Mi amigo Luis and a Sallah Shabati Moment

Wow, twice in a matter of minutes. I´m on a roll, and there is nothing to do in Guayaquil.

I ended the last e-mail with the end of my time in Quito (Monday afternoon). That night, we boarded a bus and headed an hour and a half to the south to Latacunga (Now is when I wish I had a map I could show you but you could simply Google it and find out).

Mucho gusto (Spanish for ´nice to meet you´)

On the bus to Latacunga, I sat in a window seat near the front of the bus with the aisle seat next to me unoccupied. After we make a few stops in the city to pick up more people, a kind-looking man sits down next to me. Within a few minutes, we start chatting about different things. We talk about his life, my life, politics, sports, his life dreams, Joe Pesci, etc. It´s all inclusive.

Here is what I learned about my this man. His name is Luis, and his a day laborer. He just returned from working on building a gas station in the north but he doesn´t have any stable employment. He makes enough money to feed his family but not enough to save. His life dream is to move to the United States and is very curious about how much money he could make there. He has also never seen Home Alone (which was the movie showing on the bus [bus movies merit their own special category but I will get to that in a later post. Right now, all you need to know that the long buses show movies]). I told him Home Alone was a classic in America and in my family, but the movie kept skipping so you wouldn´t be able to follow unless you knew what was going to happen.

Then he asks me what I am doing the next day, and he says that he lives in a village near the place I planned on doing some hiking. He told me that he would call me, and maybe I would be able to eat lunch at his house with his family. He says he has three sons and shows me a certificate that one of them received in school.

So, the next morning I wake up and get ready to go for the hike. I get in touch with Luis and tell him when I would be near his town. He says that he would meet me at the bus station in Latacunga, which I thought was about 20 minutes away from my final destination. I arrive at the bus station, assuming that Luis would be taking the bus up to his village with us. When we get there, he introduces my roommate and me to his niece and then shows us to the bus we are going to take to where we would hike. He boards the bus with us but then gets off. I ask him why he left the bus, and he told me that it was two hours away but that he would meet me there. I tried calling him when I arrived to see if he was there, but I couldn´t get any service.

The next day, when we returned to an area with phone reception, I sent him a text message telling him what happened and thanked him for his help. He replied with a message thanking me for helping him and answering his questions.

Lake Quilatoa = Awesome

Damn, this is another one of those times when a picture would really help things out. When I set something up for the photos, I promise to include a picture of this really sweet crater lake. It is one of the most beautiful images I have seen. We arrived there late in the afternoon and knew we wouldn´t be able to complete the four hour hike to circumnavigate the lake but didn´t want to miss this opportunity. When we arrived, it was perfectly sunny, but, a few minutes later, the rain came and we decided to turn back. We were lucky enough to get photos of the lake in all weather conditions (gorgeous, ominous, rainy).

Sallah would be proud

If you have never talked Israeli movies with me, you would probably not know that Sallah Shabati is my favorite movie of all time. It is about a Middle Eastern family that immigrates to Israel. The father figure, Sallah, is one of the greatest characters of all time. When I return, I would be glad to loan you this movie if you haven´t seen it. Either way, back to my story.

So the only back to civilization from Lake Quillatoa is to take a shared cab back to a nearby village (30 minutes) and then to take a bus back to Latacunga (1.5 hours). After we finished our breif excursion around the lake, we decided to head back. At the entrance to the lake we found a driver who would take us to the village for $3/each, which was 40% less than the competition. We loaded into his truck and took the bumpy road to Zambuhua.

On the way to the village, we passed the fields where the barley for the most popular beer in Ecuador is grown. Our driver, Daniel, asked us if we wanted to listen to English or Spanish music. We wanted Spanish but he put in a CD of English tunes. Along the side of the road, people were doing a variety of different rural village activities (farming, soccer, carrying stuff, riding horse, riding bike, just walking), With each person we pass, Daniel honked his horn. I asked him if he knew everyone in the town, and he said that he has lived here his entire life so he knows mostly everyone. As we near the village, he asks if we would like to continue to Latacunga (another hour and a half), I negotiate him down to less than half of his initial value, but he says that he needs to stop at home before we go to the city.

When we get to his house, he tells his daughter that he is driving to the city. She grabs her backpack and excitedly jumps into the back of the truck. Daniel grabs his baby boy Joel and assists his wife in putting a mattress in the bed of the truck. I had no idea what was happening. I figured that going to the city was an exciting adventure, so the entire family wants to come along.

We sit Ari, Daniel, and I in the front seat with his daughter, baby son, and wife in the bed of the truck and we drive down the Andean mountain passes. We go like this for about 20 minutes before we see woman in farm clothes running down the side of the hill as the truck passes. Daniel stops and allows the woman to hop in the bed. A few hundred meters later, a large group of farmers is waiting on the side of the road, trying to get a ride in the back of Daniel´s car back to their homes which are many kilometers down the road. At one point, there were 11 people and a sheep sitting in the bed of the truck and the three of us in the front seat, enjoying the gorgeous alpine scenery.

As the people begin to unload from the back of the truck, it becomes clear what Daniel is doing. He acts as a sort of cab for these mountain laborers. With his daughter playing the role of cashier, the laborers pay his daughter and Daniel is able to make a bit more money on this journey to the city.

Well, that will be about it for tonight. I must go to sleep and get ready for the Galapagos. If I have Internet access, I will send another update that details my interactions with the jungle equivalent of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, the saint who Superman is based off of, my volcanic encounters, the most random Oneg ever, and how my bus broke on a mountain pass.

Until then, I hope all is well. Tough loss by the Pistons. On the Ecuadorian football front, it appears that Liga Quito, the best team in the country, will face my favorite team, Buenos Aires-based Boca Juniors, in the quarterfinals of the continent-wide Copa Libertadores.