Christmas Vacation

It's been a while since we've posted, so here's a long one covering quite a few topics. Still, I think it's interesting:

New Year's Eve
Just after Christmas, "monigotes" and "mascaras" began to appear. Monigotes are life-sized "dummies" made of a shirt and pants, stuffed with newspaper and given form with corrugated cardboard. Mascaras are paper maché masks, painted to resemble political, cultural or sometimes fictional characters. Popular masks included Paul Granda (mayor of Cuenca), Rafael Correa (the President), Fabricio Correa (his brother, who has been embroiled in controversy over some shady road contracts he had with the state), Michael Jackson and others.

These figures, once the mask is attached, and perhaps some other personal touches are added, are commonly known as "Años Viejos" (Old Years) and are burned on the 31st. Many are displayed during the day at residences or businesses, and may represent personal characteristics or things that happened during the year that the burner hopes to be rid of in the new year. Along with these pre-purchased "Años Viejos," many people also make their own. In fact, there is a competition amongst neighborhoods, where entire scenes are created out of these figures. I don't know who won, but some of the more interesting themes we saw included a boxing match and a wrestling match between the president and his brother, a "Thriller" motif, various references to the "Communication Law" currently being debated in the congress, which many feel impinges on freedom of speech, and one which poked fun at the new Cuenca logo of "Todo Un Mundo" ("A Whole World") turning it into "Todo un mundo de Baches" - A Whole World of Potholes.


In the afternoon on the 31st, Nikki bought a kid-sized monigote and a Michael Jackson mask, added a paper bow-tie, and we ignited it at midnight. We decided that the monigote would represent Debby´s brother, David, who had a pretty serious ligament tear that ruined his whole summer and fall. We burned Uncle David in hopes that he´d have a better year next year and that he´d be able to fully exercise and come to the Adirondacks for the Heath annual gathering in August. We really missed seeing him before we left for Ecuador last summer. (The flame retardant polyester pants took a while to catch, and didn't smell too good when they did, but....) Michael/David was joined by hundreds of others on our street, throughout Cuenca, and all of Ecuador, I'm told. We saw many people running around the block with a suitcase, hoping to insure a year of travel, and others jumping over their burning Old Years for extra luck.

Oh yeah, like millions of Ecuadorans, we all wore yellow underwear to ensure a lucky 2010. According to superstition here, yellow undies bring good luck, red bring love and green bring hope.

Another New Year´s Eve tradition, brought from Spain, is eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight. Of course we did that as well and thought of our amigas madrileñas, Merche, Paloma and our half gringa- madrileña friend Kelli!

Noche Buena and Christmas Day

Christmas Eve is one of the most important religious celebrations of the year. Preparations begin in November, or earlier, and at the kids´ school, Nikki's class began rehearsals for their Christmas chorus. They had 3 performances in December, and they all dressed as elves, green satin pants, red turtlenecks, and white knit hats (which they dutifully turned in after each performance, to be redistributed for the next performance, likely to a different elf. Luckily, no lice sitings yet!) Performed at malls to an audience of mostly parents, it was awfully cute! We were really impressed with Nikki - she learned 14 new songs by heart!

Outside of the school world, celebrating Jesus' birth starts becoming public on the 15th, with "novenas," gatherings of family and friends to recite some prayers and ask for help for those in need (those in prison and kids in hospitals were most commonly heard at the novenas we attended). We were honored to be asked to participate with Jaime and Rita and their family, and we attended the first 2 novenas. Also during this period, we witnessed a few "Pase de Niños" or processions in which a group of families or parishioners walk through the streets, behind a decorated car, truck, horse or float, with small children, beautifully clothed in heavily embroidered and bejeweled white robes. These neighborhood "pases" culminate on the 24th with the "Pase de Niño Viajero" thru the streets of the historic center.



This big procession lasts from about 10:00 to 3:00 pm, and is mostly made up of three types of participating groups. Some are on flatbed trucks, representing biblical scenes surrounding the birth. Others are "bailantes de Tucumán" or what we´d call maypole dancers, in which one person carries a pole, about 12 feet tall, from which hang about 15 to 20 colorful ribbons, each attached to a dancer. The dancers do intricate weaving steps, braiding and unbraiding the ribbons around the pole.

The final group consists of an exquisitely clothed child, astride a horse or donkey, who is also covered with a jeweled robe. Additionally, this horse-cloth is also covered with strings of food, both natural and packaged, toys and sometimes money. Following the animal and rider are groups of native dancers, in traditional clothes, often lead by a completely masked dancer, like what we saw in Chunchi. We watched the procession for a couple of hours, and on our way to lunch, we passed a small plaza where many of the groups who had finished the parade were having lunch. We learned that all the bounty which adorned the horse is later shared by all in the group.

The procession gets its name from the fact that it is opened (or closed, depending on who you ask - we didn't see it) by a group carrying the "Niño Viajero," a baby Jesus statue which "traveled" ("travel" in Spanish is "viajar") to Bethlehem (or Rome) by a Cuencan bishop, many years ago.

The evening of the 24th we spent with Jaime and Rita and their kids and grandkids. We had a secret Santa gift exchange, and received a visit from Papa Noel, bearing gifts for the kids. We ate a huge traditional Turkey dinner at about 10:00 pm, extremely late for a family that typically eats only a small sandwich for "dinner" around 7:30. After dinner, Papa Jaime joyfully distributed bags of animal crackers and sweets to the kids.

Our family turned in shortly before midnight, but on Christmas morning, we awoke to a small pile of gifts under our small, borrowed, artificial tree. (Special thanks to our friend, Santa Susan, who brought down two extra bags of goodies from home, giving some important volume to our Christmas! We were SOOO excited to get Vermont maple syrup and Vermont sharp cheddar cheeses from Aunt Karen, as well as some Trader Joe´s treats like chocolate covered almonds and dried mangoes.. Susan also lugged down about 40 books for the kids.) Around noon, we headed down to our friend Gladys' penthouse (Gladys is Jaime's cousin, who spent about 14 years in new jersey) for a Christmas Day dinner with our visiting Seattle friends.

No Friends Like Home Friends
On Dec. 12, our friends Don & Susan, their kids Ian and Meghan; and Kelli & Alex, and their kids Miles and Lydia arrived in Quito. We've known Don and Susan since Ian and Mia started kindergarten together. Kelli and Alex joined our group of friends a few years later, when Miles started school with the siblings of some other members or our original kindergarten parent gang. We've all been looking forward to their visit for a long time. After they spent a week exploring the north part of Ecuador, we met them at the coast. We rented a 12 person van, picked up our girls at 111:00 am, immediately after they finished their last exam, and drove to meet them at the Azuluna hotel near Puerto Rico.

We spent the 1st day chillin' at the beautiful, long, wide beach across the street from the hotel, where, unfortunately, Nikki (and to a lesser extent, Mia) got a pretty good sunburn, which "colored" the rest of the trip for Nikki. (I think the pain of the burn was compounded by the fact that this group, although she has spent a lot of time with them, has never really been "her" gang, as she has no classmates in it.) We had planned to go to Isla de la Plata on day 2, but a number of kids had been sick the night before, so we changed plans, and most of the group went to the indigenous community of Agua Blanca, while Nikki and I spent the day in Puerto Lopez. Puerto Lopez is a sweet, small, authentic fishing village, with a few low-key tourist amenities, like restaurants and hotels. We watched some boats unload: piles of small fish carried by the dripping boxful from the boat to waiting trucks, which took them away to be baked and ground into fish meal for animal feed. Watching the frigate birds and pelicans dive and scavenge for scraps was like being inside a scene from National Geographic.

On day 3, we finally made it out to Isla de la Plata - the "poor man's Galapagos." An hour and a half boat ride brought us to the island, where half our group took the 4 km trail to view blue-footed boobies, white-beaked (?) boobies and sea lions, while the other half took the 7 km trail, and saw red footed boobies instead of sea lions. All the boobies were nesting, so we saw the females, sitting atop an egg or two, inside a circle defined by the boobie-poop she'd kick out from the center. We saw a few newly hatched boobies, protected by mom as well. The island is pretty harsh - no water or shade to speak of, only a few low-growing, grassy shrubs. We finished our trip to the island with a bit of snorkeling, then the 1.5 hour ride back to Puerto Lopez. We arrived in time to watch another fishing boat unload, this time in the crisp late afternoon light.

Day 4 had Ian, Miles, Mia and Don F went 4-wheeling on the beach at Olón, while the rest of us explored the pristine beach of Los Frailes. Dinner at an Italian restaurant and a late night skinny dip closed out a great day!

The ride back to Cuenca was a long one, because of 1) a wrong turn off the highway, which resulted in a fleeting, but interesting view of the "guasmos," or slums of Guayaquil, where we saw people living in bamboo and plastic huts, and begging by the side of the six-lane, divided highway, 2) a potty break with the A/C running, which lead to a dead battery, and the subsequent purchase of battery cables (no one seems to carry them!), which allowed us all to witness a pedestrian funeral precession thru the gas station parking lot to the nearby cemetery, and 3) the fact that hauling 12 people and their luggage from sea level to 12,500 feet in the fog, and then down to Cuenca (8,500 feet) is just not as fast as moving four people the other direction! Anyway, we made it in time for the Christmas eve described above.

On one of their last days in town, eight of us went hiking in Cajas Nat. Park, about 45 minutes from Cuenca. This was Debby and my third visit, and our best yet. All the kids did a great job hiking the 4 km trail, and the variety of peaks, lakes, flowers and rivers was spectacular!



Our friends left on the 30th, and we were all sad to see them go, but grateful for their visit.



Saraguro
New Year's Day we packed up our bags for a trip to the small town of Saraguro, about 3 1/2 hours south of Cuenca. When we got there, we discovered that the circus was in town, and we decided to go. The circus was a typical small town affair - Debby and I had both seen similar ones during our Central American travels. This was a 5 or 6 person show: 2 clowns, 2 acrobats, a magician/hypnotist/escape artist, and a woman who cooked popcorn, sold and collected tickets, and starred in some of the karaoke skits (actually, all the performers had multiple roles). Only about 50 people were in the audience - this was the 3rd to last day of a three-week run. I was pulled from the audience to help tie a rope around the escape artist's knees - he escaped. Go figure.

On Saturday, we look around town a bit, then went for a hike to "Baños de Inca" a few kilometers out of town. This was a beautiful but hot hike up to a small waterfall and some caves.

Saraguro is a small, rural, largely indigenous town of about 5000 (?). It reminded both Debby and me of Guatemala. The men wear below-the-knee length, black trousers, (when we got into town Nikki says ¨hey, why is everyone wearing capris" ???) and the women wear a white blouse, black, full-length skirts, heavily beaded necklaces that cover their blouses from shoulder to shoulder, and a black shawl, held together in front by a heavy metal pin, with a large, flat, sun-shaped top. (Although beautiful, the asking price of about $60 for one of these "topos" was too steep for me.) The men and women also wear hats, but not the panama style hats that are seen in Cuenca, but more of a back, felt, Swiss style, or else a wide-brimmed white hat, with large black spots on the underside.



Sunday is market day, and we visited the animal market, but decided against buying any cows, horses, pigs or sheep. We did buy a number of scarves, earrings, and bracelets, and some beautiful weavings from some Peruvians who travel up form Cuzco, Peru (a trip of one week!) two times a year to sell in the Saraguro market.

It has been a very full vacation, but we are all happy to be back to our routine: school for the girls, coffee and long mornings reading the paper for Debby and me. We're already planning our next trip!

We hope that all who read this had a wonderful holiday season, and that 2010 had an auspicious beginning, and proves to be a great year for all of us!

Christmas in Cuenca- Mia

The main reason i am doing this is because my mom told me that the main thing she wanted for Christmas is to write on the blog. it may be in teenager talk and it may not have the best grammar but whatever.

so my friend emailed me a few days ago asking how they celebrate Christmas here. i was about to write a simple "the same as in Seattle" back but then i thought about it. in cuenca and many parts of South and Central America, Christmas is more of a religious holiday that anything else. its about the birth of Jesus, or "el nacimiento" in Spanish. its more about praying, and communicating with god your thanks and your gratitude. i have never been in a central or south American country for Christmas, so i cant really say that much on how it goes. today, was the 24th, and we saw this magnificent parade in the central square called Paseo Del Niño with every one dressed up as angels and mini Jesus. it was so hot out but that didn't matter to them. they were just happily sitting in their costumes, wanting everyone and anyone to take a picture of them. i get the feeling that the parents are just as proud as the kids with the parade, and i can see why. my parents told me that this was the pride and joy of everyone in cuenca.

anyway, right now it is I'm getting ready for dinner, at 8:30, (I'm turning into grandpa!!!!!) :) and my parents/friends tell me that this is the plan:
-hang out and talk until 9 or so
-open secret Santa gifts at 9:30
-eat at 10
-set off fireworks at 11
-and pray at midnight
my only question is, how do they expect us to stay up until midnight?!

***

last night we actually did it. i am exhausted. the plan went as planed. we had turkey, ham, and potato salad for dinner, which turned out to be traditional even though it sounds like an all American dinner with out any pie. our host family had a cute little tree (even though it was fake), and a nativity scene that was finally completed on that day by putting in the baby Jesus (you wait to put him in until he is born). our host family and many others have been doing "novenas" for the nine days leading up to Christmas. basically you get together every day until Christmas counting down and doing little prayers, sayings and singing as well. last night was the last one and it was "hermoso". wonderful. every kid and adult had to say something to Jesus, young and old. even the 2 year old asked Jesus to help all the kids in the hospital and make them not sick any more. when it was time for the secret Santa exchange, we had a little surprise. Santa came and visited!! he gave presents to all the kids from his big sack and explained that he couldn't come down the chimney because he didn't want to destroy the nativity scene that was set up in the chimney. between the presents, the praying, the food and the singing, i think that might have been one one of my favorite Christmas eves ever.

Culture

Cuenca is a city that prides itself on its many cultural offerings. Almost every day there are concerts, photo exhibits, art exhibits, or "folkloric" activities. Unfortunately, we don't get out as often as we'd like, but we do take advantage of the offerings when we can.

The 10th Bienal de Arte recently finished up its six week run, and we were able to see quite a few of the exhibits. The Bienal draws artists from all over South and Central America, even one from California, and there were over 25 different exhibition spaces, with many more artists represented. All of the exhibits were free, and some were in very public spaces, such as exterior walls and even buses.

We also recently saw a production of Carmen, directed by a Cuban friend of ours. The entry for this was $3.00, and it only played for one night. A couple of nights later, we went to see the Cuenca Symphony Orchestra perform, for free, and were surprised to walk into the middle of the the first performance of the International Guitar Festival. There is currently an International dramatic arts festival, an International film festival, a Cantinflas film festival, and I don't know what else going on. Tonight and tomorrow night there is a Messiah at the "Old Cathedral" - hopefully, at least one of us will get to go.

Our daily routine

Our friend, Bennett, asked us to write a bit about our daily routine so here goes. Everyone is up around 6 a.m. and of course it's already light out, which is nice. Don makes a hearty breakfast for the girls which always consists of fresh fruit (mangos, pineapple, papayas, bananas, etc) and eggs, oatmeal or cereal. Sometimes he even goes to the trouble of making hashbrowns for them. I do my yoga while he gets breakfast ready and then take out the garbage. The garbage gets picked up 3 times a week so we usually have just a little bag. There is recycling once a week but very few people do it. You have to buy the bags to recycle (which seems like a poor incentive to encourage participation...) and it's picked up once a week. it kills us to not be able to compost our food waste, like we do in Seattle. If we lived in the campo, we'd just give it the animals or dig a hole, but we can't do that in the city. I've heard there is composting at the market but we need to figure out a way to get our slop to the market....

Enough about garbage. After yoga and after the kids eat, I walk them to the corner at 7:05 and wait for their respective buses to pick them up. Since Nikki is in the school and Mia is in the high school, they go on separate buses. Then comes my favorite part of the day. I power walk over to Paradise Park and go to my exercise class. Mondays is dance, Tuesdays is "palo de escoba"- or broomstick (we do all kinds of exercises with the broom handle), Wednesday is Taibo or kick boxing, Thursday is weights and Friday is a combo class. The teacher, Miguel, is always animated, brings great music (salsa, reggaeton, hip hop., pop), and always varies the class. I found this class the first week I got here and after 2 classes, people started chatting with me and welcomed me with warm arms into their little exercise circle. These women have been working out together for 3 years and have become very close. They celebrate birthdays together, have a unform, call themselves "Flores de paraiso" and even have a little cheer for their group. These ladies were my first friends here and I'm indebted to them for making me feel so at home. Needless to say, I love starting the day working out with other people outside!

While I'm at my exercise class, Don goes for a run and then we meet back for breakfast and to read the paper. Every day I savor the fact that we get to read the entire paper, uninterrupted and unrushed. I've never had that luxury in my life!

I go to the University three days a week and Don volunteers at a day center for kids whose parents are working at the market all day long. On the other days, we usually go into the historical center to visit one of the many museums, churches or art exhibits that are part of the Bienal (a 6 week art festival that happens every two years). I never tire of seeing all the beautiful buildings, churches, and plazes of Cuenca. Other days we go to the market or the supermarket or run errands. Everything takes a bit longer since we walk or take the bus to everything.

Mia comes home from school about 2:30, does her homework and gets ready for gymnastics at 5. We found a gymnastics program for her at a sports complex that is about a 15 minute bus ride from our apartment. One of her friends from school is also in the class and her Mom brings her home at night which really helps us out.

After classes end for Nikki, she stays at school to participate in "bici cross" which is sort of like mountain biking on a concrete trail. Think of BMX racing on a circular track. She looks so cute in her motorcycle helmet and her leather gloves! The school has its own track, and the coach, Santiago, is great at motivating kids to do their best and have fun. About once a week, Nikki returns home with a bloody elbow, a bruised shin or a scraped hand, but she always has a smile on her face!

Don and I take turns cooking dinner and every now and then we eat out at the burger place down the street run by the Venezuelan who used to live in Chicago. Both girls often need help with their homework (mostly with language) and then it's bedtime.

In a typical day, I think we both walk about 4 or 5 miles since we have no car. We have learned the bus system pretty well and are totally used to not having a car. The only time we miss it is when we want to get out of town. We manage by taking a bus to the bus station and going in any direction from Cuenca, but we miss the mobility and ease of hopping in a car and taking off whenever you want. Cars are more expensive than in the U.S. here and in the city it makes no sense to have one. The drivers are crazy, there is a lot of traffic and, in the historical center, you move faster by foot anyway.

Because of the lack of machines in our daily lives (most notably a car, dishwasher, and a dryer) everything takes a bit longer to accomplish. We don't really notice, however, since we have more time on our hands and tend to enjoy the simple tasks of hanging laundry or washing dishes by hand (reminds us of our cabin and life in the Adirondacks...) or walking to the market for fruits and vegetables. And, at least for the time being, the power is cut every day for 3 hours which adds an element of surprise to our daily tasks.


So, there you have a glimpse into our daily activities. Every weekend is different so there is no routine there.

Random notes, 23, Nov.

Long time, no blog. Well, here is some of what's been going on with us lately.

A sad story. On our 2nd or 3rd weekend in Cuenca, we were invited by Rita and Jaime to visit their "quinta," or country home, in Susudel . Since that time I've been talking with them about the house, and Rita's desire to rent it out more, as sort of a retreat center, or a B&B. We had talked about a web page, and I had created a flyer for them to use to market it as well. A couple of weeks ago, while talking with Rita, I learned, through many tears, that they had decided to sell it.

I knew that Jaime had not been fully employed for a while, what I learned during our talk was that they had taken out a $35K loan, for which the property at Sususdel was used as collateral, and for which they hadn't been able to make a payment on since Jan. (Not all of this came out during our first conversation, but rather over the course of many conversations with Rita, Jaime, and their daughter Fernanda, over the course of the past couple of weeks.) The loan was with a private person, a friend of their son's, and he was calling it in. At the time of our first conversation, she thought she had a month or so to sell it, and I offered to help by creating a quick and dirty web site, and talking it up to the gringo community here. A few days after our first conversation, I learned that they had to give up their car, to resolve a work-related lawsuit that Jaime was involved in, so things were starting to spiral down. I also learned about this time that a maquilladora-style sewing project I was trying to set up with her, sewing pants for a friend's new business at home, wasn't going to come through, because in our global economy, she just couldn't produce them at a competitive price and still make any money. I couldn't bring myself to tell her this directly - too much piling on of bad news. Anyway, she was pretty wrapped up in the need to sell Susudel.

Last Thursday, while walking home from La Fundación El Arenal (see below), I got a call from Fernanda, asking if I knew anyone who could buy the property - today! Apparently, they had been talking with the owner of the debt, and he needed to collect his debt - which was now $45k (they hadn't factored in the interest they owed, which they hadn't realized was 5% per month, not per year) - immediately. Having already, finally, come to the realization they would have to sell it, now they were just trying to make a little money on the sale, enough to purchase another car, and to cover daily living expenses until Jaime can get a good job. They had put a price of $60k, although the property is easily worth 2 to 3 times that, but only if they had some time to find a buyer, which they didn't. So Debby and I did what we could. I created a little flyer with some pictures I had and some facts about the property, we emailed it to our gringo contacts. I also created this in Spanish, and gave Rita some copies to give to their friends. I also created it as a web site and sent out the link, and we went to "gringo night" at a couple of local bars to talk it up. We found a couple of potentially interested folks, but the time and the questionable title were issues. Luckily, they were also pushing it to friends, and as of yesterday, it looks like they have a buyer. Debby went up with them to serve as translator to the 3 gringos we had rounded up, and during this "open house," it turned out that one of their Cuencano friends had been looking for something just like this. The deal is not done yet, and they ended up forgoing a lot of money due to their failure to face reality soon enough, but it's better than just giving it up to the owner of the debt. No moral to this story, it's just quite sad.

Drought. Cuenca's, and all of Ecuador's rainy season usually starts around Oct., and runs through March or May. But this year, after a moderately rainy week in mid-October, the rain stopped, and the country, which relies on one major hydro-electric plant for about half of its energy needs, has been experiencing an energy crisis. Ecuador only produces about 48% of the energy they use. They typically import a lot of energy from neighboring Colombia, but Colombia is also experiencing a drought, so has cut back its energy exports. Starting around Nov 5, when we returned from Baños, there have been daily, rolling blackouts, or "apagones" and "cortes de luz" where the power is shut off to various sectos for 3 or 4 hours at a time. This has caused considerable inconvenience to people and businesses, with some stores buying small gas generators to get through it, while others just do what they can. The good thing is we know when the electricity will go out the next day so we can plan ahead. But it's killing the small businesses. Last we heard this will continue to March unless the rain really picks up. Surprisingly, no one seems to complain at all; they just put up with it and recognize it's just part of daily life here. In reality, there haven't been cuts like this for about 10 years. It reminds me of Cuba. I tell you Americans would never put up with this.

Hike with Club Sangay to Cajas. when we first got here, we learned about a hiking club called Club Sangay, which is like Cuenca's Mountaineers. since we got here in August, we've wanted to go on some trips with them and we finally were able last weekend. Not knowing how hard it would be, we decided to leave the kids with Fernanda's family for the day. One nice thing about the drought is the sunshine. This made our first hike with Club Sangay, up to Cajas (actually an area just outside of Cajas) quite pleasant. In fact, people on the hike commented that no one would believe they had been to Cajas, which is usually shrouded in mist, unless they splashed some water and mud on their clothes! Cajas is a national park about 45 minutes outside of Cuenca, quite high (we were hiking at about 12,000 ft), and starkly beautiful. We plan on returning to another part of the park with this group in December.


Paute. We have been a lot more social in the past month, both with Ecuadorians and gringos. We had our first party in our apartment and invited over Fernanda's family and an Ecuadorian/ Cuban couple we met through a Seattle contact. They stayed late and seemed to have a great time and we're ready to have more parties!

The weekend before we spent the weekend in a little village outside of Cuenca called Paute. We were invited to stay at our friend Ron's hacienda and it was gorgeous. Turns out Ron is from San Juan Island. He came to Cuenca about 10 years ago to live with his kids and teach English for a couple of years. 10 years later, with his kids in college and having recently split up with his wife, he decided to move back to Cuenca. For a long time, he was a DJ at a local radio station and how he volunteers at an orphanage, works on his fruit trees on his property and recently married an Ecuadorian. We LOVED his piece of paradise in Paute and will definitely be back. The next day we met up with an American/ British couple that also teaches at the University of Azuay and spent the day at the pool near their house. The best part of the weekend was the Sunday market and eating roasted pig for breakfast. I guess we are no longer vegetarians this year...

Fundación El Arenal. Part of my coming to grips with the fact that the Municipio is probably not going to take advantage of my offer to create a bus map for them, is that I needed to find something to do, (although doing nothing is becoming a lot easier with time!) Debby and I finally visited La Fundación El Arenal, a few weeks ago, and I have decided to start volunteering with them twice a week. This foundation works with the school age children of people who sell in the biggest open air market in the city, El Arenal. They help the kids with their homework, counsel them and their families, and make sure they get at least one good meal a day. I'll be working with the older kids, improving some basic computer skills such as Word and Excel, and even basic Keyboarding. I found a good, free, typing program through the internet, and the staff, mostly hunt and peckers themselves, are excited about it.

Bus Map. I haven't actually completely given up on the City, and in fact, in my last conversation with the Director of Mobility and Transportation, he told me that he had talked with the mayor about me, and although there wasn't any money in the budget to pay me for my efforts, if I was willing to do it completely voluntarily, they be willing to take me. I said I was, and he said he'd start to pull together the materials and resources I'd need, and have me sign something to make it official. In the meantime, I'm trying to see if I might be able to get some recompense for this work through Peace Corps Response, a program which places ex- Peace Corps volunteers in short term assignments in their areas of expertise. Stay tuned....

Thanksgiving. Although the 4th Thursday in November is just another day in Ecuador, we´ll have a Thanksgiving meal with some gringo friends on both Friday and Saturday. We hope those of you who read this will be enjoying a wonderful meal with your friends of family, and that you have plenty to be thankful for. We certainly do.

Long Weekend in Baños de Ambato

Nov. 3rd is Cuenca's independence day (all the major cities seem to have their own independence day), and since Nov 2nd was Día de los Difuntos, and Nov 1 Día de Todos los Santos, it was a long weekend. We were going to stay in town to see all the festivities; parades, fireworks, beauty contests, etc., but we decided instead to take advantage of two days off school to go on a road trip. We rented a car (!) and headed north to Baños (de Ambato). We were a bit apprehensive about renting a car, as many of the roads are in bad shape, and the drivers are crazy, but we decided that the extra mobility a car affords was worth it, and if we stayed off the roads at night, we'd probaby be ok.

We left Cuenca about 3:30 in our rental Chevy Corsa - a small, weak car, which meant that we wouldn't be racing other drivers around blind curves or up steep hills, and after a short, unplanned detour to find 1) a gas station and 2) the northbound lanes of the highway out of town, we were really on our way.

While many of the roads in the country are in bad shape, this is changing, and there is a lot of road work going on. On the Panamerican highway heading north, this means that they are replacing the pot-holed asphalt with reinforced concrete, definitely an improvement. But since the road is a 2 lane highway, this means that there are quite a few spots where one lane is closed at a time. Locals take advantage of this situation, and itinerant snack sellers work the waiting line of cars, offering nuts, chips, drinks and cut fruit. Due to the delays, and the patches where the road still needs considerable work (asphalt gives way unexpectedly, and unannounced, to dirt), we didn't get quite as far the first day as planned. Instead of spending the night in Alausí, we felt ourselves lucky to find a place to stay in Chunchi.

After checking into a clean but non-descript room in probably the only hotel in Chunchi, atop a 24 hour restaurant right on the Pan-am highway, we found a place to eat. Talking with the waitress, we learned that there was a festival that night, a "concurso de baile," a dance concert to raise funds for the old folks home. We headed down to the "Coliseo" to check it out (without our camera, unfortunately.) The coliseo was sort of like a high school gym, with concrete bleachers, about 1,500 people in attendance and two (2) doors (can anyone say "fire code?") We were the only outsiders there and we could feel all the eyes on us. Nobody goes to Chunchi, which made our time there all the more unique. The dance groups came from surrounding villages, and typically had about 25 - 30 participants, ranging in age from 8 to 30, men and women. The dances were all sort of the same, a line of men and a line of women converged, mingled, separated, etc., but the costumes were great. Men wore western style cowboy hats, serapes, and leggings made of some furry animal hide. Women typically wore large, colorful skirts, shawls and headscarves. In some of the dances, one person stood apart from the lines of men and women. This person was dressed almost other-worldly, with a facemask and headress. They weren´t leading the dance, as much as overseeing it, only occasionally whipping a dancer back into the line.

We got back on the road the next morning after breakfast, with Baños as our destination. The Andean countryside is stark and beautiful. The road winds throug very high hills, mostly cultivated, or waiting to be planted. Very little forest is seen here, and the hills are rolling, not rocky like the Cascades, even though the elevations are between 7,000 and 10,000 ft. As we were getting close to Riobamba (our intended lunch stop) we saw what looked like a small rest stop, with a large group of colorfully dressed people visible from the road. We pulled into "Laguna Colta" where the tourism agency was having a group of folkloric dancers perform for visitors. We checked it out, explored the lake and the playground, and headed on. After a nice lunch in Riobamba, we headed on, arriving in Baños about 4:30.

I wasn't sure what to expect of Baños, but it is definitely a touristy place, although 95% of the tourists are Ecuadorian. There are lots of hotels, restaurants, and "tipica" stores, all crowded into a fairly small valley, surrounded by beautiful hills, and just out of view, the active volcano, Tungurahua, whose last major eruption was about 10 years ago. Due to the long weekend, the place was packed, mostly with "Quiteños." Along with some great restaurants, and some good, cheap hotels, there are also a number of outfits offering various adventures: mountain biking, 4-wheeling, bridge jumping, and tours in open-sided buses offering tours down the valley to one of many "tarabitas" or cable cars crossing the Rio Pastaza.

The next morning, before breakfast, we went to to one of 3 municipal baths, which are set up to take advantage of the thermal mineral water coming from the volcano. We thought we would beat the crowd, but since they open at 4:30 am, the pool was already packed when we got there at 7:30 a.m.. (I think that one of the reason's they are so popular is that it is awfully hard to get anything like a hot bath in Ecuador. Most homes do not have bathtubs, and most showers are equipped with an on-demand water heater, located right at the shower head. The heat turns on with the water pressure, but it's capacity is easily overwhelmed by the flow of cold water.) After breakfast, we hopped in our car and drove down the valley to

"El Pailón del Diablo," (Devil's Cauldron),

an enormous and powerful waterfall. Beautiful, but nothing in the way of solitude - the 30 minute hike to the falls had more people than the path around Greenlake on a sunny day in February! On the way back to town, we decided to stop at a tarabita, and take the

cable car across the river.

Luckily, the tarabita we chose allowed us to get off on the other side which we did, and went for a very nice hike on a stone-lined path thru jungle-like terrain to a smaller waterfall. There was also a little restaurant, which had a small tank full of trout, which they would cook up for you if you'd like, and

some very cool rope swings out over a river.

Back in Baños at night, we checked out some local "delicacies" of sugar cane, cane juice, and a hand-pulled taffy called "milcocha."

Mia, Debby and I awoke early on Monday morning and took a steam bath like we've never had before(baño de cajón). You sit down on a bench and an attendant closes you in with a box so that only your head is exposed. There's a lever you can adjust to let in more or less steam and for 5 minutes your body heats up. The attendant then opens the box, and leads you thru rinsing your body parts off with cold water. We repeated this procedure 5 times and the attendant finshed us off with a cold water jet spray. We all felt relaxed and refreshed for breakfast after that!

After breakfast, we hiked up to a small viewpoint above the city, then to the town cementary. While people do clean up and decorate their relatives graves for Day of the Dead, the day is not celebrated like it is in Mexico. (Most of the cementeries we've seen in Ecuador have the graves above ground - I'm not sure why that is.) We left town around noon, hoping to get about half-way back to Cuenca, but the long line of cars returning to Quito, and the numerous detours for road construction meant that we only made it as far as Riobamba. We scored a really cool hotel in Riobamaba- a family's restored 100 year old home and we had the place entirely to ourselves which was fun for everyone. We ordered take out and spread out in this beautiful mansion (the owner slept upstairs in a separate area). In the morning, we awoke to clear skies and a view of the spectacular Chimborazo volcano, the highest in Ecuador (20,700 feet). A beautiful and uneventful drive on Tuesday brought us back home, where everyone was happy to be.

This past week in Cuenca has been a bit strange, in that the rainy season has not yet started in the southern part of the country, and the rivers are very low. This means that the hydro-electric plants are running at way below capacity, and Thursday and Friday the government started rolling blackouts in various sectors of the country. Making things worse, there have been a number of forest fires in the hills surrounding Cuenca, possibly started by campesinos who believe that the smoke from the fires will bring the rain. (This is actually what people are saying, although it sounds a bit like scapegoating to me.) Anyway, we are all hoping for rain. (Well, maybe not Debby - she does like the sun.)