Las despedidas

A sure sign of how much of a good time you've had in a place and how many meaningful friends you've made there is how sad you are to leave. If this is true then I can say with some confidence that I in fact did have a very good time in Loja with some most excellent friends.

The goodbyes began on Friday 31st Jan with the last day of three of my kiddie classes. The difference in goodbyes was marked - with my cutie 7-9 year olds we sang Yellow Submarine complete with actions for their 'graduation', then my favourite's mum went out and bought us all fried chicken, which we ate and reminisced about the class, then left with a big group hug. I have to say I had a little tear in my eye. For contrast, my 10-12 age group came in, begrudgingly sat through Wallace and Gromit with me, begged to go home early and only said goodbye after I shouted down the corridor after them. From the final 13-15 group only 2 from 7 turned up which I was happy with as it meant we could watch the final hour of The Inbetweeners Movie in peace. So that was all fine. I had hoped for a big teachers party but everyone was so exhausted that we all just wanted to go home. Or in my case to Rene's (our boss, personal assistant, and friend) mum's house due to a slight 'dickhead problem' with my landlord, where she attempted to destroy my stomach lining with even more chicken and rice and soup (I had to refuse most of it and that which I didn't eat was served up for breakfast). Delightful woman though and very generous with what she had, which was fairly limited to start with.

So that was one goodbye. The biggest goodbye came then on the following Wednesday, with the last class with all my adults there. One was due for a test so he kept me occupied whilst the rest of them mysteriously didn't turn up. Eventually I was told to go upstairs, where the others waited for me with a great goodbye party, and I was greeted by cake, presents, beer smuggled into the school, and even a mini-me out of foam stuck to the board. Due to being rendered speechless by what they'd done for me I spent most of the time grinning at it all, but I stopped that for long enough to give a little speech about how much I'd enjoyed teaching them, to which they told me how much they'd enjoyed being taught by me. The presents were amazing too, a little sombrero, a box of goodies from Loja and the surroundings and a bag full of personal messages from each of them. Still looking for the perfect time to read them. Afterwards we had an afterparty consisting of getting some drinks and driving between various city lookouts and getting back in the car to drive off when the police came. Living on the edge, but also kind of boring. Well I had fun regardless.

As if that wasn't enough, in the final half of my last lesson with just 3 from 6 of them I offered them the chance to play any game. The game they decided upon was 'guess what Dennis has in his bag'. After 5 minutes I gave up, and he pulled out a big gift box of Swiss products - an army knife, watch, pen and keychain. Not any old Toblerone for them! Add to that a very cute card with 'don't forget us because we won't forget you. Thank you for forming part of our lives' on the envelope. As you can imagine I was rendered a bit speechless again. I left them all a little personal letter of thanks (it was the least I could do) and one big hug in place of the words that I couldn't really find to thank them.

My final weekend in the area saw us head to Vilcabamba (gringo-hippie-centenarian commune) for a weekend that was far more eventful than it should have been. The general plan was to hike to a waterfall and have a little dip there then go partying after. Well despite a very high water level we went for the trek, crossing the fast-flowing knee-deep river, getting changed on the other side, and then crossing it again to take a dip in the rather deep pool at the bottom of the very powerful waterfall. If this sounds slightly stupid then that's because it was. I was the unlucky victim who got sucked towards the waterfall and under the water by a rogue current, and luckily one of us was close by and only in up to his waist and so was able to drag me out. Needless to say I was shaken up by that for a good couple of hours afterwards. Even scarier was when Antonia, a new teacher who'd arrived with her boyfriend, was unceremoniously dumped 2 metres into the water by a tree branch that decided it had finally had enough of being climbed over all these years. You could say that the deep water saved both of us, as it wasn't quite enough to suck me under and just deep enough to prevent her hitting anything hard on landing. When I think back I'm glad that the only casualty was my hat bought by my students, cruelly knocked off my head by a stray branch into the raging torrent.

After those lucky misses we partied that night like it was really our lucky weekend, with an outdoor live band, dancing, drinking around a fire, and then a pool party at my friend's girlfriend's dad's country house. I honestly have only ever seen such a nice house with such perfectly clean white furniture on adult films. It was slightly surreal.

On the Sunday we jumped into another river, gave Rene his birthday Bailey's, jumped into another river and headed home. It was then only left for me to pack up ready for a midnight bus on Monday night with a final michelada (spicy beer that I also had on my first night in SA) with my good friends here. As a final emotional farewell James (Colombian friend) gave me a necklace his mother had given him to watch over him, and which now should watch over me. Truly the sweetest gesture - it had better not fall in any fast-flowing rivers!

I'm now in Guayaquil providing a little jetlag recovery bootcamp for my girlfriend before we fly to Galapagos tomorrow, and that is of course crazy and slightly surreal, but even while there I'll miss little old Loja and the very good friends there that I made in such a very short space of time.

Walking high, travelling far, and generally looking up

It really is time that I wrote something more positive here. Luckily my neck issues are now sorting themselves out and I've been able to make some visits out of Loja, so let's talk about that.

On January 11th I headed out with my Colombian friend James (pronounced ha-mezz) to Vilcabamba, the local laid-back hippie/gringo commune for a spot of hiking. The place is interesting as it not only showcases the huge climatic diversity of Ecuador, since a windy 40 minute bus journey brings you to a slightly lower altitude and with it a sultry tropical world of colour far removed from the monochromatic fresh mountain slopes of Loja, but the influx of gringos on the search for cheap land and daily massages lends it a much more laid back feel than Loja.

After said bus journey we headed straight for mandango, one of the many mountains that tower over the village. Not knowing the way to the path, we stopped by 'Hostal Mandango' in the presumption that the owner would have some inkling as to the whereabouts of the hotel after which he named his business. As it was his terrible directions cost us a good half an hour of walking time. We finally found the actual path, and after a decent slog up the top (some of the time on our hands and knees up a rubble path with a sheer drop to one side), we were soon making Jesus poses on the cross at the top. Most exciting of all was the wildlife - we saw an iguana camouflaging itself in the dry grass, had to poke a tarantula out of our path with a long stick, and when we reached the top a grand old eagle swooped over to say hi.

After we stopped for pizza in a well established American-owned joint where the owners spoke barely a single word of Spanish. It left me with a warm glow of self-satisfaction to compare myself with him, out for the day with an entirely non English-speaking friend chatting constant Spanish, and that after only 4 months of learning and immersion. My friendship with James has been funny in a way because it's given me a guide to how I'm improving. When I think back to when I got to know him 2 months ago and was basically latching onto singular words I'd understood and forming any acceptable sentence about the perceived conversation topic, I honestly do feel quite smug that now we can have real back-and-forth conversations, and I understand 95% of what he says. It's strange in a way that a friendship can work in those circumstances but with enough hand signals and 'eyyyy's we somehow muddle through.

The second trip was last weekend, to the village of Zapotillo down by the Peruvian border in order to see the guayacanes trees, which flower brilliant yellow annually, but only for one week, so we knew we had to go for it. Now, due to the the remote Andean location of Loja I've come to approach the interminable slaloming bus journeys required to reach anywhere of note with a Zen-like calm, seeing the endless hours as  opportunity to immerse myself in favourite books and albums, alone withy my thoughts. However this journey tested my tolerance to the i  limit.

We took the bus from Loja at 15.30 on the Saturday, arriving in Zapotillo at 23.00. Due to the one-off nature of the event all hostels were fully booked, so we looked for salvation in the bus station. The building closed for the night at midnight, but the woman kindly offered us some cardboard boxes from the storeroom and some scissors that we might make ourselves some beds and sleep outside on the concrete behind the buses. This actually seemed like our best option until we saw that the bus we'd arrived on was still open and containing several fellow bums sprawled across the seats. There we 'slept' (the bus station was next door to a late night music club) until 5am.

At 5 the engines started up and the bus driver told us he was heading towards the village where all the yellow was. Liar. We overshot the turning for the village by a good 10km and greeted the sunrise with our thumbs out on the side of the road after working our way back there from the dead end village we'd been dropped off in. Luckily hitchhiking is super easy over here due to all the pickup trucks, so three lifts later we made it back to the turning and at 7.30 jumped on the back of one of the many army trucks running a free service to the trees.

I guess you could say we got what we paid for. Between there and the trees was only 2 hours of windy dirt track. Cue much headbanging (ironic since the doc had told me the day before to avoid heavy metal concerts due to my neck) and furious breathing through the nose, if at all. By the time we arrived at 9.30 we'd been on the road and sleeping rough for 18 hours. To be fair the site that met our eyes was beautiful - an entire valley decked out in daffodil yellow, definitely a site for sore eyes and necks, and we gulped down our morning chivo al hueco (goat in the hole) gratefully.

Due to work on Monday and the ridiculously long journey we'd have to take back, we only had 3 hours in the actual village we'd been aiming for. We spent those eating goat, walking alongside a herd of goats towards some old Inca bathing pool before hitching on a pickup instead, which we shared with a travel sick goat on our way back from the baths. To me this was such a south american thing to happen - chilled out about giving us a lift and then springing the surprise of a retching goat in our travel space with no apology or explanation, hilarious. So we huddled at the far end of the back of the truck, grimacing with each goaty retch as we knew that if anything came out of its mouth it would trickle down to us and our bags sitting downhill from it.

After another army truck journey from hell it was back on the bus. Luckily I was armed with my neck brace, which is brilliant for sleeping on buses as it stops your neck moving around with the movement of the bus, and my secret weapon - the unabridged Moby Dick audiobook. Works every time.

Me vs the mozzies

I'm mostly writing this post because I'm just plain bored lying at home with a raised foot and waiting for my spazzy mosquito-ankle to stop being so spazzy. During the day the raised foot position is natural for a hammock but in the evening it's enough of a drag to make me miss even my most annoying English classes. Strange feeling, maybe I do enjoy teaching after all.

It all started so well, with a night out with my students on the Friday for views of the city, crazy amounts of meat for 5 dollars and then a few tobasco-beers afterwards, all paid for by my students who are all either at university or earn less than me here. So yes, that was rather lovely. I also learned plenty of more interesting things about  Ecuadorian culture, such as the fact that people inland call those who live on the coast 'monkeys', which is apparently completely acceptable and not racist at all..

After a slightly below-par showing from myself at my Saturday class, it was straight off to Vilcabamba, a major 'gringo town' 45 minutes from Loja, for Saturday's festivities. As an aside, I recently discovered that the word gringo originates from the American occupation of Mexico where the soldiers wore green and thus they wanted that the 'green-go', hence gringo. It's not a friendly term in any case and I always make a point of taking an exception to it. Mostly the offence comes from people mistaking me for an American!

The festivities were a birthday surprise for my English friend Ross organised by his  Ecuadorian girlfriend Diana, in a private youth hostel resort type thing with swimming pool, outdoor bar and almost panoramic views of the surrounding mountains. We started drinking around 4 and finally retired well after midnight after sampling the pool and sauna facilities late at night and drinking copious amounts of warm canelazo (water, cinnamon sticks (canela), brown sugar, an acid fruit juice such as naranjilla or lemon and aguardiente (fire water)).

The next day we moved on to the holiday home of the owner of our company and perennial sunglasses-indoors-wearer Diego, for much more of the same. That is, volleyball on his private court, swimming and plenty of beer and salted pork skins for snacks (another delicacy here). It was a great end to a great couple of days but unfortunately I'd forgotten my insect repellent at the other place, and there had been an unseasonal number of the little bitey buggers at the party.

The next day I woke and felt fine apart from a slightly queasy feeling at seeing my feet and legs covered in mankey red dots, and I went about my business in the usual way. During my 5pm lesson my foot started causing me a bit of pain, by 6pm my left foot was pretty much too painful to walk on, and after 20 minutes of my 7pm lesson it was decided that my ankle was far too swollen for the sake of teaching the one student that had turned up, and René and I headed off for the public hospital in town.

Well that was an experience. After negotiating with the people operating the barrier about whether they would let us in, we made our way into a modern, newly built waiting room. Unfortunately, with no one to greet us at a reception and the doctor refusing to open his door to anyone, neither the various families knocking on his door or the police that came to drop off a suspect, a waiting room was all that it was.

Slightly put out by the lack of order or any type of system at the main emergency ward of the whole city, we headed off to the next hospital, which was in fact a private clinic. Here, the porter received us gratefully and wheeled me through (I couldn't walk at all by now) to a nice private room and a bed. There I lay as the odd nurse came through cleaning things, and a good 20 minutes later we managed to catch a doctor to ask her what was going on, only to be batted away and told that she was busy. 10 minutes later we threatened to leave if no one showed any interest in me, to which she said 'well, you can leave if you want' without having even looked at me. So, we left.

René was finding the whole thing very amusing and delighted in telling me horror stories of other such occurrences as I zoned in and out of attentiveness. To the third hospital's credit, they saw me promptly, told me it was just an allergic reaction and gave me an injection and some pills and cream to take home, the whole thing costing a mere 31 dollars. I would just have slightly rather not had to spend 2 hours of my life looking for someone who would spare me the time of day...

The moral of the story: get that insect spray on you because you don't want to fall ill here if you can help it!