Justin McCandless

First of all let me start by making a correction. Remember how I was praising the cyber cafe with SD card readers, and I was all happy that I would be able to post pictures now? Well that cyber cafe sucks. The next time I went in there, the card reader was acting funny and ended up just not reading my card, which didn't really bother me at the time since I could just try another one the next day or something. But then I went home and put my card in my camera, and it wouldn't read it, I just got a card error. So I went to a different cyber cafe, tried it there, and it wouldn't read. So yeah, the first cyber cafe destroyed my card. Later, before the Baños trip (which I'll get to) I even conceded that all my Ecuador photos were gone and tried to reformat the card using the camera, but it wouldn't even do that. Right when I started taking good pictures too, I fixed the nasty bluriness just before my Shaimi trip (which I'll also get to). Oh well, I've since bought a new card and I'll see if there's anything I can do about the pictures on the old one when I get back to the US.

Ok back to happier topics. I was hired for a second job since the last time I posted. One of the guys from my work mentioned to me that his wife owns a web design company and was looking for a second hand on a few things. Later I met with her, saw what she was working on, and showed her some of my Arcoiris stuff, and now I have two jobs. Her name is Paola and she is actually a very talented web designer; she does some really professional work using a lot of Flash and stuff. I was actually scared to work for her when I first saw some of the sites she had done because I had no idea how to do half that stuff myself, but she's been really cool about teaching me. This second job should be a really good experience, as long as I'm able to put in the time required with everything else I have going on.

So that was the weekend of the 20th-21st of June that I got started on that second job. The next week I started working both my jobs regularly, which often times meant being Arcoiris from 8:30 to 6:00 (with a nice lunch break) and then heading to my second job straight from that. It's a lot of work, but I actually really like both of my jobs, and they're pretty laid back, so I don't mind it at all. It also still pales in comparison to the amount of work I normally put in during the school year at Michigan. The only problem is that the other interns always want to travel (and so do I) so I'm often torn between staying in town to get stuff done and getting out and seeing Ecuador.

Speaking of traveling though, I did get to go on a short day trip that week with my work. I went with Luis, the guy whose wife I was now working for, and a few other guys I had never met before including a Shuar guy named Ángel and his family, another Shuar dude named Washington, and a guy from a separate organization in Quito, whose name was also Luis. The trip was to a tiny Shuar village along the Nangaritza river called Shaimi, for the purpose of discussing a program with them that would lessen their dependency on illegal logging.

By the way, the Shuar are a native people here in Ecuador who live in the Amazon. Their language is called Shuar as well, which is much less common than the major native language here, Quechua. They live mostly in solitary houses along rivers with their families and hunt and fish. The Shuar in Shaimi obviously did live in a small village though, and mostly made their living by farming and selling wood.

We took off early Wednesday morning, heading past Zamora a bit before taking a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. After about an hour on that road, passing sparse houses in the countryside, we came to the Nangaritza River. Here there was a platform that floated on the water and moved along cables to carry cars from one side of the road to the other. We caught a ride on that with a big truck and then continued on another dirt road on the other side. We hit the river again awhile later and parked there, near a small group of houses and stores. After getting a bit of food and water and hanging out for a bit there, we then departed in another Manta style motor canoe upstream towards Shaimi. This part of the trip was really cool, we were on a boat in the middle of the jungle passing through huge canyons with waterfalls and massive trees all around, it was crazy. We even picked up a Shuar family of like 8 people who were boat hitch hiking halfway to Shaimi. We finally arrived at the village, which was right along side the river, after about 4 hours total worth of traveling.

We couldn't waste time since we had to get back to Loja the same day, so right when we got there we entered a building that might have been a school house and started setting up. Then about 20 people from the town came in and sat down, and Ángel, Washington, and the two Luises started presenting their project. I hadn't ever even been told the real purpose of the trip at this point, so I just sat down and listened along with all the Shuar. The Luis from Quito didn't speak any Shuar, so it was mostly him talking in Spanish with frequent Shuar interjections from Ángel and Washington. Including an attempt at explaining the carbon cycle.

The project basically consisted of creating an area of reserved forest where no trees would be cut, an area of sustainable logging where trees could only be cut at certain time intervals, and providing compensation to Shuar families who do not cut down trees that otherwise would be logged. And that last part was pretty legitimate, they were basically offering to pay the full amount that each tree was worth chopped down, dried, and turned into boards, each year, just for not cutting the tree down. Sounded like a good deal to me. There was actually a lot of concern among the Shuar though, and rightfully so since this would be a huge change in lifestyle. They were especially worried about becoming dependent on this new source of money, and about losing the trees that were supposed to become protected to large mining companies. Everyone was always very respectful and formal when speaking though, and towards the end I think they started to come around when they realized that they would basically be getting paid more for doing less work.

The effectiveness of the plan could be debated, though, but I don't think I really have a clear enough understanding of it myself to judge. It would be great to get the people from Shaimi to be able to farm and log trees sustainably, for their own sake and for that of the environment. Ángel and Washington really wanted to help the Shuar develop as a people and have the opportunity to do things like go to college, and they were very much in favor of this plan and though that it was a good step in that direction. On the other hand it could be basically putting a whole village of people on welfare for the sake of saving a few trees in a tiny part of the Amazon, while elsewhere the rain forest is being burned down a mile a minute. I guess it just depends on how it's executed, so if the plan does get implemented then we'll see what happens. I do really wonder where all that money would be coming from though...

Anyways, after the presentation we started our journey back to Loja. The boat ride was equally awesome in reverse, but faster this time since we were going with the current. I ended up making it back home at about 9 or 10 that night and crashed.

Then that weekend Dave, Demetri, and Sam had planned a trip to Baños de Ambato. We were supposed to leave Thursday night, and I was kind of ill prepared since I sent emails out to both my bosses that morning asking permission to take off. I ended up not hearing back by the time we were ready to go, but I decided to just go for it since both of them are pretty laid back. They ended up being fine with it in the end.

So Baños is a town about 12 hours away by bus, in the Sierra in the north of the country. It's right in the middle of some massive mountains, at the foot of a volcano, with hot springs and waterfalls all around the city. It's also very touristy, with gringos (and people trying get the gringos to spend money) abounding. It's a very cool place though, with tons of crazy things to do.

We arrived fairly early Friday morning after one looong bus ride to Ambato and one short one (about an hour) from Ambato to Baños. The first thing we did was get a hostal, and we ended up really lucking out after shopping around a bit. We settled on Hostal Carolina, with a nice room with 5 beds right on a terrazo with an amazing view of the city, mountains, and a nearby waterfall. And probably due to the high concentration of gringos, it actually had hot water. $5/night/person for the four of us. Amazing.

Downstairs was a great restaurant with decent prices considering it was in a touristy place. This restaurant was also the first place I've seen bacon or pancakes since I've been in Ecuador. I had the pancakes two days straight and they were absolutely delicious, made from scratch and with miel de caña instead of syrup. There have been very few times I've had pancakes that good even in the US. Three bucks with jugo, café, and some yogurt and fruit.

The whole hostal/restaurant combo was owned by a really nice family who was always friendly enough to talk to us and answer our questions about Baños. I highly recommend it if you're going to be in town. It's yellow and on the other side of the plaza from the church.

Another favorite place of ours was a small Ecuadorian restaurant between the church and the zona de bares called Caracol. Also highly recommended. Two dollar almuerzos and meriendas that were very good and actually left me feeling full on the way out.

Getting back into chronological order, the next thing we did after eating breakfast and dropping off our stuff at the hostal was head to the hot springs in town. I think they're called Las Piscinas del Virgen, and they're right at the base of this waterfall that you can see from anywhere in town. It's $1.60 to get in during the day ($2 at night), and there are two man made pools built on top of the hot springs that the water fills. The water supposedly has all kinds of minerals and is really good for you. The waterfall is also diverted in a few places to run right near the baños and forms a few natural showers which is really cool. You sit in nice the hot springs, at the base of a massive waterfall, all with an awesome view of the city and surrounding mountains.

At about this time I started realizing I was sick, unfortunately, though it did end up just being a cold more or less. I bought a sweet llama chompa to make up for it and to save me from another ice cold 12 hour bus ride like on the way out, and I picked up a new SD card to restore my camera to working order as well. The rest of the day consisted of walking around town and ciesta-ing a bit at the hotel. We also saw a dude bungee jump off a huge bridge by chance too. That night I went with everyone to a bar for a bit and played some cards before giving in to my sickness and calling it a night.

The next day we decided to go on a huge hike towards a town called Puyo, in the direction of a bunch of waterfalls. We walked along the road for the longest time before turning off onto a trail that basically paralleled the road, but up in the mountains on the other side of a canyon with a river in it. After passing a bunch of little farm houses and plenty of cloud forest, we ran into another touristy spot at a hanging footbridge at the top of a pretty big waterfall. There was a gondola to take you across the canyon and back to the side with the road, but we kept hiking our little trail instead. After I bought about 8 granadillas (a fruit that vaguely resembles a pomegranate).

About this time it started to rain pretty hard, and we started to climb pretty high, and combined with the fact that I was sick and wearing a t shirt and jeans it got really cold. But we pressed on, passing two separate donkey caravans coming down the mountain carrying crops and stuff. Eventually the trail ended up hitting a little house in the middle of nowhere dead on, with no direct indication of where to go from there. We spent probably the next hour trying to figure it out, following overgrown mini trails all over and trying to figure out where to go. We even went up to the house at one point and asked the lady there where the trail was, but she didn't even appear to speak Spanish, probably only Quechua. But she indicated some directions with here hands nonetheless, which sent us searching all over corn fields and other places for the trail (when we weren't squeezing under the roof next to her chickens trying to stay out of the rain). By that time we were completely soaked through, and the trail was nowhere in sight, so we decided to head back the way we came. We stopped near the footbridge we crossed and ate some 10 cent panecitos we had brought with us before making it back to the road and flagging down a bus back to Baños. It was a pretty good hike, despite being sick and wet and freezing at times, though it still bugs me that we couldn't find the end of the trail.

We grabbed a much deserved merienda and some even more needed showers when we got back. The hot water was very much appreciated after that hike. Not long after that I completely crashed, and slept for probably the next 12 hours or so.

I felt much better in the morning after all that rest. We ate our last breakfast downstairs and then packed up and headed to the terminal. We ended up having to take three buses this time, from Baños to Ambato to Cuenca to Loja. We left at about 10:30am and didn't get home until 2:00am the next morning. And as usual I had to work at 8:30.

This week at Arcoiris has been slow, though. We're in the middle of changing offices, so Monday I hardly did anything. I did like the old office, but the new one is cool too, and probably nicer. It's in a house again, and it's actually a bit closer to where I live so that's nice.

This weekend I'm off on another trip, this time to the north of Perú, on the coast. It's going to be pretty fun celebrating the 4th of July with a few Americans in Perú, but the trip is also necessary. Since I didn't get a visa, my passport runs out the 3rd of August, and I hadn't planned on leaving till at least the 21st. So my plan is, I'll leave the country to Perú, and when I come back I'll have the Ecuadorians stamp my passport for another 90 days. I've heard it has worked before, but I'm kind of skeptical since I went to the border near Huaquillas and there was no one there who cared who left or entered either country. I hope it works.

Update: I have since posted some pictures of the trip to Baños detailed here. Check them out at Recentish Pictures.