Another trip to the province

Last week I went on another trip to the province with some of my co-workers from NCI. Our plan was to spend one day in a small community outside of Macará. In the morning we planned to visit a river and in the afternoon we were going to a small school to interview a group of farmers who were going to be there for a meeting. If things got late we were going to spend the night in Macará, but we'd probably drive back to Loja on the same day. That was the plan... the reality was a bit different, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good trip.

We all met at 6 a.m. at the NCI office. The first news was that plans had changed. There was too much for us to do all together so they decided to drop me off in a small community called Larama where the town mayor, Don Alcivar, was going walk with me to the river to check out the new source of water for Macará's drinking water system. The rest of the gang was going to head up the hill to the community of Mataderos to interview the farmers. When the interviews were over they would come back down, pick me up, and then we were all to drive over to the community of Pozul (about an hour and a half away) for a meeting at 7 p.m. Then we were going to spend the night in Celica and drive back to Loja the next day. My first thought was that I would be stuck in Larama for most of the afternoon and I might just take the first bus back to Loja. I decided to wait and see how things were going before I decided what to do.

We left Loja and after about 2 and 1/2 hours of bumpy, windy road (I've discovered the Ecuadorian version of Dramamine and use it regularly on these trips) we pulled into Larama. Don Alcivar was waiting for us in front of the City Hall. I had been told that the hike to the river took about an hour and I was a little worried, was that an hour of hard core hiking or a leisurely stroll? When I saw that Don Alcivar was middle-aged and a little overweight I breathed a small sigh of relief - if he could make it, I could too. But then, Don Alcivar whistled to a young guy and informed him that he was going to guide me to the river. The guy obviously had no idea that he was going to be asked to be my guide that day and his first comment was something like "it's really far away". I started to get a little nervous, but I reminded myself that I had plenty of food and water and there was no hurry to get back, I was just going to end up sitting around waiting for my co-workers to show up anyway.

So we all piled into the truck and drove down the road to the trailhead. When we pulled over we were greeted by a steep, rocky trail that went straight up the mountain. My co-worker looked at me and said "Well Lori, at least after this trip you won't have any stress". As I started walking up the hill behind my young guide I thought to myself "this could go really bad...". But I just got into my hill-climbing pace and started "trucking", making sure that I kept an eye on where we had been just in case I had to find my way back by myself. It turned out that we were walking on top of the buried water pipe. It was a nice, wide trail and it was almost impossible to get lost. As we climbed up the scenery was beautiful and I started to enjoy the hike.

After about a half an hour my guide stopped in the shade to wait for me. As I got closer he looked at me with a pained expression on his face and said "there's still a long way to go". I think that he was hoping I would just give up and turn around but I still had plenty of energy so we kept on going. After about 10 more minutes the road leveled out and I was surprised to round a bend and see a break in the hillside and some trees. "That couldn't be the river so soon", I thought. But it was. A few minutes later we arrived at a beautiful, rocky, mountain river. I crawled around on the rocks for while, looked for fish (didn't see any but did see a crab), and took lots of photos. It was fun. The hike back down the hill was quick and easy and we were back to the road by 11:30 a.m. The entire trip took less than two hours.

We found a ride back to Larama and I said good-bye to my guide and headed over to the restaurant. It was a typical lunch - meat, rice and tomato salad, and I fed the leftover bones to a hungry-looking dog who was hanging out nearby. I was impressed at how he was able to crunch them down, without leaving a trace. By then it was about 12:30 and I was faced with the prospect of waiting in Larama for another 5 hours or so until my co-workers showed up. I decided to take the next bus back to Loja but I had left one of my bags with Don Alcivar and he was nowhere to be found (he was supposed to meet me after I got back from the river).

Larama is a very small town on the main road between Macará and Loja. There is one restaurant, one store, one church, a city hall and a brand new soccer field. I went over to the store and asked for Don Alcivar but I was mispronouncing his name and nobody could figure out who I was talking about. While I was talking to a woman in front of the store (I think she told me her whole life story) the bus to Loja went by. Later I finally found someone who understood who I was looking for and he called Don Alcivar on his cell. It turned out Don Alcivar had left my bag with the woman at the restaurant where I had eaten lunch! I went back to pick up my bag and met the nurse from the local health center who didn't seem to have much else to do but hang out at the restaurant all afternoon. She was a friendly, interesting person so I decided to sit with her for a while since I found out that the next bus didn't show up until 4:30 p.m. It turns out that hanging out at the restaurant with the nurse was the place to be in town. Various people stopped by to chat that afternoon, including a group of researchers from Quito who were doing a study, directed by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, on international migration.

During this time I had been trying to call my co-workers but they were out of cell range. I finally go through to one of them, and she told me that she was waiting at the school. My other co-worker had taken off to visit a property that NCI was thinking of buying. None of the farmers had shown up at the school for the meeting that was supposed to take place. She had managed to track down one person who told her that Don Alcivar had never notified them, even though he said that he had. Who knows what really happened. Eventually I got a hold of my other co-worker who claimed that he was heading down the hill and that he should be in Larama to pick me up by 5 p.m. I decided to wait the extra half hour and go with them to Pozul, spend the night in Celica and head back to Loja the next day. So I chatted with the nurse, and various other visitors while I waited. I found out that the woman who owned the restaurant had 15 children (13 still living). All of them, except one, were grown and out of the house. The youngest, a girl, lived with her and was about 15 years old. It turns out that this woman also knew some of my old buddies from the Peace Corps. Apparently, one of them had taught her how to play "head, shoulders, knees and toes" and the other one had given her his furniture when he moved.

By 5 p.m. neither my co-workers nor the bus to Loja had shown up. I got through to my co-worker and she assured me that they were on their way. Then the bus passed by. The guys from Quito left. It was starting to get dark. After another, slightly nervous, phone call I was told that they were "minutes" away. Finally they showed up, just before 6 p.m. I said good-bye to my new friends from Larama and we headed out to Pozul for the community meeting. We were pretty tired during the meeting and by the end we were all looking forward to the hotel room in Celica.

After a meal of french fries and hamburgers in Celica we headed over to the hotel. It was about 10 p.m. Earlier in the day I had asked if anyone had made reservations in the hotel and I was told "no", but it was Tuesday night and the hotels never filled up in Celica. Ooops. There are four hotels in Celica and all of them were full that night. Now what to do? The next big town was Catacocha, about 2 hours away, on the way to Loja. It was either that or sleep in the truck, so we headed out to Catacocha and arrived around 12:30 a.m. The first hotel we checked was full. I had a sinking feeling. Fortunately the second hotel we checked had rooms. They were small, but clean. My bed had a big depression on one side, but I curled up inside and crashed for the rest of the night.

The next morning, as I was getting ready, Lucho called me on my cell phone. "You won't believe this, Lori", he laughed "you weren't meant to come back to Loja any time soon". Apparently there was some kind of strike in La Toma (a town between Catacocha an Loja) and the road had been blocked. It wasn't expected to open until late that afternoon. We had been planning to go directly to Loja that morning, but now it looked like things would be delayed. Over breakfast we examined our options and decided to take the long way home. There is a small pueblo, called San Vicente, about an hour outside of Catacocha (by dirt road) where the people are supposed to have lighter complexion, hair and eyes than the average population. Legend has it that they are decendents of a group of Jews who fled there during the Spanish Inquisition. And according to some recent studies, the local population has a high incidence of certain diseases that are common among Jews and they practice some traditions (like not young cutting children's hair) that are reminicent of Jewish traditions. We weren't sure if it was true, but we had time on our hands so we thought we'd check it out. As we left town, we stopped and asked a woman for directions and it turned out that she was heading to San Vicente, so we gave her a ride. On the way we quizzed her about the Jewish-type traditions and she wasn't familiar with them, but she did say that there were a lot of people with light hair and eyes in the town. She also told me that she had 10 children, most of them grown. She looked to be in her 50's and she was very energetic.

We dropped her off in San Vicente, which turned out to be a relatively unremarkable town. But we did see a woman with blue eyes in the local store. Hmmm, could she have been of Jewish decent? Hard to say. Actually I've heard that there are lots of areas in the province where the locals are known to have blond hair and blue eyes. There are probably lots of reasons. Throughout history, humans have been pretty good at migrating around the world and mixing up their genes.

After San Vicente we decided to keep on going along the back roads. For the next couple of hours we drove along with beautiful mountain scenery, passing small towns and crossing one big river on a rickety-looking wooden bridge. Along the way we listened to the radio when we could and kept tabs on the strike. It turns out that the taxi drivers from La Toma were mad because the city wanted to charge them some type of tax for using the roads. So they protested by striking and blocking the main road into and out of the city. There were negotiations going on but the mayor said if nothing was resolved by 2 p.m. she was going to call in the military to clear the road. We kept driving and eventually made it to the main road and arrived in La Toma right around 2 p.m. The road had already been cleared, but we stopped for lunch and then headed back to Loja.

All in all it turned out to be a fun trip, even if things didn't go exactly as planned.