Road Trip

Driving in Ecuador can be a pleasure.

The country's winding mountain roads weave through spectacular and varied scenery. In the course of an afternoon you can pass from the lush jungle of the Amazon basin to steep valleys where Holsteins graze on emerald pastures beneath snow-capped volcanoes (see left, and the magnificent Cotopaxi, above). Drive a bit further and you're certain to come upon a dry valley whose encircling mountains keep out the rain clouds, giving the land a rich golden brown color and turning the trees a dusty, olive-drab (see below, landscape near Quilotoa).

It's as if you are passing from the jungles of South East Asia to Switzerland and then on to the goldenrod hills of California in the space of just a few hours. I've never visited another country that can boast such variety in so small an area. After all, at about 270,000 sq. miles, Ecuador is only the size of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England.

But for the most part, driving in Ecuador is pure terror.

What makes it so bad? Well, let's start with the narrow, precipice-hugging roads themselves, festooned with white crosses to remind the driver that certain death lies just a few feet to right?

This stress is not fleeting. It lasts hour after hour. I recently drove from Quito to the country's third largest city, Cuenca, in the south, a distance of 432km (268 miles), a bit longer than the distance between New York City and Washington, DC. The trip took 10 hours. The country may be small, but when you're averaging 30 miles an hour, it can feel like Siberia. (See an exhausted me at hour five. "Next stop, Novosibirsk?")

Generally, the main roads are more or less smooth. But almost all the problems result from their narrowness. So far, I've only seen two places in the country where the highway is two lanes in each direction. Most of the time there is one lane each way without any median. If this isn't hard enough to deal with, every few miles the road goes through the center of one small town or another. In town, all traffic slows to a crawl. Even late at night you have to slow down because you never known when there will be a speed bump just waiting to jar your spine.

They love speed bumps in this county. Sometimes these speed bumps are marked. Sometimes they aren't. It only takes hitting one of these once at 40km/hr. before you become very alert to their presence.

Trucks are a constant menace on the roads. When laden, these only manage a few miles per hour on the steep mountain roads, causing long backups. No one can take the pain of driving 10 miles/hr for long so eventually you role the dice with fate and dart out into the oncoming traffic to pass. (See below, trucks in a work zone, on the main road east of Quito.)

The only thing worse than the trucks are the buses. In Ecuador, when you want to insult someone's driving you say they drive like a busero (bus driver). It's not that the buses go slow, far from it. They barrel down the road--generally the middle of it--at high speed. The problem is that they stop whenever and where ever there is a fare. Or a potential fare. And, of course, they don't pull over. They just stop. This, unless you are very far behind, will cause you to 1) slam on your brakes to avoid rear-ending the bus or, 2) pull out into the oncoming traffic to pass it. Your choice.

For a while I thought I could just stay safe in my lane and not pass anyone, even if it meant taking all day and all night to get to my destination. But this doesn't guarantee safety either. There you are, minding your own business in own lane and what do you see up ahead in the distance? A bus, in your lane, in the process of passing someone, and heading right for you. And what's the bus driver doing? Why, he's laying on his horn, warning you to get out of the way.

Another problem are the work zones. These pop up without warning. There you are, finally barreling down the road at speeds approaching 40mi/hr, happy to be making good progress and then--just around the curve--you come face to face with a bulldozer. As you slam on your breaks, the car lurches over the bumps and pits as the smooth asphalt road you were driving on disappears into dusty gravel.

There are very few road signs. And when there is a detour, there are even fewer. The message I took from this is, if you don't know exactly where you're going, you shouldn't be driving. Basically, you have to ask a lot of questions. The problem, however, is the iffy quality of the directions. My favorite was the woman in Salcedo who, when asked where the road to Quito was, pointed to her left and said, "It's just up ahead, on the right."

And did I mention that at night, people here like to drive with their high-beams on?

The highways of Ecuador are the great melting pot of the nation. All aspects of society meet and mingle on the roads. The poor hawk fruit and candies from the shoulders, rushing into traffic whenever it slows. When the poor travel they tend to pile into the backs of pickup trucks and seeing eight to ten people--sometimes with livestock--huddled in the bed of a small truck is not uncommon (see left). The lower middle class--commuting to work or traveling to visit friends and relatives in other cities--prefer to ride the endless stream of smoke-belching buses. It is vacation time and the upper middle class, their cars crammed with kids and gear, choke the roads to and from the beach in their Chevys and Toyotas. Meanwhile, the wealthy, in their shiny, silver SUVs speed past, arrogantly zipping in and out of oncoming traffic to pass the slower-moving vehicles, confident in the German-engineered performance of their cars.

But driving in Ecuador isn't all white-knuckles and adrenalin. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to one of the great pleasures of driving in this country: traffic circle sculpture. Every small town seems to feel the need to erect a piece of attention-grabbing art in the middle of their traffic circles. Sometimes the sculpture reflects local pride (like the giant ice-cream cone in Salcedo) but most of the time the subject matter seems utterly arbitrary. Regardless, they are all fascinating.

Here follows a portfolio of my favorite pieces of rotary art.

Maize. The ear of life.

A big faucet.

This one is fantastic. It looks like the moon is concentrating on trying to get some rest amidst the traffic of Riobamba. I can't tell if that bird is helping matters.

Homage to the hummingbird.

Look at this guy's right hand. Let this be a warning to art students everywhere not to skip foreshortening class.

Paying homage to the llama.

Ethnic pride near the Inca ruins of Ingapirga.

Honoring indigenous headgear?

Welcome to Salcedo, home of the multi-flavor ice cream cone.

Come on, kid, smile. You're in Salcedo.

This guy I call the pied piper of the the Gorgons.

Paying tribute to the potters.

Even the military gets into the act. Here, Pro patria; below, a soldier protects the strategic yellow starburst.

The institute of national development.

The shoe shine kids of Alausi take a break to play torreador.

And my current favorite, the enigmatic shoe-horn of plenty.

All of these sculptures must have a story. I just wish I knew what those stories were. Dissertation topic, anyone?

Feeding the beast. At a pit stop, near Salcedo.

Colibri

A hummingbird in flight is wondrous. The small body seems to hang suspended without support, the wings beating so rapidly they are imperceptible to human sight (although not to the camera). The rapid, frenetic movements as the tiny bird moves left or down, or sideways or up seem to obey no pattern. Trying to follow the bird's flight is more like following the movements of a bumble-bee than a bird.

Along my regular west to east walk across Quito--back to my apartment after Spanish class--there is a two-block stretch of road so steep that steps replace asphalt. It is an unlikely concession to foot traffic in this pedestrian-unfriendly city and it is one of the highlights of my 40-minute walk. The steps are bordered on either side by a strip of grass and set amidst the grass is a series of stubbly, flowering trees. The trees are in bloom at the moment and the little flowers look like minuscule, orange trumpets. The other day, darting between the flowers, I saw a hummingbird.

The sight of the tiny bird, contentedly sucking nectar just a few feet away left me staring in wonder. I've never been much of a bird watcher, but hummingbirds have always fascinated me. They are so tiny, so delicate, that after staring at one all other birds seem clumsy, lumbering beasts.

Hummingbirds--known as colibri in Spanish (that has a nice ring to it, I think, even better than hummingbird)--are notoriously sensitive to pollution and this city would seem too dirty to harbor the delicate birds. In fact, one of the most exhaust-choked places in my long commute is not two blocks downhill from where I saw the bird. There, the fumes are so bad I am often left coughing and out of breath. How could a hummingbird possibly live so close to that? It must just be a random bird that strayed into town from the hills nearby, I thought. Soon it would either fly away or die, I reasoned, and so I snapped as many pictures of the bird as I could before it tired of my stalking and zipped off to a higher tree.

I found a picture on the internet of a bird that resembles the one I saw (see left, photo by Paul Pratt). It's called a White-necked Jacobin. What a cruel name to give to this lovely bird; it makes the gentle creature sound like a rabble-rousing revolutionary. In my picture of the bird (right) you can see the similar shape of the head and curve of the beak.

The very next day I saw two of the birds working the same tree. I smiled at the thought that my little jacobin had a mate and his life on the rough streets of Quito would not be a lonely one, that his existence here was not a fluke of nature. I imagined the pair having chicks that would--with luck--survive to spread to other trees nearby. At that moment, as I snapped more pictures, a mother and her young son stopped on the steps to stare with me.

The street that is home to all this excitement is Ernesto Noboa Caamano--but everyone here simply calls it Noboa. Ernesto Noboa was a poet. He was born in 1891 in the gritty seaport of Guyaquil and died 36 years later here in Quito. His short life could not have been pleasant. He suffered from neurosis and became addicted to the morphine that gave him temporary relief. I can't yet read his poems but he was an admirer of Poe and Baudelaire so I imagine they must be brooding and dark, just the types of poems I enjoy. I look forward to the day when I can search his stanzas for clues to his life and to life in Jazz-age Quito. But will I find intimations of urban colibri?

A few days later, just after noon when the hot sun draws forth the full fragrance of the flowers, I was amazed to see another hummingbird of an entirely different variety. It had a smaller body than my jacobin but it sported an impossibly long tail. I fumbled blindly for my camera, trying to retrieve it from my backpack without taking my eyes off the tiny bird as it went zipping in and out of view between the branches. Then, for a split second, it stopped and perched on a limb in the bright sunshine, as if posing for his picture. The lucky shot shows him in all his majesty. Of the dozen pictures I snapped during those minutes, only a few show the bird at all. Most are just shots of thickets of branches, leaves, and flowers.

After the bird flitted off out of range for the last time, I rushed home to learn what type of hummingbird I had encountered this time on the smoggy streets of Quito. After looking through dozens of web pages devoted to the hummingbirds of this region, the best I can guess is that my new bird is a Long-tailed Sylph, although the one on Noboa street has a tail significantly longer than the ones in the pictures on line. Perhaps the city version of the bird sports a longer tail than his countryfied counsins I saw pictured on the web; think of it as the avian version of an urbane gentleman in his smoking jacket.

At left you can see my picture of the sylph in flight, its wings a blur as it strains to insert its beak into the horn or the flower, its tail so long that it stretches out of the frame.

Now, every day as I climb the steps of Noboa street on my way home I stop and stare into each of the trees to look for my friends. As I do, I can't help but think that Ernesto Noboa would smile if he knew that on the rough and smoggy streets of Quito--surrounded by walls covered in graffiti--colibri thrive.

Hummingbird Habitat

Morning Edition

Breakfast is sacred time for me. The food is important--and those who have seen me prepare my breakfast tell me it approaches ritual--but, honestly, what I enjoy most is lingering over the meal. It is quiet time, time to read, time to write, time to reflect.

I so jealously guard this time that no matter when I wake up, breakfast completely fills in the gap between then and when I have to leave the house. It makes no difference if I allow myself 30 minutes or three hours for breakfast, I will always be in a rush at the end and invariably late to wherever it is I need to be.

In my corporate career I attended my fair share of 7:30am breakfast meetings--I even called a few of them--but I never really enjoyed them. I'm not the type who likes the feeling of rushing out of the house to begin the day.

Here in Quito, my breakfast routine is similar in structure to what it was in New York, but the trappings are certainly different. I wake up at six, just before the sun rises over the eastern Cordillera and into my face. I like to be awake to watch as the clouds that invariably cling to the mountains turn pink and yellow with the sun. Sometimes, the illuminated adobe and granite facade of the church down the hill appears to take on the same creamy pinkish cast of the clouds at exactly the same moment (see image at the bottom of this post).

Breakfast begins with tea and Spanish vocabulary at my desk. (I save the excellent Ecuadorian coffee for my afternoon pick-me-up.) The rest of my breakfast I eat a bit later on the patio, in the full face of the sun (see left--can you believe that hat?). Generally, I eat bread and cheese and fruit.

The traditional Ecuadoran cheese is a non-aged cheese (queso fresco). It is bright white and soft, with the cool creaminess of mozzarella and the shape and texture of feta, but without the dryness. At first I was skeptical of it. Now I eat it every day.

Then there is the fruit. There is so much to say about the fruit here in Ecuador that I'll have to devote a future post to the topic. For now, I'll just mention the two in the picture below. Uvillas (little grapes) are a firm, yellow fruit with a slight tartness. They are about the size of grapes and have the skin texture of a tomato. I love the sharp, cool feeling as they pop and release their juice inside my mouth. I eat them by the handful. I've been going through about two pounds a week.

The other fruit in the picture is granadilla (little grenade), a type of passion fruit. To get at the sweet, gloppy fruit inside, you have to crack and peel the hard rind just like you would crack a hard-boiled egg. The grey, gelatinous insides of the fruit, which you eat with a spoon, are hideous. Ask people what it is reminiscent of and you'll get anything from snot to uncooked sheep brains. It is best not to think about these when eating grandilla.

Recently, I've also been eating candied black figs, which are not technically fruit, as far as I'm concerned. These come drenched in honey and are best enjoyed with slices of queso fresco (white cheese) to cut the sweetness of the figs. It's an excellent combination. The perfect finish to a long breakfast.

The NPR program, Morning Edition, has been part of my breakfast routine ever since I moved to New York in 1992. I miss it. Sure, I could listen to Morning Edition on line, but that wouldn't be the same. So, I listen to local radio. Lately, I've been listening to Radio Publica Ecuador (RPE). It's pretty good but if the name implies an NPR equivalent, that's not quite accurate. The station is free of commercials and has a peppy line-up of news, talk, and music--and lessons in Quichua, the language of the country's largest indigenous minority, hosted by my latest heartthrob, the effervescent Marta--but rather than being a station that attempts to reflect the broad range of views in the country, RPE is really the mouthpiece of the government. And in Ecuador, that means it is the mouthpiece of Rafeal Correa, the young, charismatic, and wildly popular president. The New Yorker recently wondered if he might not be "Another Obama." Here he is striding in the surf, Obama-like.

Correa is rapidly changing many aspects of society and government in Ecuador. He recently pushed through a new constitution which abolished the congress. Granted, it was a notoriously corrupt body, but I'm still trying to figure out how laws are now being made in Ecuador. Another constitutional change: abolishment of hourly employment. This was an effort to curb the use of third party contract agencies that paid workers less than minimum wage. What this will do to job creation is beyond me. Correa is an economist and should have been able to come up with a better way to curb wage abuses than by enshrining full-time employment in the constitution.

Like Ecuadorian fruit, Rafael Correa is endlessly fascinating and deserves a future posting here all to himself. But for now I'm interested in his relationship with the media. Almost since his election, Correa has been feuding with the press. Like Obama, he wants to reach out to his legions of supporters without the filter of the news media. But, as Obama is finding out, this is hard to do when the question is not a campaign but the business of daily government.

Correa's latest feud with the media came about a couple of weeks ago when the local press picked up a story that ran in Colombia alleging the FARC--the guerrilla movement in that country--had helped fund Correa's campaign.

It was around this time I started listening to Radio Publica Ecuador. At the height of the controversy, every hour on the hour, there would come a "special message from the government" in which a stentorian voice (not Correa's), harangued the news media, claiming it had been spreading misleading stories about the government. The two-minute long message warned the people to be wary of one-sided reporting and closed by saying the government supported the idea of some third-party watch dog organization to oversee the media and ensure fair reporting.

These messages stopped the day the government sheepishly released evidence showing the FARC's leader had indeed tried to give money to Correa's campaign, although without Correa's direct knowledge.

But this didn't stop the government from pushing its idea of an independent media watch dog. What happened when the government didn't get any takers on this idea? It went ahead and established its own. Independent?

These are exciting times to be a journalist in Ecuador--or simply a media watcher. Meanwhile, the Ecuadoran version of Morning Edition will ensure my breakfast time listening remains entertaining.

Morning twilight in Guapulo

Pasochoa

About 20 miles south of Quito lies a wildlife reserve called Pasochoa. It is very popular with Quitenos who frequently make day trips there to get away from the smog and bustle of the city and hike its many trails.

In this way it reminds me of Bear Mountain State Park, an hour north--and a world away--from New York City. But the similarity quickly ends. For one thing, at its highest point, Bear Mountain State Park rises no more than 400 meters (1300 ft) above sea level while the Pasochoa Reserve, which sidles up one side of the extinct volcano of the same name, climbs from 2900 meters (9,515 ft) at the park entrance to 4200 meters (13,780 ft) at its summit.

Last weekend I was dispatched to Pasochoa as part of my conditioning regimen. This is an effort by my friends here to toughen me up in advance of three-day trek later in August along part of the old Inca road that ran along the cordillera between Quito and Cuzco. Each weekend I am pushed to hike at a higher elevation.

At Pasochoa, I made it to a point just below the summit. Beyond this the trail becomes virtually inaccessible without technical climbing skills or gear. At that elevation, along a steep and narrow trail, I could only go about 10 steps before resting to catch my breath.

The views were spectacular, but what intrigued me most about Pasochoa was the layout of the park itself and the extreme differences between the flora at the base of the mountain and at its top.

When Pasochoa blew its top thousands of years ago, the force of the eruption went laterally--rather than upwards, the way of volcanoes erupt in our imagination--shearing off an entire side of the mountain. This gives Pasochoa the aspect of an inclined horseshoe, the curved edge at the top, at the rim of the volcano, and the legs extending downward towards the base, the wide gash of the crater in between.

The reserve covers the eastern leg of the horseshoe, up to and including the summit. The trail to the summit runs along the ridge which in some places was only two or three yards wide, dropping precipitously down into the elongated crater on one side and--somewhat more gently--down the exterior slope of the volcano on the other. Near the summit--where the horseshoe is at its narrowest--the far side of the volcano's rim seemed tantalizingly close, just across the deep crater, (see left, the far rim peeking above, in the middle ground of the photo).

From its base to the summit, Pasochoa encompasses three micro climates, each strikingly different. This phenomenon, called micro-verticality, is common in Ecuador and is what allows this small country to possess such a variety of flora and fauna--not to mention agricultural produce. In the country's central Andean strip, for example, each province boasts produce as diverse as hearty cheeses (in the higher elevations) and succulent tropical fruits (in the valleys).

At its base, Pasochoa is covered by a deep blanket of highland rain forest (bosque de neblina montano in Spanish). In the middle elevations comes a sparse and dry evergreen forest (bosque siempre verde montano) reminiscent of the ponderosa lands of western Nevada. And at the highest elevations of Pasochoa are the arid alpine grasslands or, simply, the paramo (paramo herbaceo). The ability to hike from humid rain forest to alpine tundra in half a day is what makes Pasochoa, and Ecuador, exceptional.

The rain forest was lush and damp and the trail was very slippery in places. The trees were full of hanging mosses, creepers, and orchids. Supposedly, 127 species of bird can be found in Pasochoa and most live in this lower zone. Unfortunately, it is also in this part of the reserve where most of the visiting Quitenos are to be found, many with young children in tow; these squealed contentedly, chasing away all the birds from the trail. My goal was to survive a hike to the summit and back, not to bird watch, but it would have been nice to see more birds than just the few that I did. Fortunately, the cries of the children and the chatter of the adults had no effect--at least no visible one--on the orchids.

By the time I reached the middle elevations, the crowds had thinned. The air was noticeably drier and cooler but the sun burned down on my skin.

From this elevation the vista opened up and I could see the distant mountains and the towns nestled in the valleys. Quito itself was obscured by mountains but the city's southern suburbs were clearly visible. Above them, hugging the slopes of the mountains was a patchwork of pasture and cultivated lands, a quilt of greens and yellows and browns. The clouds gave the appearance of hanging low in the valleys but, at 10,000 feet, those valleys could hardly be called low.

By the time I reached the edge of the paramo, at about 3,500 meters (11,500 ft) I was laboring for breath and had to stop and rest for about half an hour; I had been walking since 8am and it was then after 11. Refreshed, I pushed on out of the sparse tree cover and onto alpine grasslands that gave no shelter from the fierce, noonday sun. The day before I had purchased a hideous floppy, wide-brimed Andean hat at a handicrafts center in Quito. I bought it in the hopes it would protect my bald head. Thank God I did. It became a sun helmet, deflecting the vertical rays of the noonday equatorial sun in a wide arc around my shoulders. Without it--or with only a baseball cap, for example--there is no way I could have continued on.

Throughout my slow slog up the paramo I kept thinking of the 16th century Spanish conquistadors broiling beneath their heavy, quilted mail and metal helmets, dragging their tired horses along these upland trails that were built not for armoured cavalry but for the lightly clad incas and their llamas. What, I wondered, but a maniacal lust for gold, could have propelled these Spaniards to advance, day after day, deeper into these regions?

As I neared the summit, I was able to see, edging over the top of a nearby ridge, the snow-covered peak of Antisana far off to the southeast (above, center). At 5,758 meters (18,900 ft) Antisana is one of the highest volcanoes in Ecuador and, although my picture doesn't do it justice, I was awed by its majestic white slopes peaking above the olive green carpet of the paramo.

Near the very top of Pasochoa, where the trail tends towards the vertical and the grasses of the paramo are replaced by rock and lichens and the occasional thorny shrub, I stopped. It was no use to go any further without equipment and a trained guide. I walked off the narrow trail and walked towards the volcano's edge. There I sat down, almost dangling my legs over the rim and looked deep into the forested crater below. Being just below the ridge line, the spot was sheltered somewhat from the winds, allowing bushes and a few small trees to grow. It was a charming spot, absolutely quiet except for the wind, and I felt contentedly exhausted, proud of having made it so far at that altitude. It was just then that I spied, several meters off in the distance, a single bunch of tiny, downward-facing red and orange bell-shaped flowers. They dangled jauntily from a wind-buffeted bush nearly naked of leaves. I marvelled for a moment at how something so delicate could survive in that harsh environment. Then I took a deep breath of thin air and turned to begin the long walk down the mountain.

Earthquake!

The big news in Ecuador last week: the Village People were cancelling their concerts in Quito and Guyaquil on short notice.

The Village People? Are they really still around? (I once performed in a college skit as the Leather Guy, complete with anatomy enhancing tube sock, but that's another story.) Apparently the Village People are still around and maintain an avid following in distant lands. The papers here speculated the cancellation was due to fears of the Swine Flu which has been on a tear in South America with a dozen deaths in Ecuador and many more further south where the cold weather seems to be breading a hardy new strain for export to the northern hemisphere. I went to the band's web site to find out more. Amidst goofy photographs of the band and its fans I found only this one sentence: "We apologize but due to circumstances beyond our control, Ecuador concerts in July have been canceled." Cowards! The good people of Ecuador deserve a better explanation than that.

For me, however, the big news last week was the earthquake. What earthquake, you ask? Don't worry, it didn't make the papers here either. It didn't even register on the local seismological authority's website. Apparently, this earthquake only struck my house. No one I know here felt or heard a thing. "It probably wasn't an earthquake," said one friend, in an attempt to calm me, "maybe it was just the mountain moving a bit." Holy smokes! Moving mountains? That sure sounds like an earthquake to me.

Seismic activity scares me silly. Of all the things to worry about since arriving in Ecuador last week--volcanoes, maniacal bus drivers, swine flu, and the very real possibility an airplane will fall on my house--earthquakes scare me the most.

So, here's what happened. Late Thursday night--I had just finished my previous posting in which, incidentally, I mentioned earthquakes--I heard what sounded like my upstairs neighbor moving furniture. This happens all the time in my New York place so I thought nothing of it. Only when I heard the sound again did I remember I have no neighbor directly above me here in Quito. The rumblings lasted only two or three seconds and after the second one it was quiet. I heard no commotion in the street above, no sirens, nothing. Somewhat doubting what I had heard, I went back to writing.

Then, about ten minutes later I heard a strange noise emanating from the floor to my left, near the refrigerator. It sounded at first like little claws scampering across the rough tile floor. I looked down expecting to see a mouse. But as the noise increased, I realized I was hearing an ominous cracking rather than the innocent scampering of little rodent paws. All of a sudden I saw the square ochre tiles start to buckle just inches from my feet. I sprang out of my chair--my scalp tingling with fear--and raced around the table. I jumped across the crack to the other side of the kitchen, the uphill side. (I should say here that my fear of earthquakes has been magnified by the design of this house, a good part of which appears to cantilever over the ravine. It makes for stunning views but does little for my phobia.) At that moment, all I could think of was getting myself over as far as possible towards the side of the house away from the edge. I didn't want to be on the wrong side if the crack continued, splitting the house down the middle in one fell swoop, like a machete on a coconut, spilling the contents--including me--down the ravine.

In five seconds it was over. I found myself standing against the far wall, my heart racing, staring at the crack in the kitchen floor. With visions of aftershocks in my mind--can't they sometimes be worse than the initial quake?--I began to think what to do next. First, I put on shoes and a jacket in case I needed to flee the house. But where would I go? This neighborhood is built on the side of a cliff, and many of the houses look much less sturdy than mine. (See right, for a neighboring house that looks just to be waiting for a nice shake.) Then I started to scan my apartment for load-bearing columns. If the earth were to start moving again I wanted to be able to go to the nearest one without thinking.

After about an hour of pacing and fretting and staring at the crack--which admittedly now looks smaller than it did that night--I finally went to bed. There I proceeded to stare up at the ceiling in the darkness, listening for the sound of structural failure. I don't know what time I finally fell asleep, but it was very late and I was fully clothed.

Earthquakes occur with unsettling frequency in Quito. But rather than making the people here more nervous, the frequency of the quakes appears to have disarmed them. They actually seem inured to the possibility that their city could collapse around them at any minute. (See left, from an earlier quake.) They take earthquakes in stride. The people I've told about my experience smile politely--a bit wearily, even--as if listening to a child who has just discovered a rather hum-drum fact of life. This sang-froid goes way back. In the middle of the 17th century, Mariana de Jesus, Ecuador's first saint, had this to say: "In Ecuador there will be no end to earthquakes or to bad governors." (El Ecuador no se acabara por los terremotos sino por los malos gobiernos.)

That sort of soothing fatalism may work for the people of Ecuador but as for me, I'll probably keep sleeping in my clothes for a while. Now, about those airplanes.

Quake damage -- it looked a lot worse while it was happening. Honest.

Up and Down and Out of Breath in Quito

In Quito, Ecuador's capital, it's all about the hills. And the mountains. And the ravines.

In 1534, the Spanish founders of the city--following colonial custom--decided on a Cartesian grid plan. Sadly, they laid this grid down in the center of a hilly valley scored with steep ravines. Four mountains contain the valley which runs roughly north-south for about ten miles. At the center of the valley, at its narrowest point, the Spaniards found the smoking ruins of the Incan city of Quito, the northern capital of the empire. Ruminahui (right), the last of the great Incan generals, burned the city to the ground--and slaughtered its inhabitants--rather than allowing it to fall to the advancing conquistadors. Despite the carnage, the Spaniards realized that what was a propitious site for an Incan city would serve equally well for a Spanish one. The valley was fertile and the four mountains provided an excellent defense. The snow-covered volcanoes in the distance must have reminded the conquerors of the Sierra Nevada back home.

It all makes for some breathtaking scenery, but for visitors arriving from sea-level to negotiate the streets and steps in the thin air of this city 9200 feet up the Andes, the word breathtaking quickly takes on another meaning.

While the city long ago outgrew its colonial era grid, it hasn't escaped its confining geography. Contemporary Quito, with two million inhabitants, now completely fills the valley. In several places it has spilled over the ridges, swallowing suburbs on the far sides of the mountains. Those mountains, which once provided protection from attack, today trap the exhaust from the city's cars and busses. The already heavy traffic is made worse by the narrowness of the valley, wide enough for only three arteries in the center of town. So, all north-south traffic in the heart of the city is forced onto these three roads. Underground transit has never been seriously considered. Too many earthquakes and landslides. So, the wealthy and middle classes drive while the poorer folk crowd into smoke-belching busses and everyone--regardless of class--sits fuming in choking rush-hour traffic.

Even in the midst of the soothing perpendiculars and wide plazas of Quito's splendid colonial center, the punishing topography is evident. The streets rise and fall like a roller-coster. Many are so steep that steps serve as sidewalks (see right). In an attempt to make the city more conducive to the grid the Spanish filled in many of the ravines, but this turned out to be a short-sighted solution. Water still runs through the ravines and, from time to time, the fill shifts and another red-tiled colonial beauty is lost in a heap of dust and debris. Fortunately, this is rare. Unless there is an earthquake. The other day I went to see a building that had fallen in recently. By some miracle, the facade remained undamaged but the building's original innards were gone. In their place was a handsome open-air performance space and a chic outdoor cafe. Not a bad re-use of the space, but a far cry from the original of my imagination; in my mind's eye I see a serene courtyard edged with fruit trees--a fountain gurgling quietly in the center--and surrounded by a two storied covered arcade to protect against the fierce equatorial sun.

I'm staying in a neighborhood called Guapulo, about four miles from the old town. It is one of those former suburbs on the far side of the mountains that the growing metropolis has devoured. From downtown, Quito's valley rises gradually towards the eastern ridge. But, on the far side of the ridge--where Guapulo is--the land drops precipitously (see left). Here, the houses seem to cascade down the impossibly steep hillside. The one narrow street connecting Guapulo with Quito proper copes with the steep grade by switching back and forth, again and again, in its ascent of the ridge. My apartment building is on the outside edge of this street, perched over a ravine. To reach my door from the street I have to descend four flights of stairs. Going down is fine but going up each step is a burden in the high mountain air. By the time I reach street level my head is pounding and my chest burns. And I still have to climb the ridge.

Cars, their engines straining, speed past, spewing exhaust and kicking up a fine layer of dust as I trudge up the cobblestone street. At the second switchback (left) I take a pedestrian shortcut. This shortcut--if you can call it that--is a dizzying zigzag of steps ascending the hill face. How many steps? 254. Yes, 254 steps. I've counted them. Twice. Just to be sure.

After step 254 the stairs rejoin the road for a final few meters up to the top of the ridge. From there, one can get a fabulous view of Quito spread out below, filling the valley and climbing the mountain on the western side. I could see it, too, if I were not staring at my feet, doubled over in pain, trying to catch my breath and still my swimming head, my eyes watery from the soot.

I'm sure in a few days I will become aclimatized to the altitude and somewhat desensitized to the pollution. Then I'll start enjoying the view.

Life at Zinka's House

Zinka kissed me.

It happened in her office. A big smile crossed her face when I walked in and, in her rapid, staccato Spanish, she said something more or less unintelligible to me. All I caught were the repeated words, "grande personaje" and something about me having been on TV. She got up from behind her desk and rushed over--waddled would be more accurate for Zinka is not a small woman and does not move very quickly--to plant a big kiss on each cheek. I stood there stammering, embarrassed, blushing certainly and not at all sure what to say or do.

Apparently, I had been in the papers and on TV in the days before and Zinka was overjoyed to have such a client at her humble "hostal." The next morning at breakfast, I heard her proudly telling one of the other guests about me; I did my best to sink behind a pot of tea in embarrassment. I was not expecting this. I had been away for a week in the southern part of Tierra del Fuego and had only just returned that evening to Punta Arenas. The newspaper had written an article about my research shortly after my arrival in Punta Arenas and this, for some reason set off the other stories. Fortunately, I had missed all the hubub, but Zinka had not.

Zinka´s had been my base in Punta Arenas ever since I realized my travels were going to take longer than expected and less expensive lodgings would be necessary. I downsized, trading my $30/night hostal downtown for Zinka´s House, half a mile and half a world away from the town’s leafy central square with its elegant Beaux Artes buildings (see lower left). Zinka´s was 50% less expensive and it showed. But, despite the fluorescent lighting and the sickly lime green walls of my room, despite the sway-backed mattress and the indignity of having a truck stop-sized wheel of toilet paper in the bathroom, and despite the neighborhood rooster that would wake me every morning at 5am, I actually liked my life at Zinka´s.

It had less to do with the house and more to do with the people, but the house is not without charm. Zinka´s House--that’s the name of the hostal, "Zinka´s House", in English, though no one there speaks a word of that language--is a rambling, one story affair with several outbuildings, all wedged behind a painted white metal fence. Located in the midst of the town’s drab Croatian quarter, Zinka´s House stands out. Its fire-engine red walls and tidy white trim present a bright contrast to the dingy buildings all around. In her front yard, hard against the fence, is a pretty little garden overflowing with gladiolas, irises, and other flowers the names of which I don’t know. Bunches of rhubarb--harvested for Zinka´s excellent rhubarb jam--fringe the garden and the sides of the buildings. The flowers and the rhubarb are real, but the centerpiece of the garden is a peculiar still life of plastic tulips around a two-foot high plastic snowman perched in a small, wooden wheelbarrow. This should be in jarring contrast to the lush living flowers and the rhubarb but at Zinka´s kitsch combines with the authentic and somehow it all just works.

Little Croatia is a run-down section of Punta Arenas. The houses there are mostly little more than single story frame boxes with corrugated siding and roofs. Here and there you stumble upon the occasional "Magallenic" style house of the early 1900s with gingerbread trim and steep mansard roofs or perhaps one of the sleek functionalist houses from the 1930s and 40s with its porthole windows and curving, poured concrete walls (at left, top and bottom). Both styles are plentiful in the city’s tonier neighborhoods but in Little Croatia they seem out of place, forlorn reminders of the days when the neighborhood was a leafy, well-to-do suburb and not the dusty barrio it has become. The houses of Little Croatia today are generally painted a dull white or yellow, or a splotchy light brown. Graffiti covers virtually every building (lower right). Some of the houses are left unpainted entirely, rusting into a reddish-brown that blends with the unpaved sidewalks. Trucks and tractors are parked randomly about on Zinka's street, spilling out of garages onto the crumbling, broken-edged strips of dirt and concrete that masquerade as sidewalk.

Dogs are everywhere in Little Croatia. The strays are good natured, dirty things that lope along, greeting you with a slight wag of the tail as they go happily about their business. The ones behind the fences, in contrast, are mean, bitter beasts. They growl and bark at everything that passes, straining at their chains, eyes bulging, spray leaping from angry jaws. In the land of the free, a chained dog is an unhappy dog.

To call the neighborhood Little Croatia is no exaggeration. Not only is there a Croacia street, nearby is the Croatian Consulate itself. A Croatian school is down the street. All the shops seem to have Croatian names: Buljan, Serka, Yankulic, etc. There is even a sign on one building that simply reads, "Clinica Croacia." What does this mean? Are the doctors all Croatian? Or does it refer to the patients they treat? As if to say, "Croats only. Others need not apply."

Immigration is THE major theme in the history of Tierra del Fuego and southern Patagonia. The first immigrants to the region were the Swiss in the 1850s, followed quickly by the French. The British arrived when the huge sheep estancias (ranches) were set up, bringing stock and know-how from the nearby Falkland Islands. Asturians from northern Spain followed, as did Germans. The first big wave of Croatian immigrants came shortly before the turn of the 20th Century, providing strong-backed, cheap labor, not just for the estancias but also for the sawmills that were springing up all over the vast forests of the Fuegian fjords to the south. The Croats of Tierra del Fuego remain a tight-knit community today, their identity fueled no doubt by pride in Croatia’s independence in 1991.

Before then the community in Punta Arenas lived in Little Yugoslavia. The consulate was the Yugoslavian Consulate and the street was Yugoslavia Street. You get the picture. But, before there was a Yugoslavia the Croats in Chile were called "Autrichos." To me, this seems a cruel thing to call the poor devils who were, for the most part, trying to flee the oppression and poverty they faced at the hands of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire to which Croatia then belonged. (See Croatian coat of arms, right.)

European immigration not only gave Punta Arenas its fine architecture, it also led to literacy and primary schooling statistics that were off the charts compared with the rest of Chile and South America. But the authorities in Santiago worried the large European presence in the strategic Straits of Magellan might prove too tempting to one of the imperial powers in Europe. This fear was not entirely irrational. During WWI, for example, German residents of Punta Arenas openly supplied the Kaiser's warships with food and coal while they hid in the fjords. The town's doughty Britishers dutifully reported the squadron's whereabouts to the Admiralty in London. A fleet was sent south to intercept and the result was the Battle of the Falklands, one of the largest naval encounters of the war. (See left, the cruiser Dresden, in hiding in Chile, 1914.)

So, in the first two decades of the 20th Century Santiago set out to dilute the European population in the far south by encouraging a second migration, targeting the mixed-race farmers and fishermen of the dismally poor island of Chiloe to the north. These low-paid laborers were a boon to the burgeoning economy of Punta Arenas but they forever changed the complexion of the city. Today, the Chiloten presence dominates and, of the many European groups that once ran things in town, only the Croats remain a distinct, vibrant community.

Zinka is the uncrowned queen of this Croatian community and like any royal she has her court. It is comprised of two permanent residents, Maria and Georgio, and a host of rotating visitors who come to sit at her desk and take a serving of tea and gossip. It is a never-ending stream of visitors she hosts; over many days at Zinka´s, I can think of only one instance in which I saw her alone in her office.

Maria acts as the palace chamberlain. Nothing gets done without her. She serves breakfast, does the linens, looks after the guests, and generally keeps the place humming. She is constantly on the go, moving at a brisk trot. She’s an attractive, slim woman of a hard-to-determine age. She may be 35. She may be 50. Somehow, despite all she accomplishes, she seems never to be far from Zinka. This is important because Zinka can’t function without her. Even the simplest question never fails to fluster Zinka. A question like, for example, ¨Zinka, do you have any rooms available for tomorrow?¨ causes her to sputter, then pause. This is quickly followed by a shout for Maria who instantly appears, calming Zinka, providing the desired answer, moving on.

Georgio is the outside man and I think of him in the role of court jester. Before I knew his name, I did not realize he was a man at all. I’ve never met a more androgynous figure. Georgio stands about four and a half feet tall, has a bowl-cut hairdo, a high, squeaky voice, and wears his jeans pulled up high above his waist, the same multi-colored acrylic sweater tucked in tight, day after day. I never quite learned what he does around the place. I believe he tends the garden. Honestly, anything else would seem too strenuous. One day, when I returned late to Punta Arenas and found Zinka´s House full and my regular room unavailable, Georgio was dispatched to take me around to another hostal in the neighborhood. I saw him make a move to take one of my bags, edging for my backpack which stood almost as tall he. Terrified he would topple under the weight of it, I jumped in and, thanking him, handed him my bookbag instead.

Finally, there is Zinka herself. She is an exuberant woman, short and plump, in her late fifties or early sixties, with a luxurious head of blonde hair she wears in an ornate bun on top of her head. Her presence fills the small office that doubles as the hostal´s reception. Her voice penetrates the surrounding walls and she speaks in a rapid-fire Spanish almost impossible to understand; even fluent Spanish-speakers claim to sometimes have a hard time following her.

Every visit to Zinka's office never failed to intimidate me. I felt like a poor supplicant at a royal audience. Generally, I would pause a few seconds behind the always-closed door, steeling myself for the enormity of the encounter. From behind the door I'd hear Zinka´s rapid, booming voice in conversation with one of the neighborhood courtiers or with Maria or Georgio, either of whom--often both--were likely to be squeezed into the little office, too. Just over the left shoulder of the guest’s chair, a television blares, adding to the din. I knock timidly on the door and Zinka´s voice booms out, ¨Adelante! Adelante.¨ I go in. A torrent of unintelligible sentences tumble from her lips. Is she talking to me, I wonder? I stare blinking, bewildered. Then, a smile or wink from Zinka makes me realize, yes, indeed, she is talking to me. But what is she saying? I panic. She repeats herself. Maybe I catch a word or two, maybe not. I ask her to speak more slowly, please. Generally, this goes on until I either figure out what she’s saying or until Maria swoops in to sort things out. Half the time I leave the office so flustered I find I’ve forgotten to ask the question that propelled me there in the first place.

Zinka´s office is decorated as a kind of shrine to all things Croatian and to Zinka herself. On the walls are several large travel posters of scenic Croatian towns. Croatian knick-knacks, colorful ethnic plates, and other handicrafts are there, too. And then there are the pictures. Some show Zinka with the Croatian president on his visit to Punta Arenas. Others are of Zinka dancing with various handsome men, Slavic dignitaries, I imagine. There are pictures of Zinka in full ethnic costume--red skirt, white apron, heavy silver jewelry, her long hair in braids--marching at the front of Punta Arenas´s Croatian day parade, and on and on, filling what seems to be every square foot of wall space in the office.

The place of honor, however, on the wall just behind her chair, is reserved for a larger than life photo of Zinka herself. It is a portrait of Zinka in full ethnic dress, a smile on her face and a mischievous glint in her eye, her right hand jauntily grasping the shoulder strap of her dress, as if to say, ¨Come along, young man, Let me show you the charms of Croatia.¨ It is a spectacular image and when you stand in her office, across the desk from Zinka herself sitting beneath that photograph, it is all you can do to keep your eyes fixed on the original. You strain every bit of your concentration to keep focused on her but it is impossible, your eyes can not help but dart back to that photograph. You feel intimidated and elated at the same time, as if in the presence of royalty or perhaps some Latin American dictator whose cult of personality is enormous and meticulously tended and yet so fragile its iconography must extend even to the seat of power itself.

Bizarre, and yet compelling. Kitsch combining with the authentic. But somehow it all works. Such is life at Zinka´s House.