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January 19, 2004 On the road again... Left Quito... heading south. Very good to be travelling again, out of the damned tourist areas where I seem to find myself so much... and on to the next tourist area! But at least the in betweens are good respite. I thank the good lord I'm not traveling by bus. Picked up a czech couple by the side of the road. they were really out in the middle of nowhere. drove them down to Baņos (a popular tourist area) and stayed the night. Couldn't sleep too well... cold wind howling through the louvered windows... woke up while it was still pitch black and got my stuff together. Drove up for the sunrise to this spot above banos where there are a couple of radio antennas. Picked up a woman named maria standing by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere (still pitch black). She was going up to milk the cows that hang out up there. From up there you can see the volcano above Banos too... called Tungurahua. It seems to be smoking these days... quite picturesque... for now... Went back to have a steam bath at the hotel... this place called Plantas y Blanco (Plants and white... whatever...) run by a frenchman. Weird name, nice place. Parking across the street for Jesse which she really appreciated. and then... on the road once more... It was a day of sights, sounds, smells ... and searing sun. Dusty... the kind of dusty where people stand waiting for the bus all wrapped up like bedouin nomads... bent against the wind, and nothing but sunglasses showing inside big scarf-balls, the tails whipping behind them like some kind of freaky spermicle.
The high arid desert of the Ecuadorian Sierra. Thin cold air and hot, stabbing, burning sun... the kind that cures pork in an afternoon, and burns climber's faces in 10 minutes. Ecuadorian locals, natives... the spanish call them "indigenosos", they call them selves 'quicho'. Dark, red, ruddy faces that you might think are that way from years of exposure to the unrelenting sun, but that really are naturally pigmented from mothers and fathers of generations upon generations exposed to the same unrelenting sun ... dark, red ruddy faces carried with them thousands of years ago across the Alaskan land-bridge--all the way from their forefathers and mothers among the Mongols and the Tibetans that still make their homes in the same high, arid plateaus a continent away. Right next to the pigmented gene is the gene that encodes for superior horsemanship and a knack for ranching in the most unforgiving conditions.
This isn't just the highest peak in Ecuador though... this is the farthest point from the center of the Earth. Because Chimborazo lies nearly directly on the equator, and because the earth bulges 22km at her middle like a beer-swilling couch potato, a freak of centrifugal force thrusts this volcanic pimple (at 6310m) further out in to space than noble Everest (at 8848m). The shame, the shame.
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The
smell of pig carcasses festering in the sun, chained and hung by their
snouts outside the local picanteria--their dermal layers laid bare in
strips and pinstripes, while cut squares of their fat sputter and spatter
away in big iron woks. A local delicacy ... and Bush Sr.'s favorite
food... pork rinds... the real kind... ecuadorian style.
And,
of course, Chimborazo, the highest peak in Ecuador... the queen, the ice
queen, of all she surveys, ruling with a stark and unrelenting
discipline... you meet her will with your own resolve, or you get out.
Few stay. And those that do, go about the normal business of life
with a kind of stark sur-reality that makes the westerner in you stop in
your tracks and reach for your camera. A game of volleyball in
the middle of nowhere at 4500 meters? What the...