Room with a view

This is what I came here for.  Sunshine burning past a plantain treeline just beyond the screenless balcony of my bedroom.  An optional hammock just slightly too small for me next to the bed (great for watching cable television, seemingly an anachronism in a homestead devoid of most other forms of “modern” technology).  Serenity now.

Had I awakened at 5:30, a field of dairy cows would’ve been mine for the milking, satisfying a longstanding desire of mine that’s admittedly weird but assuredly not in any way perverse.  Throughout the world, cold, mechanical efficiency had replaced the gingerly connection between hand and udder so long a seminal part of the cream-loving human experience.  Getting another check off of my peculiar to-do list would have to wait.

La Providencia

La Providencia, my home away from my home away from home deep in the coastal cantone of Chone is an all-purpose farm, specializing in nearly everything the region is known to produce.  The countryside is lined with trees producing plantains, bananas, passion-fruit, mandarins and most importantly, cacao.  Until World War II, this reason was one of the top cacao exporters in the world, sending the bulk of their supply off to Germany.  While we debated guns versus butter, Germans apparently had a similar battle with chocolate, and the sweets lost, sending the region into an abject if tasty poverty it never again escaped from.

Breakfast consists of pancakes made from plantains and fresh cheese, served with equally fresh butter, papaya marmalade, cheese and salpietro, an corn/peanut/cilantro mix with an orange tint described as “natural viagra,” the first of many things in Chone to be described as such (which, along with Catholicism, did much to help explain why nearly every person we met was a direct cousin of our host), which is outstandingly good, with just a hint of savory sweetness.

Luis, the head of Chone’s tourism department and one of two people within 50 miles — sorry, kilometers — that can speak English, arrives two hours late in time to rush us through our breakfast as though we were responsible for the delay.  It would be a common theme in area: consistently rushing, yet always a few hours behind schedule.  Uncertain of where to leave my belongings, I opted to lug my backpack, replete with laptop and any number of unnecessary supplies that would serve no purpose on any mountain expedition, along with me.

A rare, un-bumpy moment...

Transportation to nearly everywhere in the region involves jumping into the back of a pickup truck (generally a Nissan, pronounced “Nixon”.  Spouting off “I am not a crook” with two fingers in the air receives neither laughs nor a hint of recognition from the locals) to be carried around the countryside as far as any given driver might be going.  Random pit stops are often made to pick up families from the side of the road, sometimes getting as many as twelve people in the back of a flatbed, along with supplies, children and livestock.  My initial rides involved holding on for dear life while being violently shaken like a Home Depot paint mixer; by the end of the weekend, I would be standing freely, arms in the air and wind in my hair.  When in Ecuador…

After a quick stop to pick up tonga, a local delicacy involving rice, hen, plantains and a special salsa, all wrapped in plantain leaves and allowed to continue cooking in its own juices throughout the day while being lugged in my backpack, we met our guide at the base of the mountain.  The original guide was a notorious drunk and true to form was incapble of either guiding or walking.  Luckily, every mountain in Chone seems to have at least one spare local with intimate knowledge of properly menacing machete usage.  Our spare was Don Bartholo, a local hunter, more than willing to take us through his mountain.  Armed with a machete in one hand and shotgun in the other, Bartholo added a compelling intensity to the start of our trip as he led the way up the fairly steep mountain path.

Along for the ride were Fernando and Jose (two Red Cross volunteers), Luis, Joe the photographer and Lider, a 63 year old schoolteacher along for the ride whose sole purpose seemed to be making me feel like a tremendous pussy while ambling up seemingly unclimbable passes with almost no visible effort.  The ground leveled off in a large open mandarin tree field, and I realized I was already breathing like an emphysema victim well into his second pack of the day, too aware of my body’s mass and my own lack of useful degrees of both muscles and endurance.

“Are you good for this?”  Luis, curious over my panting so early into the expedition.

“Sure sure.  How far up are we going?”

A brief moment of confusion on his face before, slowly “…to the top?  The places I want to take you we can only get to from the top of the mountain.”

“Oh.”

To myself: This is what I came here for.

A surge of confidence.  A naive sense of gonzo adventure.  An arrogant surety in abilities I only wish I could describe as “untested,” when the reality is that they’ve traditionally had about the success rate of chastity rings on Prom Night.

Mandarin season

Bartholo gestures to a mandarin tree and I take one, refreshing and sweet, from a low-hanging branch.  The day would at times seem like a sweaty, unending adrenaline rush, but it would almost consistently be punctuated by a wide variety of fresh fruits, always impeccably placed at times of near collapse on my part.  Crossing a field of downed trees, Luis points at the still-wet sap on a remaining stump and says sadly “Sangre.. the blood of the forest.”  He’s been trying to teach the owners of the land about conservation and they understand, but idyllic views don’t put bacon on the table.

The uphill trail steadily becomes more uphill and less trail, Bartholo making broad surgical strokes with his machete to clear wild vines, bamboo and limitless thorny bramble from our way in the name of making something vaguely path-like where clearly no man has ever walked before.  A tree-less section of mountain opens up, with loose dirt slipping below our feet with every step.  Bartholo cuts a sharp stick from the bramble with his machete and jabs the dirt in various spots making short, makeshift steps to ease our climb, the ground descending wildly below us with few places to break a fall.

This is what I came here for.  Heartbeat and breathing erratic.  Wide-eyed and uncertain, my hands gripping the occasional loose roots for any added support at all.  Trying not to look down.

Uhh...

Glancing at the younger Red Cross volunteer, I see he’s got the fear in his eyes and can’t tell if this makes me feel better or not.  As both he and I speak only one language and it’s not the same one, I had a hard time getting out of him earlier why he was coming along — “por Trabajo or, uhhh, por fun-o?“  Fun-o apparently didn’t translate well, but he answered “trabajo” (work) anyway.  I climbed for a while wondering what kind of work a Red Cross person could possibly be up to deep in the mountainsides before it occurred to me, while danging awkwardly from a tattered rope with a helmet freshly placed over my head: “They’re here for us.”

Only Joe and I have helmets, the locals clearly competent enough to scurry upwards over relentlessly uncertain footing.  Thankfully, Joe was having a miserable time of it as well, which at least left me feeling like this was far beyond the normal mountain trek.  After climbing around a particularly difficult precipice — no harness or actual gear, so much as a rope burning tightly into my hand as i dangle there for dear life — Bartholo looks at me and says “Spiderman, si?  Ha ha.  SPIDERMAN!!!” proving that the international language of superhero crosses all cultures.

This is what I came here for.  Absolute bloody — to borrow a term from Joe — madness.  Meaningless danger as we crossed a trail that never existed before and would never exist again.  The nagging fear that any non-fatal accident would be followed by the inevitable impossibility of trying to escape down the mountain in a bloody — literal, not British this time — maimed state with the help of South American machete ninjas unaccustomed to yankee gawkishness.

While Joe was trapped below, Luis and Bartholo had a worried tone in their voices and finally brought me to “the hard part.”  A waterfall of rough vines flowed down from a muddy, 20 foot vertical wall.  As reliable and trustworthy as any of Quito’s limitless corner drug dealers, I had learned throughout the day that about one in six vines were actually worth holding onto in the name of remaining safely un-mangled, so I wasn’t instilled with much faith in my chances of using any of the natural options to reach the summit.

“You say if you can do this,” said Luis, “or we go back.”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t do this, actually.  But as I’m 100% positive I’m not going back the way we came, uhh, mas Spiderman, si?”

It wasn’t clear if Luis understood I had agreed to attempt the climb or not from my response’s sharp descent into silence, but I pushed forward and started my way up.  Vines gave way relentlessly as I dry-humped forward not unlike performing a vertical worm, but I eventually settled on two vines that seemed fairly reliable.  Bartholo, in the meantime, seemed to lock himself into the face of mountain in such a way to single-handedly grip my ass and propel it upwards, a gesture I normally would’ve been extremely uncomfortable with, but at the time was imminently grateful for.  Soaked in sweat, mud and bramble, with the deadweight of a laptop, Gameboy Advance, two notebooks, a Spanish dictionary, two padlocks, four condoms, a portable magnetic chess set and a mostly unread Tom Robbins novel hanging from my back, I crested the summit and collapsed.

Tonga

Despite being unaware at the time that Joe wouldn’t make it up for an hour, so I took out the Tonga and had lunch in the jungle to the sounds of birds and howler monkeys (which sound oddly like a mix between a miniature King Kong and a braying mule).  Lider, the consistently bemused 63-year old sat with me and pulled out a bag of mandarin juice.  For some reason, juice is served and sold in clear plastic bags similar to those used to bag produce in supermarkets, hastily tied up at one end to secure them.  They’re opened by gently chewing a corner off and then proceeding to down the entire bag in one sitting, feeling the soft plastic bladder steadily shrink in your hands while vampirically draining it of its life-giving fluids.

We called a brief meeting with Luis and explained that the intense climbing was no over for the day and any path taken from this point on would be “the easy route.”  It was four in the afternoon, and according to the altimeter on my watch, we had ascended 1600 feet.

“You are mountain climbers, though!” said Luis, confused at our near-exhausted states.

“What?”

“Mountain climbers.  I see in your newspaper pictures of you do mountain climbing.”

A moment of silence and confusion before Joe chimed in.

“Luis, those are stock photos.  From the Internet.”

He stared at us, smiling, not in any way comprehending.

This is what I came here for.  I am retarded.

This was the first clear view of the sky in about five hours

The treeline finally gave way, exposing the sky for the first time in hours with a sprawling vista of rich green, yellow, and orange in every direction with a vividness rarely found in standard reality.  Lush, green uninhabited mountains in every directions with no signs of humanity, it was very much like being on the set of Lost.  A lone horse stood to the side of the field, staring at us curiously but not moving as we passed by.  Luis was intent on a particular path, though admitted that like much of the day’s trails, he’d never actually been on it, and it could potentially be an impossible route.

We immediately vetoed this plan.

Instead, we connected with an actual trail that led to a local farmer’s property, and eventually a road that led down the mountain untrecherously.  Several houses lined the side of the path, all “casas abandonedas,” which unsurprisingly means “abandoned houses.”  They’re open to all, should anyone need  shelter, though the remoteness makes it unlikely anyone would just stumble upon them, short of gringos being foolish enough to agree to check out some “new trails.”

Absolutely disgusting

The last leg the the walk was unwelcome on blistered feet and sore muscles, but we hobbled down, making our way to the “main” road by nightfall.  I collapsed into the back of a pickup truck, hypnotically staring upwards for the first time at the Southern Cross as we sped back at high speeds on poorly paved roads to Lider’s house.  There, keeping up with an almost irrational hospitality that would characterize the entire region, Lider’s family ran out to our truck with oranges, drinks, crackers and fresh papaya marmalade, the latter he would provide us with jars of before leaving.

Coated in mud and thorns, starving and thirsty, we poured out of the flatbed and made our way back to La Providencia ostensibly in one piece.

This is what I came here for.  Hell.  Beats working.