: cool and damp.

One of the resident landscapers.

The city rises out of the jungle like the halo around a dark-haired Virgin Mary. You know in the classic picture, how you see all the perfectly manicured green lawns around the buildings? It’s kept that way by the resident gardeners, commonly known as llamas. There’s about fifty of them who wander around all day, munching on the grass. Where the city ends, the jungle begins, and even one switchback’s distance from the city makes it invisible. But where the city is, there’s only pale rock and bright grass.

Learning about the city’s history made me remember Emperor’s New Groove. You know the scene where Kuzco tells Pacha about Kuzcotopia, and how it’s going to go right in the middle of Pacha’s land, only to decide on a different hilltop by the end? I think the real story must have been that Emperor Pachacutec (or Pachacute, or Pachacuti) simply made a deal to allow the farmers to keep farming, around the retreat he built for himself and his favorite 500 people. This way, they were only partially dependent on goods from Cuzco, and they lived at the height of engineering style. It felt like wandering through an open-air castle, as our guide described different aspects of the city and the genius involved in planning. They sanded down the rocks in order to have them fit together like gloves; and when they couldn't do that, they worked around the existing rocks, as was the case with the Temple of the Condor.

It is amazing, and perfectly breathtaking. Though it left me with more questions than answers, to me, it was a testament to the brilliance of the human mind when you take away all the toys we have become dependent on. They didn’t have computers to calculate exact numbers, or sanders to quickly grind the stone down; they didn’t even have the wheel. But without all that, they managed to build a sanctuary which is still puzzling us even today.

Simple yet beautiful nativity from Perú.

I am amazed at what we can accomplish when we have the motivation. From building a city in the clouds to delving into the depths of the sea, there seems to be nowhere we can’t go, and nothing we can’t do if we only get out of our own way. And as I look at these glorious places in my mind’s eye, I’m reminded of the most glorious places I’ve never seen: a quiet little stable room, where Jesus Christ was born. As we celebrate Christmas this weekend, I invite you to consider the power of hope in your life, and what you hope to accomplish. Everything is possible, from addiction recovery to achieving our dreams, because of what began in that calm, quiet moment in a stable. Merry Christmas to you, and may all your wishes for this season come true

For more photos related to Puerto Lopez, Guayaquil, and Lima click here.

For more photos related to Machu Picchu click here.

Traveling is HARD!

Those in the ‘you guys are crazy’ camp are probably saying, ‘I knew it couldn’t be as great as they make it out to be!’; those in the idealist camp will be saying, ‘but wait…’, and our fellow adventurers are probably saying something like, ‘Yep, I’ve been there!’

The blue-footed booby and her couple month old baby.

While volunteering, we had something different happening every week. We only had one week where we actually went to the markets every day, because every week we had either stomach problems, or broken arms, or doctor’s appointments, or more sickness… Something happened every week. We had worse luck than any of the other volunteers. Not to mention dealing with the food that was making us sick so often, the lack of trustworthy water, and the constant stress. After we finished volunteering, there was more stress, less trustworthy food and water, and no friendly doctors we knew of to go to when we got sick. Tyler and I seriously got on each other’s nerves, and nothing turned out the way we expected. Some surprises were good, but often the food was inedible, the hostel was creepy, the shower was lukewarm, the beach was rocky, the weather was uncooperative, the spouse was more so, our loofah fell apart and had to be retied, the ‘shuttle service’ was a hostile hostel owner with a broken down old van…

There have been moments when I’ve sat down and cried. There have also been moments when we both have to laugh so we don’t cry. There have been moments when neither of us knows what to do next so we end up having a staring contest trying to make the other person make the decision. There have also been moments when we just can’t work up the energy to do anything, so we end up sitting in our hostel room playing games or watching movies on our iPad.

Sea turtles joining us for lunch.

We’re tired of packing up everything we own every few days, tired of debating over whether to eat native or go for Chinese (yep… Chinese takeout is apparently a thing no matter where you are…) and which is actually safer to eat, tired of wearing the same two outfits ALL the time, tired of waiting 90 seconds for our Steripen to sanitize our water, and I am DEFINITELY tired of looking longingly at the salads, fruits, veggies, and especially the chocolate-covered strawberries (which are ridiculously cheap) and knowing I can’t eat them because they’re not safe. We’re just tired.

And yet….

For every moment I’ve sat down and cried, there have been ten moments I’ve laughed. For every staring contest, there have been ten moments when I want to cry because my husband is just SO amazing. For every moment of frustration, there have been more moments that have taken my breath away. Like sitting in a canoe at the Cuyabeno lagoon and watching the sun set, or walking along the back sand beach at Los Frailes in Puerto Lopez with Tyler and watching the waves crash on the shore. Or, oddly enough, the three dogs at the beach who decided to be our personal posse for a night, following us to our hostel, then to the bank, and back to the hostel, before finally leaving to go home. We’ve tasted some truly AMAZING food (breaded shrimp, anyone?) and met some truly wonderful people, most recently at both the Guayaquil and Lima LDS temples.

Iguana at the Iguana Park in Guayaquil.

Traveling has been both the hardest, and the best, thing we’ve ever done. We’ll be heading back to the States soon, and while there are a few things I’m really, really excited for (hot showers and cold salads being at the top of the list), there are so many things I’ll regret leaving behind. Even though going on this trip means no down payment for our Tesla, (remember that? ;) ) it’s been worth it in so many ways. I hope you’ve enjoyed being on this adventure with us. We’ve sure enjoyed sharing it with you, and knowing I’m reporting to you has egged me on to do a few of the crazier things. :) We’re not quite done yet, but before we get to the end I want to make sure I thank you all for being part of it all with us! You guys are the best!

For more photos related this section of our journey (Puerto Lopez to Lima) click here.

From Mindo Lindo to Cuenca: In true Tolkien tradition

Somehow, after visiting the Amazon, I thought that nothing would ever be quite as exciting again. I had no idea that the adventure—the REAL adventure—had only just begun.

Facing fears can be very scary and Mary was terrified!

After the Amazon, we spent four days relaxing and recuperating in beautiful Mindo. It felt like coming home: the same people were still there, offering the same things, and there’s a peacefulness to the cloud forest that I haven’t found anywhere else. We reaffirmed that someday (you know, when I become the next J.K. Rowling), we’ll buy a house out there where I can go to write. We didn’t want to leave, because we knew it was the last safe haven, the last place we would go before sallying forth to find adventure in the rest of the country. It’s the Last Homely House, as Tolkien put it, and I wished we could just stay forever.

But you can’t stay comfortable when there’s treasure and dragons and all kinds of adventures to be found, and we’ve found all three:

I faced my own personal dragons while canyoning in Baños. Having a petrifying fear of heights, falling, swimming, water, and losing control made rappelling down a waterfall the perfect opportunity to face every single one of those fears. Tyler made me do it. I’m glad he did, sort of, but I think I’ll pass from now on. We still haven't finished counting all my bruises!

Adventure was at Quilotoa, a lake formed in a volcano crater. Riding the mule on the way back up was DEFINITELY an adventure. And my poor mule had some digestive adventures in the meantime. I think she relieved herself in Tyler’s horse’s face about five times over the course of the 20-minute ride. I wonder if Bilbo’s pony pooped that much.

Our amazing suite in Cuenca at only cost $40 per night.

The treasure was in Cuenca. After a single night in a hostel straight out of a horror movie, (sorry, no pictures, we were in too much of a rush to get out of there!) we decided to splurge and find a nicer place to stay for Tyler’s birthday. We booked a double room online in a hotel on the corner of the main park. We were hoping for a full size bed and hot water. Here’s what we got…

We seriously considered staying here for the next month. Too bad we have more places to visit! The architecture here in the city is amazing. I mean, our room has a skeleton key, the kind you buy at old-fashioned antique stores just because it looks cool. A skeleton key!!! And the Basilica, or cathedral, right next door, is beautiful, and somehow so much more inviting and friendly than the one in Quito. The famous Basilica in Quito was built for show. It’s huge, and impressive, and has the impression of rarely being used. This cathedral, equally big, is much warmer, and gives the impression of not just being used, but loved. When we passed by on Sunday night there was a Mass, and it was FULL.

Tyler's birthday gift was a genuine Homero Ortega Panama Hat.

Treasure was also Tyler’s birthday present:

And the food is so good! We found some delicious Chinese food, amazing Kinder ice cream, and pizza that’s ALMOST as good as Don Matteo’s, which is saying something. At night they have concerts in the park, and we can admire from our balcony (our balcony!!!!) while the lights from the square reflect on the Basilica’s domes.

It’s beautiful. But every time we consider staying longer, we remember that there’s more up ahead. So next up will be the beach, and Guayaquil, and eventually, far too soon for my tastes, we’ll be off to Peru for the last leg. Yikes!!!

For more photos related to this post click here

Tyler and Mary’s Increasingly Exotic Adventures (aka THE AMAZON RAINFOREST!!!)

Thanks in advance for making it to the end of the post. It’s a long one, but hey, this is the Amazon. It deserves more than just a few lines on the last page of the newspaper.

Not quite the jungle canopy Mary pictured.

When I was a little girl in elementary school, we learned about the rainforest. The teachers painted a picture in my head of a solid canopy of trees overhead, with toucans soaring over the tops and smaller trees struggling for survival underneath. There would be frogs everywhere, especially those pretty little poisonous dart frogs, and everywhere you go you can hear the birds singing. It would rain often, of course, but because of the thick canopy, the rain would rarely make it all the way to the ground.

Somehow my teachers forgot to mention (or else I’m such a romantic that I stopped listening at this point) the massive spiderwebs from ‘social spiders’, colonies of millions of little spiders making one giant tree-spanning web, the constant hum of insects all around you, and more than anything the constant feeling that the sweat dripping down your neck and back and head and arms and legs is actually an insect that’s about to bite you. The rainforest is HUMID. Remember when we talked about Mindo, and how everything is dripping all the time? That didn’t include us individually. In the rainforest you, too, are constantly dripping, only with icky sticky sweat instead of pure rainwater.

But let’s go back to the beginning of the adventure.

View of our lodge from the Cuyabeno River.

We signed up for a tour, 4 days, 3 nights in the Cuyabeno Dolphin lodge. The cute pink dolphin on the logo isn’t just to make the sign stand out: they actually do have pink dolphins in the nearby lagoon. To get there, you take an 8-hour bus ride from Quito to Lago Agrio, the starting point for most Amazon adventures in the northern part of Ecuador. From there it’s a 2 hour van ride to the puente, or bridge, where you hop on a motorized canoe to get to the lodge. The last part can take anywhere from 1 to 5 hours depending on whether or not it rains and how often the guide stops to point things out.

We didn’t realize until a few hours into the first 8-hour, overnight bus ride that Tyler gets motion sickness when placed in certain conditions, like no available windows to open, no view of the road, a loud action movie blaring in your face, and lots of windy curves taken by a crazy Ecuadorian driver. He threw up off and on for the rest of the night, and listening to it got so bad that I started vomiting too. Why is it so difficult for us to have a normal bus ride?

Then we arrived in Lago Agrio at around 6:30 AM, and quickly realized that about half of the people who just listened to us puke all night were about to become our tour buddies for the next four days.

I’m sure they were just thrilled about that…

Fortunately, we found a pharmacy to sell us some motion sickness pills, and we took them in preparation for the next stage. We had a nice sleepy van trip, and woke up over lunch at the bridge. We noticed that one of the parked cars was about a foot away from being swamped, and one of the locals told us that the river had risen about two meters in the past few days. (Unreal, right? We thought they must have been exaggerating. By the time that we finished lunch, half of the car’s tires were underwater.)

First rule of the Amazon, always bring a poncho.

Then the real adventure began. They gave us each a life jacket and a heavy-duty poncho, sent our baggage up ahead on a separate canoe, and started off, with our guide Diego pointing things out to us. We didn’t see much before it started to mist lightly. Within moments it was pouring, and we all hurriedly pulled on our ponchos. The driver of our boat kicked the motor into high gear to get us through it as fast as possible.

Think for just a moment about the hardest downpour you’ve ever been in, the kind where you’re instantly soaked and the road turns into puddles and it’s hard to see because the rain is so thick.

Now double the wetness factor, and that’s ALMOST as much as it rained. The river rose a few inches between the time we left the bridge and the time we arrived at the lodge. Nowhere on earth does it rain like it does in the rainforest during the rainy season. The weather goes from sunny to firehose in about two minutes, pours for anywhere from an hour to five hours, and then, as suddenly as someone turning off a faucet, it stops, the birds and insects come out, and everything is like it was before, only about two inches deeper in water.

Anywhere else, two inches of water in an afternoon would be a big deal. Here it’s barely noticeable. The river has no set bank; instead, it simply rises as needed, the trees flood, animals move to higher ground, and then move back in the dry season. That evening, after unpacking, we went to the nearby lagoon for sunset, and our guide Diego told us that around January or February, nearly the entire lagoon is dried up, to the point where they can play soccer on the empty clay beds. Right now it’s a full-on lake, with isolated islands in the middle where birds hang out freely because the bigger land animals can’t get to them, and the caimans and anacondas in the lake can’t climb the half-drowned trees.

Speaking of the animals…

You never know what kind of animals or critters you will find.

We saw monkeys no bigger than our palms, and caimans longer than we are tall. We saw spiders that jump and have enough venom to kill a human. We saw toucans and macaws and swallows and my personal favorite, the oropendolo, th has a call that sounds like the most musical drop of water ever. We saw pink dolphins, and one flapping fin of some giant fish that’s about the size of a dolphin, although I can’t remember what Diego told us it’s name was. We saw a spider making its perfectly circular classic web, and the spiderweb nests that Harry Potter’s spider friends would be jealous of. We made friends with the black bees who make such delicious honey that it’s worth over a hundred dollars per pound. We saw the spores floating off a mushroom that, when eaten, can keep you from getting sick for a year, and wiped off some of the slick white microscopic-mushroom stuff that protects its host tree from bugs. We felt the spikes on the thorny roots of the walking tree, which moves about an inch every five years.

We tasted lemon ants, and they really do taste like lemons. I had the most giant grasshopper I’ve ever seen climb up my arm. We met the red ants that build things for Ant-Man in the movie. In fact we met a lot of ants, and some of them were way too big to really be called ants. Maybe gi-ants? Well, maybe not, but they were cool as long as they weren’t climbing up US. We saw huge termite nests, and sloths that looked like termite nests, and monkeys that hooted and howled and ooked and eeked and whistled.

We called out “March” to hear the ghosts of ancient Incan soldiers marching in search of a place to live, and then heard them marching near us. (Actually it was a species of wasp that, when startled, starts drumming on the thorax to warn intruders away; but it sounds JUST like a large troop of men marching.)

We almost swam in the lagoon-everyone else in our group did- but I wasn’t confident enough that I wouldn’t freak out at not being able to touch the bottom with my toes. The water is only clear for the first foot, and the rest is a muddy brown, and after Diego told us what was swimming with us in the water, I was glad we stayed out. Although he claimed that piranhas are mostly vegetarian, and the caimans and anacondas mostly stay away from the people during the day, I heard the word ‘mostly’ a few too many times to be comfortable.

Of course, in a world where a spider the size of my finger can kill me faster than a boa constrictor, swimming is probably the safer activity…

Sifting the yuca flour to make pan de yuca.

We spent one of our four days at a local community, where a quiet woman named Maria taught us to make pan de yuca. We helped pull out the yuca roots (it’s similar to a potato), peel them, grate them into tiny pieces (with either a sheet of metal with holes poked through for grating, or a piece of a walking tree root, which was actually much MUCH better), squeeze most of the water out, and then cook it in a clay pan over an open fire into a sort of giant, flat tortilla. With no flavoring other than the plain yuca, it lends itself equally well to a savory or sweet topping, so we had a choice of either jam or canned tuna to put on top. We were hoping to visit with the community shaman as well, but he wasn’t there that day, so we went back and looked for more animals on the way back.

Oddly enough, that was the only day we got any kind of insect bites, and they were from sand flies, not mosquitoes. We came back from the rainforest with zero mosquito bites. So much for needing malaria medicine! One of the girls did get stung by a wasp, but our trusty guide Diego was able to use a sort of reverse syringe to suck out most of the venom. Tyler is deathly allergic to wasps and the lady who took our money before we left Quito told us there are no wasps in the rainforest so we didn’t take his epi-pen. News flash: wasps are EVERYWHERE out there. We had some freak-out moments, but fortunately nothing happened.

Then, about the time we decided we were tired of flinching every time something touched us and tired of waking up feeling like we had fallen asleep in a spiderweb and couldn’t get up, it was time to go. The other eight people in our group all elected to pay an extra $8 each for a private bus back to Quito, and we decided to be merciful and not join them in case we ended up having a bad trip again. Instead we waited around in Lago Agrio until night and took another night bus back.

Beautiful sunset on the lagoon with zero light pollution.

This time we took the motion sickness pills half an hour before the bus left, and made sure to get seats in the middle of the bus, near a window. We fell right asleep, and slept so well that we didn’t wake up when the bus stopped for an army inspection, until suddenly there was a soldier telling us to get up, get our things, and get off the bus. Everyone else was already off and being inspected. They started asking us questions about why we’re in Ecuador and looking at our passports. We were still only about 70% awake when I heard a noise behind us. When I looked around, I realized the bus—OUR bus—was leaving!

We looked at each other, we looked at the soldiers, we looked at the bus… leaving… and here we were, at the only building for miles around. The soldiers, thankfully, realized what was going on, finished up and gave us our passports back. They tried to radio ahead, but the bus was GONE. So instead, we got an express ride in the back of the army truck, lights flashing, siren blaring, barreling down the two-lane road in the middle of the night. They pulled the bus over, and we kept our heads down as we quietly boarded, with the soldier telling the bus driver off behind us, saying something along the lines of, “Always the same with you people!!”

After we ejected the lady who had tried to steal our window seat, we settled in and didn’t wake up again until we pulled into Quito.

Moral of the story: you NEVER know what’s going to happen on a bus in Ecuador.

And after our trip to the rainforest, we have learned:

1)Never trust what people tell you, especially travel agents. They tell you crazy things like “take these ridiculously expensive pills for malaria” (never mind that there is no malaria in this part of the Amazon, and even if you’re going to a part that has malaria, the pills are dirt cheap here) and “here are no wasps in the rainforest”. Travel agents. Really I ought to know better than to trust anyone with ‘agent’ as part of their title.

2)The bugs you don’t see and don’t know about are far more dangerous than whatever you’re afraid of. So you might as well quit being afraid, right?

3)The world is bigger than you know and crazier than you thought. Trees that walk and defensive mushrooms and plants that make girls infertile for one year are the least of it.

In the jungle everything depends on everything else.

More than anything, though, I think we’ve both come away with a greater understanding that we are all in this together. A species of ant keeps a tree safe from other predators or parasites, and drinks its sap as a reward. Capuchin monkeys clear the way for squirrel monkeys to eat, and the eagles take the squirrel monkeys before the capuchins. Everywhere you look in the jungle you can see symbiotic relationships where two different species only survive by helping one another. There is a balance; nothing is wasted, only given to another who can make better use of it. Sacrifices are made to allow others to continue living. Everyone does their part, and everyone has enough. Kind of like communism, just without all the greedy, power-hungry leaders and the lazy layabouts who just want handouts.

I think the same applies to our society. What is your part in your community? Where do you take, and where do you give? Who do you depend on for survival, and who depends on you? Even the mighty condor, soaring alone above the rest, is not a law unto himself. He depends on other creatures to kill his food, and he breaks apart the carcass so other, smaller birds can feast after him. Everyone has a part to play.

What’s yours?

For more photos related to this post click here

Goodbye is the Saddest Word

Winnie the Pooh once said, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” As a very wise bear with some very wonderful friends, I think he understood that better than most of us. After all, we’re not bears.

 

Saying goodbye at the markets.

There’s something powerful, I think, in a real goodbye. Not the kind of goodbye that’s more of a ‘see you later this week’ or ‘I’m too polite to say I’m glad to be rid of you’, or even ‘it’s been nice knowing you, but I have a hot date with a cup of cocoa and a good book waiting’. I’m talking about a real goodbye, when someone you have come to love and respect and appreciate is about to leave your life forever. As you share that last hug, and look at them one last time, your mind flashes back to all the good things you have done together, as if your brain knows what would hurt most and is determined to get it all over with now. It’s the kind of goodbye that means, ‘I’m not ready for you to leave me yet, even though I know it’s time’ and ‘I wish I could know for sure that I’ll see you again’. It’s the kind of goodbye that makes funerals so painful, realizing that whether we’re ready or not, there will be no more ‘hello’, only the pain of ‘goodbye’.

 

And yet… the pain is only half of the story. 

 

We forget, as we say those goodbyes, to give thanks for the blessing of having that person in our lives. We forget to celebrate the people we have become as a result of their influence. We forget that once someone has marked our hearts, they stay with us forever, and nothing can change that, not time, not distance, not even death. There is only pain in saying goodbye because there was so much joy in knowing that person. We say goodbye, meaning, I love you. We say goodbye, and we mean, Thank you for being part of my life. We say goodbye, meaning, I know you, and I am glad you took the time to know me too. You matter. You mean something to me, and even if we don’t get to talk for a while, you will always be precious to me.

 

Tyler and Maoro.

You matter.

 

You are special.

 

I wish I didn't have to lose you.

 

But because of the twists and turns of life, our paths are about to separate, and we will each move on, and become different people. But you still matter to me. I still want to wish you a merry Christmas, and New Year, and happy birthday, and when I think of you I’ll smile, because I love you.

 

Here are some of the people we have loved and had to say goodbye to:

 

Maoro, and all the other children whom we have gotten to know in the markets. I think Maoro has been Tyler’s favorite though. Mine is a little girl named Melanie, who snuggles up to me like warm chocolate and is way too hard on herself for someone as little as her. 

 

The UBECI staff. From sudoku to string games to sickness every other week, they’ve taken what we have to give and magnified it to be enough for the kids. They work harder than anyone at getting each child into school and on track for a better life, and it’s obvious that they love what they do. I wish I had half their patience with volunteers and children alike.

 

The volunteers we’ve worked with. We’ve loved some more than others, of course, but it’s been an amazing experience working with so many people from so many different cultures, and seeing so many different perspectives on life. 

 

Mary, Javier, Dani, Jessica, Katy, and Tyler. The UBECI staff.

Matteo and Vanessa, who are the living proof to us that good friends can be made as easily in an hour as a year. When we had to go to the doctor for a stomach infection, we noticed a little pizzeria while walking back home from the doctor’s office. The next day we went for lunch, and met Vanessa and Matteo. He is Italian, via Germany, and she is from Ecuador. They met in Barcelona, and he came back with her to live his dream of opening an Italian restaurant. It’s a beautiful location in front of a little round park, the Parque de los Enamorados or Lover’s Park, very picturesque and very out of the way for tourists on city buses. They don’t get nearly the business that they deserve. The pizza is AMAZING, the spaghetti is better, and the lasagna…. Well. Let’s just say I converted to being a lasagna fan on the spot. And it’s all made with love. 

 

We told them about our volunteer work, and we ended up with an invitation to bring whomever wanted to come and have a party, with beer, red wine, everything Italians consider necessary to have a ‘beautiful night’, as Matteo told us. And it was! They closed down the restaurant for the seventeen of us, and everybody walked away happy and full. Then we stayed talking with them for a few more hours until we had barely enough time to make it home before curfew. I’ve never had such a fun time!  Since then we’ve stopped by whenever we could, and there is always a smile and a healthy helping of food (meaning there’s always more than we can eat!) waiting for us. You know that saying that Olive Garden has, that when you’re here, you’re family? That’s what it feels like. They’re our other family, who happens to make very good food.

 

Vanessa and Matteo, our adoptive Ecuatalian family.

Veronica, our house cook. I started out talking to her because I felt bad that she has to work every day to make sure we get fed so we can go have all these adventures. Then I started to love her. Every day she makes breakfast for us, cleans all the dishes from the night before, and prepares a delicious dish for our dinner. She never gets to see us devour it, though, because she leaves for the day before dinner, and our house abuelo, Enrique, heats it up for us. It still tastes amazing.

 

And our host family, Monica, Byron, and their three daughters, Naira, Milena, and Ariana, with Byron’s father, Enrique. We’ve had something happen almost every single week of the eight weeks we’ve been volunteering, and every time they’ve been there with loving concern and suggestions on getting better. When Tyler fell and broke his arm, our abuelo doctor Enrique made sure he was alright, and when the doctor wanted to cast up his whole arm without really looking at the X-ray, Monica took us to a different doctor nearby who discovered a crack in the scaphoid bone and took much better care of us. Monica will also pop in to hear stories of what it’s like in the US, what our family traditions are, and is always ready to share stories of life in Ecuador. With her we’ve learned to make chocolate empanadas and guaguas de pan, or bread babies, and learned the stories of Cantuña and the statue of the Virgin Mary atop the Panecillo.

 

Veronica the amazing cook for the volunteer house.

The traditional English word for goodbye is ‘farewell’, meaning, ‘may all your affairs prosper until we meet again’. In Spanish, they say ‘adios’, which I like much better. ‘A Dios’, I leave you in God’s hands, until we meet again, whether in this life or the next. A Dios les dejo, mis amigos, mis hermanos, mis queridos, hasta que nos veamos, sea en este mundo o el próximo. May God be with you, till we meet again.

 

So next time you say goodbye to someone, think about what you mean. Are you simply closing the door on a chapter in your life, along with all the characters in that chapter? Are you feeling the pain of losing a dear friend, a confidante, someone you love? Or are you hoping they’ll be ok until you see them again, telling them to take care?

 

I hope, along with the inevitable pain of saying goodbye, you take the time to remember and cherish the reason for that pain. It’s a lesson I’ve learned a lot this past week, and I wouldn’t trade these past weeks with my dear ones for anything. 

 

To each and every one of them, and to each and every one of you, my wonderful readers, I say: A Dios. May God be with you till we meet again. Que Dios les cuide siempre, que les bendiga con todo lo que necesiten y más, por el amor que ustedes nos han dado. And whether we meet again soon or late, in this world or the next, know that we WILL meet again. After all, a wise man once said: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.” 

 

And you know what? He was right. 

 

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A Whole New World (Every turn a surprise!)

Tyler is receiving his cast for the hairline fracture of his wrist.

Small note: since the last time we wrote, we found out that Tyler did get a hairline fracture in his wrist. So if you see him with a cast in some of the pictures, don’t worry, it comes off soon, the doctor just wanted to be extra safe :)

Also, since Tyler insists that I be thorough with an accounting of our travels, we have also visited Mitad del Mundo and Otavalo on weekend trips. I might blog about them in the future, but in the meantime, pictures are attached to this post :)

You know that moment when Aladdin takes Jasmine on the very first carpet ride, and they’re singing from about a thousand feet up in the air as they look down on the city below?

First off, having dealt with some serious altitude change recently, I can tell you that that is completely unrealistic. They would have been gasping for air, not singing at the top of their lungs.

Just saying.

Second, I imagine it being something like thinking you’re working with a two-dimensional square and then realizing it’s actually a cube, in three dimensions, and there’s a whole other dimension that you didn’t see before. Jasmine must have been astonished to see the comfortable world she knew, her palace, from a completely different perspective. I wonder if it changed how she saw things after returning to solid ground.

Looking down on the Quito valley from atop the TeleferiQo, roughly 13,000 feet.

I thought I knew Quito: we’ve become familiar with the sights (houses, statue of Virgin Mary, hills, mountains, clouds), the sounds (the natural gas trucks honking their way through the streets, the buses braking loudly when a taxi cuts in front of them), and the smells (bus exhaust, hot tasty food, unwashed stray dog, fresh baked goods, more bus exhaust fumes) of the city all around us. I’ve come to love the sight of the mists curling around the hillsides in the afternoons, and craning my neck on clear days, hoping for a sight of the massive snowy Cotopaxi in the far distance. But lately that ‘it’s-a-cube-not-a-square’ feeling has been hanging around just out of sight, and whacking me in the face every chance it gets.

For instance: We went to La Ronda last Friday night. It’s a quiet little street in historic central Quito most of the time, where they told us families and tourists can go on weeknights or weekends to see fun things, visit the shops, and generally have a good time. We had been on weeknights before, and the shops are all fairly typical tourist shops, especially the Republica del Cacao shop where you can try different types of chocolate before paying astronomical prices for a few bars.

You never know what you are going to find in Quito...

But on the weekend, apparently, it comes to life. Street vendors have their wares laid out on the ground for passing pedestrians; magicians perform at the corners; Jack Sparrow, Iron Man, and Batman all wander up and down the streets, posing for pictures if you pay them a dollar. (Tyler got a picture with Jack Sparrow because he looked SO REAL!). Restaurants, tiny and exquisitely Ecuadorian, are jumbled together with bars like you would find anywhere. The upstairs rooms are lit and flashing, either for karaoke or dancing or both, along with large quantities of Pilsener beer, which seems to be the beer of choice down here. The restaurant hosts stand outside, hoping to entice potential customers with their menu or their smiles or by simply being the first person to invite you to eat. We sat in a tiny little bar and drank alcohol-free, house-made canelazo, which, for you unfortunates who have never tasted it, tastes almost like liquid caramel, but with just enough citrus flavor that it’s not too sweet. If I knew where to find naranjilla at home we would make it, but having never heard of it before we came, I’m not sure it’s available in the states. We pushed our way through the crowds, avoided the street vendors who tried to sell us anything from alpaca hats to little whizzy toys that light up and zoom 45 feet up before falling down. Everywhere we looked, there was something new and dizzying.

It was a completely different side of the city we’ve come to know.

Then there was the aerial view. We went up the TeleferiQo, which takes you halfway up to the local volcano, Pichincha. From there you can hike the rest of the way, and a little ways up the hike they have horses for rent which will take you on a 45-minute tour up the mountain. Every few moments, as we stopped to look back, there was another incredible vista, a new sight to be seen. It was also, miraculously, a clear blue day, which happens about once a week this time of year, and unlike most days where all you can see is a thick fog, we were able to see the entire valley and into the next. We loved every minute of it, although at that elevation, even having been in Quito a while, we were out of breath after every 5 steps or so. Literally breathtaking, pun intended.

Yes this is a real stick of cotton candy!

The giant ball of cotton candy we bought on the way back down was very nice too :) I’ve never seen one that big…

There’s so much more to this world than most of us ever see. We go through life, taking the same steps every day, every week, with the occasional brilliant moment of clarity when we are reminded, by a clear vista or a beautiful smile, that there is more to life than simply making do. I remember reading the story of the Snow Queen as a little girl, where a young boy is infected with a shard of magic glass in his eye and heart, making him see only the defects in the world. I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t see all the beautiful things around him, and most especially he couldn’t understand that sometimes it is the flaws that make something beautiful. Quito is not a perfect city, nor is Ecuador a perfect country. But those same imperfections make the beautiful things so much clearer: the cute babies on the bus, the sweet smile from a local giving us directions, the misty mountains and the clear blue sky, and the kids on the bus telling their parents that our shows have toes. We are learning, more every day, to value the good and look beyond the bad, to ignore my fear of heights and Tyler’s dislike of change, and instead enjoy the view from 9,000 feet and up. :)

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A Day In El Mercado

For everyone who asked us what we’re actually doing as volunteers, this is a snapshot of our day:

First things first, the children wash hands and face before playing.

We leave the offices, carrying all of our gear, at about 8:30 every morning, and travel to a different market by bus each day. The buses are busy but not crowded, so we don’t worry too much about our lunch money as long as it’s in a deep pocket. We bring rain jackets because it will rain on our afternoon market.

The markets are busy, and as we set up our not-quite-broken little canopy tent (it was two tents before one of them broke), the children are already arriving. Some are hesitant, waiting until they see a friendly face before daring to enter. Others rush in for first hugs from anybody they can before the other children arrive. All are directed to the two basins we have set up so they can wash their hands and learn the importance of hygiene. We are in a small, unused area of the market, with the market above and around us. All morning we hear the calls of “Una libra, un dolar” and we smell everything being cooked at the open-air lunch spot right next to us.

When the children need to visit the bathroom, we take them by the hand and hold on to make sure they don’t run off, walking into the bathroom past the seated, wrinkled woman selling toilet paper and the buckets of water you have to take to put in the toilet so you can flush it. There is no soap or hand washing station in the bathroom, only huge garbage bins where you can throw away the toilet paper, because the city’s sewage system can’t handle it. The smell is not pleasant.

Then it’s away from the bathroom, children once again in hand, back to the tents, where the ‘prof’ or teacher, is leading all the kids in learning their vowels: ahhh, ehhhh, eeeee, ohhhhh, oooooo. Later we will give them all a piece of paper stamped with the vowels and help them glue letters cut from magazines onto the page, and then they’ll color the paper with broken bits of crayon.

One little girl falls asleep crying on my lap; I think it must be her first time away from Mom. I feel her pain; I miss home too, right now. Other children nestle up to me, sitting on the cement pavement, all eager for any word of approval. They show me their glued and painted pages over and over again to hear how nice, how beautiful, I love it, I’m so proud of you, look what a good job you did. Many come just to be close to a grown-up who will not push them away.

Tyler has his hands full with a small child (who might be a boy or a girl, we don't know), who one of the other volunteers warns me is always a troublemaker. The child can’t seem to decide between trying to get away, and playing with the toes on Tyler’s Vibram shoes.

I get my hands dirty on the pavement as I try to shift myself to better accommodate the weight of the silently crying child on my lap. I laugh with the other children over how I need to wash my hands, too, but I don’t dare get up. I wipe the little girl’s tears away, speaking soothing words, but even that little bit of kindness is too unfamiliar, and she begins to cry in earnest. One of the staff members notices, and carries her off to her family. The other children stare at her tears for a moment, but don’t make any moves to help. Here each child must care for himself or herself; there is not enough care to go around, even with all the volunteers have to give.

Holding hands for safety.

Now it is time to go, and we wait for parents to recover their children. The older ones can go on their own, but some are waiting in vain. We take them by the hand and begin to navigate the maze of the market, hoping to encounter a face they recognize. Some remember where their families are; others do not. All are smiling at the fun they had coloring today. Many give us hugs as they leave, and a few even show their families what they did today.

As I look at their families, I feel like I am glimpsing the future these small, bright little children will have without an education: a makeshift life selling fruit along with hundreds of other fruit-sellers, making enough to scrape by each day, and sometimes not quite enough; but always surrounded by family. Suddenly I begin to understand why family is so all-important in Latin American culture: sometimes family is all you have, and it is still enough. As long as you have family, you have everything you need.

Time for lunch for the volunteers: not the delicious-smelling food being cooked by the market vendors, but a huge, $3.00 almuerzo at a safe restaurant nearby. After lunch it’s back to the market for a few more hours, giving all the love and attention we can. I ask them what they ate for lunch: soup, they say, or rice and chicken. Some bring a piece of fruit as their lunch. We do the same activities over, and despite the fact that many were there in the morning, they still ask for my approval of this afternoon’s work: good job, it’s beautiful, I love it, I say. They all try to be as close to me as possible, and it’s hard not to just sit and snuggle them all. At 4:30, it’s time to pack up the tents and head home. We take the bus back to the office, once again carrying all our things, and from there head back home, to relax for a while before another much-anticipated dinner.

They're ready for a nap and Tyler is ready to play.

I’ve been truly humbled here. These children have so much potential, but they need so much more than we can give. They need school supplies, and help with homework, and more than anything else they need love and individual recognition. We give what we can and trust that together with the other volunteers’ efforts and the continued efforts of the program staff, it will be enough for most of them.

When one of our two tents broke down, I asked the staff if they’re going to replace it. They told me it’s simply not in the budget right now, as they are still trying to raise enough money to provide the children starting school with notebooks, pencils, erasers, and other necessary school supplies.

I know we’re all busy and we have so many things to worry about. But I want to ask you to think for a moment about the things we don’t have to worry about, like whether or not there will be enough money for a 15 cent notebook, or whether or not our loved ones will beat us for not working hard enough today (at least I hope nobody at home has to worry about that!!!). This program is taking kids from the streets and helping them to become engineers and doctors, giving them an opportunity to become more. Most of these children are the first in their families to learn how to read and write. All need help. I hope you can find it in your heart (and wallet) to help out with this program, or others like it, since I know there are needs all over the world. Here is the link where you can read about UBECI and their efforts, and help out if you can.

UBECI

Thanks!

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