City Girl

I have always thought of myself as a city girl. Not that I have always lived in a city. As a matter of fact, I didn’t live in a big city for the first time until I was 20 years old and moved to Seville, Spain during my last year of college. But being there that year confirmed for me what I always knew. I was a city girl. I loved the fast pace, the accessibility, the anonymity of it, the diversity of people, smells, sights and foods . . . I would live in a city. And pretty much since then (with a small digression back to Delaware in my early 20´s), I have lived in cities. No they weren’t New York City, but the populations were large and the conveniences of being in a city were all there. From our door to the nearest coffee shop is 200 steps, the nearest bar 150, the nearest place to purchase a bite to eat 100, a bagel is maybe 110 steps away. You get the point.

And yet, despite the ease of being in a city, I do love to visit small towns or even communities that can’t even call themselves villages due to their small size and relative lack of every convenience imaginable. Especially when travelling abroad. I love the hillside village in the middle of nowhere where everyone knows everyone else’s name and "Good morning" is a matter of course rather than a cause for alarm.

John and I, after 10 days in the capital city of Quito, had had enough of the city life. Perhaps it was the bird spewing mustard incident, or perhaps we were just tired of having our choice of 15 internet cafes, of breathing in the intense smell of the diesel fuel, of knowing that at any moment we could be approached by someone wanting to take advantage of us. So after a little under two weeks time, we packed up our backpacks and trekked up to the Pan-American highway to catch one of the buses headed to Cayembe, a smaller town of only 20-30,000 people settled in the shadow of snow-capped Vulcán Cayembe.

While Cayembe was no Quito, 30,000 people is nothing to sneeze about and we quickly dismissed our guidebook’s summary that there was only one internet cafe and two restaurants of note. What we did notice was that we were the only non-Ecuadorians in town. It is possible, though not likely, that we might not have so quickly made that observation, were it not for the fact that every passer-by literally did a double take upon seeing us and alternately snickered or stared as if we were from outer space rather than the United States.

Cayembe, famous for its bizchochos (small, crunchy breadsticks served warm) and queso de hoja (freshly made string cheese) is not a major tourist destination for "gringos," however it is a fantastic place from which to explore the larger region, also called Cayembe. After securing a map from the very helpful tourist information center and filling up on sautéed potatoes, French fried potatoes and a version of potato pancakes, John and I were ready to embark on our adventures for the weekend.

We first set out in the town of Cayembe to find the Temples of the Sun and the Moon, ruins left over in the green space at the far end of town. Remembering my experience in Peru, I began to imagine the types of ruins we would find there, but after searching through the local cemetery for the better part of half an hour and finding only homage to people that had passed on, I began to wonder. Finally, we decided to ask for help and located what appeared to be a grounds keeper putting his tools back into the tool shed.

"Ven acá," he motioned to us as he shuffled off, over toward one of the cemetery walls. We followed closely, exchanging curious looks over top of his head. He brought us to a section of the wall that had been knocked down and indicated a small pathway between a set of run down shacks and the outside of the cemetery wall, indicating that we should follow the path up.

"What about the barbed wire fence?" I asked. But he just shook his head, smiled and assured us that the news people had brought back confirmed what he already knew, the ruins were at the top of the hill. So, we went. Climbed through the wall, under the fence, greeted the man cutting his toenails in the shack and walked up the grassy dirt path to an open field. And there is where we found, absolutely nothing.

We stood in the field, bewildered looking at each other under the threatening sky and shrugged. "Do you think this is it?"

John laughed, "I guess this is why no one in town knew where the ruins were?"

I guessed so too. Later, back in the tourist office, she told us that the pre-Incan ruins were in the process of being restored (to what I am not sure) and that we were better off going to explore some of the local communities and "touristic sites."

Determined to prove our guide book wrong, we set out the next morning on a bus bound for Paquistancia, a community about 30 minutes up the dirt road leading out of Cayembe. As usual, I attracted the one drunk old man on the bus and despite my insistence that he stay on the bus, he got off when we did, the bus kicking up dust into the sunny morning air. We stood in the middle of the dirt road, old, drunken man, John and I weighing our options. We knew that there was an old growth forest on the map near here . . . only if we knew where.

To our right, a family congregated around an outdoor sink, chopping cilantro and washing a bowl of already chopped potatoes. "I guess we can go ask them," I whispered to John, giving the swaying man a sideways glance. "I hope he doesn’t think he is coming with us."

As it turns out the family was preparing for a local girl’s quinceañera, but the eldest also served as local guide and after a few negotiations, John, Maira and I set out, just the three of us, for El Bosque Primario de Pumamaqui (The Old Growth Forest of the Puma’s Hand. We walked along dusty road, an outcropping of houses dotting the sides of the small road, cows, sheep, goats, bulls and horses grazing the pastures. Through the local church’s "parking lot" and up into the hills for the next 4 hours. As we walked, me huffing and puffing along side of John and Maira, Maira regaled us with her knowledge of local culture, fauna and lore. We learned that one of the volcanoes without snow that could be seen in the distance had become snow less, when her "husband" volcano cheated on her and she cried so much that she was left without water. We learned that the Pumamaqui tree, old growth trees that were near extinction before the forest became protected, got its name in Quechwa because the puma used to hide in its branches and because the leaves of the trees looked like a puma’s paw. We ate local taxo fruit from the trees and learned about the many uses of the plants that grew on either side of the path, with sweeping views of the valley below us, green pastures, volcanoes and small communities growing their own existence, far from the lights, sounds and smells of the city.

Unlike Paquistancia, Oyachachi was not an easy 30 minute jaunt from the town of Cayembe and as we climbed higher and higher up into the clouds of the mountains, I gripped the side of the bus seat that I leaned on, feeling the effects of the altitude with every pitch of the bus. After a while, I gave up and John was gracious enough to let me use his lap as a seat for the remainder of the nauseating ride up over the pass and then back down into the valley on the other side, into the community of Oyachachi. Like Paquistancia, and even the town of Cayembe, John and I were the only non-Ecuadorians in sight as we made our way past the soccer field and the ten houses that consisted of the town toward what the sign indicated were local ruins. We were not jaded by our experience two days earlier, we would see some ruins if there were some. We bundled up against the cold drizzle returning the greetings of the indigenous women sitting in their doorways, brightly colored shawls draped over the shoulders, a lone feather sticking out of their round hat.

Two miles down the road, we discovered the community that had been moved into modern day Oyachachi only 40 years early. A sign invited us to imagine children running in their streets, learning in their schools, families eating in their houses and mourning the loss of loved ones in the remains of the church that still stood in the pasture. Standing there in the field, a soft mist falling from the sky, the river rushing further down the hill, we stood in the remains of what had been a family’s house and I closed my eyes. Could I feel their presence here? Why had they moved their community futher up the hill? What had made them change from these cute little round houses with thatched roofs to the squat, rectangular structures we had seen in town? With no phone service and few possessions, their lives remained simple in the new version of Oyachaci . . .had the move been merely to be closer to the natural hotsprings inside the town, popular with many daytrippers? Or had their been a different reason altogether. Heading back to the new town, we fell silent, the sound of our footfalls absorbed by the dirt of the street, mountains rising up to our right, the river flowing on the far side of the pastures to our left.

Once inside the hotsprings, we were quickly the object of many a curious stares as we lowered ourselves into the volcano fed pools overlooking the town and valley beyond. The water warmed our bones, cold from the walk down to the ruins and before long, we were engaged in a rousing game of tag with a group of young teenagers from a town not too far from Oyachachi. Laughing and playing with the kids, John and I noticed that despite the odd looks we received from the general population, no one felt threatened by our engagment with the children and we tried to imagine how two adults playing tag with unknown children would go over in the States. There was inherent trust from the kids, from the people that sat and swam bathing around us.

After a lunch of beans, toasted corn kernals and fresh salsa in a bag and some fresh watermellon and pineapple from the back of pick up truck, we headed back to Cayembe, once again entertaining the locals´curiuosity about where we were from, what we were doing in Ecuador, how long we would stay and if we liked their country, their food, their customs, their people. The answer . . .of course.

As I said before I am a city girl. I love being able to get what I want, when I want it. So you may find it interesting that John and I today signed on to volunteer in the community of La Chimba, an hour bus ride up the dirt road from Cayembe. For the next two weeks or so, John and I will be giving English, computer and teacher training courses there in exchange for room, hopefully meals and an hour a day of Spanish for John. It may be difficult to reach us as there is no internet and no cell service. No restaurants, no cafes, no bars, no bookstores. In La Chimba, there are houses, school, church, a river and an ex-hacienda (slave owners´house) being converted into a future hostel for people like us, who pass through to help.

I have always thought of myself as a city girl, but for the next few weeks, country girl I will be.