Roosters wake me when the world is at the edge of light. A short time later, traffic picks up. The sounds of diesel busses, delivery trucks and car horns join the morning symphony. The metronomic clicking of frogs who sang all night begins to fade.
Sunrise happens quickly on the equator, and dawn is a brief affair. Roosters and car horns wake one dog whose barking quickly ignites the others, setting the full cacauphony into swing. Only then does the sky sift from dark to light, the town from night to day.
It has become our habit, when the sun offers enough light, to spring out of bed and check the mountains. Mama Cotacachi overloks Otavalo from the northwest, and when the sky is clear, she fills our window. This morning, clouds flank her skirts, but her sumit is clear, crowned only with a lenticular cloud.
At 6:30, fully light, the music begins at the municipal track, where walkers, joggers make their circles and an aerobics class sends women bobbing and kicking to the beat.
It is not sufficient to say the weather is variable. It puts the fluctuations of the Northeast to shame. January marks a dry period in this region, but afternoon clouds and showers are common. Even when Cotacachi stands clear, Poppa Imbabura may be fully obscured by clouds. And so, he draws us, each morning, to the door and out onto our small balcony to peer out to the east, out across the empty lot which houses a sheep, and the frogs that each night sing us to sleep. We look out at the rising sun in hopes of a glimpse of Imbabura.
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