Time Out: Part 1

I recently spent two weeks enjoying my vacation time in between semesters by traveling to several of the places in Ecuador I still hadn't visited. It started with a trip down south to get acquainted with Loja and some surrounding small cities followed by a short venture to the coast to visit a friend in the banana capital of the world, Machala.

Day Bus Blues

Traveling in Ecuador by bus is a great option because it is so inexpensive (roughly one dollar per hour). Additionally, due to the small size of the country, it is a viable option to get just about anywhere save the Galapagos Islands. One of the downsides of bus travel in Ecuador is that under certain circumstances it is incredibly dangerous.

Due to the mountainous terrain, the roads in Ecuador are winding and barely guarded by barriers to prevent vehicles from falling over the edge. Since I have been in Ecuador, I have heard of at least three horrific bus accidents that involved buses rolling off the edge of a mountain road, resulting in the death and injury of many of its passengers. Most of the accidents happen late at night in scenarios where the bus driver falls asleep at the wheel. Because of this, WorldTeach has prohibited any of its volunteers from taking buses at night (not that I would take them anyway) and our only option is to take buses during the day.

This is obviously a huge disadvantage because instead of getting on a bus at night with a bunch of quietly sleeping passengers and waking up in your destination city (without having to pay for a hostal that night, might I add), you end up spending half of your day and all of your daylight on a sun-heated people oven that either smells like a locker room or a gas station bathroom—depending on how many infants are sitting around you—and sounds like a wrestling match or salsa club—depending on whether the bus driver puts on a Van Damme movie or blasts the radio through the bus speakers.

I was traveling with my SECAP co-worker Caitlin, and we decided that Loja would be our first destination. With the drive clocking in at a whopping twelve hours, we agreed to make a stop in Cuenca for the night to make the trip more bearable. One of our WorldTeach friends lives in Cuenca and her host family runs a hostal, so we stayed at her place for a very reasonable $3.50 a night.

Before we left for Loja the next morning, we walked around one of Cuenca's parks. I remembered the park from the first time I was there because of the ridiculous statue it had of Ecuador's only Olympic champion, and Cuenca resident, Jefferson Perez. I say the statue is ridiculous because Perez won an Olympic medal for racewalking.

For the uninitiated, racewalking is a sport in which you move as quickly as you can without picking both feet off the ground at the same time and while keeping your leg straight while your foot is in contact with the ground. While the idea of walking as fast as you can sounds (and looks) ridiculous, good racewalkers actually move incredibly fast considering the restrictions on their movement.

To give you some perspective, the fastest racewalking mile time I could find online was 6:07. If you have no idea what that means, my freshman year of college I ran a 6:20. I guess the spirit of racewalking is kept alive in Cuenca by the statue of Perez because that morning we saw multiple groups of people racewalking around the park and looking absolutely foolish doing it.

A statue that captures all the excitement and awkward body movements of racewalking

(Aside: Every now and again I will mention an absurd internet video that I saw a long time ago to a friend of mine, only to question myself later when I am alone about whether or not I had actually seen the video or just fabricated it by mixing up old memories. One such video was a prank where they scared Jefferson Perez to see if he would racewalk or run to escape. I confirmed that the video in fact does exist, and it is funny to see him admit that he only runs a little bit faster than he walks.)

Loja

Loja is a city way in the south of Ecuador nearly at the border with Peru. It is a small city known for its live music, clean Spanish, and proud people. Loja was actually my first choice city when coming to Ecuador (the WorldTeach application doesn't have a section for city preferences, but that didn't stop me from listing mine). It turns out I had a pretty good taste in Ecuadorian cities before I got to Ecuador because I had a great time in Loja and could definitely see myself living there.

Plaza in Loja featuring a statue of a man who I assume is the most famous racewalker from that city

The city seemed small compared to Cuenca, but the streets were alive with people and there was a great energy everywhere we went. Even though it rained every day we were there, it didn't stop us from visiting the city's many attractive streets and plazas, and watching a live outdoor concert and dance performance.

The first afternoon we were in Loja we met a guy who was selling sucre, Ecuador's former currency before its dollarization and switch to U.S. currency, as souvenirs. I don't really know anything about how currency or economics work, but it was interesting to hear him talk about how bad the inflation was (Wikipedia tells me 25,000:1 at the time of dollarization). The guy had all other kinds of world money too, and it was incredibly frustrating to see how pretty much every country in the world has more fun looking money than the U.S. dollar.

Two other interesting sights from Loja that have no accompanying narrative are the following: a store called "Seven & Leven" and a place that sold pizza cones.

They had great Slerr-P's

Around Loja

While we were staying in Loja we visited a few nearby cities of interest. The first one we visited was Vilcabamba, a town that became famous because of rumors that the people there regularly live to be over 100 years old. We went horse riding in town, and my guide told me that the oldest confirmed person from Vilcabamba is 115 years old since they only started officially recording birthdays 115 years ago.

Vilcabamba was tiny and filled with gringos. We met an interesting character from Virginia called Charlito, who referred to his eponymous restaurant as "conspiracy theory headquarters" because it is where the crazy local expats gather to talk about all the illegal things they think governments are doing.

After starting up a conversation with us, Charlito told us more about his life and how he ended up in Vilcabamba. Apparently he got fed up with the lack of freedom in the United States ("You can't even put a dog in the back of a pickup truck anymore!") so he sought* out a place where he would be free to carry as many animals outside the cabin of his moving vehicle as he wanted. He claimed that he settled in Vilcabamba because the weather there is the best in the world, which was hard for us to believe because it rained the entire time we were there. As we were leaving he encouraged us all to consider moving to Ecuador to start an English school because it is impossible to not make money since there is no real business competition here. I'm not too sure about that, but "Krishito's" does have a ring to it...

After Vilcabamba, we checked out two other little towns called Saraguro and Zaruma, known for their jewelry and gold mine respectively, that had nothing worth writing about.

Except for this 7 Eleven in Zaruma I guess

*I tried to type "seeked" and just learned that it is not a word.

Machala

The last stop we made on the first leg of our trip was to a city on the coast called Machala. Machala is the fourth largest city in Ecuador (behind Guayaquil, Quito, and Cuenca) and since I live in the fifth largest city (Ambato), I have now visited the five largest cities in Ecuador, which I feel like is some sort of accomplishment.

Machala is not known for being a tourist spot since there is really not much there except for ports where bananas are shipped to different parts of the world. Still, it's neat to look out the window on the bus to Machala and see miles of banana trees on both sides.

Interestingly enough, although there are a ton of bananas in Machala, people don't really ever eat them plain like we do in the U.S. Instead, they have several different varieties of cooked, mashed bananas that show up in many of their typical dishes. From the first minute I stepped off the bus in Machala I started looking for a banana to eat, but it wasn't until two days later as I was about to get on a bus home that I finally stumbled across a restaurant with bananas on the tables and the owner let me buy one from him.

The whole trip to Machala was basically just an excuse to see our friend Amy who lives there, so we spent a lot of time hanging out with her and we were even invited to spend the night at her place by her gracious host family, which was nice since the hotels in Machala are pricey.

We ate a lot during this trip; I recall eating one too many banana things during this dinner and almost throwing up afterward.

Outside of seeing our friend, Machala was really no different than any other area of the coast I have been to. The Spanish was nearly unintelligible, I was sweating the entire time, and I had tasty seafood.

Caitlin and I considered continuing to travel up the coast on our way back to Ambato, but my impacted wisdom tooth thought otherwise and I ran home crying so I could see a dentist and hopefully get my tooth pulled before we headed out east to the jungle town of Tena for part two of our vacation.