I've gone on some short trips to Guayaquil on the coast, Sigsig in the mountains, Ingapirca up in the province to the north and Yungilla down the valley.
We went to Guayaquil with a neighbor from down the street and his friend. The five of us crammed into a pickup truck, drank moonshine distilled from coca leaves, visited the Jamaican and Chinese consulates, climbed up 400 stairs to a lighthouse and drank a lot of beer. There is such a difference in altitude between Cuenca and Guayaquil that our plastic water bottles collapsed on the way down. Our driver, married and father of five children, picked up a shop girl and disappeared with her for about thirty minutes. It was hot, humid and buggy in Guayaquil. On our way back we ate fried fish at a truck stop, drove through heavy fog and almost hit a cow. We arrived safely.
The day we went to Sigsig we hopped on a bus blocks away from our house. The teenager living in the house is fond of the shortest shorts. She is the object of much attention in her outfits. Sigsig is a tiny little town, one of those towns that's little more than central square and a small market. It was a beautiful day and I remember how the sun shone on the mountains, big fluffy yet harmless white clouds floating in the blue sky. We ate in a small restaurant and bought delicious strawberries from a girl selling them from a wheelbarrow. After we bought the strawberries she came into the restaurant and had a small lunch and nursed the baby tied to her back with a blanket. I wonder if the strawberry sale provided the money she needed for her lunch? We took a bus back from Sigsig and didn't quite have enough seats to accommodate the four of us. The teenager stood in the aisle and a little wrinkled man was unable to tear his eyes away from the sigh of her young backside that peeked out the bottom of her shorts.
I went to Ingapirca with another Fulbrighter. We hired a driver who we mistakenly presumed knew what he was doing. He got a little lost but it wasn't all his fault. Part of the trip took us on a detour because of road construction. The detour wound us around the side of a steep hill. We were on a single lane dirt road without an inch of shoulder. Had anything gone wrong we would have tumbled down a steep hillside into a cow pasture.
Ingapirca is the site of the most important Inca ruins in Ecuador. We went on a tour lead by an excellent bilingual guide. I highly recommend a trip to Ingapirca for any visitor to Ecuador.
Our day trip to Yungilla started as did our trip to Sigsig. We hopped on a bus near the house with the intention of getting off in Giron. However, it was pouring in Giron so we stayed on the bus and continued to Yungilla. We ate lunch at a big restaurant. I had the best steamed fish I've enjoyed yet.
It was raining lightly when we left the restaurant and we walked back to the place where we got off the bus. Buses passed about every fifteen minutes and most of them only paused long enough at our stop to tell us they were too full to take on additional passengers. One bus driver asked if we had tickets and told us the only way to catch a bus back to Cuenca on a rainy Sunday afternoon was to buy tickets in Santa Isabel. It turns out Santa Isabel is a town about a 10 minute drive from Yungilla. We asked a man working at a gas station nearby to call us a taxi. We rode to Santa Isabel for a few dollars. The driver kindly dropped us off in front of the bus office. The woman working in the office was not as kind and she told us we couldn't buy tickets for at least a half hour. The situation wasn't looking up so we ended up hiring a driver across the street to take our group of four back to Cuenca.
Apart from these day trips I've been visiting the zoo, going to town to run errands, shopping at the market, watching pirated shows on the internet, reading and showing my dad and stepmom around town when they visited in February.
The zoo is across the river and up the hill from where I live. It's unlike any zoo you can imagine, not for the collection of animals on exhibit but because going there is an adventure from start to finish. To get there I run across a busy street and a highway. After that, I climb a steep hill on a winding road for 600 meters or just a bit shy of a half mile. I arrive at the base of the zoo hot and sweaty and from there the zoo visitor's hike is just beginning. Paths are narrow and twisting, you climb up steep and crumbling trails, over tree roots using barely secured handrails often with protruding rusty nails for leverage. I wouldn't change a thing, I love the zoo.
Weekdays are the best days to go to the zoo because there aren't many other visitors. Sometimes I run into school groups but I've been lucky lately to not see many of them. Midway through the zoo is a small snack bar. Their ensalada de fruitas is excellent. They also have the best fries I've ever tasted. It might be that the fries taste so good there because by that time I reach the snack bar I've burned hundreds of calories and need to replenish.
When I visit the zoo I get hot, sweaty and dirty. I suck down quarts of water to stay hydrated and no matter how much sunscreen I apply, it's Ecuador and so I almost always get a little pink. I usually hit my head on something because I wear a wide brimmed hat to keep my face shaded. Today I slipped on loose gravel on my way back down.
Sounds great, doesn't it? It is. Maybe it's the sun or the dehydration or simply the release of endorphins from the physical exertion, but sometime after I pass the ocelot I experience complete calm and contentment. I'm in the moment, I have to be or I'll tumble down the side of the hill or get bitten again by one of their hungry little loose monkeys.
On Tuesday's trip to the zoo I thought a lot about my life here in Ecuador and what I want to take with me when I go back home. I want to take back simplicity and the need for less. I want to lead my life in the US that doesn't have as many distractions in it that take me away from what makes me happiest. I don't need magazine subscriptions, five different creams to make the skin on my face look youthful, lots of TV stations (really, do I need any if I have a decent internet connection?), shoes that perfectly match outfits, hair goo, nor all sorts of appliances that have a single purpose.
All of my personal possessions that I've been using for the past seven months (and all I expect to need for my last three months here) fit into a large duffle bag and backpack. Other than my bed and some simple furniture, this is what I have in my room. Of course I use the kitchen in the house I share with the family I live with but really I have all that I need and more even though I have fewer possessions than I've had in years, maybe decades.
My day to day life is as uncluttered as my collection of physical possessions. I have my friends and I enjoy spending time with them. Life has been taken down, maybe not as far as to the bare essentials, but closer to it than my life in Minneapolis.
What do I miss? Sometimes a good mocha but not really. I miss family, friends and my boyfriend, people who really know me. Sometimes I'll hear a plane and suddenly and unexpectedly a feeling of longing to be away from here comes up from my toes and spreads up through the top of my head. It's a moment of feeling the physical effects of homesickness, I guess. It's not that I want to leave, I'm not done being here and learning what lessons are still here to learn, it's simply that I am coming to realize that home is important to me.
I know that when I leave Ecuador, I'll leave behind a part of myself, of who I've become here. I'll be thrown back into my former life. My new life will be different from what it was before I left for Ecuador in September. I won't have the zoo where I can climb, sweat and find peace, I'll have to find another way to access that inside myself. It'll not be as easy to live my Ecuadorian life in the US just as it's impossible to create your US life in Ecuador.
