The People of Ecuador

My host here in Alangasí told me this story today: God created the perfect place in the middle of the world. He sat it right on the Equator, filled it with the most biodiversity: countless birds, animals, and a multitude of plants. He gave it various climate zones: the coastal area with the roaring ocean, the majestic Andes standing tall and proud, the Amazon forest and its healing plants as well as the Galapagos islands with their wide variety of exotic animals. Once God was done with his creation, in all his fairness, he decided that the place was so perfect: a small country with such unique and varied features, that it needed something to counterbalance that. So God gave the country its people: a bunch of ignorant idiots!

I laughed when I heard the story. Coming from an Ecuadorian, speaking about his own people!!! Wow! But that says it all. I do find Ecuadorians to be particularly uninterested. Unlike other cultures that I have had the pleasure to explore, for instance the Thai, Ecuadorians have no interest in finding out about my adventures and explorations, they don’t seem to like to talk about anything but sports and the new stuff that they are going to buy. They also, don’t have a lot to offer in terms of savoir faire; no particular talents or skills that they can expound upon. I am very curious by nature and love to learn new crafts and was expecting to quench my knowledge thirst here in Ecuador but unfortunately haven’t been able to. The average person, NOT the indigenous people, seem uninterested and uninteresting.

I feel extremely sorry for the indigenous population here who have been robbed of their land and who have to sell knick knacks by the side of the road for a penance. Under the disapproving and condemning stare of the Hispanic Ecuadorians, they work from early morning until late at night trying to make ends meet. They have been reduced to homelessness, their country side ravaged and built upon, their ancestral ways gone with the imposition of new obligations, a new language, no place left for them. Despite of these dire conditions, the Indians are more joyful, much less stressed looking, and overall much more friendly than other Ecuadorians. It is very frustrating because even my hosts here, who I consider forward thinking and pretty modern in their views, look down upon the indigenous people and blame them for every ill of Ecuadorian society. I can’t handle that type of talk and very fervently defend the Indians. The indigenous majority of the Bolivian population is one of the main reasons why I am going there.

When I went to the Bolivian Embassy the other day, I was agreeably surprised by the welcome that I was offered. I was immediately introduced to the ambassador himself who was very happy to expound upon his Bolivian homeland. He was extremely unofficial, which was a very nice change from the hierarchical and bureaucratic ways of the Ecuadorian offices that I have been dealing with so far. In the ambassador’s office there was a pro coca poster. The coca plant in Bolivia is used for medicinal purposes, mainly to alleviate the effects of altitude sickness. Unfortunately, the US has tried to force the country to eradicate the plant that they consider a drug. Of course, the plant is harmless, only when chemically altered is it a drug, but the US has conducted many raids on poor coca farmers and have sprayed the coca fields with various chemicals that not only poison the air and the water but also cause health issues to the people. It makes me so angry. If drugs were legalized, the casualties of the drug world mainly the innocent bystanders would cease to suffer and the drug lords would stop making fortunes. Why is it so hard to understand? Anyways, the ambassador’s poster made me smile. The whole embassy was filled with colorful artwork which stood in stark contrast with my previous visit to the Peruvian Embassy which was cold and menacing.

I went to the veterinarian with the dogs, the woman was super nice, she faked all the dogs documents for me. The puppy that I found in Ecuador is too young to get a rabies shot so the veterinarian lied about her age and put in a sticker as if my dog did get a rabies shot. It turns out that not all Ecuadorians are unhelpful. This woman was extremely nice and friendly. And the visit for my 3 dogs and the official document which allows them to travel cost me only 35$. The veterinarian has a true love for animals, it came to me as a bit of a surprise because I got used to most people here being cruel to their dogs, beating them, starving them. Most people think that I am crazy to cuddle with my dogs and play with them, for people here, a dog is like a rat, just a scavenger deserving no respect. It is uncanny how many dead dogs I have seen here, laying by the side of the road, dead from being hit by a car, their last days spent homeless and hungry. I am so unbearably sad when I see that, each time I make a point to look at their poor mingled bodies and to send these dear dogs a loving thought.

Thinking of Claire

I was thinking of a girl I once knew whom I met in a photo class while at university in Montreal. Her name was Claire and she was German. She was taller than me which is rare coz I’m six feet, she was muscular and strong looking. Long brown hair that she wore disheveled with overgrown bangs. Her eternal thin worn out jeans and vans sneakers. No pretentiousness at any fashion style, just whatever.

Early on in the semester we started talking a lot, commenting on each other’s work. I was doing a lot of self-portraits, some of which were nudes and she thought me gutsy. Once after a whole day of hanging out together I invited her to my apartment, which I shared with my roommate, whose girlfriend would often crash there as well. We all had a nice dinner with some wine and talked until late, so late that Claire couldn’t get a bus back to her place. I invited her to stay. We had to share my bed. I remember lending her pajamas: a Bugs Bunny boxer and a camisole. We chatted before bedtime, the wine made me sleepy. I dozed off. I remember waking up to a nice wet warmth between my legs. I opened my eyes and there was Claire licking my pussy. I was shocked! “I thought she had a boyfriend!” “I thought that she was straight!” She licked me for a blissful moment while I moaned and groaned. I remember taking her top off and licking her nice firm nipples. I slipped my fingers inside her as she informed me that it was her first time with a girl. I went down to her belly and kissed it softly and directed my face to her swollen pussy lips. I liked her fervently. I recall her smell being strong and her juices tasting metallic, not a taste that I have had before. We alternated between pleasuring one then the other and we sixty-nined until we fell asleep exhausted. In the morning I was shy and had a hard time believing what had happened. I remember my roommate’s girlfriend Julie winking at me to signify that she knew that I had scored. I didn’t feel that way, I mostly felt shocked by having had that experience with a school peer and knowing that she had a boyfriend.

Not long after this experience Claire informed me that she had broken up with her boyfriend and told him that she was gay.

On the road through South America alone and sometimes very lonely I thought of Claire. Where is she now? Oh how I would long for a kiss from her, her sweet lips brushing mine. How wonderful it would be to have a girl by my side driving towards a beloved jungle. Two fierce chicks in love!

Crucita Goodbye!

My hosts in Crucita ended up being nice. I am awfully quick to judge and my negativity is legendary. I am working on that. I need to find the balance between being a bright eyed, naive woman and being a pessimistic judgmental one. I guess being a tattooed dyke who often got teased at school as a kid, I came to be quickly on the defensive and on a constant lookout for things that can be against me. I need to find my balance.

The Jehovah witnesses, although having an impossibly different outlook on life as it relates to how one should lead their life, were nice to me. I knew and they knew that we were from very different planets, yet they managed to be courteous and pleasant overall. I was on their property after all, they could have asked me to leave. But they didn’t, they made an effort towards me and I did the same. Yes, our interactions seemed forced at times but overall I think that we all grew from the experience. I am generally a very outspoken and argumentative person when it comes to homosexuality, I like to make my rights known, I like to impose my sexual orientation on others, to be in their face. Especially when I was in my teens I used to love to provoke and shock people. Here, with these Jehovah witnesses I chose not to do that, instead I was calm and extremely polite, overly so perhaps, the goal being to show them that I am not the monster that their religion depicts me to be.

At the end of my stay, when we were parting, they gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. We all looked at one another and smiled cheerfully, at once relieved that the ordeal was over but I also hope to think that we were also genuinely respectful of one another.

My Hosts Turn Out To Be Jehovah Witnesses!

I am getting quite fed up of the beach and of the place where I am staying. As it turns out the owners here are Jehovah witnesses and our world views couldn’t be any different. I haven’t told them that I am a dyke but my full sleeve tattoo is filled with girls and other elements giving me away so they probably figured it out. I have noticed that the wife of the owner never interacted with me after the initial introduction and seemed to be avoiding me and then the husband informed me that they were Jehovah witnesses and even gave me a pamphlet. He is acting unnaturally nice towards me, as if it cost him to be interacting with me. They probably view my arrival as a strengthening ordeal sent to them by god in order to teach them about how close the world is to Armageddon. I must represent the mighty devil sent to tempt them into sin….

I have never had any dealings with Jehovah witnesses, in fact I never even bothered to open my door when they would knock on their week end door to door crusades. After learning that my hosts were of that religious denomination I looked it up on Wikipedia. Being a fervent atheist, I was shocked to realize that some people can hold such ridiculous and backwards beliefs. I am all about live and let live but when someone’s belief is that all homosexuals are demons to be put in the same category as pedophiles, I cringe and fume. I don’t understand people’s need for religion, I think it’s a need to not think, to be told what to think and do. With all the knowledge that we have about how religion is an invention of men in order to control other fellow men, how can one still pursue it? Why do people have the need to believe these dark small minded fairy tales? After all the massacres and wars that have been conducted in the name of religion, why can’t people move away from it and gain control of their own lives? We are masters of our own lives, and no supernatural little Jesus, who is an absurd invention, is going to guide you. Reading the bible and interpreting one’s life based on it, one might as well take Grimm’s fairy tales and live in accordance to their “truths”. I will most probably be ranting against religion in many more posts to come because it is an unfortunate illness here in South America. All kinds of evangelical groups come in brainwashing the poor and undereducated masses here, manipulating them with gifts and free meals. It is sad and oppressing.

I am also fed up with the empty days spent on the beach. I can’t relax, especially now that I am being watched as if I am the worst sinner, and the days seem long. I feel stagnated since I have tons of things to do in Quito to be able to get out of Ecuador. It feels like a big waste of time here. I am trying to look at my situation with humor: a lesbian amongst religious fanatics afraid of her! But it’s hard to not feel angry and disappointment at the state of things. In our day and age, with so much experience from history, with so much knowledge carved onto us in the blood of those who were massacred in the name of these manipulative beliefs, there are still so many small minded people out there pursuing this nonsense and judging other fellow human beings with their twisted and shallow myopic eyes. It makes me sick! It really goes to show how truly westernized I am. After leaving Poland when I was 10 I never had to deal with the insanity of religion. I have taken for granted the openness and atheism of the society that I found myself in while in Western Europe, Canada or the USA. When in Asia, Buddhism has been nothing but accepting of my sexual orientation and I never felt ostracized. Here I am in South America with a new mission of opening the eyes of the mobs of uneducated fanatics. I’ll take it on! I do think that I will be feeling better amongst the indigenous people whose traditions and beliefs are much more in accord with my own: respect of Mother Earth, communion with all life, a much more meditative and positive approach to life.

Manta, Ecuador

So I went to Manta today in order to get the car checked and get an oil change. The people that I am staying with referred me to someone in Manta. The car got supposedly fixed and the rattling sound that was audible went away while I was with the mechanic but about half an hour later when I was on the highway it started back again. Which means that I have wasted a whole day for nothing.

But hey I got to explore Manta. What a deception! The city is one big slum with stagnant water everywhere which breeds mosquitoes which in turn bring disease such as malaria and dengue fever. The town is dirty and smells like raw sewage. The beaches are filthy without much room to lay down because a lot of the beach is occupied by businesses from bus stations to noisy bars to tourist knick knacks to fish stands. Oh fish stands, great! So I thought but after looking at the dead fish laying there unrefrigerated, with bugs and flies squirming on it, the thick smell of decomposition all around at 100F heat, I got a little bit less excited.

Then come the tourists, lots of them. Skins burned orange from too much unprotected sun exposure, walking with their fancy Nikons around their necks, dressed in the classic safari garb consisting of polyester khaki shorts, matching tops, ridiculous expedition hats with their feet clad in socks inside Teva sandals, proudly carrying their loads of purchases. They are generally to be seen in the tourist spots around mainstream hotels and knick knack stands. It’s a shame for me to be associated with them.

I was trying to find a place to eat some good fish dishes but found that most of the restaurants were closed (it was 2pm) or the quality of their fish looked anything but appetizing. The smell upon entering the restaurant would be that of rotting fish. My dogs breaths smell fresher than that. Not where I would eat no matter how hungry. After spending about an hour looking for someplace to eat, I decided to give up my search and ended up eating… brace yourselves… canned fish with crackers! So here I am in a fishing town and I’m forced to eat canned fish. I was not happy.

Manta has a big expat/retirees population which keeps me utterly puzzled. Who in their right minds would choose to live there? It’s dirty, stinky, polluted, congested with traffic, without anything even remotely resembling a nice beach, with only one tiny patch of green nature which happens to be the central park of the town which sits on the main highway surrounded on all sides with major traffic, smog and trash. I don’t even understand why tourists choose to merely visit Manta but the thought of living there?!?! I could see some fancy houses sitting in the midst of slums, surrounded by the dirt and grit of the city and the envy and misery of their neighbors. Ok, so you have your nice mega house in the middle of screaming poverty! How well can that possibly make you feel? A white person with the most wealth in the whole town having servants and staff catering to you, I guess some people crave that: being singled out as the supposed success. I personally prefer being on equal footing with my neighbors or even better: make a difference by helping my neighbors either by giving them the opportunity for meaningful employment or giving them a hand with their housing construction and living surrounded by well cared for and protected nature. We can’t all have the same aspirations I suppose.

Reflections on the Beach

I am definitely not much of a beach girl. I like the ocean, the smell of it, the breeze, the infinite vastness of it but after a couple of days I get bored. I start missing the greenness, the lushness, the life of the trees. The beach is just sand. Funny because I like the desert which could be considered as just sand. To me though the desert represents a meditative spiritual state, a confrontation with oneself. I most probably feel that way because of the solitude that the desert offers, the beach is not quiet, there is the sound of the waves crashing and there’s also always human life because a beach is rarely completely isolate.

Beach life here in Crucita is definitely relaxing, not much is happening, the beat of life is lazy and repetitive. For some it is paradise, but for me it is thankfully just a wait station, a necessary short stop.

I also don’t find myself all excited because I see bikini girls out and about. I have never found that the sight of a girl scantily clad made me more interested in her or more sexually excited for that matter. I really get turned on by faces, beautiful expressive faces are what I find myself drawn to. The body type is not important to me, I like all sizes: long or short, thin or built are equally attractive to me, I am a physically active person and tend to like the same in my partners. Hair color, eyes color are totally irrelevant to me and I often wonder why some people make a big deal out of these completely superficial attributes. An expressive, awakened, unique face stands out in a crowd while body types are redundant.

While by the beach I am taking the time to just do nothing, lounge around, eat fish, read and prepare for the upcoming administrative hurdle that will come soon enough when I reach the capital.

Mosquito Hell

Little mosquito is there not, a beauty in you that I simply can’t spot?

What is the use of mosquitoes? What good do they do? Besides spreading disease and causing so much suffering, is there a utility for their existence? Oh how I wish that they were feeding off something else besides my blood.

It is hard now that I am back to mosquito elevations again. They bite me all over all day and in the evening they are deadly. I can be indoors, under a mosquito net and they will find their way to me. I love the tropical climate but boy do I hate mosquitoes! They make my life so miserable! I am literally covered in bites from head to toe. And I am not the zen type who calmly nurtures their bites, I am the scratch till it bleeds and forms a wound type. I take pleasure in assuaging my need to scratch and I do it relentlessly. Then I regret it because I end up covered in wounds, which is not very attractive to the eye. Ideally, someone would pass a light feather on my bites and give me some gentle respite from my agony.

I do not use DEET because it is toxic and causes a failure in the central nervous system if used frequently. I generally use essential oils of citronella, eucalyptus and tea tree mixed with water and sprayed on myself and reapplied every 1 and a half hours and that works fine. The problem is that I do not have these wonderful oils with me right now. I will have to seek alternatives to DEET that are not toxic if I am unable to find my beloved essential oils.

Oh mosquitoes, dear mosquitoes can I will you out of my life? Please disappear and give me some respite!

Crucita, Ecuador

Beautiful cabin rental right on the ocean. After a drive of 12 hours from Vilcabamba, I have finally made it to Crucita, a small fishermen town about 40 minutes north of Manta.

The drive was tiring but the road conditions were good. The worst part was skirting Guayaquil. Passing by dozens of gated communities with identical oversized row houses with no yards or greenery, located right on top of slums and shanty towns. A very depressing sight! Fighting traffic and competitive drivers with very little skill or knowledge of driving.

Arriving to the cabin that I am renting from a wonderful couple who both speak English, I was relieved because for a change there were no negative surprises. I found the cabin on Airbnb and it is exactly as described on the site. I am so glad that the place is clean, quiet and has good Internet which I boost by plugging in my own Linksys router to the main system. There are some things that are totally useful to bring when traveling and a router is one of them. I don’t need a phone because I can use the free Internet phone either through Google Voice or Skype.

I pretty much have the beach for myself, and the weather is so hot that it is nice to take a solitary swim in the ocean. Of course my dream would be to have my girl with me, to cuddle and make out in the salty water, throwing one another into the waves, licking the salt off our skins.

I went into the center of town to eat and found a nice little place by the beach serving delicious ceviches. The boy who took my order and served me the food must have been about 9 years old. He explained me the menu, brought me my plates and condiments, cleaned my table after I was done. All the while, what seemed like his father, sat reading a newspaper. Would it be better for that boy to be in school or to be working for his parents business? The boy looked happy, he had a wide healthy grin.

I was looking at all the young people on the beach, surfing, swimming, playing. They weren’t going to school, in fact I haven’t seen a school in the town. I was wondering what it would be like to have been born in that context, with none of the obligations of modern society, no schools, no careers, no major consumerist ambitions. Just fishing, picking coconuts, enjoying the ocean, laying in a hammock when the day is at its hottest. Who would I have been by now?

Is there a girl out there on that beach who is dreaming of another one like her, with a passion for her sex? Is she pursuing her desires or is she simply submitting to her fate? Accepting reluctantly the societal obligations of an unhappy marriage with kids? I wonder… as I look around me trying to spot my fellow lesbians.

Hosteria in Malacatos and House Rental in Vilcabamba

I will be leaving Vilcabamba tomorrow to go to Crucita, a coastal town 45 minutes north of Manta. I have been in Vilcabamba and Malacatos for the past 3 and a half months and although I don’t have much in terms of living conditions it was home for me and I will have a slight pang of sadness to be leaving.

When I first arrived to Ecuador, I stayed in Malacatos which is about 10 minutes by car from Vilcabamba. I stayed at a hosteria called Las Lagunas which in retrospect was totally fine but which seemed too busy and popular with the locals when I first got there. The only reason why I chose to stay there was because they accepted to take me with my two rescue dogs from Canada. The hosteria is huge, they have 3 pools as well as saunas and thermal baths. They also have chicken and a tilapia farm. Often times on the week ends they would have big parties with karaoke and lots of drinking. What I liked about the place was that there was no tourists there, exclusively locals which forced me to practice Spanish.

I absolutely can’t stand being in a place surrounded by tourists because it makes me feel completely constricted and suffocated. When I find myself in a foreign country with other foreigners I feel like a fraud, I am embarrassed and odd to be part of a group of non-integrated people. I always have a huge sense of shame in front of the locals when I am a part of a group of tourists sight seeing and not living the local life in a more organic way.

Anyways, back to my Las Lagunas story. The hosteria was generally totally vacant during the week which was great since it felt private and was very quiet and restful. On the week ends I would generally lose my temper if the drunks were being obnoxious late at night, which didn’t happen too frequently but did a few times. The main problem at the hosteria was the lack of ability to cook for myself, having no kitchen in my room. Being a vegetarian and loving to eat what I make infinitely more so than restaurant food (especially since the food around here is horrible), it became a hassle and I decided to leave and rent a house in Vilcabamba.

What a major headache I have signed up for by doing so. At first sight the house looked fine, not great but compared to a lot of other places that I have seen it felt luxurious, gee it has an indoor bathroom! But after spending a few days there I realized that the city water service was extremely intermittent, most days having to go without running water for several hours. Also, when it would rain outside, the water coming from the tap was horribly brown and stinky. Boiling that mud was not an option so I had to use bottled water for everything: to wash myself, the dishes and for cooking. That’s a lot of bottles and a lot of plastic which made me really upset as I try not to use any plastic as much as humanly possible. The Pacific garbage patch is huge enough without me having to add to it.

After living in the house for a few days I noticed that I kept having huge migraines and feeling strong bouts of nausea and on some days I would have diarrhea. I knew that I wasn’t drinking the tap water so it couldn’t be that but what was it then? I am not a believer in Western medicine so going to a doctor was out of the question so I decided to research it on the Internet. The house as well as parts of the city reeked of sewers. Some days the smell was so bad that I would find myself on the verge of puking, feeling weak and dizzy. My Internet research showed that poor sewers installations could emit hazardous gases and fumes which could cause headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and in extreme exposure conditions even death. Wow! Now my urge to leave was extreme. But I had signed up for a month on this place and didn’t have a plan B since it is very hard to find a house rental in Vilcabmaba or Malacatos especially with dogs. So I had to tough it up. My poor dogs were also very unhappy because unlike at La Lagunas where they could run around wherever they wanted, in the house rental they didn’t even have a yard.

I frankly don’t understand why all these expats are coming to Vilcabamba because it is quite a foul little town. It’s very noisy, big trucks passing at high speeds through town, yelling kids, howling dogs, car alarms, people driving around with speakerphones yelling about their goods for sale, fireworks at all times of day and night, etc. The town is too densely packed, everybody is on top of everybody in terms of living conditions, yet as far as interesting things to do there is absolutely nothing. Most people just sit around drinking all day. I don’t drink alcohol at all so you can see how poorly I fit in here.

Most of the time I walked around bored. For the first two months or so of being in Ecuador I was still working on my goal of finding land to buy to start my female centric commune. After having looked at about 20 different properties around Malacatos, Vilcabamba and Yangana I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to live around here an so stopped my search. Since then I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to live in Ecuador at all but that’s a different story.

The tourists and expats who come to and through Vilcabamba are not on my wave length. They are either retirees with a strong pull towards the bottle or young pseudo hippies with a screw loose, talking about the end of the world and conspiracy theories. It makes me feel sad to see them almost foaming at the mouth, with wild eyes talking about building bunkers underground in other to survive when the end of the world comes. They buy guns and military paraphernalia and try to enroll others in their psychotic universe. The saddest part is that they make babies like rabbits. So the end of the world is coming but yet they are willing to put a child into this? I personally think that there are plenty of people in the world as it is and there is no need for more, especially not more poor, uneducated kids with no options. For me adoption is the only route that I would consider, that is if I ever felt inclined to raise children. I would definitely need to be in a perfect situation to do so. I am sure that I will be reflecting upon that issue in some future posts since it is an issue that I hold close to heart.

Disillusion in Ecuador

I came to Ecuador with the idea of purchasing a large amount of undesirable land to reforest and protect. I was also hoping to start an alpaca garment enterprise and hire locals and thus help the local economy and in my wildest hopes to turn a village around with labor and new possibilities. Unfortunately, upon arriving here I quickly realized that with the local currency having been changed to the US dollar, the cost of living was too high for me to be able to afford to live here.

Several problems plague Ecuador right now. The current currency being the US dollar, the prices have climbed drastically and thus the cost of living is not very different from the USA. Also, Ecuador has been advertised as a great place to retire and unfortunately there is a huge influx of expats and retirees coming here to lead a high life with servants and fancy houses. What it creates are even higher climbing prices, higher inequalities and the expats catering to expats when it comes to real estate. Everybody is trying to make money by buying cheap land off of locals and reselling it for 10 times more to foreigners. This scenario has been played out so severely in Vilcabamba that the price of land now compares to prices in rural USA. A 5 acres property starts at 200 000$ and that is just the land without a house or structure. Unfortunately, all of Ecuador seems to be heading that way.

My disillusion with Vilcabamba is soon coming to an end. I am in the process of researching the next leg of my Ecuadorian road trip, the places to stay as well as the hikes and nature activities to do. I plan on going up the coast, stopping in various beach communities, then heading back into the Andes around Quito where I will be receiving my resident card. It is ironic since once I get the resident card I will immediately be heading to Peru and Bolivia.