¡Achachay! 2

The cold snap I was complaining about in my last posting has apparently been felt even more severely in other countries in the region. Ecuador, it seems, has escaped rather lightly.

In Argentina, snow has fallen in many parts of the country that seldom, if ever, experience it, and the president declared several regions national disaster areas. The cold there has been blamed for more than 40 deaths so far. The hardest hit nation in the region, however, has been Peru where more than 100 people have died of exposure and respiratory infections blamed on the extreme weather over the past few days. In Puno, a city high in the Andes, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the thermometer plunged to -23 celsius (about -10 fahrenheit), down from a normal temperature of about 8 celsius (46 fahrenheit).

What I find most surprising about the news reports from the nearby countries is that it's not just the high Andes or the coastal regions that are suffering from the cold. The jungle areas of the Amazon basin are also feeling it. The Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, for example, in the steamy far east of the country normally registers temperatures this time of year in the area of 30-35 celsius (85-95 fahrenheit) but this past week the city has seen temperatures plunge to as low as 9 celsius (48 fahrenheit).

Here in Quito, the end of the cold snap has already arrived and today skies were sunny. It was the first day without rain since the first of July. There is still a chill in the air but I'm hoping by tomorrow night I'll be able to stow that second comforter.

¡Achachay!

"Achachay!" That's what people in Quito say when it's cold.

It is a Quichua word. Quichua is derived from the old Inca language, Quechua, the lingua franca used in the polyglot Inca empire before the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. Quichua is still spoken by the native inhabitants of the Andean sierra that runs down the center of Ecuador, dividing the steaming Amazon valley in the east from the hot and dry lands of the Pacific coast. There are a number of Quichua words in common use by the Spanish-speaking majority in Ecuador today, but to me, none has the same resonance, the same onomatopoeic ability to capture that bone-chilling feeling when an Andean wind whips down from the summit of a nearby peak. "Achachay!" Or -- as has been my situation these past few weeks -- when you step out of a warm bed into the chill of an unheated Quito apartment. "Achachay!"

For people from temperate climates, the Equator can conjure nasty images of extreme heat, of undulating waves of hot, sticky air, Conrad-esque scenes of languid Europeans driven half mad by the sun and the heat. At best, the Equator can evoke thoughts of a cool drinks sipped under a leafy palms or on the veranda of an exotic hotel with a decadent, imperial sounding name like the Raffles, or maybe the Peninsula.

But here in Ecuador -- a country that takes its name from the Ecuator itself -- it's freezing. That's right, North America and Europe may be suffering through heat waves this July, but here on the Equator I'm wearing two shirts and a sweater and am considering pulling on some long underwear.

I'm not exaggerating. The temperature in Quito hasn't risen above 70-degrees in the past two weeks and every day has brought bone-chilling rain, often buckets of it. At night, temperatures regularly drop into the 40s.

Despite the withering equinoctial sun, the high altitudes of the Andean Cordillera keeps Quito's temperatures mild. Mornings and evenings tend to be cool while the days--warmed by the fierce sun high overhead--are balmy and can even get quite hot for a few hours at mid day. This makes for the ideal climate, not unlike Cape Cod or the coast of Maine in the height of summer where residents swap shorts and bathing suits for long pants and sweaters as evening falls. In

fact, the temperatures in Quito are normally so mild that houses are built with neither air

conditioning nor heating. A friend from New York who spent time in Ecuador calls it, "the best climate on the planet."

The problem with this climactic model, however, is that when it's rainy--as it has been every day this month--the sun's warmth doesn't penetrate the clouds to warm things up and the chill of the high Andes predominates (Quito sits at 2800 meters/9,300 ft). Repeat this day after day, and the ground gets get colder and colder and colder and people suffer more and more. (See a picture of cloudy Quito, at right.)

I'm not the only one bewildered. Quitenians themselves don't know what to make of this weather. It seems as if everyone I know is sniffling and coughing and wearing scarves wrapped tight around their necks. Yesterday, I saw a woman in a knit cap and gloves. A common greeting on the streets these days is the questioning lament, "Why is it so cold?" The response is to blame climate change or of all things, global warming, and the underlying tone betrays a real fear this state of affairs is here to stay.

Last year at around this same time I arrived in Quito and stayed nearly two months during which time I didn't rain once. It seemed like paradise then. I'm starting to have doubts about paradise. ¡Achachay!