My colegio had an end-of-term vacation from July 8-18, and I decided to use the time to catch up with my scattered WorldTeach friends and see more of the country.
The first leg of my trip was the shortest, but perhaps the most adrenaline-packed. After walking the 7 km from home to town on Thursday morning, I waited in the park for a couple hours for a passing car or truck that would take me to the next town over, 6 de Julio de Cuellaje (Ecuadorians name everything with dates). Three of my WorldTeach friends are teaching in and around the small town, about 10 km away from Peñaherrera.
Just as I was losing hope of finding a car going in the right direction, a large pickup truck came speeding down the road, leaving an impressive cloud of dust. “Uds. van a Cuellaje?” I shouted to the men in the still-rolling truck. They were—what luck! The father of the family already sitting in the bed of the truck grabbed my duffel bag, and we were off, barreling down the dirt road and zooming around hairpin turns at a speed I don’t want to calculate. I wedged myself into the corner of the pickup’s bed, but I still had to hold on tight to keep myself from flying out of the vehicle-turned-roller-coaster.
After the terrifying and exhilarating ride, I arrived in Cuellaje and found my friend Matt at the parroquia’s colegio without any trouble. His school’s schedule is one week removed from mine, so the students were preparing for end-of-trimester exams. Soon after I arrived, the class bell rang, and I followed Matt to his décimo (~10th grade) class, eager to compare teaching experiences.
When the 40 (!) teenagers were seated, the English teacher Matt helps posed a question to the students: “Do you want to have class today?” “NO!” was the resounding, unsurprising answer, and the students lost no time in scrambling out of the classroom. I was baffled. The teacher explained that this week, the class was reviewing for the upcoming English exam, but they had already gone over all the material—there was nothing left to do in class! The students happily trooped towards the fútbol field, teacher in tow. I was dismayed but unsurprised to see that the attitude towards school is as generally lax in Cuellaje as it is in Peñaherrera. Fútbol, on the other hand, is serious business—I sat and chatted with the English teacher on the sidelines while Matt and the students played an enthusiastic game.
That afternoon, I caught up with the other two INTAG volunteers, Anthony and Chris, who are both teaching at elementary schools in communities near Cuellaje. All four of us are having very different classroom experiences, but it was refreshing to finally talk to people who have faced similar challenges and enjoyed the same cultural discoveries here.
The next morning, we caught the early morning bus to Otavalo, the nearest large city, en route to Mindo, an eco-tourism town also located in the cloud forest. At the bus terminal in Otavalo we met our friend Kelsey, who is working in Ibarra, and after some market-walking and lunch-eating, we continued on to Quito. There, we caught yet another bus to Mindo—we arrived in the early evening, about 11 hours after leaving Cuellaje.
I think now is an appropriate time to bring up what might be the greatest puzzle I´ve encountered in Ecuador. The country is relatively small—I´ve heard it compared to the state of Colorado in area—but it takes ages (and about five separate busses) to get anywhere. The trip from Cuellaje to Mindo is a good case in point. As the crow flies, the distance between INTAG and Mindo is quite manageable, maybe 140 miles, but actually traveling there, we had to 1) use extremely circuitous and steep dirt roads through the mountains and 2) go in the opposite direction from where we wanted to end up—twice. Thankfully, the scenery was gorgeous and the company good. In the last month, I have grown immensely more appreciative of the miracle of efficient transportation.
The long journey proved to be worth it, because Mindo exceeded our expectations for beauty and adventure. Another WorldTeach colleague, Ryan from Guaranda, joined us in the evening, and we all enjoyed more conversation over some surprisingly good pizza. At 6 the next morning, the group set out on a bird-watching hike with our friendly and knowledgeable guide, Herman. The birds and the scenery were wonderful.
Our Quito friends Emmett and Amol joined us in the early afternoon for lunch and an incredible zip-lining adventure.
The rest of the group had to leave at dawn the next morning—they all had a full day of traveling ahead—but the two Quiteños and I were able to spend Sunday in Mindo as well. We visited a beautiful butterfly garden, where we saw new butterflies emerging from chrysalises and many varieties of older butterflies feasting on over-ripe bananas (who knew?). All three of us kicked ourselves for not bringing our cameras.
The reason we left them at the hostel was that the next item on the agenda was tubing on the River Mindo, and we didn’t want to risk drenching them in the fast-moving current. The most exciting part of the trip down the river was observing our guides, who skillfully muscled our raft of rubber inner tubes away from large rocks.
After drying off and watching the excellent World Cup final in the company of lots of España fans, we packed up and headed back to Quito. I stayed with Amol´s host family for the night and accompanied him to class the next morning. All the Quito volunteers are teachers at a government-affiliated organization that offers vocational classes, so their students mostly motivated adults who have a career-related interest in knowing English. Amol teaches an advanced English class of about fourteen students; his teaching situation couldn’t be more different than mine, so it was really interesting to watch his class. I had a lot of fun helping him act out English idioms for the class. We found out that there’s a Spanish equivalent to “the pot calling the kettle black,” which I think can be roughly translated as “the donkey making fun of the rabbit’s ears.”
After class, I said goodbye to Emmett and Amol, and hopped on an “Executive Super Special” bus (it sounds less silly in Spanish) to Manta, a coastal city where two more volunteer friends are working. I forgot to mention one really nice thing about Ecua-travel: bus rides between cities cost about a dollar an hour. My eight-hour trek across the country set me back only 10 bucks—I guess $2 is the cost of being “super special.”
The even nicer thing I’ve found about travel in Ecuador is that bus companions (mine at least) are unbelievably generous and helpful. The woman I sat next to on the way to Manta, a Mantileño who has lived in New Jersey for several years, told me about the towns we passed, and insisted on sharing her lunch with me, buying me juice and crackers, paying for the telephone call I made to my friend in Manta, and helping me find a cab when we arrived in the evening. On the return trip (which I’ll tell more about later), I again relied on the friendliness of my bus-mates, who chatted with me, directed me to the correct ticket window at a bustling terminal, gave advice on staying safe in the city at night, and paid for a trolley ride across Quito. Maybe I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd, but I’ve never met strangers so kind in the US.
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