The Old, Dusty, Roundabout Trail

Juleen left just over a week ago. Though, in our last blog entry, she suggested that our blog would be no more, she forgot one important thing: it's all the rage to resurrect oneself and come out of retirement. Christ was probably the original trend-setter. He was followed, a few thousand years later, by the likes of Ryne Sandberg, Michael Jordan, and, repeatedly, Brett Favre. Being the trendy type, I'm naturally following suit.

I wrote most of the following piece a few days into my stay in the north of Peru. Tarapoto, Peru is an interesting setting. Here I am volunteering for a total of two weeks. I am primarily doing two things: collecting and organizing parasite infection data and speaking with indigenous communities about climate change. Is Tarapoto as unique as I make it out to be or am I just cranky?

Another day and, though little was accomplished, the night beckons. The sidestreets are still of dust, and the dirtbikes and their brethren taxis still roar through the street, pale orange soil or otherwise. The stickiness is alive and well, too. After a few blocks, half uphill, of rapid walking the sweat begins to bleed through. In blotches, my grey shirt turns a shade darker. Even the delicious mint-chocolate chip ice cream couldn’t fend off the heat and its friend, sweat. This slow, dusty town is not strong on tourism, and I detest the weather, but it’s not all bad. Compared to the constant hassle of street vendors and beggars in Cuzco, this is paradise. Definitely wouldn’t mind the chill of Cuzco, though.

The Tarapoto, Peru Plaza Mayor.

Efficiency, as the cold, is not the order of the day here in Tarapoto. Perhaps the inhabitants have purposefully inserted squares where there should have been circles, slowing the gears, and keeping life from running as quickly as it could. Perhaps it would, at full speed, run away from them. Perhaps they’re weary of the heat and the sweat and, thus, intentionally add disorder to intentionally slow the pace. For me, the inefficiency is infuriating. Coupled with my frustration, each set of unnecessary added steps is another proverbial straw striking the camel’s back. It causes more, not less, sweat to pour out of me. My shirt darkens further.

Prime example: At the grocery store I ask for contact solution. The woman behind the counter grabs it, but, of course, she does not give it to me. Before making contact with the blue box that contains my solution, I must pay and get my receipt. After I pay, the cashier has another woman walk the solution to the distributor, a woman who checks receipts and hands out items. I must walk the 30 feet to the other side of the small store and wait in line to show my receipt to the distributor. I wait mostly patiently and fend off a rear attack by a potential cutter. With my receipt Xed, the distributor casually hands me my contact solution. Easy as pie!

The city sits on a grid. East-west streets around the plaza are paved. North-south streets, like this one upon which the URKU offices and, thus, my accommodations sit, are rarely paved, regardless of location.

Speaking of treats, after this consumer endurance test, I need an ice cream fix.

The ice cream kiosk sits at the entrance to this same grocery store. I approach the young woman. She is equipped with the scooper and access to twenty glorious, colorful flavors. I ask her which flavor is best. She starts to rattle the name of each. I cut her short. She confirms my suspicion; the green with a hint of darkness is mint-chocolate chip. I’m sold. “That one. Dos soles.” But she doesn’t handle money. She directs me to the cash registers where I must compete with all of the store’s customers and all of their items. All I want is an ice cream cone. Two soles. Mint chocolate chip! I hesitate, thinking about leaving the place just out of spite, and a bit of principal. “I can’t let them jerk my chain around like this! It’s ridiculous!” But I do. I want the mint-chocolate chip. It looks good, and it is.

Right behind these red doors? An upscale cafe on the Plaza Mayor that inexplicably closes during lunchtime hours.

I’m still conflicted about whether I should have bought the ice cream. But my experiences paying for printed documents and, later, trying to buy bread at lunchtime show me that unnecessary, painful, sweaty inefficiency is just how it is in Tarapoto.

Motorcycles and affixed chariots are the transportation mode du jour. I might sweat less if I took one.

Now, almost a week into my two-week stay in Tarapoto, I don’t let the city’s signature inefficiency bother me as much. It helps that I’m beginning to understand the calculus behind store openings and closures. Still, my bid to buy bread today, a Sunday, was nonchalantly denied. I am taking down hoops, but, still, there are plenty to jump through. Though I return to my small room dustier and damper than necessary, I usually enjoy the circus, or at least its ice cream payoffs.

An unrelated picture: My impromptu radio debut on Millenium Radio Sunday morning. Daniel, first from the right, surprised me with questions about why I'm here, what I've learned, and last words. I said that when I return to the US I'll be better at doing unexpected things, like surprise radio interviews in foreign languages. The guy in the deeper blue shirt translated everything into Quechua.

Ecuador Map

After the last updated map let-down (I never explained the places visited, I'm sorry), I pledge to do better and quicker.

We didn’t volunteer in Ecuador, so no color code is necessary. You’ll notice I went ahead and included the location names right next to the map. Is this helpful or not?

32 – Tulcán – early morning of 2/22 – An all-night bus from Cali, Colombia took us to the border earlier than anticipated. We waited for the sun to rise to make for a safer border crossing into this small Ecuadorian town.

33 – Quito – 2/22 to 3/05 – We stayed with Eleana Figueroa (Ele), Joe’s family’s former foreign exchange student, her brother and sister in Quito. They have a nice apartment a little ways north of the city center. And they were INCREDIBLE hosts! Here Joe’s mom came for a week, also using their home as a central base for other travels. We were all impressed by the unique, beautiful churches and plazas, along with happening, hip neighborhoods Quito has to offer. Though polluted, Quito was a good place to be.

34 – Otavalo – 2/26 to 2/27 – We, including the mother, fell victim to Otavalo’s main tourist attraction—it’s lively, touristy market. Everything we owned ended up spewing forth soft alpaca accessories, minus our wallets, which weren’t spewing forth much at all. Juleen proved the master market negotiator of the three. A hostel situated amid the rolling green and rocky volcanoes, plus good pizza made the short trip even more pleasant.

35 – Riobamba – 2/28 to 3/01 – A traditional Ecuadorian lunch—fritada, mote, plantains, empanadas de queso, potatoes, fried whole corn kernels, salad, etc—with Ele’s family, followed by a light dinner of guinea pig made this trip synonymous with food. Meeting Ele’s fam was great too! We see where she got the great hosting skills.

36 – Baños – 3/01 – The few hours we spent here were not enough. Baños is a great traveler and adventurer hub with more than enough to offer, and an incredible setting with 360 degrees of steep mountainous terrain surrounding the small city to boot.

37 – somewhere within the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve – 3/06 to 3/09 – Seven hours in bus from Quito to the jungle frontier town of Lago Agrio. Three hours in a private van farther eastward. Two-and-a-half more hours into the Amazonian ecosystem in motor-powered canoe. We thus ended up at Jamu Lodge, quite a luxurious place given its environs. See the preceding blog for more info about what we did.

38 – Cuenca – 3/11 to 3/14 – Seventeen hours in bus from Lago Agrio got us to Cuenca, soon to be our favorite city of the journey. Incan ruins, great museums, a riverwalk, not to mention Ecuador’s staple beautiful plazas and churches, a happy gringo community—what’s not to love about Cuenca?

39 – Loja – 3/14 – The way out of Ecuador took us through Loja. Though there didn’t appear to be much to do in town (we were told the place to watch American sports is the bus terminal, for example—luckily we didn’t find the Purdue-Minnesota basketball game), it’s supposedly surrounded by national parks. We can attest to the pleasantly mild climate. Another night bus, this one with a border crossing into Peru, took us out of Loja and the country.

Ecuador Wrap-Up
It seems this country has a lot to offer. The fact that it’s smaller makes its distinct climates and locations much more accessible, which is a big plus compared to relative giants Colombia and Peru. It was also significantly cheaper than Colombia—another bonus. Though we didn’t volunteer, spending time with Ele, her family and Joe’s mom made the time substantive enough that it didn’t seem like we were lacking in the I-need-to-be-productive department; this has haunted Joe especially during previous extended traveling phases of the trip. In the end, we highly recommend the parts of Ecuador we saw (particularly Cuenca, Julie and Harold!), and we’re anxious to see more.

A good meal lost in the Moore's basement

Before, when I, Joe, thought of guinea pigs I could only think of the pet guinea pig (or hamster—who knows the difference between those terrible pets anyway?) my sister had when we were growing up. A little while, probably just a few days, into its existence at our house, it went missing. Months later we found it. Underneath our old, scraggly basement couch we found a familiar looking and familiar smelling dead pet guinea pig. After our last few weeks here in Ecuador none of us will think of guinea pigs, or cuyes as Spanish-speakers call them, in the same way.

This monumental transformation of our perceptions of this small, measly rodent started because my family had a foreign exchange student. She was Ecuadorian and came to stay with us during my first year away at college. I didn’t get to know her too well, but a few stories surfaced from her time in the States and made their way to me. One of the most entertaining stories of Eleana, details her going to a friend’s house for dinner and offering to cook up the family’s pet for dinner. You see, in Ecuador and Peru (and apparently other southern South America countries too) guinea pigs don’t have assume a throne of a plastic cage w/ a spinning wheel. They instead sit atop one’s royal dinner (or likely lunch) plate, ready to be consumed, paws and all.

Eating guinea pig, or cuy, dates back further than modern-day Ecuadorian and Peruvian omnivores. Supposedly, according to Juleen, the Incans were enthralled with eating cuy, placing some spiritual significance in consuming the rodent. For more on this part of the story, let’s go to the source herself. Here’s Juleen.

Well, being the Incan expert that I am, I googled it. Here is what I found, “The cuy has a place in pre-Colombian Inca tradition. Consumed only by the nobility or used as a sacrifice and a means of foretelling the future via the entrails.”

So, in pursuit of Incan bliss, we followed not the trails to the ancient civilization’s sites, but the faint sounds of cuy that give the guinea pig their Spanish name. Our first encounter with the royal rodent occurred at an animal market in Otavalo, Ecuador, a few hours north of Quito. Among other animals, the predominantly indigenous capitalists maintained a thriving cuy trade. Sellers had baskets full of fluffy-haired guinea pigs. Buyers went around grabbing the necks of the cuy, testing the meatiness of the animals, throwing them into a rice sack if they met the mark.

Okay, we can handle the cuy exchange. That’s not too hard on the eyes, nor the stomach. But could we handle cuyes cooking as they rotate above a charcoal grill? Unlike the familiar rotisserie poultry, the cuy comes with head, paws, and, well, everything attached. No polite de-animalization of your lunch here. Still we survived.

The logical next step of our cuy-based Incan investigation is the climax—eating the darn thing. Why else would we have stopped at the road-side rotisserie cuy vendor? Eleana’s father was anxious for us to try the cuy, of all Ecuadorian meals his favorite. And so we stopped the car, bought a whole cuy (very crisp, please, he asked) to go for $15. Wrapped in a plastic bag that hid the sight but not the rich smell, we headed towards Eleana’s hometown in Riobamba, three hours south of Quito.

Finally, that evening the time had come to eat like kings, or, more appropriately, Incas (meaning kings in the indigenous Quechua tongue). Juleen wasted no time in putting her portion of the cuy to waste, eating the rodent like the pig she is. Joe, as he is inclined to, politely and nimbly picked the small pieces of meat off of the small bones. Denise, Joe’s mom, even took part in the cuy-tasting fiesta, eating a few bites. The climax within the climax of this story? Juleen boldly and indiscriminatingly chomping the cuy’s hind-leg paw. She reports that it was a delight, particularly the discernible crunch of the fingernail. Joe reports that he has assumed a spot atop a throne, albeit figurative…and imaginary.

Now, all familiar with the Moores’ sad pet guinea pig tale, we can’t help but think differently about guinea pigs. Never again will we let such a useless pet go to waste. And, having done the important part and eaten like an Inca, we plan to continue our Inca quest right after our Amazonian adventure that starts with a 11pm bus ride tonight!