A Gringo’s First Impressions of Ecuador

Photo by Lilah Raptopoulos

I woke up this morning with a headache, which happens commonly in the US. Despite the fact that everyone here talks about altitude sickness, and how my capillaries should be slowly reforming themselves to acclimate to the lack of oxygen, my lethargic winter break ensured the impossibility of deciding whether my dizziness and shortness of breath after hiking across Quito were a product of being nine thousand feet above sea level or my being absurdly out of shape. The altitude also meant I couldn’t put toilet paper into the toilet or figure out how to take a shower without getting burns or frostbite. Even my shit was a different color in Ecuador—dyed, I suppose—by the juices fabulosos: mango, pineapple, naranjilla. So I spent most of the first days of orientation confused about my own health and state of mind, trying to balance being outgoing and clever for my new amigos and blasting into my brain the realization that I am here and not home.

Yesterday the program director summoned all nineteen of us into the combined dining room/garden of the Posada del Maple hostel. She made sure we knew not to drink unbottled or unboiled water, passed out some ribbed condoms and a flimsy mask to protect against volcanic ash, laughed off requests for a map and sent us out in pairs to shove into packed buses, store our wallets close to our thighs, widen our eyes at the leers of aggressive old nuns and eventually stumble back to the hostel half alive. I dropped a loaf of bread in a panaderia, gave incorrect change at a SuperMaxi, dodged taxis like one dodges mosquitos and drank suspicious jugo de naranja at a café. I forgot Spanish words constantly and consistently, like one might forget one’s car keys on the roof of one’s car, and gave an answer to a query about the location of said SuperMaxi that may or may not have been sexual. I’m still waiting for diarrhea from the orange juice.

Today, however, the group traveled to Yanacoche—“Black Lake” in Kichwa—as one happy, if somewhat baffled, family. Yanacoche wasn’t actually a lake, we were told, but a forest in the depths of the clouds filled with picaflores—hummingbirds—and would be a fitting setting for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Burdened by the pain in my skull, I joined my fellow scientists in the back of a metalbus (we were glad to know it wasn’t made of plastic) at 8 AM among the toxic fumes of the Ecuadorian morning commute. All the roads in the city were one-way, which led to awkward skirmishes with trucks back and forth between parques and muros: walls. The city was sliced through with all kinds of walls, some with barbed wire perched on top like crows and others lined with shards of glass carefully inserted into the crumbling cement. Everyone leaned out of vehicles to stare at los gringos, and we leaned out of the bus to take pictures of the city and mountains beyond. We passed slums and shantytowns and stray dogs, and I forced down a dim and distant sadness.

Yanacoche was only accessible through a drive through the valley of the shadow of death. Sharp turns on cliffside routes and near collisions with livestock were accompanied by unpaved roads and cavernous potholes. The bus driver plunged through a hacienda like sperm through an egg and smiled back at the nausea he had inspired. I grabbed the foot of my amigo as he plunged out the window. He took pictures of the precipicios of mud and grass and rock and garbage, as well as the approaching wall of mist.

The bus crashed through a thatched archway welcoming visitors to la reserva final of the black-breasted puffleg. We took our vehicle’s sudden silence as a cue and got off at a dank set of bathrooms. We walked off into the mist in assigned groups, attempting to memorize the names and descriptions of plant species—some as old as los dinosorios—without using English at all. I tore through the Spanish and Kichwa words like copper miners tear through a native village. The more I pretended to learn the more stupid I felt, until we stopped for lunch at a small group of benches sheltered with a ceiling made of paja. It began to rain. There were sudden thrums behind me, like loose arcs of electricity, and I turned to face a green and golden blur. A species, I was told, which was native to this particular slope of this particular mountain.

We emerged from the thick sponge of fog believing in some epiphany or another, brought about by swordlike beaks dipping into sugar water and, soaked, shuffled back onto the bus. The program director was sick and we couldn’t help but grimace at her face in the overhead mirror. The bus stopped near a slope so she could get out and vomit.

The cloud began to extract itself from the land and I stared out the rear window, transfixed by the towering castle of water vapor that loomed behind us like a white montaña. Little shacks crowded close to the bus as if seeking warmth. Their foundations were cracked and their walls were boarded together like a collage of the desperate masses yearning for a new revolución. Children sat in the muck while dogs fought over food and attention. I sat on a throne high above and thought about when I would next have Internet access or time for a nap. I went through the usual guilt trip, the one established specifically for touristas and Europeos and, with some luck, Estadounidenses. It cleared my head a little.

People stared at us from trucks piled with rubble and wood and from fenced slats of land brimming with hens, precariously balanced near the remnants of not-so-old mudslides. I was conscious of who I was, which doesn’t happen often in the U.S. A stranger in a strange land. Lawrence of Arabia. An ugly duckling. The Great Satan.

“I think I know what it’s like to be a minority now,” I said, as a sheltered gringo would.

“No, you don’t,” said the girl next to me.

We passed Quito’s military academy. Above a carved condor over the entrance were imbued the words: “Solo Por Vencerte Venceras.” Only through conquering yourself can you conquer.

I tried to break free like life was a lucid dream. I wondered if peyote would help, or the hallucinogenic shanshi plant. And, just for a fraction of a half of a second, I convinced myself that I rejected all semblances of separation, all carefully crafted illusions and manufactured indications of difference. I made all kinds of naïve assumptions and convinced myself that I was the same as all these people except for a few cases of odd luck—diarrhea of the Fates. I was the man leaning against the doorframe of a storefront, mouth pursed and wrinkled, sharing all of his thoughts and passions and resounding vigor. I was the woman standing at the corner of Seis de Diciembre and Avenue Patria, hoping in earnest that her face was pretty enough to convince a bus driver to stop. I was the child pushing a cart of alcohol up a steep embankment for what could have been a thousand reasons, pressures and fears, none of which I understood. I was the hunched man at the restaurant in La Mariscal who played the harp for us, who passed around a basket for a tip, who waited ten minutes at another table while two diners willfully ignored him before carrying his heavy instrument, alone, into the lit and festive night. And he was I.

I am here and not home. •