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March,
1992
The equator, or Ecuador in Spanish
Our
trip inland was quite pleasant, and very interesting. We took a
bus from Guayaquil into the
Andes, planning on short stays in
various towns mentioned in the guide books. Riobaimba
(called the “Sultan of the Andes”) was our first stop, and we
went to the Convento de la Concepción which has been restored and
is now set up as a museum. Although very interesting, the dramatic
and gory life-size crucifixes were a bit much for us. I
got a bit of a surprise when we went into the local hotel to ask
for a room. Take-charge
person that I am, I walked up to the desk and asked in Spanish for
their room rates. They
looked extremely reasonable and so I turned to Peter to tell him
we could stay here for about $X.00, translating the Sucres into
dollars. The hotel
clerk said “just a minute” and flipped the room rate sheet
over. On the other
side were room rates, also, but about twice as high – these were
the rates for “foreigners”, i.e., non-Ecuadorians.
 The
mountains all along this route are quite dramatic, and the towns
seem an anomaly in the terrain. We went to Saquisili,
famous in Ecuador for its market, and it was worth the
stop. To see all those Indians selling their crafts (which are
really beautiful) is quite overwhelming.
Quito
is a really pretty city. We’re
fortunate that we ascended the Andes as gradually as we did so
that we did not suffer from altitude sickness (Quito is 2850
meters above sea level - 9,350 feet, almost two miles). Although
Quito is almost right on the Equator, it’s so high that it gets
really cold at night, and isn’t that warm during the day
unless you’re in direct sunlight.
It’s a lovely old city, with lots of old churches and
buildings to see. Peter
wouldn’t walk all around the old city with me, since it meant
walking up some streets that make Beacon Hill look like it’s
level.
We
met two young fellows from Colorado who were hiking and skiing the
Andes here (“how different is it to ski on the Equator!).
They spent a month and had a ball. They told us that they
were quite surprised to get altitude sickness the first trip up
one of the volcanoes shortly after they arrived. They figured that
coming from the Rockies they were already prepared for the
altitude. Wrong.
They had
to hike back down
for a few days to get acclimated to the
altitude before
going back up. They said that it was a wonderful experience for
them.
We
were prepared for some of the disappointments. We had read a
history of South America, and an autobiographical account by an
archaeologist who has been studying Ecuador’s pre-Columbian
cultures. The gist of it is that Ecuador, like so much of South
America, has been badly influenced by the 16th and 17th Century
Catholic priests, who taught that the
pre-Incan cultures were nothing but “savages”. As
a result, apparently, there is a general disregard for so much of
their culture. The archaeological
museum in Quito was
interesting, but
frustrating.
The information
they provide is minimal, just a plaque for each “culture”
giving bare information about when they thrived, where they were
located, and minimal information or even
speculation about their contribution to Incan or other culture.
There were really interesting statues, pots, and other artifacts
displayed with no information
as to where they’d been found, what
they might have been used for, what it
meant for that culture. I left there
intrigued, but not enlightened.
We
were extremely fortunate. We had planned to go to the Otavalo
market by bus on Saturday morning (market day is only one day per
week, and in the towns around Quito most are held on Saturday).
Sitting in the Quito Hotel having dinner (the only place in that
area that evening with any electricity), a local fellow asked if
we wanted to take a market tour to Otavalo. When we found out it
would be in a small van, rather than the giant coach busses that
the usual tours run, we agreed. As a result we got to see many
more places and things than we would have been able to on our own
by relying on the local busses, and we got to have a typical
Ecuadorian lunch at a lovely restaurant/inn. Not only the famous
market of Otavalo was included (Otavalo is famous for its
hand-woven textiles, which are quite lovely), we got to stop at
many other interesting market towns.
Calderón, where miniature figures are made from bread
dough (when I read about this, I wasn’t too impressed, but
I’ve got to say that they are just wonderful. Peter was
breathing down my neck, so I didn’t get to buy very much, to my
subsequent regret). Cotacachi is where they make beautiful
leather goods. If we didn’t live on a boat, where leather
mildews in just about 10 minutes, I might have mortgaged the farm
here. The prices were excellent, and some of the stuff was simply
great. You can have  clothes custom-made here, no problem. For the
committed shopper, this mini-tour was great. Because the group was
so small, we had more freedom to adjust the itinerary, staying in
the interesting places longer, cutting the others a bit short.
Wherever we went, though, it was the Andes which were the main
attraction. Peter got quite a kick out of the Indian women walking
along lugging huge bags of stuff on their back, plus carrying a
baby in a sling in front. And the men walking behind the women
carrying nothing. He
kept muttering “where did we go wrong?” as I made him carry my
purchases.
Now
we must tell you about the interesting man we met on this
mini-tour. He is a southern gentleman, very polite, pleasant and
quite quiet. As we
got to talking, we found out that he’s a Colonel in the U.S.
Army, head of the medical Corps. He’s stationed in Panama, and
was in Ecuador setting up a training exercise for the Army medics.
They go into remote, poor villages and treat the populace. Gives
the Army medics training in working under difficult conditions,
seeing exotic tropical ailments they would never see in the U.S.,
and it benefits the poor, forgotten people of these countries. We
were so enthusiastic about this program (he’s planning on
expanding it to every country in South America in the next two
years), that we just couldn’t hear enough about it from him. He
said that it was thanks to this program that the Army medics were
so effective in the Gulf War, able to recognize and treat so many
exotic complaints. He thought what we were doing was fantastic,
and the day just flew by as we tripped over ourselves talking with
so much enthusiasm with him. He’s not your typical arrogant
doctor. He’s alert, intelligent, and interested in everything.
We mentioned ciguatera to him, hoping he could help us with the U.
of Hawaii test, and he had never heard of it. But we are sure that
by now he’s an expert on it.
I’ve
mentioned the double price standard for locals and for foreigners.
Well, I’ve saved one of our hotel bills, for the ridiculous
disparity -
we
had dinner from room service one night. Two steak dinners cost a
total of 10,880 sucres (1,340 sucres =
$1.00
US). That same bill had a 3.7 minute telephone call to the US: 38,000
sucres. (!!??!!)
We
returned back to Watermelon, watched over carefully by Gary and
Ingrid on OBSESSION and by two Ecuadorian brothers and
their father that we hired to clean the boat and watch out for it.
Salinas is pretty safe, little in the way of storms or high
winds, but a little extra security is prudent.
Once
back we had to get ready for crossing the Pacific, and there was
lots to do.
Most
important was getting water.
To get pure water we had to pay 25 cents a gallon, in
5-gallon jugs. We toted 15 of the damn things to the Watermelon.
Then, two days ago it rained for two days. We could have filled
our tanks for free, and with no work! (However, the fellow we
picked up for crew said that he hasn’t seen rain like that in
the four years he’s been here. Neither, apparently, have the
locals, so our ridiculous expense and effort to obtain water was
the prudent way to go.) The “public” water here is not
potable, according to the middle-class and wealthier locals (the
poor people don’t have any choice). However, for 5 days even
non-potable water was unavailable, due to a ridiculous series of
third-world “happenings” (including the power rationing
that
went on for the last month because
the rains hadn’t come to Ecuador to fill
the
reservoirs and rivers from which they generate
hydroelectric
power). We had been avoiding using our watermaker because it uses
so much electricity, and our only way of recharging our batteries
here in the doldrums, where there is no marina, and no electricity
even if there were a marina, and no wind to drive our wind
generator, is via our 11-year old engine that we are trying to
nurse through a few more years.
The
little local store in Salinas ordered some canned vegetables for
us. The local canned asparagus is delicious, and since Peter
loves asparagus so much I wound up ordering a whole case – 36
cans. And Peter was
so worried that we wouldn’t have enough potatoes that I bought
THREE cases of Ecuadorian canned potatoes which are the best
canned potatoes I’ve ever had. They are about the size of very large marbles, with their
skins on, and bright yellow flesh.
Delicious! Gary
and Ingrid took a bit more than half a case, but that still meant
that I had 84 cans of potatoes to stow.
I also bought about 20 pounds of flour which I removed from
the plastic bags and stored in air-tight tins.
Final
preparations prior to leaving included taking the 2-1/2 hour
express bus ride into Guayaquil for fresh meat and the American
products that have no decent Ecuadorian substitute.
In the specialty stores catering to the expats I was able
to find some products, such as SPAM, tinned stew beef, dried soups
(which I used as seasoning as much as I use it for soup) as well
as a few cans of bacon (not US – Czechoslovakian, I think) and
small cans of yeast so I can make bread (Leva-dure). Some pork and steak that could be kept in our freezer
completed the meat purchases.
Cheese is important to me, and I found some imported Gouda
and Edam so I didn’t have to wax them myself.
They’ll keep for months.
I bought a good-sized beef roast and two frozen chickens,
one of which will stay frozen for at least a week at the bottom of
the fridge underneath the freezer box. The other one I fried the night before leaving so we had
substantial food no matter how the weather went. I also cooked up the roast with potatoes and vegetables.
That will provide several hot roast beef dinners as well as
some sandwich meat. On
the bus trip back from Guayaquil I bought tickets for two seats so
I wouldn’t have to try to stow all my huge bags of stuff
overhead or on the roof of the bus.
Thank heavens taxis are so cheap here or I would never have
been able to carry all that stuff from shop to shop as I checked
things off my list. For
several weeks I had been searching for, and finally found, proper
ground coffee. For a
coffee-producing country, about all that one can buy in the stores
is Nescafe instant coffee. All
the coffee beans seem to be exported.
Even in restaurants we were served instant coffee.
When we finally found proper coffee I bought about 25 kilos
(more than 50 pounds), which will last us just about 6 months.
The
day before we left we went to the local produce market and after
much searching I was able to buy 10 kilos (22 pounds) of yellow
onions. We usually
can only find the red onions, but they don’t keep as well as
yellow onions so I insisted on asking everyone if they had
“cebollas amarillas” and one of the stall keepers found them
for me. We also
bought an entire stalk of bananas – because the entire stalk,
which had about 15 hands of bananas, cost under US $1.00.
Lots of vegetables with an emphasis on cabbage and carrots
because they keep so long without refrigeration.
When
we got back to the boat with all our produce I immediately started
cleaning them. I
filled the sink with water into which I put a chlorine tablet (the
ones used to sterilize baby bottles).
The vegetables are soaked in this, then blotted dry and put
into the sun on the cabin top to dry completely before being
stowed. Most of the
vegetables are wrapped in newspaper and stowed in our ventilated
locker, the onions and fresh potatoes are stowed in men’s tube
socks to keep them dry and unbruised.
The stalk of bananas was dipped into the sea water before
it was brought onto the boat to float away any hitch-hiking
critters, and it was then hung off our solar panel frame at the
stern of the boat.
I
bought 5 dozen eggs from the local store and had to coat them with
petroleum jelly so they would stay fresh for the 3-week passage.
I
was up very late trying to get everything done. About 1:00 am I went up on deck to get some air (it’s been
very hot here now that the rain stopped), and noticed a local’s
boat very close to a cruiser friend’s boat (a Swedish Merchant
Marine named Shel) who I knew was on shore. Just as I was about to
call Peter up to take a
look I heard a loud crunch as the boat’s bow crashed into
Shel’s stern (swells are up tonight). Then another big swell,
and another loud crunch. Peter decided he had to do something, so
he got into our dinghy and went over to check out the situation.
The Ecuadorians are not used to bad weather and don’t
seem to have very good ground tackle or anchoring techniques. Who
knows what he’s
using for an anchor, but it slipped and fouled Shel’s anchor,
and the anchor rode was under Shel’s boat.
The local’s anchor line was just ski tow rope, so it was
going to break pretty quick and then the boat would be up on the
beach in about five minutes. Peter came back, got some mooring
line and tied the boat to Shel’s so it would be far enough back
to not slalom into Shel’s stern any more. (Shel’s boat is a
little steel 24-footer that he built on the deck of a freighter he
was working on; the Ecuadorian’s boat is a fiberglass 30-foot
open inboard/outboard that is probably used to take the tourists
here out water skiing. Just
as Peter got back to the ‘Melon and poured himself a cup of
coffee, Shel returned. Now
we’re both so wide awake we can’t get to sleep.
Oh, the interesting situations we get ourselves into in
this cruising life.
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