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Learning to Trust Monday, November 29, 2010  Happy Thanksgiving! What.We knew we wanted to go to the beach but we weren't sure where. Canoa is 12 hours away, Atacames is eight and also not the safest place in the world, and the others were either farther or not worth it. Tania suggested to me that there was a remote, beautiful beach relatively untouched by humans near San Lorenzo, a city pretty much on the Colombian border. She called her friend who had the information and helped us out by setting up the arrangements with the exception of travel. So how did we learn to trust? Thursday was our travel day and in order to stay where we were headed we had to pay up front for the cabin. First shady point, paying up front. Second shady point, we had to deposit the payment into a checking account of some guy who wasn't the owner of the cabin and wasn't one of Tania's friends. Once we finally got payment figured out we headed to the terminal. We were under the impression it was a 2.5 hour bus ride to San Lorenzo then a 15 minute truck ride to the cabin. Perhaps this is partially true if traveling by car, but the bus (including an almost hour-long lunch break) took about four hours to San Lorenzo alone. San Lorenzo, for those who have never been there, looks a lot like Haiti. We called our hosts, Mary and Ramón, to let them know we had arrived and were ready to be picked up in the truck. We did not know it was another bus ride...one that took another hour and forty minutes. So we asked on the street and received a different answer for how to arrive every time we asked until eventually a man approached us and invited us onto his bus. Luckily, this was the correct bus and we arrived at our stop just as sunset began. When we disembarked from the bus we were immediately greeted by a man with a hat that said "Chile" but had a picture of the state of Texas on it. I suppose they do have similar flags. He introduced himself as Ramón and took us in his pickup back to La Molinita. The ride back provoked songs from the Lion King as long-necked white birds flew in flocks over strange-looking cows just as the sun went down. La Molinita is literally breathtaking; we could not muster the human words to describe the immense relief and awe we experienced upon our arrival. We had our own cabin (and I had my own loft within) that looked out onto the untouched beach. I have rarely seen stars so bright or sand so fine.  The confusion of standing in the back of a moving pickup truck La Molinita at 7 a.m.The touristic problem with the northern Esmeraldas coast is that it is on the Colombian border and is predominantly Afro-Ecuadorean, meaning that although it is safe, beautiful, and has the friendliest most humble people in the country it does not receive much tourism since the US embassy suggests that its citizens not travel so close to the border and Ecuadoreans suggest that most don't travel there because, let's face it, the country is pretty much racist towards everyone. This means that there is rampant poverty in this region but since it is an untouched area there isn't a real crime problem. Most of the people are fishermen or fruit farmers but have no outlet for their products. For this very reason, when we arrived shrimp was thirty cents a pound and papayas were pretty much being given away. To continue with food, Mary was the best cook I've met since arriving in the country. At night we would have coffee and bolones de verde or empanadas de verde, both cheese-filled fried plantain fritters. For breakfast on Friday we had fillet of fish with rice and patacones. For lunch we had six-inch long prawns and fish soup with melon milkshakes. Breakfast on Saturday was the real winner, with the same prawns as well as lobster tail, plantain medallions, and a volcano of rice and tomatoes, served with coconut milk. For four dollars. Mary refuses to use store-bought seasonings since it harms the stomach or something, but I don't think any of us could complain. When we got back it was census day, the first full census in about two decades from my understanding. Nothing was open so we stocked up on food and had a cooking festival so as to not go onto the street and get arrested. For Sunday dinner I had fire-roasted cuy and, for a nighttime snack, Mario brought a protein-rich snack: fried beetles, which were a thousand times better than the churros from earlier this month. Now it's the last week of internships, our papers and presentations are due next week, and the program ends next Saturday.  Rrrrrrico At first the buzzing came softly; but a shadow of a sound. Then it grew, resounding in the children's ears, the hum of a billion tiny wings beating against polished carapace, until nought was heard but the deafening drone. The End had arrived.Sam / 1 comments |
About the Adventure Student: Sam Grigsby '11 While abroad in Quito, Ecuador, Sam will interning with a grassroots nonprofit organization dealing with human development. Through this work, he hopes to identify areas of further study and possible career paths. Sam also intends to greatly improve his fluency and conversation skills in Spanish while staying with a host family and working in his internship. Blog Archives
• June 2010 |