TheExpatJournals.com

Been a little busy here folks. Went away to Quito (again) for a week and went up to Cotacachi and Otavalo for the weekend. Had no time to do anything but work and sleep in Quito, but had a wonderfully relaxing weekend in Cotacachi…I even left my computer in Quito so I wouldn’t be tempted. Must get some photos so you can see for yourself. Cotacachi, about 2 hours north of Quito, sits right in the center of two huge extinct volcanoes, Cotacachi and Imbabura. Pretty amazing views when the clouds let you have a peak.

Could not get over how dry and dusty everything is north of Quito. Looks like a mountainous version of west Texas. Otavalo is arguably one of the most famous artesan markets in South America. Indeed, row after row after row for block after block are blankets, rugs, ponchos (the center is called Poncho Plaza), jewelry, etc. It seemed like at least half of the gringo tourists in Ecuador were there. Bear in mind, ‘gringo’ in  Ecuador includes Europeans, Australians, etc and not just Americans.

I was not especially impressed with the Otavalo market. Maybe it was excpectations from all I had read and heard, but all in all, it seemed just more and more of mostly the same thing.  And vendors on the outskirts made sure you knew that vendors on the plaza were not the makers, only the sellers of their goods.  A lot of stands did offer the most intricate pen and ink like work on a gourd that I’ve ever seen.  It apparently comes from near Guayaquil, so once I’ve been able to scour a map to jog my memory on the name of the town, I’ll get back to you.  It was beautiful work.  Met a couple of brothers who make very nice rugs in a village just past Cotacachi who let me know they could make whichever design I was interested in and in whatever size and colors I wanted.  Those handloomed rugs run around $50 for a 4′x6′ rugs.  I have their names and numbers in the event anyway ever wants it.

Believe it or not, I didn’t buy anything there. However, I did find 3 antique shops a couple of blocks off the artesan stands where I bought one huge antique batea, 1 medium sized one and another round wooden bowl that reminds me so much of a century old bowl I have from Africa that I just had to buy it, too. Managed to get the smaller batea and the bowl in my suitcase, but had to lug the large one in a bright yellow chicken feed bag all over the place. You should see the patina on these bowls. They almost look mahogany from the years of use with the round bowl resembling something akin to ebony.

I stayed with this really nice couple I had met online before they ever came to Cuenca. They opted for this great Adobe house up in Cotacachi instead, but invited me up, so I took them up on the offer. I had a fireplace in my bedroom and must say, now I want my own! How incredible to burn fragrant eucalyptus. I think watching a fire might put me to sleep even better than television. They also had a bath tub. I think the last bath I had was my first year in Casco Viejo as Latin America is big on showers, not tubs. Decided the ultimate would be to have a double sided fireplace open to both a bathroom and bedroom. New goal. Used to be snow skiing in New Zealand while I looked out over the ocean, but now, it’s a bath and bedroom with a fireplace.

Cotacachi is a pretty sweet town that is larger than I expected, though I was somewhat amazed by the gringo scene there.  One street, 10 de Agosto, is known among the gringos as Leather Street due to block after block of leather stores.  Seems most who are living there are pretty laid back  people.  There are at least 4 developments in the works around Cotacachi.  I went up to see one on the Cotacachi side overlooking town and with those great double volcano views, though even better due to being up a bit.  Apparently, Gary Scott has done a good job of pumping the place we were constantly running into gringos in town. Not all were retirees.  It seems to get its fair share of tourists, probably there for the leather.  One young Canadian could not contain himself. We stopped on the street to speak to someone…I suppose we mentioned leather and he stopped, uninvited, to crow about the quality and price of two leather jackets he had just bought.   After he left, we sort of laughed and decided the Chamber of Commerce should hire him given his level of enthusiasm.

So delivered my first Visa on Wednesday to my first Visa client, a friend. He had been lied to for months by attorneys who were still charging him more all the time.  This was not theory.  I met the lawyer at Direccion de Extranjeria in Quito who confirmed his attorneys definitely knew the ‘documents’ they submitted for his Visa were not the documents they needed to submit for a Visa which, in essence, left him nowhere though they kept assuring him it was just a little longer and a little more money please.

He was going to have to leave Ecuador for six months if he didn’t have a Visa by July 25th.  I got his documents together (including an apostilled police report from Texas after convincing a sheriff to help us out without him being there in person) and turned all that over to the lawyer I work with in Quito who got his Visa approved in 7 days. Brought all that back with me from Quito and then helped him get his censo and cedula. The Jefe at Registro Civil remembered me and miraculously, we were in and out with his cedula in 35 minutes…presentation of documentation, fingerprints, photos, and typing it all up included. My cedula took 2 trips and maybe 3 hours. Another person I know in Cuenca had such a bad experience, she wrote it all up…2 days for her. So yes, 35 minutes seemed like an absolute miracle.

Just had this post interrupted by a knock at the door. The grandchildren of my landlords are visiting from California, two nice, beautiful young teenagers who knew today was my birthday, just brought me a bag full of the best Pan de Yuca in Cuenca. They knew how much I liked it, but I have a feeling it was Dad who made the suggestion. How sweet. The family invited me for dinner tonight, also sweet.  Told you I liked my landlords a lot. I also really like their oldest son and his wife a lot, too.  Must admit, the first time he visited here, we probably didn’t exchange more than hellos. Honestly, this man is so ridiculously attractive that I couldn’t have talked to him if I had anything to say. That doesn’t happen very often to me and never because of how someone looks, but rather because of what I sense about someone.  Sometimes, when I am, what might be called, in awe of someone for either reasons known or unknown, I turn into an awkward 15 year old who wants to just run. This time, a mutual interest in one threatened area of the Amazon basin gave us something  to talk about which propels one forward and erases all else.

God this pan de yuca is great…almost as good as the best buttered biscuits I used to have in the south. Diana (my landlord) had the woman whom she says makes the best tamales make some for dinner. I do like Ecuador food, though I doubt I’ll ever try cuy.

Almost finished with the website the Galapagos folks contracted me to do. Worked really well with their programming guy in Quito. Now I understand why they needed me. It’s like I’m the site’s architect and their guy is the builder. Works for me. Turns out they are doing lots of promotions and marketing right now and their marketing manager now turns to me every time they need English. Owner wrote me last night and said he want to ‘revise’ our agreement because it has turned out that I’m a lot more help than he anticipated he and wants to offer me a better arrangement. Don’t know what that is, but I like that he’s so pleased with the efforts. Seems you spend most of the time working so hard and yet no one ever even notices, so upon those rare occasions where your work is actually appreciated, it sure feels good.  Apart from the Visas, the Galapagos project and some other things, my primary site is built and being loaded with content and set to launch in August.  That, I’m really excited by.  I have been working 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week, so it’s about time things began to take shape.  I’ve maybe taken 5 days off in the last 6+ months.

And yes, I’m 50 today. Hard to believe, but I can’t really say I think about age period. Still, to say the number 50 seems big somehow. Anyway, I’m about to run up for dinner and must quit eating these yuca rolls…I’ve now had 3 while writing. It’s a good thing they’re not big. If you’ve ever had an Indian dosa, they’re more like a roll form of that.

In short, I’m feel good. (Sing it James Brown) In some ways, it feels like all these past months of working so very hard are beginning to result in something tangible. Fucking finally. (Read: some parts of the New Yorker in me will never leave.) The last few years were not the easiest…between 9-11 from a few blocks away, the death of TL, the maddening abyss of web developers that drove me to learn how to myself and the attacks on me in Panama,  the horrible ‘partnership’ and it’s legal resolve, I’ve been in dire need of a little affirmation and certainly in need of a peaceful life.  I don’t know if I knew how direly I was in need until some peace returned to my life.

I remember leaving NYC, moving away and how horribly afraid I had always been of leaving that city.  I mean, to say the world revolves around NYC for New Yorkers is actually an understatement.  It is the world. And leaving it is as pyschological as anything else.  You don’t leave…you failed…like remaining in some bad marriage for all the wrong reasons, it traps you somehow on a level so deep, you mistake it for your own feelings.  It took awhile, but finally what freed me to leave was answering one question: "What actually keeps me here?"  After much mental chatter, the answer became clear…fear of leaving.  As one friend was to say to me a couple of years later and in another context, "You and I are alike in that we use fear as a motivator, rather than a deterrant."  He was right. The minute I realized fear was at the bottom of remaining in a New York that was so unlike the New York I used to love, the NYC who’s skyline felt like my security blanket each time I flew home, NYC by 2004 no longer even resembled that New York.  Again, remember crossing 9th Avenue at 43rd Street with a friend speaking on his cell phone to a friend of his who had moved a few years earlier to the west coast.  She was saying how much she missed New York and his response was, "Honey, the New York you miss doesn’t exist any more."  So not allowing fear to control my life, I made the decision to leave.  I so vividly remember getting about 2 hours down the road when I realized a great weight had been lifted that I did not even realize was there until it was gone.

But back to the present, a little affirmation helps. I could be a hermit I think.  Somehow, I really don’t get lonely, so I can go for ages without human contact with my head buried in a computer. But again, perhaps it’s all those years in NYC and being used to knowing that all those options exist outside my door, whether I avail myself of them or not, that has left me without the ability to actually live isolated in the country somewhere.  I may not walk out my door, so to speak, but I like knowing I can.  And in Ecuador, life in the country doesn’t come with high speed internet.  Perhaps one day when it does, I will make that final leap.

I have to remember that I have only been in Ecuador for 9 months and that creating a new life in a foreign country where you knew no one isn’t the easiest of tasks. Oddly enough, a woman from Panama coming here, who used and abused me and then acts like she’s the offended party…someone I (and others who know her far better than I) was afraid to actually have in my house for 2 weeks though felt like saying, "No, go stay in a hotel" would be rude (also have to get over the last vestiges of ‘people pleasing’ that remain in my pysche) reminded me that I prefer locals to gringos. With only one exception, the friendships I carry with me from Panama were not those with gringos, but with Panamanians. And so I stopped attending the gringo get togethers and started getting together with locals I intended to get to know better. Not surprising (in retrospect) things started to improve immediately in terms of building the sort of life in Ecuador that makes me truly happy. What is it about these expats who turn so nasty out of their own countries? Is it just that most are from small towns where petty, high school gossip culture is their idea of a good life?  Is that their idea of having a second childhood?  Did I just become too much of a New Yorker to be so repulsed by such pettiness? Not saying there aren’t exceptions…like an Australian couple I really, really like (they’re artists) and the Hawaiian couple I spent a wonderful and comfortable weekend with, so maybe it’s just something in the expat culture in Panama?  Is it the Universe’s way of propelling me to where I need to be?  Don’t know, but think I’ll stick primarily with the Ecuadorians.  It is so much more pleasant and having a pleasant life matters more than ever.  After all, I’m 50 now.  Somehow, that should give me a license to not put up with the bullshit anymore, but instead to live in the way that keeps me outside of the US, one that nourishes and challenges and isn’t always comfortable given the fact that I’m not yet fluent in Spanish, but one doesn’t get fluent in Spanish by speaking only English.  I didn’t leave the US to be immersed in US culture, to live in a tiny American bubble somewhere else.   I’m frequently now in settings where I can actually have something akin to a real conversation in Spanish.  And once I remembered that, discarded the theoretical safety net of expats with their English, I seriously doubt it’s a coincidence that things began falling into place.  Why wait?  Grow where you’re planted and all the other hokey truisms. If not now, when?  Plus, I LOVE that my Spanish keeps improving.  There’s a lot of freedom in that.

Now to end with something so completely unrelated it’s ridiculous, another site I built, Ecuador Forums , had a thread that began with cuy, something I can’t bring myself to try no matter how adventurous I am, and wound it’s way to haggis and then Scotland.  Posted this this morning in response to these photos :

WOW!  Absolutely incredible…perhaps one of, if not the, best sets of landscape photography I have ever seen.  I love the west of Scotland anyway.  Seriously considered moving there, or Ireland, when I was researching where to move after I knew Panama was not ‘it.’  But, apart from maybe a B&B, couldn’t quite figure out how to earn a living.  Plus, very scary when you have minimal dollars to think in terms of pounds.

Was just relaying a story last weekend to my friends in Cotacachi about a time I was on the train in the west of Scotland with my then 5 year old son.  His favorite part of the trip was the video game on the ferry between Mallaig and Armadale.  Mine was probably the scenery (and oddly enough, the best cup of coffee I had in Scotland on Skye).  But the memory that lingers is one of an old lady on the train with 3 large dogs, all bound by rope as was her luggage…a cardboard box.  Can no longer even remember her name, but do remember a few years later in NYC watching a family return from a trip and one of the things they were unpacking was the same type of dog.  I stopped and asked if it was a Scotch deerhound…which it was and that I knew shocked them.  When they asked how I knew, turns out the old lady’s name is synonymous with the breed.  They were very proud that their girl’s lineage was only once removed from her directly.  I vividly remember her warning my son that they liked little boys for lunch.  He fed them his yogurt for preventative safety no doubt.  She lived at the isolated western end of Loch Ness, long before the isles.  I also remember her grumblings about all the reforestation on the hills that weren’t meant to have trees.  I think of that sometimes in Ecuador.  I also think about how many travel reports say that El Cajas remind them so much of Scotland and looking at these incredible photos, see several that could have been taken in the Cajas.