Our plans are slowly solidifying for next week. We have decided to split forces, the better able to cover the smallest, and most diverse, of the Andean nations. So Rocco will go to the Oriente, the Amazon basin region to the east, beyond the reach of roads (and, presumably, exhaust fumes), to a remote jungle camp called Imuyu. I am to take the more well-traveled, less romantic route, south from Quito down the Avenue of the Volcanoes to Cuenca, the colonial city build on the ruins of the Inca's northern capital. Along the way I'll ride what some believe is the most treacherous railway in the world, a seven switch-back plummet called the Devil's Nose. This way we can maintain daily connection with the TerraQuest site -- and we have no higher priority -- while gathering content for our developing Ecuador event. (There are few phones in the rain forest, and little electricity: a digital camera and laptop would be so much excess baggage.)

Which doesn't really explain why we are here, tonight, in Otavalo. Except that tonight is Friday, and tomorrow morning the country's largest market begins before dawn, building in size and strength until it spills out of the so-called "Poncho Plaza" down side streets in every direction. Otavalo is probably the most visited indigenous town in the Americas, with the possible exception of Oaxaca, and ranks with the Galapagos as one of Ecuador's prime destinations.

Already it is clear Otavalo is not just another stop on the Pan-American Highway, not a Cayambe with its sour cheese and bland biscuits, not a Guayllabamba with its racks of swinging slaughtered pigs. Officially about 25,000 people live in Otavalo, most of whom are mestizos, but some nearly twice that many Otavaleno Quechua live in the region, and on market day the town center is bursting with vibrant colors, thick handmade blankets, farm animals and vegetables for sale. Otavalo is a culture center, a national treasure, a showplace for the creativity of the indigenous people of Ecuador. And as is evident from our four-block walk from the bus station on Calderon to the Plaza Cafe at the corner of Jaramillo and Calle Quiroga, Otavalo is also a prime way-station on the Gringo Trail.

The international nature of Ecuador is certainly present in Quito, as befits a country's capital. Last night -- following Rocco's ftp transmission to the 24 Hours site, we ate a late dinner at a dim, narrow taqueria on Avenida de Amazonas, to the deafening accompaniment of a karaoke player. Our sleep in Quito was often interrupted by the panicked squeal and squalling of car alarms; Russian-built Lada taxis dodge between German Mercedes and Japanese Nissans (all of them belching black exhaust -- there seems to be a national piston-ring crisis, with the big loser being the fabled air of Quito). Here in Otavalo, the international nature of modern age is also present, as heard most clearly in the music. The store fronts on Calle Sucre spill Spanish-language reggae, restaurants feature the flute and drum music of the Andes, and slick shallow show pop blasts out of cheap car stereos.

Sometimes we can be grateful for the penetration of familiar, home-built culture into these far corners. The vegetarian chile on brown rice at the Plaza Cafe was excellent, and only sheer will-power kept me from ordering the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Still, somehow I miss the surprises, pleasant and otherwise, that came with ordering and eating regional dishes with indecipherable names in small cafes on my first trip to Mexico, 23 years ago.

Perhaps a bit of caution in dining is a good thing, especially these months in Otavalo where several hundred cases of cholera have been reported. Morgan Sheehy, hostess at the Plaza, brushes it aside: "Just don't eat in the market or drink any of the water," the Pennsylvania-born young woman says. "And stay out of public restrooms." I seem to remember the very same warnings in Seattle in the 1970s, for very different reasons.

In the dining room of our hotel, the Ali Shungu, while an Andean band thrums and toots customers can chose between ratatouille, waffles, trout enchiladas and that regional specialty, carrot cake -- though presumably not all at the same meal. This dizzying interpenetration of cultures becomes casual, acceptable for a time, even to the rasta-locked gringos who sometimes wander into Poncho Plaza, or the soft-in-the-belly American who exclaims too loudly at too much.

To the Otavaleno Quechua, whose town this has again become as the power of the colonial order has evaporated, all this too shall someday slip away. We are but another wave of change passing through, passing through, who exists but for fleeting days or months or even years in a centuries-old continuum. Ecotourism, someone pointed out to me recently, is from the Greek for "home"; eco-travel must include the people who live in these environments, as well as the thousand species of trees and birds. Yet how does that carrot cake taste to the Quechua tongue?

None of which stops the fedora-capped Otavaleno from riding that exhaust-belching bus, if it gets him where he must now go.

-- Christian Kallen

 

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