The road chose me

Crunching across the thick morning frost at 5am, staring intently at The Southern Cross beside the glowing Volcán Cotopaxi, I realize this is one of the most friendly, beautiful, peaceful and genuine places I’ve been lucky enough to spend time.
All fifty hectares of this amazing wilderness could be mine for just $8,000 USD.

Living in the middle of nowhere

A few weeks ago Omar, one of the local guys working here, invited me on his annual family camping trip and needless to say I was jumping out of my skin to go. At first we thought I would ride along in his Land Crusier, but when I suggested bringing the Jeep along he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. Ecuadorians seem to love my little Jeep, and are constantly asking for rides or trying to buy it (for considerably more than I paid for it, too). Pretty soon everyone, including more kids than I can count, are loaded up and we move off for the first leg of our journey into the National Park.

The camping crew

I’ve been gazing at Cotopaxi Volcano day and night for three months now, and even that doesn’t prepare me for just how mighty it really is up-close. For an hour or so we drive across, around and in-between enormous lava flows and house-sized volcanic red boulders, making me feel like the little Martian rover navigating alien rocks on a ridiculous scale.

I’m told that dinner for the night is fresh trout. So fresh are these trout, in fact, they are still happily swimming in the river avoiding our baited hooks. After about 3 minutes of impatient watching Omar says “I have a better system for fishing”. When electrical leads materialize, my suspicions of delinquency are confirmed and I can’t help but join in the laughter. Huge amounts of steel-wool are wrapped around the end of two sticks, wires are twisted around each ball of steel and the whole lot is plugged into an inverter connected to the battery of Omar’s truck. Pretty quickly I find myself “bag man” – standing in the knee-deep river, just down-stream of Omar who has both sticks in the water, eagerly hunting out fish in the reeds. The second the current is switched-on, small trout float to the surface, momentarily stunned. The fast-flowing river makes them pretty tough to catch and the ladies on shore constantly scream “Dan!”, “Dan!”, especially when I miss one. Apparently I ask too many questions about how strong the current is, so Omar happily demonstrates by bringing the sticks within a meter of my submerged hands. Snatching my hands out of the water causes everyone to burst out laughing once again. I happily confirm my long-believed notion that rubber gumboots make excellent insulators.

Fishing system

For a reason I never quite discover the whole exercise is conducted as fast as we can possibly run upstream catching fish, run back to move the truck, yell back and forward about something or other and repeat. I think it’s just more fun this way.
About an hour later we have a collection of trout large enough to satisfy the ladies, and Omar beams when I mention this is illegal in my country, “Here too”.

As we climb higher the road deteriorates until we are guessing our way across green highland fields, pocketed with mud and swamp-like areas. Inevitably Omar’s overloaded Land Cruiser gets stuck up to the axles, only 100 meters from our destination. One of the other trucks is hooked-up, and a lot of wheel spinning and engine revving only results in the Cruiser sinking lower in the muck. An earlier mud patch / river crossing showed the Jeep to be a tough contender, so everyone suggests I give it a go. At just over idle in low-range 4×4, with an absolute minimum of fuss the Jeep easily hauls out the Cruiser, much to the delight of everyone present who gather around and start referring to the Jeep as “El Tractor”.
I look up pride in the dictionary.

Full of pride

Our destination for the night is a farmhouse built entirely from mud bricks by Omar’s uncle 55 years ago. It’s perched 50 meters up the foothills of Volcán Kilindaña, providing amazing views over the alpine meadow below, of which Omar’s uncle runs cattle on his 50 hectares. Within five minutes of our arrival we tuck into a lunch of rice, potatoes and chicken, quickly followed by trout soup with rice and potatoes.

Living wild

The afternoon’s activities involve more legally dubious activities, the details of which I’ve sworn to secrecy. I will say it was a lot of fun

Don't ask why I have a shotgun. It's just best that way.

In the evening I’m amazed to see the gender lines drawn so quickly and clearly. The ladies huddle inside to cook dinner on an open fire with little more than an iron pot and wooden spoon. The fire, lit in the middle of the room on the mud floor, has no chimney or ventilation of any kind, choking the entire room with smoke and causing my eyes to burn furiously and tears to streak down my face. Amazingly, the ladies are laughing and smiling as they stand in a circle and lean right over to stir dinner.
The men stand outside drinking beer and aguadente, and extremely strong, crude liquor made from sugar cane, following the world-wide tradition of fermenting anything and everything possible. There is much joke-telling, talk of ladies and finally even a guitar is produced for some drunken sing-alongs. Long after dark, when the cold finally overtakes our festive mood, we move inside and perch in dark corners to eat our dinner of friend trout, rice and potatoes.

Dwarfed by Volcán Kilindaña

I have no idea what time it is when I worm deep into my sleeping bag and slowly drift off to sleep listening to the sound of complete silence.

-Dan

Every year around this time the little town of Machachi comes to life with a huge festival, centered around a horse parade and bullfighting. The locals have been talking about it for weeks, so I had to find a way to get down there.

Cowkid

I skip off “work” for the afternoon and race down to town, to find it overflowing with thousands and thousands of people each desperately trying to consume alcohol and street-meat in enormous quantities. I, of course, dive right in and join the fray, with the intention of sampling at least one of everything on offer. It really is hard to beat a cold beer with mystery meat-on-a-stick especially when there is more than one unidentifiable kind.
I miss out on the horse parade through the town, which I’m told is spectacular, so I move down to the bull fighting ring.

Colors everywhere

After opening a pop-top beer with his teeth

Before I say more, let me clarify this is not the kind of fighting where the bull is stabbed and eventually dies – here it’s free to attack as many people as are stupid enough to get in front of it, before it eventually tires and is roped and taken out of the ring.

Cowgirl

Imagine for a minute a rough soccer pitch, half mud and half weeds, surrounded by a two-story grandstand circle made from planks of wood, rope and anything else left lying around. Now put a very large, angry bull in the middle with a few hundred people and fill the stands with thousands of drunk people jumping up and down and screaming for action. Surround the stand with tens of thousands more people, add torrential rain, copious amounts of mud and hundreds of street vendors selling all manner of objects that drunk hordes inevitably crave.
Yep, it’s a lot of fun

The bullfighting ring

I start to wonder if I’m a little too close when the bull slams into the fence not thirty centimeters from my face, but soon realize it’s all worth it when a matador gets tossed like a rag-doll a few times before running away intact. It becomes clear there are two kinds of matador here; the drunk, dared by his buddies, get close and run-like-mad garden variety and the pro. The pro stands more or less still, has his left arm beside him in that funny manner with fingers spread and can easily have the bull running in circles for up to 30 seconds at a time while never once looking scared or the least bit out of control. It really is an art form very close to dancing, and simply stunning to see up close.

Looking pretty mad

As day turns to night I decide to get out before things get really crazy and pickup one more little snack for the road – a bag of french fries with chunks of pork, beef and chicken, cheese and onion all smothered in ketchup and mayo.

Gotta love mystery meat-on-a-stick

OK, fun doesn’t quite cover it.

-Dan

A foreigner here in Ecuador recently had a fall and needed medical attention, the story of which makes me smile.

My Ecuadorian friends couldn’t understand why I was asking how much emergency care might cost, simply shrugging their shoulders and saying “Medical care is always free, you just have to pay for the medicine”.
Surely this can’t apply to a foreigner, we all reasoned.

With no idea what might be required, patient, passport, travel insurance paperwork and a small fortune in cash were loaded into the 4×4 and driven down to the small town about an hour away.

Upon arrival at the emergency department of the hospital, he was greeted by extremely friendly staff who apologized for his four minute wait due to another patient being seen. A very friendly and professional doctor sized up the situation and after some local anesthetic, had the cut cleaned out and stitched up with eight neat little lines of thread, eagerly asking questions about foreign lands the whole time.

The doctor wrote out a prescription for a week-long course of antibiotics and wished his new friend well as they walked to the door of the hospital. A little confused about the need for payment, the patient tried to show his insurance and passport, to which the doctor said with a broad grin, “You don’t need that here, everything is free”.

At the local pharmacy (drug store), the prescription was filled in thirty seconds and the total bill rung up – $7 (USD) including tax.

Raise your hand if you wish health care worked like that in your country.

Sitting around the dinner table that night while the story was relayed were looks of surprise, shock and outright disbelief. Stories about healthcare in homelands were told by people from all over the world, from similar accounts, to people declaring bankruptcy due to nothing more than a broken arm, an injury that will probably happen to most of us in our lifetimes. After some rough translation, the Ecuadorians couldn’t believe the cost of health care in some countries, and were downright scared when told how much one couple had paid in medical expenses just to have a baby.

I think it’s pretty clear those of us living in the “First World” have a lot to learn from those in the “Third World”.

-Dan

P.S. No, mum. This story is not about me. You can stop worrying now

I don’t often write about my future plans, though right now there are a couple of things on the horizon that I’m too excited about to keep to myself:

• I’m currently training to run a 10km fun run through the streets of Old Town Quito at night, and am loving the fitness attained at 3500 meters above sea level.

• Before I move on I’ll make an attempt on the summit of Volcán Cotopaxi, 5897 meters up. This will be by far the biggest mountain I have attempted.

Distant Cotopaxi

• I’ll start moving South again in early September, spending roughly a month in each of Peru, Boliva, Northern Chile and Northern Argentnia on my way to…

• Christmas with my family! in Buenos Aires! Uh-Huh!.

• The plan after that is very hazy, but probably involves going South along the East coast to Tierra Del Fuego, then North along the West for some solid time in and around Patagonia and Southern Chile in general.

• After that, there are a few dreams forming that keep me thinking, but nothing concrete right now.

Love that view

-Dan