towards Baños
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Otavalo
Kelly Estrella crossed the road, held out her hand, and said, "Nice to meet you," and "I´m Kelly Estrella," and "would you like to come for a drink?"
I told her that I was Sam and that I would, and after a while I asked her who the old lady walking beside us was, and she told me that that was her mother and that she was coming with us.
Night had fallen on the streets of Otavalo, where, at this time yesterday, poles and tarpaulin had lain, horizontally or folded on the floor, as the unsold goods from market stalls had been packed into trucks or vans. Now we walked, a strange looking triplet, perhaps, as the rich yellow light of streetlamps swam like oil in the thick black puddles on the ground."
We sat in a brightly lit room. Myself on one side of the table, the mother and daughter on the other.
The hands Kelly had held out to me were small and delicate, and she wore the intricate gold necklaces, the high collared white and turquoise blouse and long black skirt worn by most indigenous women in this part of Ecuador. Her mother´s hands were hidden, wrapped in a thick woollen blanket, against the evening´s chill. The whirring then of an electric blender, juicing fruit. Maracuya. Tomate de Árbol. And mango.
"Yes we have mangos, " I was saying, "and passion fruits, but they´re not as good as here. No. I´ve never seen a tree tomato in England before."
Between Kelly, who was 23, and the lady wrapped in the blanket - with deep worn lines on her face, tracing every expression from grief and fear and sadness, to joy, amusement and hope, so that it looked now as if someone had laid a myriad of photos, one for each emotion ever shown, each on top of the other, so that what was expressed seemed more a retrospective of experience itself, even when moved to express current moods - there seemed a missing generation. We sipped the juice through plastic straws.
The conversation rotated around what my Spanish could manage. Every Sunday, Kelly told me, she and her mother came into town to speak with her older siblings, studying in Germany. It was the happy killing of a prejudice to learn that two people from a small indigenous village were studying in universities half way across the world. Kelly helped her mum to make clothes, which was a reinforcement of one.
"How do you say papas in English?" she asked, and answered her own question, saying something very close to potatoes, but without any ´o´s in it. I hoped as I corrected her that I was as endearing when I make similar mistakes in Spanish, but I doubted it.
Kelly Estrella paid for the drinks despite protestations and we waited outside for their taxi. Still the yellow oil swimming in black water.
"Would you like to come for a walk, to the waterfall, with us tomorrow?" she asked, and I told them sadly that I had to leave. Perhaps it was only the pronoun though, that failed to change my mind.
The clouds part at last - Cotapaxi´s summit, 5897m
I told her that I was Sam and that I would, and after a while I asked her who the old lady walking beside us was, and she told me that that was her mother and that she was coming with us.
Night had fallen on the streets of Otavalo, where, at this time yesterday, poles and tarpaulin had lain, horizontally or folded on the floor, as the unsold goods from market stalls had been packed into trucks or vans. Now we walked, a strange looking triplet, perhaps, as the rich yellow light of streetlamps swam like oil in the thick black puddles on the ground."
We sat in a brightly lit room. Myself on one side of the table, the mother and daughter on the other.
The hands Kelly had held out to me were small and delicate, and she wore the intricate gold necklaces, the high collared white and turquoise blouse and long black skirt worn by most indigenous women in this part of Ecuador. Her mother´s hands were hidden, wrapped in a thick woollen blanket, against the evening´s chill. The whirring then of an electric blender, juicing fruit. Maracuya. Tomate de Árbol. And mango.
"Yes we have mangos, " I was saying, "and passion fruits, but they´re not as good as here. No. I´ve never seen a tree tomato in England before."
Between Kelly, who was 23, and the lady wrapped in the blanket - with deep worn lines on her face, tracing every expression from grief and fear and sadness, to joy, amusement and hope, so that it looked now as if someone had laid a myriad of photos, one for each emotion ever shown, each on top of the other, so that what was expressed seemed more a retrospective of experience itself, even when moved to express current moods - there seemed a missing generation. We sipped the juice through plastic straws.
The conversation rotated around what my Spanish could manage. Every Sunday, Kelly told me, she and her mother came into town to speak with her older siblings, studying in Germany. It was the happy killing of a prejudice to learn that two people from a small indigenous village were studying in universities half way across the world. Kelly helped her mum to make clothes, which was a reinforcement of one.
"How do you say papas in English?" she asked, and answered her own question, saying something very close to potatoes, but without any ´o´s in it. I hoped as I corrected her that I was as endearing when I make similar mistakes in Spanish, but I doubted it.
Kelly Estrella paid for the drinks despite protestations and we waited outside for their taxi. Still the yellow oil swimming in black water.
"Would you like to come for a walk, to the waterfall, with us tomorrow?" she asked, and I told them sadly that I had to leave. Perhaps it was only the pronoun though, that failed to change my mind.
The clouds part at last - Cotapaxi´s summit, 5897m
Pasto, Colombia
We walked around Pasto looking for something to do. At 9pm the sky was black and under it the grey and empty streets felt post apocalyptic. Piles of rubbish, and a ghostly quiet; all dogs, drunk beggars and nothing.
Darkened faces and dim shop lights, behind black and metal bars. On Monday night there was nothing to do in Pasto so we gave up.
The next morning I went for a walk alone. The city´s mountain air was fresh, and the sun glinted off glass and metal window frames onto transformed and crowded streets. I walked aimlessly about the city. I stopped to eat empanadas with salsa that tasted of water and drank coffee, which was black, but tasted only of sugar.
The multi-coloured dome of a church caught my eye and I turned a corner towards it.
I stopped. Men were shouting at each other. Two men standing on a truck, piled high with metal poles, and two others across the street. Voices rose again. I lingered on the corner, not wanting to get closer, but with that school yard fascination holding me there, not wanting to miss a fight.
Then the shouting stopped. Two of the men started running away, and from behind the truck a man followed, his arm extended, holding a gun.
I ran away too; though less dramatically than I would have liked as I was wearing flip flops that didn´t quite fit, so instead of diving or sprinting away, as one might imagine oneself doing from a gun fight, I just kind of slowly and incompetently skipped.
A single shot was fired, and a sharp boom filled the air. I can´t tell you what happened though. I was hiding in a shop, my heart beating in my mouth.
Approaching Pasto.
Darkened faces and dim shop lights, behind black and metal bars. On Monday night there was nothing to do in Pasto so we gave up.
The next morning I went for a walk alone. The city´s mountain air was fresh, and the sun glinted off glass and metal window frames onto transformed and crowded streets. I walked aimlessly about the city. I stopped to eat empanadas with salsa that tasted of water and drank coffee, which was black, but tasted only of sugar.
The multi-coloured dome of a church caught my eye and I turned a corner towards it.
I stopped. Men were shouting at each other. Two men standing on a truck, piled high with metal poles, and two others across the street. Voices rose again. I lingered on the corner, not wanting to get closer, but with that school yard fascination holding me there, not wanting to miss a fight.
Then the shouting stopped. Two of the men started running away, and from behind the truck a man followed, his arm extended, holding a gun.
I ran away too; though less dramatically than I would have liked as I was wearing flip flops that didn´t quite fit, so instead of diving or sprinting away, as one might imagine oneself doing from a gun fight, I just kind of slowly and incompetently skipped.
A single shot was fired, and a sharp boom filled the air. I can´t tell you what happened though. I was hiding in a shop, my heart beating in my mouth.
Approaching Pasto.
Supia, Colombia
I looked across the road, which now, under construction, was only the churned up mud and stones, fallen traffic cones, and white and red tape, speckled brown and flapping in the breeze - slack, plastic rattling and snapping taut - at a wooden door, blue peeling paint and the worn out letters of the word hospedaje. I was there by mistake. I often feel that way in small towns, but this time I actually didn´t want to be there.
When the town of Supia came into view it should have been another town. Only after the sign saying Supia, the public swimming pool of Supia, numerous shops claiming to have something to do with Supia, and finally a man who told me we were in Supia, was I finally convinced that I´d taken a wrong turn about 15 kilometres ago. It was too late to turn around though, and I stood looking across the debris, at the place I would likely spend the night.
A man passed and I asked him about other places to stay.
"You don´t want to stay there, " he said, "You´ll be robbed!"
His name was Humberto and he walked me up the road to a hotel at which I wouldn´t be robbed and arranged to meet me later.
We walked round the plaza and looked at the church, stopping to talk to friends of Humberto that we happened to bump into. This was a much longer process than you might imagine though, as everybody we bumped into appeared to be Humberto´s friend.
A group of ladies sat on stools around a shop front, eating from paper plates. Humberto introduced me, told me it was the birthday of one of the ladies, and after offering our congratulations we sat down to eat.
"I´m twenty-one," she told me, in mock confidentiality, and the ensuing laughter proved that the joke travels well, not just across international boundaries, but through decades as well.
At Humberto´s house we ate again, the dining room open to the cool night air, and I talked with his family. An hour or two later, perhaps tiring of saying everything slowly for my benefit, or sensing that we had very nearly exhausted my vocabulary, Humberto stood up. "Let´s go and see Brent, and Marta and her parents. Brent´s Canadian - he´s a cyclist as well."
Twenty three years ago Brent had cycled from Canada to Peru. He had met Humberto in the same way I had; an irreparable puncture, rather than a misguided sense of direction, leading him to Supia, and Humberto had taken him to the same hotel by the plaza,to which he had taken me.
Brent and Marta met, and had lived in Canada for several years. Recently they had returned to Supia, and were living with Marta´s parents, Don Humberto and Doña Muriela.
The house had wooden beams, white walls and high ceilings. Antique clocks hung on the walls, ticking and unticking. Some would chime on the hour, and others would rotate their hands in silence. Some mechanisms required winding and one was operated by a long rope and two weights - one falling slowly to the floor. Don Humberto had made that one himself. There were clocks on tables and a clock standing on the floor. Beautiful, wooden antique clocks - more clocks than I had ever seen in a house before. One thing was noticeable though; the hands pointed to each other, or to the sky or floor, at almost as many differnt angles as there were clocks. Just two, I found, were in accordance, and I felt quite comfortable to be in the house of someone who had such a fascination with clocks, but an apparent disinterest in timekeeping. I was very happy when Don Humberto invited me to stay.
The next afternoon we went for a walk. A muddy path cut through the sugar cane, growing above our heads, and a light rain fell from a light grey sky. All across the mountains a deep and glistening green.
Small buildings sat on the hillsides; bamboo skeletons, stuffed with dry sugar cane. From one steam escaped and the sound of voices could be heard.
A man fed the fire with dried cane, and in huge metal bowls a golden liquid bubbled and shone. Caramel and hot. A furious boiling let steam fill the air and huge ladles of hot water were added to the cauldron-like bowls. As we left, with a clear plastic bag full of warm and crumbling panela, a weak and hazy sunlight shone through the bamboo walls. And the bubbling water shone again, light and silver now.
Marta told me they used to wrap the crumbs of panela in banana leaves when they were children.
The first night we went out we started drinking rum. Then creme de ron. Then aguardiente. And then I woke up in a bed I´d never seen before.
When I opened the door I thought that perhaps I´d been kidnapped by the mafia. The brightness of the day glinted off perfectly polished black and white tiles. A stone statue stood in the hall, and everything else that my gaze haggardly encountered seemed to be made of glass or marble. I felt my head spin and I felt scared to touch anything at all.
I clicked the door behind me and a uniformed maid appeared. She seemed unsurprised at my hungover state. And much less surprised at me in general than I was at her. I think I managed a "Buenos dias", but nothing more. What do you say to a maid you have never met in a house you have no memory of entering?
The girl led me to a glass table, and brought me coffee and fruit. I wanted to ask something, but I had no idea what. Instead I looked, quite drunkenly I´m sure, but in a generally questioning and puzzled manner towards the girl in the white apron, placing a silver pot of sugar in front of me.
"Salió" she says. He left. Or she left. No. I don´t think so. He. But for the next half-hour I had no idea who.
Diego came back a little while later. He laughed at me. Filled me in on the previous evening. Laughed at me again. And restored me to the house of Don Humberto and Doña Muriela.
I remember the rest of my time in Supia almost completely. A day by the swimming pool with Diego´s friends and family and the next night out, when I drank much less. Going to Las Piedras, some beautiful waterfalls, with Brent, Norely and Marta. Riding on the back of Norely`s motorbike to do an interview with telesupia. And the lovely meals and evenings on the veranda, drinking coffee, and talking with new friends.
It was hard to leave Supia, and I was both uplifted and sad, rolling the15km down the hill, to correct one of the most wonderful mistakes I can remember ever making.
My bike.. don´t think I´ve taken a photo of it for a while...
When the town of Supia came into view it should have been another town. Only after the sign saying Supia, the public swimming pool of Supia, numerous shops claiming to have something to do with Supia, and finally a man who told me we were in Supia, was I finally convinced that I´d taken a wrong turn about 15 kilometres ago. It was too late to turn around though, and I stood looking across the debris, at the place I would likely spend the night.
A man passed and I asked him about other places to stay.
"You don´t want to stay there, " he said, "You´ll be robbed!"
His name was Humberto and he walked me up the road to a hotel at which I wouldn´t be robbed and arranged to meet me later.
We walked round the plaza and looked at the church, stopping to talk to friends of Humberto that we happened to bump into. This was a much longer process than you might imagine though, as everybody we bumped into appeared to be Humberto´s friend.
A group of ladies sat on stools around a shop front, eating from paper plates. Humberto introduced me, told me it was the birthday of one of the ladies, and after offering our congratulations we sat down to eat.
"I´m twenty-one," she told me, in mock confidentiality, and the ensuing laughter proved that the joke travels well, not just across international boundaries, but through decades as well.
At Humberto´s house we ate again, the dining room open to the cool night air, and I talked with his family. An hour or two later, perhaps tiring of saying everything slowly for my benefit, or sensing that we had very nearly exhausted my vocabulary, Humberto stood up. "Let´s go and see Brent, and Marta and her parents. Brent´s Canadian - he´s a cyclist as well."
Twenty three years ago Brent had cycled from Canada to Peru. He had met Humberto in the same way I had; an irreparable puncture, rather than a misguided sense of direction, leading him to Supia, and Humberto had taken him to the same hotel by the plaza,to which he had taken me.
Brent and Marta met, and had lived in Canada for several years. Recently they had returned to Supia, and were living with Marta´s parents, Don Humberto and Doña Muriela.
The house had wooden beams, white walls and high ceilings. Antique clocks hung on the walls, ticking and unticking. Some would chime on the hour, and others would rotate their hands in silence. Some mechanisms required winding and one was operated by a long rope and two weights - one falling slowly to the floor. Don Humberto had made that one himself. There were clocks on tables and a clock standing on the floor. Beautiful, wooden antique clocks - more clocks than I had ever seen in a house before. One thing was noticeable though; the hands pointed to each other, or to the sky or floor, at almost as many differnt angles as there were clocks. Just two, I found, were in accordance, and I felt quite comfortable to be in the house of someone who had such a fascination with clocks, but an apparent disinterest in timekeeping. I was very happy when Don Humberto invited me to stay.
The next afternoon we went for a walk. A muddy path cut through the sugar cane, growing above our heads, and a light rain fell from a light grey sky. All across the mountains a deep and glistening green.
Small buildings sat on the hillsides; bamboo skeletons, stuffed with dry sugar cane. From one steam escaped and the sound of voices could be heard.
A man fed the fire with dried cane, and in huge metal bowls a golden liquid bubbled and shone. Caramel and hot. A furious boiling let steam fill the air and huge ladles of hot water were added to the cauldron-like bowls. As we left, with a clear plastic bag full of warm and crumbling panela, a weak and hazy sunlight shone through the bamboo walls. And the bubbling water shone again, light and silver now.
Marta told me they used to wrap the crumbs of panela in banana leaves when they were children.
The first night we went out we started drinking rum. Then creme de ron. Then aguardiente. And then I woke up in a bed I´d never seen before.
When I opened the door I thought that perhaps I´d been kidnapped by the mafia. The brightness of the day glinted off perfectly polished black and white tiles. A stone statue stood in the hall, and everything else that my gaze haggardly encountered seemed to be made of glass or marble. I felt my head spin and I felt scared to touch anything at all.
I clicked the door behind me and a uniformed maid appeared. She seemed unsurprised at my hungover state. And much less surprised at me in general than I was at her. I think I managed a "Buenos dias", but nothing more. What do you say to a maid you have never met in a house you have no memory of entering?
The girl led me to a glass table, and brought me coffee and fruit. I wanted to ask something, but I had no idea what. Instead I looked, quite drunkenly I´m sure, but in a generally questioning and puzzled manner towards the girl in the white apron, placing a silver pot of sugar in front of me.
"Salió" she says. He left. Or she left. No. I don´t think so. He. But for the next half-hour I had no idea who.
Diego came back a little while later. He laughed at me. Filled me in on the previous evening. Laughed at me again. And restored me to the house of Don Humberto and Doña Muriela.
I remember the rest of my time in Supia almost completely. A day by the swimming pool with Diego´s friends and family and the next night out, when I drank much less. Going to Las Piedras, some beautiful waterfalls, with Brent, Norely and Marta. Riding on the back of Norely`s motorbike to do an interview with telesupia. And the lovely meals and evenings on the veranda, drinking coffee, and talking with new friends.
It was hard to leave Supia, and I was both uplifted and sad, rolling the15km down the hill, to correct one of the most wonderful mistakes I can remember ever making.
My bike.. don´t think I´ve taken a photo of it for a while...
Antioquia, Colombia
Cool, the mountainsides; the wet and drizzling trees. Lightly, the specks of golden sun catch the rusted red of roofs.
Valley walls fall steeply away, to the rushing white, and churned up brown, of the river, far below.
The breeze block houses look like they´re hanging on by their fingertips, white-knuckled and unable to breathe. Teeth clenched. They don´t trust their legs; spindly concrete stilts, stuck in mud and stone, and slipping, surely, slipping. The houses, huts, look new and old, dirty, unfinished, neglected and treasured all at the same time, but slipping, surely, slipping.
As the road climbs higher young boys on BMXs, or old mountain bikes with rusty gears, fly effortlessly past, clinging to the backs of trucks.
The mist closes in. The far off peaks turn grey and disappear. And the glow of the sun falls dull. And then glows not at all at the bottom of a misty sea.
For the next few hours I climb through clouds as though half-blind. All I see is a greywhite blanket, spread thickly all around. The edges of the road, just two metres away, disappear from view.
Small villages announce their presence by sound alone; the monotonous beats of reggaeton fill the wet air, or salsa blares from a point unseen. And children cry and laugh, doing what I do not know. And mothers call to them, "Ven aqui," through the noisy, grey mist "Come!"
As I ride invisibly by, I catch glimpses of unseen gossip, from voices not far away.
"Almost always, he told me, always," she says.
"Well, I saw her, " she says
"No?"
Even an argument reaches my hears, a woman´s voice hard and strained, "Me molesta señora, me molesta."
And another woman´s voice snaps back, "Two times, already. Dos veces!"
And again, "Señora, you´re annoying me. Señora. Go away!"
Invisibly, I climb, through the grey and noisy mist.
A crash of something falling quickly through wet leaves. Fast and heavy. A sound to make you jump.
Then, the small black outlines of children in the grey. The youngest might be four, the eldest eight, perhaps. In their hands, dangle catapults. And gripped in them, stones, I´m sure.
I climb slowly towards them. The eldest toys with the elastic, and laughs at the terror in my eyes. He hasn´t even turned the thing towards me and already he´s won the fight. I haven´t been this scared of an eight year old since I was eight.
The other boys laugh, say something about a gringo, and catapult stones into trees.
Slowly, as the evening falls, I watch the clouds break apart. The deep green Andes, coming reassuringly back.
At the parque, Supia.
Valley walls fall steeply away, to the rushing white, and churned up brown, of the river, far below.
The breeze block houses look like they´re hanging on by their fingertips, white-knuckled and unable to breathe. Teeth clenched. They don´t trust their legs; spindly concrete stilts, stuck in mud and stone, and slipping, surely, slipping. The houses, huts, look new and old, dirty, unfinished, neglected and treasured all at the same time, but slipping, surely, slipping.
As the road climbs higher young boys on BMXs, or old mountain bikes with rusty gears, fly effortlessly past, clinging to the backs of trucks.
The mist closes in. The far off peaks turn grey and disappear. And the glow of the sun falls dull. And then glows not at all at the bottom of a misty sea.
For the next few hours I climb through clouds as though half-blind. All I see is a greywhite blanket, spread thickly all around. The edges of the road, just two metres away, disappear from view.
Small villages announce their presence by sound alone; the monotonous beats of reggaeton fill the wet air, or salsa blares from a point unseen. And children cry and laugh, doing what I do not know. And mothers call to them, "Ven aqui," through the noisy, grey mist "Come!"
As I ride invisibly by, I catch glimpses of unseen gossip, from voices not far away.
"Almost always, he told me, always," she says.
"Well, I saw her, " she says
"No?"
Even an argument reaches my hears, a woman´s voice hard and strained, "Me molesta señora, me molesta."
And another woman´s voice snaps back, "Two times, already. Dos veces!"
And again, "Señora, you´re annoying me. Señora. Go away!"
Invisibly, I climb, through the grey and noisy mist.
A crash of something falling quickly through wet leaves. Fast and heavy. A sound to make you jump.
Then, the small black outlines of children in the grey. The youngest might be four, the eldest eight, perhaps. In their hands, dangle catapults. And gripped in them, stones, I´m sure.
I climb slowly towards them. The eldest toys with the elastic, and laughs at the terror in my eyes. He hasn´t even turned the thing towards me and already he´s won the fight. I haven´t been this scared of an eight year old since I was eight.
The other boys laugh, say something about a gringo, and catapult stones into trees.
Slowly, as the evening falls, I watch the clouds break apart. The deep green Andes, coming reassuringly back.
At the parque, Supia.
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