After two whole nights in Cuenca we repacked and headed south again. I swear that the further south one goes in Ecuador, the nicer the scenery, the nicer the people, and the more comfortable we become. Slowly relaxing with each kilometer . . .
We arrived in Loja this afternoon and I must say: Traveling by bus is inexpensive but oh my God is my butt sore. Jeff seems to fare a bit better in that respect - at least he has some decent padding to deal with.
When we're in a town we walk for hours and hours, possibly just to see if we can once again avoid getting killed as pedestrians. But we feel like aliens: gigantasaurus aliens surrounded by short people with black hair that cast side glances at us or just outrightly stare. We stand out, really stand out.
And whether they like us or not, there's no hiding the fact that "we're not from 'round here."
In forums, blogs and articles Ecuador is touted as being ever so organic. Well we're not so sure about that at this point.
We
arrived in Cuenca on the 11th, found a sweet place to stay for a couple
of days. Then we headed out by bus to see a place that we really
wanted to check out: Paute. Really just a dot on a map though lower
elevation, warmer, and agriculturally oriented.
After the hour
plus bus ride there, we jumped out of the bus and onto the sidewalk,
once again bewildered by yet another maze of streets, stores, homes,
wandering dogs and speeding cars - but this time a much smaller town.
Right
away we found the town marketplace. Unfortunately the vendors were few
and far between due to the "festival." What festival?! Apparently a
large town on the coast thought up a reason to have a festival that day
and even though it pertained only to that particular town, the town of
Paute also opted to celebrate. Cute.
We wandered around musing
at the selection of fruits and vegetables - wondering what a number of
them actually are. The vendors would tell us the names but our heads
are so full of new Spanish words that the names slide out one ear as
quickly as they slide in the other. No matter, there will be
time for memorizing later. I so wanted to buy many of the cool looking
fresh produce items, but I had no place to prepare it. No matter, there
will be time for sampling later.
We bought some fruits, including a "tree tomato", some bananas, and peaches, sat down in the market and pigged out.
Back
to the organic concept: I'd say that probably at least one out of every
five storefronts in Paute is an agricultural or feed store. Finding
this quite curious, we stopped in to talk to a friendly looking man
tending a seed and feed joint.
We asked him about the use of
chemicals by local farmers. See, we were curious about it because the
country is touted as being ever so organic in its practices. But we
couldn't figure out how that could be the case. It just isn't logical.
It's as though people think that farming chemicals haven't made it this
far into the so-called 3rd world yet.
Chatting with Luis, a man
who partially makes his living by selling fertilizer and insecticides to
farmers and partially in growing produce himself, we learned the
fallacy of the Organic Ecuadorian Farmer myth.
He says it
wouldn't be so bad if the farmers would use the insecticides, pesticides
and fertilizers as recommended on the directions - but they don't.
According to Luis, chemicals are very much over-used without regard to
any instructions or safety for themselves.
Consequently, his
wife explains, those beautiful yucca that we had been admiring in the
market (she had seen us there), could actually be FULL of chemicals in
spite of how beautiful they appear. But yes, there ARE organic growers
in the region and on two days a week they sell produce in the Paute
marketplace under the name of "Agri-ecologicos".
Granted, ONE
agricultural supply vendor/medium scale farmer's opinion is just that . .
. but me thinks he has some experience in this arena.
So as always, wash your produce and consider ways of detoxing. That's what we learned about organic produce in Ecuador.
In a dash to leave Quito we jumped on a bus headed south for a little place called Latacunga, thinking we'd just spend the night in some small peaceful pueblo. Well, not so much.
Firstly the bus simply dropped us off at some nondescript section of the PanAmerican Highway - no phone, no internet access, no restaurants, no bathrooms, no hotels - and for a few moments - no hope. We just stood there with our luggage looking at each other trying to figure out who to blame. OK, it was my bright idea to be free flowing, spontaneous, cast care to the wind. This was payback.
We decided to flag down a taxi who took us to the marketplace (as though we seriously wanted to wander through some Latin American marketplace with day packs and dragging our luggage - NOT. What were we thinking?!!
Thank goodness the market was shutting down so we redirected the taxi driver, asking him to take us to the town center. We couldn't do much in the way of checking the place out while dragging luggage around town. Plus it just plain looks tacky. So we opted for a hotel right across the street from the main town plaza; nothing fancy at all, but functional.
We parked our luggage (thank God) and headed out on foot to explore this late great pueblo of Latacunga. It didn't take long for us to decide that though it was a darn site better than Quito, it was not for us.
We were greeted by a hummingbird with a long dark tail in a small park on the outskirts of Latacunga. This tiny connection with nature resounded as a reminder that this connection is central to our existence. What are we doing in these cities anyway? Going rural presents challenges, but we are up for it!
We managed to get to Quito but geez what a long trip - long and pretty uneventful. Then the drive in the taxi at 11pm from the airport to the "Community Hostel" had enough of a view to show us that we didn't want to spend much time in Quito. Yikes . . .
But the sorry story is that we were exhausted from the trip and from getting precious little sleep that first night that actually LEAVING wasn't a wise idea. For one thing, we hadn't actually decided yet where to go from there.
So instead of heading straight out of town we plodded around Quito all day long in a daze: both foggy headed and me (Starr) with a moderate altitude induced headache. We learned two things in Quito: 1) the Community Hostel is a great place to stay; 2) Quito's not someplace that we would volunteer to visit.
