Manglaralto, Ecuador and Hats

Well, as I expected in this generally unplanned adventure of mine, everything is taking longer than I had hoped and yet still somehow coming together. For instance, Friday I went to the school here in town (Maglaralto) to meet Ramiro, who is the Agriculture coordinator for the high school. And on Monday I'll be returning to shadow a class of his. Why am I in a small town on the coast of Ecuador in the opposite direction of my planned trajectory to the mountains you might wonder? Well, I feel very comfortable with this Yale group here, and they are having on a daily basis the very conversations about development projects as I hoped they would be having. Today (Sunday) for instance we spent all of dinner talking about using data and a good understanding of the community to create realistic and worthwhile goals for their time here. There is such an interesting breadth of experience and idealism in the group that the conversation takes on a mix of advice, experienced conversation, and radical rethinking of the project. The angst about what they are doing is well placed and I think they are taking all the steps necessary to address it. Still this is not my project, and as much as I like it here, I am not getting to pursue what I came to South America for. So it is definitely time to move onward and outward.

Weaving a hat's border in Montechristi

Saturday, while the Yale team was doing productive things I went to Montechristi to find some hats. Montechristi “Panama Hats” are known throughout the world for being the finest straw hats in the world, made from a palm-like plant and woven by hands taught from one generation to the next. I sat on a bus for almost 4 hours to go no farther than 100 miles (126km). The bus stopped at every single little town along the way. Arriving around 10:30 or so, and then went about looking for hats. I wandered up the hill, passed the steep incline of shops each filled with hats, various woven chairs, wooden sculptures and chachkes. But none of them screamed, “I am a Panama Hat shop” or perhaps more appropriately “Yo soy una tienda de Sombreros Paja de Torquillos.” So I continued up until a very random person asked if I was looking for hats. I was looking, and he knew where to bring me. We visited three different stores selling real hand made straw hats. They are very beautiful closely woven things--floppy, malleable but definitely sturdy. 

And perhaps as such, it is not surprising that each one takes between one and three months to make. Indeed, though these stores have people working on the hats, they are only doing the last 3 or 4 days of work, which is simply finishing the border and then ironing it out. In the countryside someone else spends the better part of the month or even up until 3 months weaving the majority of the hat, and someone else altogether goes into the forest to find, harvest, and dry the palm leaves. Needless to say, it is an involved process, which brings together many members of the community. I bought two hats, a male and female model. The female one may end up being a present, but with the view of potentially selling these masterpieces of weaving I have determined to examine first hand this whole process. To that end I will be returning there on Tuesday to visit the countryside with Victoria, one of the shop owner's daughters.

Tuesday being my first steps away from the comfort of this beachside, I will then continue on hopefully to a Dole banana plantation, or at least its health center where a Peace Corps volunteer has been working for the past year. From there I will be passing through Cuenca on my way to Loja where I will work on a coffee farm for a week before leaving the lovely country of Ecuador for a life of bus rides and adventure, but mostly bus rides until I reach Bolivia

Well Couchsurfing sometimes falls through.  I arrived on Thursday in Guayaquil and promptly plopped myself down with my overpacked backpack in what is commonly termed the Park of the Iguanas.  It lives up to its name:

These creatures are strange and the locals are interested, though perhaps not as much as the tourist I saw who had placed or enticed a number of the lizards on her arms and shoulders.  I got to know this park well, as I would spend 3 hours waiting for my couchsurfing contact to show up though he never would.  After a while I began a conversation with Kari, an older woman who was very clear to give me constant advise about being safe.  She made me nervous enough about the neighborhood to move out around nightfall and find a hotel.  

Beyond the Iguanas, there isn't much to report.  I am getting my bearings here, and hope to get out of the city sometime shortly.

I have a functioning phone if anyone feels the need to call.  The number is +593 09 68093276 

Peru!

I am waiting for the beans to cook. They will be spicy, slightly chewy and hopefully delicious. They are probably going to be our last cooked meal in South America, so I hope they turn out well. We are staying at a very nice hostel called the “Blue House” with one of the best possible views of Cuzco. High up in the neighborhood of San Blas, we found this place, where most people seem to be staying for over a month, at around 11pm the day we arrived from Bolivia about a week ago. Cuzco has treated us well. We have decided to budget big time again and so aren't allowing much splurging anymore—gone are the days of cabanas and fondue. However, after Machupicchu which we did the cheap way (more on that below), we did treat ourselves to pedicures and full body massages (you can't beat $15). Oddly enough we got into a religious art mood and spent the second day here looking at paintings and wondering about archangels. This was of course accented by the immense Inca stones lining the streets, and inflected by our reading allowed of the Golden Compass trilogy, which we recently finished, over coffee and hot chocolate.

So I said we went to Machupicchu the cheap way. That means that we only spent $100 each. But in order to avoid more costs, we woke up at 3:40am to leave Cuzco for Santa Theresa which took us over harrowing roads. Caitlin and I were separated on the van and so we were unable to sleep for fear of waking up in an angry woman's lap—a distinct possibility. So, exhausted, we walked the 2.5 hours to Aguas Calientes at the food of Machupicchu and stumbled half crazed half dazed, into a nice looking hostel at around 2:30pm. Food was so expensive in Aguas Calientes that we had prepared and brought enough food for all of our 6 meals while in Cuzco. We ate the second of what would be many avocado on bread with cheese sandwiches and fell promptly asleep before 7.

Waking up at 3:52 the next morning we trekked to the base of the mountain where the Inca ruins actually are located. There we found the line of 100 people just like us hoping to be the first 400 to the top and so be allowed to climb Huaynapicchu, the mountain so famously depicted in every picture of the site. We were told that the buses would start leaving at 5:30, and walkers could start at 5:00. We were nervous. We thought we might not make it. At 4:50 we were let over the bridge and allowed to start the climb. It was like a cross country race. The staircase up was narrow, slow people could keep you back for long enough that the buses might pass and leave no chance of getting there in time. We ran. Thirty-nine minutes of knee splitting, and thigh dragging latter we made it to the top—no one had passed us. And so it was that we raced up a mountain (600m up) in order to be given the priveledge of climbing another mountain! We did it happily. It was a really fun time in a beautiful place—even if the tourist tax is extravagant we couldn't help notice how much less like an amusement park Machupicchu is than the Iguazu falls. Unbelievable.

Today we leave for Lima—one more 20 hour ride ahead!

Chicken

It is always fun to walk into a place functioning so utterly under its own power that you are looked over as merely a curious and perhaps uninvited stranger. No one really notices you. The taxi people are not constantly calling over to you, the ladies on their piles of goods aren't yelling “papito, caserito, que vas a llevar!?” Caranavi is exactly that place. If however, the foreign visitor is an unnecessary addition to their society, the economy is not wholly divorced from the foreigner's world. Coffee, cacao and coca make up this town and region's most formidable and tasty products. They of course export most of these goods, in one way or another, remember of course that the USA consumes most of the world's cocaine, a sizable portion of it's coffee, and I don't think I need to even mention chocolate, thus we play a large part in making this place work. Other than these cash crops, the fertile Yungas region produces all sorts of tropical fruits and vegetables for the large La Paz market. Yet all this agricultural activity is apparently eclipsed in the town of Caranavi by the hegemony of the fried (broaster as they say here) and roasted (al spiedo) chicken joint. Each shop seems to do so inexplicable well, that none feel the need for variation well. By some unknown fascination for this, the most common of all foods, Caranavi is able to support hundreds if not thousands of chicken restaurants, and yet boasts not a single pizza parlor, or even an egg burger stand (not so uncommon in the rest of Bolivia)! The imagination does not stray far here in the beautiful semi-tropics. The discovery of the revolutionary grilled chicken, it must be stated for the sake of honesty, has resulted in the popping up of a few shops dedicated that particular chicken formula. And if you should want something other than french fries and rice under that piece of chicken, you are in luck in the Yungas, Plantains grow rampantly, and fried pieces of the platano may be an allowable substitute for fries. What more could you ask for? That night we ate fried egg on a pile of rice. Yum.

We arrived with the intention of visiting an acquaintance's farm plot not too far outside of town. He grows high quality coffee for export and consumption in his shop in La Paz. Having placed fifth I believe at the “cup of excellence” for all of Bolivia, I take it his coffee is good (Caitlin corroborates). Sadly we have such a limited time here that when transportation fell through, there was no way to guarantee the visit. We left. Wanting to stop in on Coroico, the destination of the “deadly road in America” and a tourist haven on the way back to La Paz (for the last time). You could not imagine a place more different from Caranavi. In short, no fried chicken. We are currently staying at an idyllic set of cabañas located above town called Sol y Luna. I imagine that this is close to paradise without, but with bugs. We splurged; I hope that slpurge doesn't result in malaria.

Pictures

Hello all,

It has been a very long time since a real post, and I am sorry to disappoint again.  The truth of the matter is that not much has changed.  You will find picture on the right hand bar.  Two new albums are up.  One is a catch up album from the past 2 months since our arrival here in Bolivia.  The second is of our recent trip to see the salt flats of Uyuni and the surrounding lakes.  It was phenomenal.  Beautiful.  Fabulous.  We traveled with a recent friend Sarah, who shared our love of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  We read the first book aloud on the trip.

Email if you want to, I've got some time on my hands!

And Now

Well it all went really well here in La Paz, although much faster than I thought it would.  I'll be heading back to Sucre in a couple days to figure more stuff out with Caitlin.  As of now, I need to get more proactive about Las Yungas coffee and cacoa cooperatives.  Maybe I'll get there sometime by the end of April?

A few days ago

3.29.2011

So I have entered a new phase in my trip.  As the end approaches, I have decided that I cannot wallow in indecision until it arrives.  Thus I will start a project.  The objective is to learn as much as I can about fair trade in Bolivia.  Although this is obviously my interest, I have been enabled by Dave Holman, a Carleton alumnus from 2006 who runs a chain of bookstores here.  He also sources a good deal of apparel and some coffee and chocolate exclusively from Fair Trade suppliers.  The first step then is to visit some of the co-ops he works with and take pictures, make profiles and talk to people.  Obviously this is to Dave's benefit (for marketing), but it has also given structure to my otherwise empty time ahead of me.  So far in the service of my new project I have sat next to a retired Bolivian general on a plane, and visited one chocolate factory (who doesn't love large vats of chocolate!) 

On another front, the comfort and contacts I have made in this country are starting me thinking about ridiculous prospects for the coming years.  One friend who I first met in the south of Chile is considering starting a hostel here in Sucre.  What if I invested in his project?  What if I came back to Sucre every year or so for a few months and worked/helped set up the place and laid down roots of sorts?