Ooeeooeeooooo, waaa waaa waaa...

[That was western theme music in case you didn't get it.]

 

If I was amazed to meet two girls that I actually wanted to hang out with, this week must be a record breaker. Shortly after my last post (actually while we were still in the internet place) we met a gal from Seattle who was on her way to do some volunteer farm work, and instantly glommed onto her. Everyone got along great, and whether doing little errands, sipping coffees, taking in spectacular scenery, sloshing through calf-deep mud and creeks, or just sitting around watching the days go by like people crossing the square, these three were enjoyable company the whole time.

 

On the first day we went to check out a book exchange / cafe, which was more of a lending library as the hippified guy running it (a transplant from Las Vegas) wanted desperately to hang onto all of his books. Most of them weren't even for sale, you had to leave a deposit and trade in something that he wanted in exchange. Not convenient when in need of a read and leaving town, but I kind of liked the idea. We asked if he had coffee (being a partial cafe & all) and he said, 'Why not, I feel like a coffee too,' brewed some up and sat down to with us for what turned into a couple of hours. It was fun to get some of the local down-low; apparently there are about 200 expats from the USA etc living around Vilcabamba. In fact the next day in the square, about 8 of them showed up at the corner coffee place - I had the feeling it was a daily routine - including some characters that the bookshop guy had mentioned previously. A motley crew to be sure, but at least they were gravitating toward the good life.

 

That first night after whiling away the whole day in town, making our way up the hill to the hostel, there was no moon and at times it was so dark that it was impossible to see anything more than a foot or two away. Except for the millions and millions (mullllions and mullllions) of stars, and those little star-like creatures gleaming in the bushes and skipping along the road: fireflies!! It was magic up above and all around.

 

Ok these days are getting a little jumbled, but the other picture I really want to remember of Vilcabamba is sitting at that corner coffee place in the silence of long afternoon sunlight, the decorative pastel church across the way glowing at the top where the shade had yet to reach, watching folks come and go - oh yeah, while enjoying an exceptionally tasty piece of fresh banana cake (jam in the middle, coffee icing on top, mmmmm). It was a perfect afternoon that got more perfect when suddenly the speaker above our heads came to life with some fitting blues, then jazz, setting an even better tone to already great ambience.

 

I also want to remember those Sunday drivers, the guys in neatly pressed collared shirts riding the pranciest horses on earth down the brick streets in the middle of town. The horses were decked out in leather accessories studded with silver decorations. They always came alone, I don't know if it was a weekend thing or if they were meeting somewhere down the road, but I kind of expected to see some kind of gilded tumbleweed go by each time one passed.

 

The last morning at breakfast, a guy came up the street yelling, Pescado, pescado, the one-man fish market. Then a bit later a little truck came humming along with a sign on top advertising milk for sale. Se vende leche de chivas. Just as I was deciding that chivas probably means goats, the truck passed revealing a half-dozen goat heads peeking out the side. I wondered if they were selling it straight off the goat. Sometimes it's the daily stuff of small towns that's the most memorable.

 

After a couple of days of unexpected fun, it was finally time to leave for Cuenca. I was amazed by the scenery from the bus window: 5 or 6 hours of greener-than-green rural mountains and valleys, covered in shrubs, forests and farms, each as green and gorgeous as the one before. I'm totally in love with this country already. Have to check out the coast one day, who knows, I hear it's pretty easy to eek out a life down here.... ;-)

 

Cuenca is truly a beautiful little town. Actually bigger than I was expecting, and parts of it a bit more poshy, but nice nonetheless. The main square is the perfect centerpiece for the city, and the old churches and buildings are absolutely beautiful. Today I fortuitously stumbled upon a museum and decided to check it out, finding inside the most well laid out and interesting ethnographic exhibit of all the peoples/regions in Ecuador. My mind was a little blown when I went down to the bottom floor and peeked through the glass doors of the ethnographic reserve - all the extra stuff that wasn't in the exhibit - rows and rows full of pottery, beads, all kinds of artefacts, probably fifty times what was actually displayed upstairs. Wow. Outside was an Inca ruin which turned out to be pretty extensive, with a big garden at the bottom including medicinal plants and a sample Andean forest (I think actually modeled after what the original grounds might have been like), plus a few birds in houses that were way to small for creatures that should be soaring a mile above them... but anyway the place on the whole was really impressive. And one of the parrots kept saying things in spanish and then cracking up.

 

Tomorrow I've got a 12-hour bus ride to Quito, the last long bus of the trip. Think I'm going to catch a morning one, even though opting against a night bus means paying an extra night's accommodation and spending all that precious daylight on the bus. After the last ride I really want to see what the landscape looks like between here and there.

 

Then a day in Quito, then a couple of flights, then some welcome familiar faces and lots of catching up to do...