Borracho: (sp) adj.  drunk

-ito: (sp) suff.  diminuitive.  added to words in Spanish to imply “little” or impart a degree of cuteness on a word not initially present.

Borrachito: (sp) n.  1. “adorable little drunk,” then.  2. an Ecuadorian drinking game

Belen (or is it Anita?) deals out the seven of hearts, and a makeshift shotglass is once again placed in front of me in a game that seems fixed (these Ecuadorian women keep giving me their hearts).  A club unsurprisingly is dropped to the next person in the circle, and a table full of Ecuadorians chants “IZQUIERDAAA IZQUIERDA A LA IZQUIERDA!!!” which by this point I’m only too aware means “to the left!!!” As in, my current location.

Cards and Cristal

As someone that went to college in the United States, I’m no stranger to drinking games, where through a combination of fate and strategy, cards determine exactly who is likely to be emptying their stomachs before dawn.  Decidedly short on strategy, Borrachito is basically a step away from sitting down and racing through a bottle of terrible fermented sugarcane juice while admiring a deck of Galapagos-themed playing cards.  Cards are slowly dealt clockwise around the table; clubs require the person to the left of the dealt player to drink, spades go A LA DERECHA!!!, hearts go to the current player and diamonds give him the ability to force Ecuador’s finest distilled out on any of the unsuspecting players.

As far as drinking games go, this one is decidedly lacking in both skill and subtlety, though it presented an excellent opportunity for a gringo such as myself to learn key Spanish phrases that would be imminently useful.  Besides “right” and “left,” I picked up “Drink!” “Poor baby!” and “Enjoy!” (”disfruta!“), for less than the normal five dollars an hour most Spanish lessons cost.  The drink, a local schnapps-like spirit called Cristal (not in any way to be confused with its Hip-hop beloved distant cousin) is fairly inoffensive for one to three dollars, and the obvious choice for locals as all foreign spirits of about the same size range from 10-40 dollars per bottle.  Much like many of the ingestibles I’ve tried in Ecuador though (guinea pigs, chicha, dried cow’s blood), it’s not terrible but simply not something most people would ever in any way crave.

We’d gotten back to La Providencia well after dark; had I known we’d be returning, my backpack — equal parts mud-soaked and deadweight — could’ve remained behind.  I had intended to sleep after our rough day trekking through Chone’s cloud forests, but as our gracious host Roberto had invited four local women over to welcome us, it seemed rude to opt for the company of my hammock instead.  My poorly chosen gear, well established by now as containing nothing remotely useful, also contained no additional clothing.  The day’s attire in a pile of cloth, mud and stowaway branches on the floor, I was forced to ask our already gracious host Roberto for an outfit of some sort, which fit remarkably well considering I’m taller than everyone in Ecuador by at least a foot.

Ignoring the party for a bit, I carried my clothing off to the washroom so that I’d have something vaguely clean to wear in the morning, and got well acquainted with the “old school” method of laundry.  Using a large stone basin, I dropped each article in individually and hosed it off, then got to work with a block of soap and brush, doing my best to rid the clothes of the bulk of dirt (and in some decidedly badass cases, blood) before hanging them on a clothesline to be dry by tomorrow.  Unfortunately, “dry by tomorrow” is an impossible description in Ecuador’s thick, humid climate, but I wouldn’t have to deal with that until morning.

Wall Decorations

A little should be said about the sparse decorations in La Providencia.  Few adornments cover the wall and, with the exception of a large soccer — sorry, futbol — banner, can be broken into two categories: solemn religious Catholic dogma and big-titted ladies calendars advertising agricultural products.  My room contained two of such calendars, a cross and an austere portrait of Jesus seemingly glancing over towards the nearest calendar.  On the door of the kitchen, a sign reads (loosely translated): “This is a Catholic house.  Please keep other dogmas, Protestant and otherwise, out.”

The Pigeons' Room

Despite no screens over any of the windows or balconies, there was a pleasant lack of insects (mosquitos or otherwise) inside the house.  The wood making up the floors and ceiling beams had been gatherered from La Providencia’s predecessor (also La Providencia), which had been built at the turn of the last century.  The wood felt dense and strong, though at times wide gaps between beams displayed parts of the storage area downstairs.  Like anywhere else in Chone, dogs wandered the yard that could best be described as “mangy,” cats howled in the mornings in tandem with roosters though were never seen, and a lone bird cage contained two pigeons, clearly cramped but nonplussed about the situation.

Back in the kitchen, I joined Joe and met up with Fernando (Roberto’s cousin) and Roberto’s four friends that had dropped into to meet the gringos; our rarity in the region had elevated us to near celebrity status at times.  Mariella, Belen, Anita and Gabriella (whose names I would almost never apply correctly) sat at the table with two bottles of their finest $1.50 Cristal.  The game proceeded as described above, until I attempted to dissuade Roberto from using his “give a drink” power on me by teaching him “Bro’s before Ho’s” which immediately denigrated into a curious sharing of language and cultures with Roberto acting as translator.

We talked for a few minutes about when and where and if one should use the word “Dude” when, after a brief silence, Roberto asked:

“Do you say nig-ger?”

“Uhh… No.  I can’t.”

“I see movies and in movies they say ‘hey nig-ger hey nig-ger’…” he says, while gesturing two fists coming together in a friendly greeting.

“Well, for one, I think it’s nig-ga.  Like the ‘ERRR’ isn’t really said.”

“Nig-GUH”

Belen (or is it Mariella): “NIGGA!”

“Yes yes.  I mean no.  like…”

“I go to New York and say ‘hello nigga’”  It was phrased like it should’ve been a question but there was no querying tone to the statement.

“No, you can’t do that.  I mean, Chris Rock probably explains it better but, like, white people mostly shouldn’t say it.  And maybe the rules are a little different for hispanics but I’m pretty sure you can’t get away with it.”

He stares at me perplexed, not entirely getting me.

“No say nigga you.”

“Oh.”  I expect him to be disappointed but he accepts the cultural limitation with ease, as though the topic of conversation were as interesting to him as ice hockey, Jerry Springer or any other bizarre North American curiosity.

Luis arrives to talk about the next day’s exploration of Chone, not even attempting to disguise the fact that it will be more of the same relentless cheating of serious bodily harm.  While the girls and Roberto continue drinking, Luis, Joe and I huddle on the other side of the table around a small paper map of Chone and a recently printed tourist brochure.

“Tomorrow,” he says, “I take you to the Tombas.”

Entomb(as)ed

Tombas, meaning tomb, is a cave-like outcropping in the middle of a particularly muddy hill that cuts about seven feet into the moutain before stopping, a fairly level five feet tall all around.  We’d made it there towards the end of the day, already beaten and exhausted, and while it did indeed seem like it’d be a fun spot for tourists to camp at, I’d simply had too much natural grandeur that day to take in any more, collapsing on the surprisingly smooth stone surface while Luis explained why this natural equivalent of a storage closet was a thing of magnificence.

“We saw the tombas already, Luis.  I think I have some tombas stuck in this scab on my arm…”

“We saw ehh.. pequeno.. the small tombas.  I wanted you see big tombas.  You saw smaller.  You can even stand in big tombas.”

“Big tombas is deeper in mountain?”

“Not deeper, no.  Is taller.  In wet season, big waterfall pour over tombas.  You stand behind.”

“There’s a waterfall there?”

“Yes.  In January is waterfall.”

The brochure in front of me, I try to point out cave etchings, opulent old churches and displays of rich, varied foods to take advantage of throughout the region.  Each offer to take part in the rich culture of Chone was immediately deflected by a reminder of the mindblowing resplendence of a rocky outcropping three feet taller than the one we had just seen earlier.

He also brought up the Tembladeras, another natural occurrence he was never quite able to accurately describe.

“Horses, Luis!  Didn’t you say there were horses in the area that were great for riding?  Why don’t we do that instead of going back to the mountain?”

“The horses here are wonderful.  Yes.  We will go to see them after la tombas.  You will really like.”

Joe, fresh from a particularly bad ropeburn, was trying as hard as I was to keep things a bit more tame, but eventually dropped “Well, this is what we were sent here for, so we go where you say,” and once journalistic ethics have been brought into things I had no more outs.

Still buzzed, I went to sleep with no intention of waking in time to milk anything the next morning.