I am a world traveler. These are my stories.
In Ecuador and Peru, I have seen an item on several menu’s called Kuy. When asking around, I discovered this was actually a guinea pig indigenous to the area. Something of a delicacy, and eaten only on special occasions, the guinea pig is served whole; ears, eyes, teeth, and claws all still attached. The following video should give you an idea of what you are in for.
For anything other than the novelty factor…
Travel DON’T
When was the last time you used counterfit money to pay for something?
When was the last time you saw a gunfight?
When was the last time someone tried to kidnap you?
Before today, I may not have been able to answer these questions, but now, thanks to the miracle of the Ecuador-Peru border near Tumbes, I can. This border, between Loja and Piura, is the border I was told was more secure than the other crossing points between these two countries. After an all night bus ride, especially one as uncomfortable as last night, no one is ever at their peak performance level. Perhaps that’s why I got into some of the situations I did this morning. I tell you, if you are ever coming to Peru, stay on the tourist track, by all means FLY into the country, and never ever stay in a car with a man twice your size.
This may all seem marginally sensationalized, and I assure you, it is a bit over the top… but as my memory works, this is an accurate account of this mornings border crossing activities.
While on the bus ride to the border, I noticed a building slide past that said, ‘Migracion’ on it. I thought this was odd, but just laid back until we got to our stopping point a few kilometers later. Disembarking, there were a dozen or so guys with all manner of wheelbarrows milling around and trying to put everyone’s luggage on their cart at the same time. While this was happening a taxi wheeled up and some guy standing in the street asked me if I got my exit stamp yet.
No, I replied, I am heading down to the border.
Apparently, the bus company forgot to mention that the bus ticket I bought to go to the border, did not include stopping at the Migracion building, some 4 kilometers away beforehand. I turned to the busdriver who was still unloading bags and asked him if this was the case. He agreed that it was.
I needed to pee.
I stood around looking stupid for a couple of minutes until the bus pulled away. I figured I had better get going, so I harrassed a price out of the taxi driver and I jumped in the back seat with my bags. As my new friend and informant was opening the front door to get in the passenger side, a familiar sound rocked the street.
Boom.
I didn’t need to pee anymore.
I couldn’t see where he was hit, but a policeman and his motorbike tumbled into the dust and a rather standardly dressed man, aside from the pistol in his hand, jumped over the collapsing bike and man to make a run for several gentlemen seated along the sidewalk with briefcases in their laps. Quickly, several other forms joined in the rush.
Screams. boom. boom. boom. pop pop pop. Pounding feet. Screaming Women. Yelling men. The roar of an engine.
Two more men fell in the street before my taxi was well on it’s way out of the area. Later, at the border I was to learn that Peruvians are generally thought of as thieves in Ecuador and today was yet another attempt for a group of thieves to get money. The briefcases were moneychangers and each most likely had several thousand dollars in it. The officer wound up in the hospital in a nearby city, I saw the ambulance fly past us at the Migracion building. One of the thieves died before he hit the ground. The others are being detained or escaped.
My guide, standing in line with me at Migracion, unfurled the details of the story like yesterdays pants; dirty, but just old news. I was a little shellshocked, but after hearing Jasper’s drive-by-shooting story, this just sort of becomes another piece of the puzzle that is Latin America. When I tried to hand my passport to the man behind the window, he directed me to the next window. When I stepped over there, the man gruffly told me that the system is down. He then walked away. 45 minutes later, another man walked up to inform me that the system has been down for two days, and I will need to drive another 10 minutes away from the border to find a Migracion building that is stamping passports manually.
For another $5 round trip, my taxi driver agreed to take me there, wait for me, then bring me back to the border. This seemed fair, so my guide and I made to leave. When a Peruvian girl asked to ride with us I tell her to get in and then she is summarily dismissed by the taxi driver and made to go to another car, even though we both had to go to the same building. I spent the next ten minutes hounding the two men as to why in the hell they wouldn’t let another person get in the same cab. It comes down to the same reason those men were shot today; Greed.
The line at the second Migracion building was full of familiar faces from the bus and the first building. It takes a while, but I managed to get my stamps and a taxi ride back to the border. Before crossing the border I decided to change a few US Dollars in for Peruvian Soles. $40 gets me about 112 Soles, and I’m on my way across the border.
Once I crossed the border, a man named Arturo started talking to me and asked if I needed a taxi ride to the Migracion office for Peru. I said, No, but he mentioned it was 4 kilometers to the office. Asking a police officer walking by, he told me it was 2 kilometers. Turning to Arturo, I said, “are you joking?”
“Well,” he replied, “Maybe it’s 3.”
He then directed me towards his cab. After walking about 20 feet through the market, I noticed a large dirt lot with several derelict looking cars in it and almost no humans. I turned a 180 and marched right back up to the street telling Arturo, “No, Thanks.”
Arturo followed me back up to the street chuckling and telling me I was right to be cautious. He then offered to pull the car up to the street and we could leave from there. I told him to do so and walked off in search of another taxi. None presented themselves in the 30 seconds or so it took Arturo to materialize with his driver and car, so I hopped into the back. Remember that I said this; Never put your bag in trunk of a car. Never.
So I hopped in the back of the car, with both my bags, despite the insistence of the cabbie that I put it in the trunk. Arturo asked me if I had the money to get across the border; citing the often written, though seldom enforced border rule of ‘sufficient funds.’ I replied I was fine,though never gave him a specific dollar amount when he mentioned $100 US.
Very quickly, the taxi driver mentioned that he would like to pick up some more people for the trip to Migracion; stating that his taxi was actually a colectivo. I disagreed and told him to keep on driving, but he pulled over at the next corner and two men jumped in the other side. One of these men was gigantic; Andre the Giant.
My large bag was rather uncomfortable between my legs, but despite the insistence of the driver, I kept it close at hand. At the border, I again chose to keep my bag close at hand, a practice I firmly endorse, and entered the migracion checkpoint with bag in hand and Andre close by my side. After a bit of a wait in line, Arturo managed to get one of the policemen to scoot me to the front of the line. Oddly, Andre did not push forward with me, but sits back a bit until Arturo and I round the corner. About 30 seconds later, the big man joined us and the other guy outside. When I asked both of them pointedly if they got stamps, they both agreed emphatically; one of them going so far as to tell me he paid the policeman a dollar to rush him to the front of the line. Once back in the car the subject of sufficient funds came up again, this time in reference to an upcoming police checkpoint; only the amount magically became $200 and Arturo insisted I answer his questions as to how much money I have. I may have been a little slow, but I knew that dance. There were cars stopped a distance ahead of us in the road. I am hoping this is the police checkpoint he was talking about. Arturo is holding the other two guys’ papers in hand and asking for mine. I make my move.
Before Arturo could retract his hand, I had a firm grasp on the migracion papers in his outstretched hand. He tried to pull away from me, but it only loosened the papers enough for me to pull them free. When I looked at both papers neither had stamps. The driver wasn’t able to see behind him and was slowing down for the police control point. I immediately asked why the papers were not stamped and everyone in the car started talking at once.
First I was told the stamps were just for foreigners, then I reminded them that they had just told me they were Ecuadoran. Then everyone tried to tell me that there was an agreement between the two countries. The driver pulled into the oncoming traffic lane and started driving around the stopped cars. Times up.
I popped the lock open on the door and threw the door open and started yelling “Stop” over and over. The driver slowed down a little bit uncertain of what to do and, bag in hand, I rolled out the door. We were about ten meters past the police and the driver pulled over quickly and Arturo jumped out while Andre shut the door quickly. Arturo ran up to me demanding that I get back in the car. I said no thanks. He put both his hands on my bag and said I needed to pay him $30 for the ride; a far cry from the $1 he initially offered. I told him to fuck off and he dropped to $15. I fished into my pocket for the weird money I had just received from the moneychangers and told him I would pay him the dollar I initially agreed upon. As my hand was coming out of my pocket, he made a grab for the money, pulling a $10 bill from my hand and dashed back to the car. The car drove away as I turned around to find the policeman had made it to my side.
As quickly as I could, I relayed all the details (in broken Spanish) to the Officer and he confirmed that they should have had stamps on their paperwork and then said that the police would be looking for the car and the men.
The rest of the day was spent in semi-shock wandering around Tumbes, a horrible scorched border town in Peru. I tried to pay for food with the money I got at the border and was turned down almost everywhere because it was Effing counterfeit! Eventually, I managed to pay for bus fare and a meal with it. I’ll be humped if I am going to take a $40 hit because Peruvians are corrupt. If you are ever stuck there waiting for a bus, go to the Costa del Sol. It has free wireless, air conditioning, and pretty good food.
All night bus rides are never that great, but I managed to sleep a good deal getting in to Lima. I reiterate, bring bandanas when you travel. There are a million and one uses. Lima thus far has been less than exemplary other than I had the best coffee of my whole trip. We’ll see what else happens.
I feel I must tell you; there are a great many things to jump off of in Mindo. I, the intrepid explorer, have done my best to bring documentation of said things to you, my wonderful readers. Behold.
Camera 1:
If you think that was stupid, check out Camera 2:
Ecuador rainstorms smell different. Rainstorms smell different this close to the ground. On angel wings, you don’t catch that smell of earth; of loam… but here we are. It is hard to find reliable weather information online, but tripadvisor.com, which is fast becoming one of my favorite sites, has a three day forecast on the review page for each listing on their pages. Tomorrow it looks like lightning.
I’m going ziplining and then tubing in the Mindo river.
Definitely a good day for lightning. Good thing the camera housing is shock-proof… isn’t that what it means?
Ecuador has a couple national beers, Pilsener being one of them. You can pick up a 750 ml bottle of it on just about every corner for a dollar and you get 15-25 cents when returning it, depending on how much you paid for it. A pretty good deal, except it seems that you can drink these till the cows come home and never catch a buzz.
Mindo is a pretty cool little town. As soon as I got off the bus, a local woman walked up to me and asked in English if I needed help. I gave her the name of my hostel and she gave me immediate and accurate direction on how to get there. I was flabbergasted.
Gareth gave me the name of the place I am staying at. He left Quito one morning, feeling not quite 100% and was deathly ill soon after arriving in Mindo. This family took care of him for nearly 6 days while he regained his strength. As soon as I tell the matriarch of the house that I am friends with the sickly English guy, she becomes excitedly chatty asking all about him and even taking 20% of the cost of the place. Not bad for 10 seconds of work.
My room is splendid. I have three beds, yet again, and a private bathroom with what appears to be hot water in the shower. I think I need some friends to travel with, because if I keep getting stellar deals on three bed habitaciones, I would rather split the cost three ways.
My ankles itch tremendously from all the little ankle-biter bugs that I encountered walking the canyon in Quito. I’m doing my best to just put Benadryl on them instead of scratch because each place that I scratch the skin is a place where flies or infected mosquitos can lay all manner of worms and parasites that will skip right past your skins protective layer and right into your body and potentially kill you. This is the reality of my life. These are the concerns that I have replaced traffic tickets and vehicle maintenance with.
The cloud forest above Mindo is breathtaking. And not just in that Audrey Hepburn way… I mean seriously… to get to the top of the Cascadas, a series of waterfalls running through the forest, it is about a 7 kilometer hike to the entrance. I was quite out of breath. A 7 kilometer hike sounded a lot better to me than paying $15 for a taxi ride up there. If you ask around, however, you will find a trolley of sorts that drives people up en masse for $1; I just didn’t bother to ask before I left.
I had gone up there mostly because I heard that it provided some good views of the forest, you could swim in the river, and I purchased a $10 ticket for a canopy zipline tour. If you come to Mindo, ask the locals which tour group to go with. One of them is local so do what you can to support them.
If you come to Ecuador, you must come to Mindo. This place is delightful after the metropolitan sprawl of Quito. Cooperativo Flor de Valles runs numerous daily buses here for $2.50 USD. You can afford it.
After you reach the park entrance and pay your $3 entrance fee (well worth it) you can hike down to a platform looking over this amazing view. And then you can jump off of it.
When I asked the guy in charge if I could jump with my camera in hand, he gave me a look that said, “We are jumping off cliffs with a string attached to some underwear on the outside of our pants. If you wanted to jump off with a kitchen sink, I wouldn’t stop you.”
Once you get tired of this… ah who am I kidding, no one in their right mind would ever get tired of this… but it costs $3 per round trip, so, once you run out of money you can continue hiking down to the floor of the canyon and the Cascadas. Take your time, look around, and bring a rain jacket. It isn’t called a cloud forest for nothing.
Once you have hiked another 2 kilometers or so, you will come to a fantastic sign standing next to a cement platform; which you can jump off of.
There is also a toboggan slide next to it, which, in a manner of speaking, you can jump off of.
A little farther down you will find some gentlemen talking, possibly grilling up some lunch at a small outpost next to the largest waterfall in the Cascadas. One of them will happily take you over to a small mirador set over the waterfall… by now I’m sure you know where this is going.
The rope in the video is so they can ensure you don’t get dragged underwater. It is quite common for Latin Americans to have no idea how to swim, and the rope has become something of a rule. The actual height of the jump is just under 40 feet. This jump is free, but I suggest you tip Xavier and his friends as they are honest and hard working. As well they should be; they are the highest paid people for miles around, making more than even the hotel owners. Remember to tip your guide, but don’t worry if you only have so much coin… they will get by.
Before I left for the mountain, the power went out in the whole city… around 8 a.m. At 5 p.m. when I return the power has not been restored. The story, however, has percolated to the town. Apparently a car was forced off the road by a bus and struck a power pole or line and took out the connection.
The whole ride back down the mountain on my newfound $1 shuttle bus, I spoke with a couple guys traveling from Korea. They know a guy who knows a guy and they are staying in the priests quarters at the local church. I’m off to find them.
As luck would have it, Mindo is small and en route from some delightful Ginger tea, I bump into the only two asians for maybe a hundred miles around. The Father has already fed my Eastern companions, so they come sit down and regale me with stories of their travels and homes and lives. Before long we are neck deep in questions like “Why am I traveling?” “What do I want to return to?” and “Why the hell does everyone need an iPod?”
This conversation is one of the reasons that I am on the road. Fresh perspectives, old questions, that sense of camaraderie that comes when someone else is asking themselves the same questions you are. I’m not sure if the answers we came up with are correct, but we all had stars in our eyes to accompany a renewed sense of purpose and connection. Hyoung and Puck, you guys really made my night. Thanks for investing the time in a stranger.
Quito is a big city. It looks and feels like almost any large city in South Americs in some parts. That being said, it is set in an amazing valley that is absolutely breath taking once you get out of the city proper.
Some of the parks have clever looking structures of wood, metal, and even entire old trees stacked together; all of which are absolutely begging to be climbed all over. With little to no idea of what to do within Quito other than take Spanish lessons, I head for what appears to be a prominent backpacker haunt in between the much lauded New Town and the auspicious Old Town. Before you jump into a taxi, be sure you are at the bus station you think you are. The North Bus Station is extremely far north of the city and can cost you to taxi to and from.
L’Auberge Inn is definitely serviceable. Their wireless is decent and you can keep a decent signal if you get the second floor rooms facing the main street; this also gives you a balcony and a great deal of traffic noise in the morning. L’Auberge has a restaurant inside, though I would recommend either of the restaurants directly across the street for a much cheaper and delicious lunch, or one of two bakery/breakfast places about 2 blocks to the south on the other side of the main road. Neither of the breakfast joints seem to have names, but you’ll know when you get there. If you are going to eat at the hostel I would recommend avoiding the spaghetti bolognese. For dinner or snacks there is a grocery store on the same side of the road about one block north of L’Auberge inn that has a mildly English speaking attendant and everything you could want out of a third world country. Frontera (CabSav) seems to be the best available wine for any price. It adds a touch of class to the city night, as you can see.
Gareth is a young English bloke from Reading, England. He is one of the most friendly and talkative people I have ever seen. He is bristling with information about Ecuador and is ready to go find some adventure; his Spanish is terrible, but that never stops him from trying his best. For the two days following my arrival in Quito, he and I bounce around the city and talk to the varied inhabitants of the hostel; the highlight of those being a four member motorcycle loving family from Texas, including their Six and Eight year old children who have been traveling South America for the past year.
At the recommendation of the guide book I’ve been lugging around and cursing for some time, I decide to head up to Mitad del Mundo; the Middle of the Earth. Gareth has already been there so I am off on my own; braving the metro bus system. The trip there, on my lovely blue bus, is relatively uneventful and even with the rain I have a great time playing with tourists and snapping pictures. I even manage to find an espresso machine.
As I am leaving Middle Earth, a green bus rolls up to the bus stop and tells me they are headed to Quito. Not one to stand in the rain, I hop on and go for a ride. Map in hand, I attempt to engage the change collector in discussion about where I need to go and when to get off. The gentleman cannot seem to communicate with me, one of the minority of people in Ecuador who is too heavily accented for my to understand. Nearly a half hour passes on the bus whilst I try to get someone to direct my gringo self to the proper bus stop. During this time I am ignored, babbled at, and even given the opportunity to stare at a rather well formed brown breast as a woman decides to breast feed her baby while we are talking. You can imagine my surprise.
Finally, I seem to have conveyed my message through blunt force and the driver of my green bus speeds up, cuts off a blue bus, forcing them to a stop, and I jump out and board the blue bus. Two relatively antisocial Norwegians, red and blonde hair respectively, are at the back of the bus and I attempt to speak with them until we get to a bus stop I recognize. Walking in large cities in Latin America can net you some pretty impressive sights. It’s neat what people will do for a dollar.
The following day, having been told that Quito was a marvelous place to take Spanish lessons, I ask the hostle to summon up their partnered professor for a couple hours of my time. I was told he would be onsite from 9-11 and I could meet with him thereafter. This was not so, and the gentleman showed up some time after 11:30. After clearly stating that I wished to study 2 hours that afternoon, and 2 hours the following morning and that I needed to practice future and past tense verb conjugation, he proceeded to try and teach me present tense irregular verbs. This went on for about 30 minutes before I asked him to cooperate or leave. He decided to cooperate.
What seemed like an eternity later, seemingly out of material, he handed me a book to read out of; lists of vocabulary. Staring at him, I asked him the time and he said that we had been going for three hours. I bid the good man adieu and packed up my bag, setting off for someplace less frustrating.
I found an absolutely wonderful couchsurfing host with magnificent dogs and the nicest house I have entered south of the US border. Victoria and I spend an evening cooking and chatting and even watching some inestimably foreign English tv show. She gives me a run down of the house and her pets; the dogs who eat everything (keep the doors closed), the cat who eats only bread (keep the cabinet doors closed) and avocados, and all their various maladies. Victoria even takes me on a walk to a simply marvelous little canyon nearby down some of the most bug addled dirt roads that exist on this planet. Victoria tells me that there are so many lights burned out in the house, that she can’t see to get her keys in the door or use one of the bathrooms. One night, she resorted to simply scaling the garden wall to get inside; after hearing this I take the keychain flashlight off my daypack and put it on her keyring.
Friday morning, and Victoria is off to work before I am awake. Unfortunately, she left both the cabinet and her bedroom door open; all the bread is in absolute ruins around the kitchen, and her bedroom floor looks like this.
Breakfast in my belly, I load up on camera equipment and, packing a pug, I head off to the canyon. Apparently it is field trip day, so I take the opportunity to talk to some of the children running around and snap a few pictures.
4 hours of hiking later, the pug, the stray, and I are all beat when we get back to the house. I manage to make some guacamole, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and break her guest bed in one afternoon. I’m not sure how that balances out, but I feel like a complete retard. Victoria is a gracious host and simply moves me to another room.
My close friend and team mate, Joe, has been toying with the idea of taking a couple weeks away and coming to Argentina and Brazil with me. He finally manages to lock in the ticket and sends me the itinerary. It’s like Christmas.
With Joe’s arrival date now locked in, this gives me one month exactly to make it to Argentina. Including a week in the Jungle, 4 days at the Salar de Uyuni, and travel time I realize I need to get moving. Mindo is barely a word in my guidebook, which makes me think it must be wonderful, so Saturday morning means more busses to a new town. I have the name of a family who hosted Gareth in my moleskin, an invaluable present from Mark, and a bus ticket. This should get me there.
In all my life, I have seen few places to rival the beauty of the mountains of Ecuador. If you ever come here, get the hell out of the city. Do not spend one more minute in Quito than you absolutely must because the secret to this country is away from the metropolis; it is in the verdant loving (mosquito-addled) embrace of the jungle and mountains. The sight of the mountains, rivers, and vegetation on the bus ride coupled with the kid falling completely out of his chair when he fell asleep completely made up for the motion sickness from the drivers Andretti impression. If you are ever coming to the mountains of Ecuador, bring Meclazin.
Dancing is not my forte. That being said, I actually like dancing, or at least the idea of it, quite a lot. Hence, my reason for coming to Cali; to take salsa lessons. Cali has become the beginning of so much more.
The Guest House Iguana in Cali is a welcoming place filled with all manner of people. The overweight “vegetarian” who, despite having been here two days, doesn’t know if the shower has hot water. The requisite Scandinavian. And a mad diminuitive monster of a man, covered in tattoos from far away places and tribes, none from a gun, but rather wooden spikes and hammers, needle sharp copper rods, and other equally foreign objects. Jimmy, sporting last years mutton chops and no shirt tells me his plan:
“We go to Quito, meet a local who knows a little bit ab out the river, I’ve got a map, but there is a 7 way split that I’m not quite so sure about, buy a boat, some rifles for us, ammunition, and gifts for the tribe and then we’ll set off up river.”
This is the plan. It is some of the most primitive medicine on the planet; drinkable psychotherapy, Jimmy calls it. It is possible to find local men who will supply it in a safe location such as a living room where you can drink it and experience it. I encourage you to read the article in the link and see if that sounds like something that should be done in a living room. There is a tribe that will allow certain individuals to visit, provided adequate gifts of medicine, food, ammunition, and whose shaman will induct said visitors into the experience of ayahuasca. The idea is spend at least 5 days there, enough time to go through a couple of sessions with the shaman and perhaps go blowgun hunting with the men of the tribe; the tribe who as recently as the 1950’s was still actively practicing head shrinking. The tribe is not the only group out there… this is where it gets sticky.
The Rio Negro is the only way into their lands. This is tribal held land that is not policed or patrolled, prone to all kinds of nasties. Much of this land and the river are in conflict, as which tribe actually owns it is contested. This is effectively a warzone.
The key points are as follows:
There is no way in hell I am going to let this opportunity pass.
p.s. salsa is hard.