My first Jack-O-Melon

Pumpkins are hard to find here, so we make due!

The Day I Let A Stranger Lead My Family Into A Dense Forest...(The Jungle Part II)

We cross over another creek and climb a dilapidated bridge as Edi easily navigated us out of the jungle. Covered in mud up to our ears and famished, we headed back to the cars.  This, of course, was not before we paid Edi for his handy skills and his time, handed him a bag of cookies (from the USA!!), and thanked him profusely.   

Resting back at Edi's house with more of his family.

After we left Edi, we treated ourselves to a delicious lunch at a nearby hostel where we reminisced the days events. It was a beautiful setting overlooking the local river basin, complete with domesticated local wildlife.

Finally, we returned to our hosteria, where the kids played in the wonderful (but chilly) pool/water park. 

The next morning at breakfast we spoke with the manager of the hostel about the best possible direction home, clearly we wanted to avoid the 4 hour drive on the dirt road from Limon to Gualaceo.  The manager made a phone call with the strangest wireless phone EVER.  It looked like your traditional wired phone - a handset connected to a cradle by a wire - but the cradle itself was wireless. The phone call was to inquire about the condition of the original road with the mudslide only to find out the road is...still sliding in mud.  CLOSED.  The manager proposed another route, but it was a private road which you have to be granted special access from a special someone to cross a bridge.  The manager just so happened to be elected to a provincial government post the day before but he didn't start until Monday and unfortunately didn't think he could pull strings for us to get us easy bridge access. The alternative route would be out of the way but would ensure a beautiful drive through Sangay National Park.  The drive home did not disappoint, with a vast array of converging rivers, picturesque waterfalls, and thick lush trees it was a feast for the eyes.

Looking for the wreckage

We stopped a few times to take in the beauty and make countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  At one point we saw a few highway workers peering over the edge of a steep cliff (guard rails are a rare sight here).  The workers informed us that two nights earlier a car with three passengers inexplicably drove off the cliff 250 meters down.  Amazingly, three of the four people and survived, and two were actually able to climb out to safety.   About a third of way through our drive, as we crossed over the pass of a large mountain, seemingly out of nowhere the scenery totally changed.  Gone were the thick lush trees and shrubs and instead we found the paramo, a golden and more bleak and rough countryside, equally beautiful but vastly different.  The instantaneous change was unbelievable. This area is also known for its two large alpine lakes.   We stopped here to have lunch at a place that served one delicious meal to all its patrons....freshly caught trout.

The remainder of our trip home was fairly uneventful except for some horrific fog just outside of Azuay that left it nearly impossible to see two feet in front of you. The fog itself would not have been horrific had we not been winding through mountain roads with several-thousand-foot drop-offs with the fresh memory of a car shooting 250 meters off the side of a cliff! 

In the end, I am so thankful we were invited along with our friends to the jungle.  The views along the way were some of the more breath-taking scenery upon which I have ever laid eyes. 

The day I let a stranger lead my family into a dense forest with a machete...The Jungle (Part I)

 It would have been a personal travesty to travel all the down to Ecuador to the South of America and be so painstakingly close to arguably the most well known jungle in the world and not visit it, right?!  The truth is when we first arrived in Cuenca we debated this journey to the jungle and nearly nixed the whole idea all together for a number of really quite valid reasons.  First, we never got our yellow fever vaccination (too expensive) nor did we take our malaria pills (just forgot).  Second, the closest jungle 'entry' to us, which still ended up being at least plus or minus eight hours away mind you, is Macas, in the Southern Oriente, the provincial capital of Morona-Santiago, also known as the wilder and less traversed part of the jungle, and as I previously read, "should never be entered without a knowledgeable guide".  And last but certainly not least...we were traveling with our kids, of course.  Kids and remote, unpredictable jungle are not usually what one (most?) would consider a slam dunk idea.  But then when our good pals Diego and Inga proposed a trip with us to the jungle with their kids (who our kids adore) and with Homero (Diego's dad) we oddly didn't hesitate.  We said when and what exactly do we need to bring?

The weekend started at Homero's house where we met and loaded his car and drove about 15 minutes to a gas station to meet The Vintimillas in their car.  The boys immediately ditched us to ride with them leaving John and I alone in a kid/noise free car with Homero.   About two hours into the trip I started noticing people (multiple, mind you) in cars in oncoming traffic flailing their arms wildly.  Unsurprisingly, it ends up we have a mudslide ahead and there is no passage through and we must turn around and find a new route.  Turn around, like pretty much ALL THE WAY back to Cuenca, turn around.  Oh well...an "adventure" is what we are having, right???  Homero has this endearing and slightly amusing habit of stopping every walking passerby along the route if we are headed in the right direction.  Sure enough the very dirt and gravel road we were currently on was heading to the city we needed to get to, Limon.   We conceded to the fact that the majority of our drive would be snaking around mountains on dirt and gravel, rarely driving over 40 miles per hour.  We drove a whopping four hours and only made it 40 kilometers.  Soooooooo, nearly 198 kilometers and 12 hours later we arrive at our very charming and ultra rustic hostel all tuckered out and ready for bed.

Will not be taking the luxury of  'paved' roads for granted anymore

 The next morning we get up for breakfast and got dressed for our trip into the jungle.  The Duckworth family is appropriately dressed in full rain-proof, weather-proof gear, including the sweet $9 rain boots we picked up in the local market in Cuenca.  The Vintimillas are half as prepared as we are with no boots, just hiking shoes.  Diego shrugs.  John and I exchange nervous glances.  Is this jungle trek really gonna happen?  With no real plans we head out to the middle of the city to find a tourist company or somebody (Anybody?) with any idea of what to do or where to go.  Remember, I already read that you should never enter the jungle here without a knowledgeable guide, so needless to say I was a little nervous about how this would all turn out.  And.....to our luck it did!!

 We pull off the main road where we saw a sign that basically said 'turn here for jungle trekking'.  We drive to the end of the road and see a man with some horses, and some other men and also a whole family starring at us. Hmmmmm......so Homero, a very outgoing and talkative person, introduces himself , states our intentions, and asks about the jungle. The farmer told him that we could head through to the jungle, and we proceed ahead.  All of a sudden I notice a guy with a machete (a sharp, shiny one) and few small boys start to take the lead.  Inga leans over and says, "Just so you are aware, he works for the farmer, who told this man to lead us through the jungle."  Oh thanks Inga. I wasn't nervous at all.   

The jungle here is very dense but there is no doubt that deforestation is occurring as we somewhat sadly see the cut pathways leading us deeper into the jungle and eventually down to the river basin. As we reached the end of the deforested/farmed area, we encountered a creek that was backed up with large amounts of debris. So our new guide, Edi (pronounced like Eddie or Eddy), starts wielding his machete to cut us a neat path that will allow us to be on our way.  With tree bark flying all around us, we prepared to make an assembly line with an adult on each side of the creek to help the kids easily and steadily pass along fallen tree.  One by one, we safely cross the creek.  It was clear at this point that we would not have gotten very far without our very skilled guide and we were all very happy to have him along with us.

The forest here began to get quite lush and even denser and we began to to notice interesting wildlife like large spiders, colorful beetles, giant ferns, various plants and trees with fur-like texture.  But what I think struck me most was all the varying shades of green - light, dark, kelly, chartruese, forest, and beyond.  Along the way Edi would point out interesting finds like a giant ant colony or the jipijapa palms, which are the trees that produce the famous panama hats made from the finely plaited young leaves (panama hats are improperly named - they originate in Ecuador, but in the days of Teddy Roosevelt, they made their way to the outside world through the ports of Panama, and thus gained their name).Then at last we wound down the somewhat steep pathway cleared by Edi to the river, having to steady ourselves on the wet mud. We stopped for a moment to ponder the river and take some pictures.  This was the point where the two smallest kids, Elliott & Eliana, who had been trekking thru the jungle as well as Bear Grylls, started whining and were clearly ready to make there way back out.

So onward and upward we forged and it got tricky tredging up wet mud even more so than going down, so John helped Elliott in several places, but Finn had virtually no help at all.  When we reached the top of the hill, we came upon a small house (wood shack) where Edi told us he once resided.  He had to move, he said, because his kids' clothes would get too muddy on the way to school, having to endure such a long wet hike everyday.  This is also when he informed us that he had eight children and a granddaughter at the ripe old age of....38.

Stay tuned...

A Day in the Life

Rain, rain go away! It has been raining nearly non-stop since Sunday, and projects to continue. So what else should we do, but blog! 

The week-and-a-half that followed our Quilotoa trip was pretty quiet. Normal day-to-day stuff, with a laid back weekend out at Diego & Inga’s house in San Joaquin (a “suburb” of Cuenca). As such, I thought I would write a summary of our typical day here.

We wake up with the sun – when it’s out. Being at the equator, there’s not a whole lot of variation in the sunrise and sunset. It’s pretty consistently up at 6:00 and down at 6:00. The weather here is all over the place – it is said that you experience the four seasons every day in Cuenca. When the sun is out, it will be warm and 75 degrees. When the clouds roll in, it’s cold at 67. It will be cold and rainy in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon, and then cold and rainy again in the evening. So far, we’ve been fairly lucky. It was quite rainy our first week, and then we went a good 5 weeks with mostly sunny and warm weather, until this week came along, anyway.

In any case, we arise, get dressed, the boys get ready for school and we have breakfast. Then, around 7:45, I head out with the boys to catch the bus and go to school.

Waiting to catch Number 12

After I drop them off, I walk back home. In the meantime, Shannon has cleaned up the apartment and gotten ready for her day at school. She takes off for her Spanish studies around 9:50 a couple blocks from our apartment. She spends two hours with her teacher, one-on-one, in an intense course.

Shannon preparing for her teacher's arrival - what a building!

While Shannon and the boys are at school, I am at home, working at the kitchen table on my various projects at home, listening to music.

School lets out at 12:30. At that point, one of two things will happen:

(1) Usually, Shannon will leave from her class and walk to get the boys, and then bring them home, at which point we have lunch and relax for a bit. At 2:00, Finn and I head to la Escuela de Futbol. Finn has soccer practice from Monday-Thursday from 2:30-3:45 at the Coliseo – the city’s sports arena and outdoor complex.

He plays on the 6-7 year old team. There are no other teams – this is entirely instructional. They generally work on various drills for the first 45-60 minutes of practice, and then put on penny-jerseys and play a game. The difference in skill level at this age is extreme, as you might expect where one kid started aged 7 years 11 months, and others started at 6 years 0 months. The other aspect that stood out to me were the kids who watched a lot of professional soccer on tv. These are the kids who (a) understand the game a lot better than their peers and (b) emulate the showboating nature of soccer stars (i.e., running and sliding after they score a goal).

In any case, as it turns out, this is part of the national soccer network that ultimately feeds into the national team. After the kids make it through the 11-12 year old team, they’ll compete for the 13-14 year old Seleccion de Azuay – the province’s team. From there, it’s further whittling down till the national selection is complete…

While Finn is at soccer, Elliott is usually at home having quiet time, although occasionally Elliott joins me at soccer and we goof around, and sometimes he’ll get to go to the park near our apartment by himself.

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(2) On most Fridays, and occasionally on other days, I might pick up the boys and go visit the park near our old apartment, which is also within walking distance from the school. We’ll grab hot dogs and chips from a nearby stand and enjoy the park for a while.

After we finish at the park, it’s a walk up the river to catch the bus home. And being three boys, we might sometimes stop to sit on the banks and throw rocks in the river for a while.

Once everyone is back home, it’s general free time until dinner. Frequently, I’m back doing some work on the computer, Shannon is working on dinner, and the boys like to go downstairs and play in the parking area of our building (which is closed off from the street) with some of the other kids in the apartment building.

Finally, it’s dinner, and then playtime for a bit and off to bed for another day!