Cajas

"Its easy to get into Parque Cajas" admonished Lucien when he learned our next destination. "But not so easy to get out." In truth, people have been navigating the high páramo of what is now Parque National Cajas for over three thousand years. Also true, the rolling labyrinth of glacial lakes and sudden appearance of fog, rain or sleet at any time of day makes navigation a challenge.

But enter we did, climbing Loma Cucheros and descending to the Burin valley and Lago Ingañan. The rain came in early, and we sloshed down the trail in our rubber boots and full rain gear. At our feet flowers bloomed: the yellow orchid-like Halenia, purple gentians reminiscent of Siberian squill, and the centimeter-wide circus tents of Gentianella. At the laguna, a herd of five llamas cropped the páramo grasses, their long eye lashes and coats thick with moisture.

We climbed to a pass above the lake and camped on the cushion plants, the only reasonably dry and flat place the land offered. The first late-afternoon sun we’d encountered in weeks poured in under low clouds. It hit the landscape spinning gold from the grasses and setting the kettles and potholes of water to dancing. A carunculated caracara soared over our site, and we watched until gathering clouds sent us scrambling for the tent.

For the next two days, we followed the Inca road. The Inca stonework is still evident in places; bench cuts into the hillside are built up, and in places flat-topped stones keep the trail above the mud. Though it’s called the Inca road, archeological sites show the Cañari used the route before the Inca. To the west lay the port of Guayaquil, and the coast, sources of fish, salt and coral. East lay the ancient city of Guapondélig, which the Inca named Tomebamba, and the Ecuadorians call Cuenca, further east, the Amazon provided bamboo, animals, and the feathers of scarlet macaws.

We turned toward the Amazon and followed the trail as it wound above the Rio Taitachugo. The route has been lost in places, as when we eased through the obstacle course of the polyepsis forest, or descended four hundred meters over a couple kilometers, following the plunging river to the cloud forest below. We wondered then which route the Inca and their laden llamas had taken.

In the valley, the river broke into a broad meander and the cloud forest, as verdant as the paramo was spare, gave way to a grassy valley. A tufted tit-tyrant sang from the top of a nearby shrub, and a flock of parrots exploded into flight.

The ruins of an old hacienda stood where the river emptied into Lago Llavicu. And across the lake construction has begun on a covered boardwalk, which will serve as part of the new nature trail. So the story of the land continues, with new generations of construction and navigation. We left he park at the Llavicu control and continued on the ancient route aboard a bus to Cuenca.

Jima

There is hiking in Jima, just ask the locals who will point to the two mountains that flank the town. Or, if you're looing for something more extensive, a guide can take you to nearby (a half-hour by camonteta) Bosque Protectors Moya Molón or Tambillo. Or take any road out of town. Each of the two we followed wound up a drainage to a pass, from which the vistas enticed us onward.

The land is gentler around Jima, and at least two-thirds of it is cleared for pasture or cropland. Crosses or churches anchor the summits of nearly every crest. Eucalyptus trees lined rivers and hugged the valleys. I hear there's an information center with additional information, but everyone we met was friendly and knowledgeable. I'm not sure a formal center was necessary.

Ramon welcomed us to town, and as the restaurants were closed for the holiday, he invited us to dinner should we need a meal (we had brought our own food, since we'd been planning to be in the backcountry.) Pablo detailed extensive treking options from the main trail along the crest of the moutain to a three day trek to the Amazon, through local villages where housing and meals would be available. A family buying groceries set us on the path for the hundred (or more) year old adobe church that looks over town from a nearby hilltop.


But Jima has another story as well. The town, for being a small agricultural hub, has many nice houses and new ones being built. The plaza is well-kept and clean. An artifical cascade lined with international flags graces one corner. The money comes from Jima's many citizens who have left not for Cuenca, but for the states. Miguel, his wife and two daughters were back for a visit, all four are now citizens of the US and return to Jima every year or so to see their families. Fifteen years ago Lucian worked his way north to Mexico and walked across the boarder. His son was born in New York and they've been "home" for six months. Our host at the Hostal Jima spent some time in New York City. All of them, and many others, sent part of their paycheck home every month.

I wonder at the toll of being in the US illegally, of not being able to return home for a visit. I wonder at the parents and children for whom "home" is sucha different place, not only geographically, but culturally and economically. And I feel so hugely blessed to be able to come and go, to travel to nearly any country I choose and often without even the need to ask permission to enter. I would return to Jima, for its friendly folks, and for its hiking, this time with a map and a few extra nights to stay. And who knows, if the restaurants are closed, maybe I'll take Ramon up on his offer and go to dinner.

¡Carneval!

Our first introduction to carneval, outside the reader on Important Ecuadoran Celebrations that we translated in Spanish School, was a pitched battle between boys and girls including water balloons, buckets of water, spray foam and powder.Almost everyone ended a little wetter than they'd begun and a few appeared prematurely grey from the fistfulls of talk that landed in their hair. The best part was the indigenous woman of 30 or 49 in pleated skirt and high ecuadoran hat who stood on her second floor balcony tossing buckets of water onto unsuspecting passersby below.

In Cuenca, carneval shuts down the city and everyone has ammo on hand. Leaving our hostal we were ambushed by two boys with half a dozen water balloons. Waling around town we cast a wary eye at all balconies before passing under them. Two kids got us with super soakers around the commercial plaza and their neighbor completed the deal with a bucket of water from the roof, which we dodged, but barely. Later, as we walked to dinner, a nine-year-old snuck up on us with a can of spray foam and squirted a pile of it on my neck. The sound of it made me jump half a foot in the air and we all laughed.

A rampant mischeviousness ran through the city and anyone was fair game. Squirt guns aimed from open windows of passing cars, but driving with the windows down was also a dangerous proposition. Everyone joined in, with children taking the lead.

While we enjoyed the festivities, the holiday became frustrating when we tried to leave town on Monday. The city busses, depending on who we asked, either weren't running, or were running on a holiday schedule. The south bus station was closed completely and provincial and interprovincial busses were few and far between. "Porque es Carneval!" was the simple and soon unnecessary explanation. "Mercoles." There will be busses on Wednesday. So we did what we had not yet done and hired a cab for the 45 minute ride to Jima, making sure, as we headed out of town, that the windows were closed.

Making Other Arrangements

M. hobbled into the room "Bad news" he said, "I just turned my ankle." I returned to the dining room where the staff was still cleaning up after dinner and somehow managed, through spanglish and mime to get ice in a plastic bag. The next two days of our trek we replaced hiking with pick-up rides and waited to see how bad the sprain was.

And so we found ourselves on the plaza in Zumbagua making other arrangements.

I remember a similar sense of opportunity as I sat on the platform at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia as a 16 year old. When the airport train pulled into the station, I realized I could go anywhere. And while we were hugely dissapointed to be turning away from a trek that would have taken us across a remote section of high paramo, through a vicuña reserve (vicuña are llamas' wild cousins) and over the shoulder of Chimborazo, the volcano whose summit, due to the bulge at the earth's equator, is further from the center of the earth than any other, we were also full of opportunity.

Were should we spend our last ten days? Find a last-minute deal for the Galapagos? Explore the islands and Marine Reserve at Machalilla National Park? Head over to the hot springs ad day hikes at Baños?

It was Cuenca that called, and so we climbed to the Panamerican and boarded a bus south, heading south to Ecuador's third largest, and by many accounts, most beautiful city and the adjacent Parque National Cajas.

Tourism and Tradition

When two Texans opened the Black Sheep Inn almost twenty years ago, villages in the Toachi-Quilotoa area began to receive visitors. Since then most of the pueblos in the region have opened hostels of their own, and a few sport internet cafés as well. The increased tourism is a mixed blessing. Tourists bring in money to the local communities, but the largely indigenous population seems to approach the infux of extranjeros with a wary tollerance.

But the story is older than that. In her paper “Seizing the Lake”*, María Belén Noroña details the history of the indigenous community at Quilotoa and their relationship with tourism. Long considered second class citizens (Indigenous People were not uniformly able to vote until 1979 when Spanish literacy requirements were removed from the voting registration process), and for centuries victims of the hacienda system and a series of agrarian reforms, the community at Quiotoa formed a cooperative in 2002.

The first hikers through the region received a chilly reception, a few, it seems, were actually physically driven from the town. But a local guide Sr. Latacunga began to lead visitors through the region, not only did he know the paths through the Andes, but he also offered safe passage through the region. Over the past decade, the cooperative has come to see tourism as a viable source of income. Both men and women are learning spanish and at least 10 family-owned hostels can be found along the road.

When we arrived in Quilotoa in the back of a pickup truck from Chugchilán, hostel owners vied for our patronage with a shy reserve. We settled in one, basic but comforatble enough. The chiminea, when our hostess lit it in the evening, was welcome. (At nearly 13,000 feet, the nights are frigid.)

It was the lake, the crown jewel of the loop that enticed us to stay. Cupped in the hollow of an inactive volcano, the saline green waters lie over 1000´ below the rim. Warmth rising up the steep walls from the lake seemed to defy the afternoon mist, and as we strolled along the caldera´s edge, the clouds parted again and again to offer us views.

During our stay we watched tourists shiver out of their cars and tour busses, ascend through the artisan market, and follow the path inside the caldera to the lake below. Men and women (in their customary knee-skirts and brightly colored shawls) worked on improvements to the path, digging drainage ditches and building a mortared stone wall to edge the path. Handlers jogged down the path with mules, and sold rides back out of the caldera to visitors. When they returned to their cars, many people sported new hats, sweaters or gloves bought in the market.

The town is doing well, in many respects. And in some ways, families cling to their traditions - women dress in the traditional skirts, shawls and hats and the sibilant sounds of Quichua wisper from the hearth. But kids wear designer jeans, and coke and potato chips line store walls. I hope they can find an easy truce, this cooperative, between tradition and tourism. For me, at least, staying with a local family became as much a part of my experience as the lake. I appreciated too the cheer of bright shawls in the gathering evening mist.


*Noroña,María Belén.“Seizing the Lake: Tourism, Identity and Power of the Indigenous
Peoples of Quilotoa, Ecuador”. Latin American Studies Program, University of Texas at Austin. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/ilassa/2007/belen.pdf. Acessed 19 Feb 2012.

A Walking Landscape

When the Quilotoa volcano erupted 800 years ago, it blanketed the region in ash, filling river valleys and creating a high terraced plateau. The rivers cut down relatively quickly through the soft rock, reclaiming their canyons. The lanscape is a walking landscape, craggy mountains shed water into valleys a thousand feet below.

We left Isinliví and dropped steeply to the Rio Cumbijín a tributary of the Rio Toachi. Not 25 meters down the path, a grandmother, climbing from below, paused to catch her breath. She asked our destination. Her sing-song Spanish was accented with Quichua, and I strained to follow her. I caught enough to understand she was telling us it was a long way to walk. "Muy legos" she crooned. Across..down..and up up. She laughed at my light-colored plants and suggested I tuck them into my rubber boots (which were strapped to my pack) or better yet, take a car. We all laughed and she reviewed the directions again before turing upslope to continue her journey.

The well-traveled path descended past hobbled cows, fields planted in corn, beans and potatoes, and past small houses, their laundry waving from the line. I was staggered not only by the steepness of the landscape, but also by the angle of cropland and pasture that quilted the hills. Everything, including places that seemed too steep to walk, let alone plant, weed or harvest, held rows of plants.

The trail passed a small farm and ascended through a pasture, then turned to descend through earthen clifs, opening at last onto a bench whose contours we followed 400 m above the Rio Toachi, a rocky, almost-braided river that runs north to join the Rio Guayllabamba then rushes to meet the Pacific at Esmeraldas. We followed the river upstream entering its deeply carved canyon.

On the opposite bank families worked the land; their brightly colored clothing highlighted ant-like movements. For many of these families, all of whom seem to own at least one horse, our path must serve as the road to town: Isinliví or the equally small Chugchilán. We crossed the river on a felled tree, to which was bolted a post-and-wire hand rail. Continuing up stream, our eyes followed the switchbacking paths that rose to houses on the plateau. At our feet mountain lupine and yellow daisy-like flowers bloomed. Eucalyptus trees formed hedgerows between pastures.

Just below Itualo, our path began to climb. The sound of the river rose upward with us as we switchbacked to the terrace where Itualo perched. We sat in the shelter of the church doorway for a rest. As soon as we had our packs off, school let out for the day and our sanctuary flooded with curious children. One propelled a wheel over with his stick, two others giggled over a handmade kite which exhibited a lingere add. A fourth stopped to chat, asking us words for things in English and pulling out her English and math workbooks to show us her grades. We chatted until the afternoon chill drove us up path which rose 300m up the cliff to the upper terrace.

Again and again on the path, I stopped to gasp for breath while school children scampered up-slope and home. "Aqui!" they called down to us, mistaking our pauses for confusion "Por aqui!" At the top Miguel, a woodworker, invited us out to a vista overlooking the canyon through which we had climbed. We stopped to admire a door he was making and the hand carved scenes he had created of the Toachi valley, before we headed on to Chugchilán. The path brought us out to the road and back to a faster paced life.

In his book Wandering Home, Bill McKibben talks about the welcome he received while travelling on foot from Vermont to his home in the Adirondacks - and here I felt it too. Built into the walking landscape was the space to put down my pack and pass a few minutes talking with the neighbors.

Birding from the treetops

Mindo is the Moab of Ecuador's Cloud Forest. As we walked through town on our first afternoon, outfitters advertized ziplines, tubing, cayoneering and a party of four set out on four-wheelers led by a guide on a dirtbike. While the town is small, it hosts an impressive variety of hostels, restaurants and karioke bars.

It is, compared to the surrounding landscape, still largely forested, and this is at the heart of its quieter layer of infrastructure. It was this, its reputation as a birdwatching Mecca that brought us. Our hostel "El Descanso" was a wooden wonder of patios, decks and private rooms all opening to the back yard refuge where ten species of hummingbirds competed for space at the feeders and where tanagers, thrushes and tucans gathered to down bananas that the owner put out each morning and afternoon. We could have spent our two days birding from the porch and developed quite a list, but a few of Mindo's other amenities drew us out.

The truck downshited to ease uphill and around a series of puddles. Its open-sided safari style back was boldly painted, and carried a load of tourists uphill toward the ziplines, cliff jumping and tarabita. It was at this last that we got off. We climbed into the small cable car and eased the 500m across the Canchupi River. On the far side a network of trails brought us through a wooded reserve to a series of waterfalls. On the way we watched tanagers and barbets. M. even watched South America's only species of dipper bob from a rock midstream.

The next morning we ascended the long driveway to the Yellow House, which serves as a gateway to a private forest with about 10km of trails. Here we saw a Chacó araçari, and a wattled guan. We watched an ornate flycatcher hawking for insects. In addition the trails hosted a surprising number of insects - large beetles with yellow or red wings, butterflies with translucent wings and a patch of crimson, and a small brown butterfly with a flash of metalic blue on its forewings. I watched a small lizard scale an aerial root and M. spotted an aguti (he describes it as half capybara, half rabbit) and we marveled as it clipped grass from the trail`s edge and loped off into the undergrowth. When we returned to the Yellow House the hostess met us with glasses of fruit juice and invited us to rest on the porch to watch the hummingbirds.

It was with some reluctance that we boarded the bus the next morning for Quito and began the journey south to Latacunga and Islinivi.

The Lek

I first heard about the mating rituals of the Cock-of-the-Rock in my sophmore year Animal Behavior class. So when the opportunity presented itself to witness the spectacle, I signed on.

We woke at ten of four, dressed in the dark and tiptoed downstairs to meet our guide. Outside the lodge, we walked uietly, savoring the night sounds of frogs and insects, the trail illuminated by our headlamps and a waining moon. When we reached the ridge, we paused for breath, and found ourselves between the big dipper and the southern cross. Below us lay the sleeping towns of Nanegal and Nanegalito.

We left the main trail and descended steeply crossing a small stream and climbing again. I began to wonder how this site had been found. Shortly before six, our guide stopped, fished a pocket knife out of his backpack and began to cut long, broad leaves while we, in whispers, guessed at their purpose.

The path descended more steeply and we shook drops of water from each tree we clung to for support. The trail ended in a bench made of two long poles worked into the hillside. Our guide spread the leaves across the poles forming a dry-ish seat for each of us. "The birds will be here," he informed us indicating a swath of the forest below with his flashlight. "Please don't use your flash if you take pictures and don't shake the trees." Then we sat, still and silent waiting for the show to begin.

The daily ritual is called a lek. Males gather in the same spot day after day to compete for a mate. They strut, squak, show off their brilliant plumage and make themselves appear as fit and worthy of a mate as possible. Usually, it seems, the females choose the fellow at the center of the lek, who, as an alpha male has earned the right to be there and fathers about 90% of the offspring.

As the day lightened and the leaves took on color, a loud sqwak sounded below us. A bizarre foot-high bird in brilliant crimson with black and white wings and a bulbous array of feathers on his crown paused on a branch to preen. It was 6:00 am, right on schedule. Other birds added their voices to the melee and shortly the lek reached a crecendo. Birds flew in and out, flapped their wings, ducked their heads adn called loudly, each seeking to out-compete the others for best in show.

Over the next hour, the volume increased, ebbed, then racheted upwards again. We sat spellbound on our leaves craning our necks to spy ont eh birds through dense foliage. This day, apparently, the performace concluded without the presence of a female - who, according to our guide would have landed on the ground and immediately been surrounded by a hopping squadron of crimson suitors. At ten of seven, the squaking died down, each crecendo a little further from the last and a little less intense. Finally in a prolonged period of silence, we rose to go.

On the walk back I thought of Robert Askins who first introduced me to many of the strange and wonderful habits of birds, and whose teachings ignited in me a lifelong passion for and curiosity about the natural history of my avian fellows.

Santa Lucia

If you go to Ecuador and you don't mind a bit of a hike, go to Santa Lucia.

When we reached the lodge after ascending 2000 feet over a well-maintained 3km trail, Eduardo met us on the porch with glasses of lemonade sweetened with raw sugar from their own plantation. We sat to take off our shoes and sip lemonade while empress brilliants and andean emeralds lapped nectar from the hummingbird feeder. We found that, despite our afternoon arrival, lunch had been kept for us and we sat at the broad-planked table to enjoy a hearty oat and vegetable soup, rice, beans and lettuce from the organic garden.

Santa Lucia began as a farming cooperative. As the enterprise grew, members began to seek out viable alternatives to clearing the land and farming with pesticides. Construction on the lodge began in the mid 90s, and today, the cooperative offers simple and sustainable accomodations perched on a ridge surrounded by primary and regenerating forest.

In our three days there we slowed to the pace that living with minimal electricity allows. In the morning dailyight and birdsong woke us, and after a delicious breakfast of bread, blackberry jelly, and scrambled eggs, we headed out along the main trail following the ridge. We stopped to watch a masked trogon and later a golden-headed quetzal. Wrens sang in the undergrowth, and mixed flocks of tanagers drew our eyes to the canopy.

While our bird list grew, our minds and hearts settled. A place in which everything - food (outside of that grown in the garden), supplies, building materials, and in many cases one's luggage - arrives by mule, teaches gratitude. From eggs in the morning to papaya cake after dinner, each offering was a treasure. Hot showers were made possible by propane tanks carried up the mountain by mule. The bare bulbs that lit our after dinner bananagrams games came from solar pannels. In light of their sources, we found these accomodations to be the luxuries they are.

Eduardo and the other members of the cooperative live this gratitude as well. Their pride in what they have created is evident, and their joy in living a simple, non-harming life is infectious.

As we walked down hill, scanning the canopy for tucanets and barbets, our talk turned quickly to returning and to all the people we wish we could bring when we do.

Tanagers

As J. and I walked in toward Three Mile River on our first night on the Appilacian Trail almost fifteen years ago, three male scarlet tanagers joined us. They flew low along the trail or in the woods on either side of us. The birds, startlingly red with black wings and tails stayed with us for nearly a mile, and from them I took my trail name: Tanager.

The Birds of Ecuador has seven plates of tanagers illustrating almost 140 species, two of which return to the northeastern US each spring. As we left Otavalo and began working our way through the Intag and Guayllabamba vallies, tanagers again graced my trail. Around Apuela the Lemon-rumped Tanager, a glossy black bird with a lemon-yellow patch on its lower back was common along the roadsides and field edges.

When we paused at the Rio Guyabamba Yellow-tufted Dachnises and White-shouldered Tanagers gleaned for fruits on the river side trees. But it was on the road to Santa Lucia that tanagers became our daily companions. The brightly colored birds called from the tree tops and roadside shrubs hopping and flitting in search of fruits and insects. We saw the red, yellow and turquise Bay-headed Tanager, the striking Golden Tanager, and the common Blue-winged Mountain Tanager.

With colors equalling the brilliance of tropical fish, Orange-billed Euphonias and Flame-faced Tanagers moved through the canopy in mixed flocks with Beryl-spangled Tanagers and Metalic-green Tanagers. We delighted in watching them, though each encounter sent us scrambling for the bird book. What a warm welcome they offered, these creatures. A sweet glimpse of the familiar in the foreign.

Long Shortcut

All the advice we received told us to take the bus south to Quito and then another back north to Nanegal. But our maps showed a more direct route from Otavalo, so at 8:30, we boarded the bus for Apuela.

The small village hugs the mountain side above the Intag river and serves as the headquarters for DECOIN the environmental organization that is working to encourage sustainable opportunities to keep copper mining out of the valley. We wandered through the market and watched part of an Ecuavolley game while drafting our plan to begin our 40 mile journey. Around us pickup trucks and camionetas filled with people and goods and headed off toward the surrounding valleys. A police officer in a pick up, already loaded with a father and son, offered us a ride and we hopped in the back.

Knowing people would think we were nuts if we gave our full plan, we offered only the next village as our destination. The cop dropped us off at the intersection of the road that would carry us up to Silva Alegre and he headed on to Garcia Moreno. The day was warm and dry, and as we headed up the road lemon-rumped tanagers flitted into the undergrowth. When the road began to climb more steeply we paused to eat bread and a papaya we had brought from Otavalo while white-collared swifts soared and dove for insects.

We got a lift the last three miles uphill in a camoneta carrying sacks of woodchips. Selva Alegre sits perched on a ridge above the Intag and Tonglo valleys. The hard scrabble town was fully enveloped in the clouds. The Sunday volleyball game was in full swing, and most of the town had turned out to watch it, and then us, as we emerged from the pickup. We sat for a moment in the plaza to rest, but finding the village's eyes on us uncomfortable, we headed on in search of a campsite.

We found it as dusk was gathering, and pitched our tent at the base of a slope above the Rio Meridiano. Though the crops were poorly tended, we placed our tent mindful of the corn and bean plants, and spent an uneventful night amidst the voices of the cloud forest.

In the mornning the sleepy road carried us to Naranjal, an area that in New England, might qualify as "thickly settled". We donned our rubber boots to ford a stream and followed the road through town. Past the school, slopes on both sides of the road held banana and sugar cane plantations broken by brief tangles of native vegetation. We got a ride down to Playa Rica and stopped in at the tienda for off brand lemon and orange sodas. To our left the Rio Guyabamba rushed toward the ocean.

The bridge at an elevation of about 900m marked the lowest part of our journey. The concrete abutments offered a resting place, and we ate our snack while the waters from Quito and Otavalo rushed beneath us. On the slopes above we encountered the village of Cacapara where a mother and daughter spread corn kernels to dry in the sun, and the rythmic cycling of an engine pumped out from the sugar mill. We left the paved road at the town limit and switched backed up the hill passing wooden shacks with corrugated metal roofs. Chickens and dogs picked through the dirt and commented on our arrival. Several kilometers above the town a red chevy double cab stopped and the driver offered us a ride to Nanegal, our destination.

As we walked, M. had told me about an assignment he´d been given in college; on three subsequent days, students were to walk, bike and drive to class, noting, each time, their observations of the world around them. In general, people thought we were nuts walking the forty miles from Apuela to Nanegal. And it was hard to explain in our broken spanish why we so enjoyed it. How could I explain to someone who grew up in Naranjal or Selva Alegre how lush I found the life around them, the diversity of birds, plants, even insects that they had known from birth. In walking, we felt rich, and in taking rides (for which we were grateful when they came)our senses were, somehow, deprived.

El Marcado de Animales

Yesterday we followed hoofprints in the mud across the bridge that lies behind our hostal, across the Panamerican Highway to the animal market. We entered by the small animal section where chicken wire circles and bamboo crates held chickens, ducks and guinea pigs for sale. Where purchases had been made, chickens (2 for $7) hung by their feet, or grain sacks, bulging with their cargo wiggled momentaily before settling. The smell of ammonia and chicken feathers laced the air

Further in, pigs wallowed in the mud or nosed for corn their owners tossed to keep them quiet. Two women negotiated over three piglets held with rope harnesses. Thirty-two for this one, or fifty-six for the pair. As I watched, the bristled ear of a sow brushed my fingers. Five llamitas drew us further in, at $75 each, they were almost tempting. Cheaper than a new lawnmower, but the airlines, I think, would be a little less open to a baby llama than they would a puppy. A gentleman walked by with one of those tucked into his coat, a finger absently stroking the soft fur. He smiled when he saw me watching.

Cows and calves stood hobbled, most stood easy, chewing their cud, though one aimed a switf kick at a passing man. Others added their contributions to the mire. Two men began negotiations over a cow, the buyer opening the cow´s lips to check her teeth and running his hands over her flanks. A too-large calf sucked at his mother's udders despite her side-stepping protest. Two burros and three horses stood at the edge of the cow market.

At the farthest edge of the market stalls offered food, benches and tarp roofs against the morning´s persistant drizzle. Simmering pots held cow innards, lungs and testicles. The smoke from grilling meats drifted over me as I ducked an umbrella seller. Below a loud speaker extolled the virtues of a colon cleanse and proclaimed the latest treatements for prostate health.

We followed the crowds back to the center of town and the burgeoning Saturday market.

Sunglasses and a raincoat

Fernando laughed when we asked if there were a good website for weather. "What do you need that for? The climate is always the same here. You bring a raincoat and when it starts raining you take it out and put it on, when it stops, you put it away."

Later as we headed out on an excursion in his car when he needed heat. "En la mañana, y en la noche." But of course. So we leave the house prepared to weave through the seasons in a day. In the morning I emerge from the shower shivering and pull on almost all the clothes I´ve brought: a long sleeve shirt, wool sweater, down vest and winter hat. By mid day I´ve shed my outer layers, pulled up my sleeves and put on my sunglasses.

Leaving school, I wait out the first raindrops and glance up to Cotacachi to see what is in store for us. Torrential rains are not uncommon in the afternoon, but neither are lingering showers that share the sky with sun. By late afternoon I slid back into first sweater then vest. Getting ready for bed, I regularly find my sunglasses still perched on my head riddled with raindrops. And each evening we retreat under the three blankets on our bed and sleep out the winter of night.

And so we`ve learned. We`ve discovered that morning sun (or clouds, or rain) is no indication of the day`s weather. We`ve learned to put on sunscreen when we get up and to pack our raincoat. We`ve learned to duck under an overhanging roof when the sky opens. And we`ve learned to fill our eyes with the mountains when they emerge.

Afternoon Excursions

It began with a scrabble game and a trip to the heladeria (ice-cream store, and from there, our afternoon grammar lessons disolved completely into excursions. The brilliant part about it was, that we were still studying - every where we went we spoke and listened, teased out meanings and relayed stories.

In Peguche, we descended a few steps to the weaving room of El Gran Condor where an Otavaleña demonstrated carding and spinning wool and showed us the natural plant (and insect) dyes used to color the wool. Several blocks away, we tucked into a back patio where a man showed us how to craft traditional pipes and flutes from bamboo.

In San Rafael, upslope from Laguna San Pablo, the abundant reeds that line the lakeshore provide the materials. The reeds are woven into everything from fans to mats, figurines to furniture. A grandmother sat on her mat, weaving it to the specified length using hand tools. Around her the tools and materials of her trade: reeds bundled and stacked to dry, forms for baskets, containers of dye. I took her picture at the urging of my professor, though I shouldn´t have; she turned her back on me as soon as she saw my camera.

After touring the workshop, we visited a local shaman who showed us through her garden. Walled by the ruins of an abandoned monastary, the garden was a tumble of herbs, vines and shrubs. Miniature hammocks cradled orchids that she was trying to coax into flower. As we would through the rooms of the convent, her fingers trailed over the leaves, alighting long enough to offer a name, or to pinch off a sprig and offer it to us to smell. This one is good for the heart. This for the digestion - cleans you right out. At 76 she was light footed and energetic, only her lined face revealed her age. Her energy she atributed to her vegetarian diet and daily exercise. As she explained, she hinged back onto her back, her legs tucked underneath her. And loose clothing, she added lifting her skirt to reveal a bare thigh - nothing underneath so my skin and spirit can breathe. Crazy, some might say, but her eyes shone clear and deep and her garden was a wonder.

The following afternoon found us paying homage to another divine spirit - the Cascada de Peguche whose rushing waters tumble down rocks and fill a sacred pool where locals bathe at midnight on the shortest night of the year. The trails leading to and from the waterfall were a labratory of new vocabulary: that afternoon root, moss, trunk, leaf, berry trumped infinitivo, gerundio and pronombre.

On our last afternoon, we announced that we had not yet made the acquaintance of El Lechero, an ancient and solitary tree rooted on a hilltop overlooking Otavalo and Lago San Pablo. The species name comes from the milky sap that runs in the tree´s leaves. The tree is revered for its healing powers and the tree's trunk and lower branches have been worn smooth by generations of hands. I ran my palm over the lowest branch wishing for a safe journey ahead.