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.