Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel like I am in Ecuador. Friday night I jumped on a bus to Quito with my host brother to see a concert. It was outside in the middle of the city, and we listened to a jazz band from Germany. I could have been in any city in the world doing the same thing.
Then there is the rest of the time, when it feels like I am on a completely different planet. The morning after the concert, I left for Intag and literally spent the weekend up in the clouds. We drove 6 hours (3 hours on the Pan-American high way, and 3 hours on a single lane dirt road carved through the Andes mountains) outside of the city to a cloud forest reserve. A cloud forest is pretty much a huge dense forest that is so high up there is constant cloud cover on the ground.
Shortly after entering the cloud forest, my two academic directors pulled the bus over and said they needed to show us something. After getting out of the bus in the middle of nowhere, and making my way through the tall grass and over a small hill, I found myself staring at the most beautiful sight I have ever encountered. We were on the edge of a volcano- below was a huge crater lake, Cuicocha, that was over 200 meters deep, and in the center was an island. As far as the eye could see there were only mountains. We had barely even entered the cloud forest, but this first stop proved to be a good indicator of how the rest of the weekend would unfold.
When we finally arrived and were greeted by our hosts, Sandy and Carlos, we still had an hour hike ahead of us. We loaded up a few horses with our backpacks (because there wasn’t a road) and hiked the trail to where we were staying. The accommodations were…rustic. There was a house of sorts with bunk beds inside and hammocks out. There was an outdoor shower (cold water from a hose) and a compost latrine. There was no electricity- we had candles. Needless to say we didn’t have phone service or internet. Our hosts told us that they only got electricity in the past five years, and telephone wires in the past few months. It was a whole different world out there. On the property, there was an outdoor picnic type area where we ate all of our meals, a little hut where we had classes, and an open field to kick around a ball. Horses and cows were all over the place (the chickens were kept cooped up). There was a fair amount of mud (you could sink up to you mid calf) so the choice footwear was rubber boots. I looked like REI threw up all over me with my flannel, khakis and knee high yellow boots-anything goes in the cloud forest. On the way home we stopped in Otavolo, a huge market town. I’m pretty sure we gave America a name because of the way we looked and smelled.
Every day we hiked around the forest- there were small dirt trails that lead to waterfall after waterfall and river after river. Standing under the waterfall was the closest I came to a shower for the four days I was there. There were plants with leaves the size of my body, and vines that you could swing from. The whole thing looked a lot like the island in Jurassic Park (only instead of dinosaurs there were birds and bugs). We never feared getting lost because the 3 dogs on the farm always came with us and knew the way back.
The food there was amazing- most of it was grown on site. There was a garden with tons of plants- bananas, coffee beans, yucca, pineapple, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tree tomatoes, lemons, oranges. Of course there was rice at every meal, but I didn’t mind when it was accompanied by salad (a novelty down here) or pumpkin soup, or homemade guacamole. At breakfast there was always pancakes, jams, and freshly squeezed juices. What we lacked in luxury amenities was more than made up for at meal times.
Over the course of the four days, we listened to the stories of various people that lived in the area. The first night we listened to Carlos- a Cuban national who had lived in the cloud forest for almost 30 years and our host for the weekend. He told us about the struggle that has been going on since the mid 90s with the mining companies there. Foreign mining companies come in offering all sorts of stuff- money, roads, schools, hospitals, and doctors to the people living the cloud forest in exchange for the rights to mine the land for copper. What seemed like a good deal really isn’t really in the long run- mining for copper necessitates clearing millions of hectares of forest and contaminating the water supply with lethal chemicals. Most people realized the long term hard that would ensue and started a resistance movement. The first company that arrived was forced to leave after the community torched everything from heavy machinery to pencils and paper owned by the mining company. The second company was a bit more determined, and when bribes didn’t work, they turned to violence. Carlos was a leader in resisting the mining effort, and the company hired thugs to see if they could make him come around. They paid off the police to raid his house and issue a warrant for his arrest. Eventually, the company went bankrupt because they weren’t able to start mining. When only a few people stand between you and billions of dollars worth of ore, those lives don’t seem too important anymore. Carlos finished by talking about how now it’s not a transnational from some far away country that wants to mine, but instead the Ecuadorian government, so they’re going to have to figure out another way to fight. The next day we listened to a similar story from a women who lived in the town where the miners where. She joined the resistance movement at 16 when she was just a kid. Now some 15 years later, she is still involved in the fight. It’s crazy-a lot of women here, especially in the rural areas, are expected to stay at home, take care of the kids, cook, and clean the house. Somehow, all of the women whose world had been their homes got involved in this david and goliath fight. It was both inspiring to hear these stories, and heartbreaking to think that there was a serious chance that that place would not always be there.
The weekend flew by- it was good to get away from classes and the city for awhile. Life there was just so different, and although I do appreciate running water internet service, it was definitely a nice escape.
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