Ibarra, Ecuador

July 13, 2000

Ibarra, Ecuador

My day started a 6:30 AM this morning as Washington drove up honking his car horn, beckoning me to join him and a fellow student Jurgen. Rebecca had taken ill with Gripe... the flu, so I will have to leave her in the capable hands of Mamanita who is acting as her nurse and chambermaid. She tells me to have a fun day from under a haze of delirium, and assures me she will be fine. Reluctantly, I head to the waiting car and join my new friends for another adventure.

We are off to Ibarra for a train ride to the rain forests of Ecuador. Washington informs us that we are running late as he speeds the 25-mile distance from Otavalo to Ibarra. A normally anxious person, Washo is even more so when pressed for time, driving with one hand on the horn and his right foot glued to the floorboard.

We arrive careening into the train yard and Washo hit the ground running to head off our makeshift train and secure us a spot on the roof of this smoking behemoth. Jurgen and I made our way through the crowded cabin filled with track workers and their tools. We climbed the stairs at the rear of the coach and emerged on the roof. Our seat for the three and a half hour ride was a wooden luggage rack with a poorly welded railing at the edge. Shortly Washington joined us with another German fellow and we headed down the line.

The train rumbled and smoked as a blast from the air horns, located some 5 or 6 feet in front of us, warned of our departure. We began to lumber through Ibarra. The fearlessness of these Ecuadorians was apparent as they dodged and weaved their way past the train as it quickly gathered speed. We had a bird's eye view of the city and landscape as it rushed past us on the way out of town... unfortunately the full-grown steer whose backside we hit, did not. A little ruffled, he made his way back out of the ditch we had knocked him into, with bellows and snorts of protest that could be heard for almost a half mile.

The train had picked up speed and I was beginning to enjoy the landscape when all of the sudden... it stopped. Jurgen and I watched as the track workers filed out of the cabin and began scouring the area for the rotted railroad tie's that littered the fields on both sides of the track. Several of the men climbed to the top of the train and started hoisting the rotted wood up the side. They then promptly stacked it on our seat... uhh... luggage rack! This continued for about 45 minutes until the entire roof of the train was lined with rotted, insect-infested hunks of wood. Without a moments notice, the train once again started chugging down the track with several stacks of railroad ties loosely lashed to the top.

So here we are, perched on top of a stack of wood, roped to the top of a train running at about 50 mph, gently teetering to and fro. After a few anxious minutes looking over the side of the train and down the 1000-foot cliff to the river below, I calmed down... until I saw the tunnel. Yes, that's right, the tunnel. It was carved into the side of a mountain we were skirting. You have never seen a couple large white guys try to get as small as they can so fast in your life!

I could taste the termites and smell the dank, musty stone as it whizzed by me at... about 50. They never tried to slow down. Well, several tunnels later we were quite fond of those termites and hardly had a glimmer of that oh shit look in our eyes as we approached the next brush with mortality. In fact, I had gotten so cocky that after we had emerged from the last tunnel I started to see how close I could get to the tree branches before I would duck, until one of them took my hundred and some odd dollar sunglasses right off the top of my head. No one ever said I was too smart.

We traveled through some truly stunning countryside and several ghost towns before we reached the washout in the tracks that would signal the end of the line. Washington led us off the train as we bade goodbye to our new friends, human and insect. He took us to a waiting pickup truck at the side of the tracks and we continued north to the Cloud Forest.

We wound our way through the mountain trails, rutted and washed from the constant rains that soak the forest on an almost daily basis. The huge ruts and rocks scraped at the undercarriage of the little pickup the whole way. The scenery was unbelievable. You could see the clouds springing from the jungle, climbing slowly up the hillsides they would finally leap into the sky. I watched as the jungle gave life to the entire planet, pushing its oxygen-laden air high into the atmosphere where it will journey across the globe.

We arrived at our jungle guide's home in the early afternoon. A relative of Washington, he was a retired police officer turned trout farmer/jungle guide. He had built his home at the base of the mountain close to a stream, which feeds into the river running through a little valley. When he had first built the house, there was no road, which meant he hiked an hour up the mountain to get home every night. Now he pulls right up to his porch and drives his trout to market. I could imagine the days when he actually carried them down the mountainside on his back.

These days he has it easy, driving only 30 miles through the jungle to sell the fish at market, his income supplemented by leading a tour or two a month in the jungle that is his backyard. He led us through the under growth for an hour to see his waterfalls and experience a little bit of his lifestyle, the lifestyle of which he is fiercely proud. When we had returned to the house, we found that his wife had prepared some of the best trout I had ever tasted.

As we loaded into the pickup truck for the long ride home the rain started to fall, soaking everything in its path. That ride afforded me a lot of time to digest the events of the day in a non-too comfortable environment. Watching the clouds ascend the mountain slopes, I could see the slow and deliberate manner of the guide mimicked in their movements. Taking every step with purpose and intent he walked through the jungle aware of his surroundings, determined not to damage the source of his livelihood and life.

All too often I see others and myself blindly bumbling through our day unaware of the consequence of our actions. We make choices that have an affect on life and the planet we live on without thinking, without using the good judgment we all possess.