Behold! The Power of the Internet!

So I thought for sure that there was no way that there would be an Internet cafe anywhere within a hundred mile radius of Manglaralto, the tiny fishing town where I would be spending my coastal excursion. However, as you probably gathered by now, that is apparently not the case! Touring the town this morning with my classmate, Lara, who was assigned to stay in this village with me, I was shocked to walk past not one but TWO internet cafes! Apparently, the power of technology and the Internet reaches even into tiny impoverished pueblos in rural Ecuador!

We flew to Guayaquil Wednesday morning, bright and early, from the airport in Quito. The plane ride was barely half an hour, which was amazing, and we emerged from the airport into the hot, humid air and blinding sunlight of Guayaquil! It was kind of disconcerting, after being in the rainy, freezing Sierra for so long, like suddenly emerging from a rather dismal Spring into a blazing summer. As we rode through the city on our bus to our hostal, I was reminded of Miami (indeed the city looks and feels a great deal like Miami), I was reminded of North Carolina in the summertime (though even NC is not this humid), and even the Inner Harbor in Baltimore (after seeing all the ships tethered to the boardwalk--and I mean big, old-fashioned ones with sails). All of us immediately loved it and wondered why we could not spend more than a mere day here!

We dropped our things off at our hostal, Iguanazú, and spent about an hour unwinding and playing in the pool there. It was a beautiful hostal (and like everything in Ecuador, was an amazing deal at $15/night!), perched on a hill overlooking all of Guayaquil. I so wish we could have stayed longer!

After an hour or so, we all piled back on the bus and drove down to the Maricón (boardwalk). Now this area used to be very dangerous, where pickpockets and thieves LOVED to hang out, but apparently the mayor of Guayaquil has done wonders of the city in recent years, including using a LOT of money to refurbish the boardwalk area completely. We ate lunch at a restaurant on a section of it that has been constructed to resemble a giant ship, which was cool, overlooking the huge river that leads to the sea.

After lunch, we divided into groups and strolled down the boardwalk, admiring the water and all the sights. There are AMAZING gardens lining the boardwalk--apparently, it was constructed AROUND the giant, old trees there, which makes it incredibly gorgeous and mercifully shady! There were also statues of famous figures in Ecuadorean history, benches where people lounged, and tons of playgrounds throughout where kids ran and shrieked joyously.

When we arrived at the end of the boardwalk, we found ourselves at a museum (also newly refurbished), where we looked at some amazing contemporary Ecuadorean art by a guy named Villafuerte and some Pre-Colombian art, as well. All in all, very cool and a welcome break from the intense heat outside.

After the museum, we took our bus to a small, square park in the middle of the city which, although it has another name, is basically known to all as the "Iguana Park" because the iguanas (original inhabitants of this area) roam around just about as normally as squirrels do in the US. It was INCREDIBLE--iguanas everywhere and so many that you kind of did not even realize you were seeing them because they were literally strewn across every tree branch and every bush! There were HUGE ones, like dinosaurs, with spines and huge, long tails, probably almost six feet in length, and then baby ones as well, skittering up tree trunks in a flash of bright green. And as they are pretty accustomed to people, they just sort of sat there and looked at us as we pet them tentatively. Perhaps my favorite thing thus far this semester!

After the iguana park, we went back to the hostal to change, and then were dropped off on a street lined with restuarants to go have dinner. Since we have all been having Ecuadorean food every day for every meal, more or less, a group of us decided on a little Italian restaurant. We were the only customers and the owner and waitress happily pulled a bunch of tables together for all of us. It was really funny, because as they were taking our orders, I at first thought they were speaking to us in Italian--only after a minute for my ear to adjust did I realize they were just speaking Spanish with a very STRONG Italian accent. Once they took our orders, we watched as they literally made all our food from scratch in front of us--from the pizza, dough and all, to the pasta to the sauce. And it was INCREDIBLE. Eventually, a young Italian-Ecuadorean guy joined us. He spoke English fluently, but with a mix of an Italian and British accent because he learned his English at a British school here. Quite an international experience just talking to him.

The next day, we all piled in the bus after breakfast and took a driving tour through Guayaquil. Now, I have to say, I have mentioned before the strange looks and stares we get as we drive anywhere here in our big old bus full of gringos. However, Guayaquil is not a tourist town whatsoever, so not only were we probably the only gringos there but we were also definitely the only gringos cruising around in a big, conspicuous bus (as my friend Kari once kind of sang under her breath, I think at the wedding we attended, "I feel conspicuously white..."). And while the stares we receive elsewhere are usually kind of passively curious, these reactions were MUCH stronger. People waved, people stared, people glared, and some immediately began talking animatedly and gesturing when they saw us. And walking around, we got a lot more of the reactions we were warned about by Lenore and Faba at the beginning of the semester (lots of men yelling, "I love you" in faltering English and whistling). A very interesting and at times uncomfortable experience, to be sure.

We eventually reached the outskirts of Guayaquil, where the suburbios are. Now, these are NOT like the suburbs of the US at all--suburbios here are the shacks and lean-tos built by incredibly impoverished people squatting on the land around the city. Eventually, the government might recognize them and put in basic sanitation and stuff. MAYBE. It was a very stark contrast--tiny shacks built from sheets of plastic and metal and wood, surrounded by garbage and appearing very close to falling in the river. I looked at them and I think we all thought, "Oh shit--that´s like what we will be living in the next five days."

We drove for a while in the bus, through winding roads that cut through rolling hills covered in tall, waving grasses. Finally, we came around a bend and there, to our left, was the Pacific Ocean in clear aquamarine blue! We stopped along the road at a tiny restaurant for lunch, then continued on to our villages. The way it worked was we had been assigned in pairs to different villages all up the coast. We would drive and, village by village, dump each pair out along the way with the name of their community and family and the pair had to find their way to their house. Given that each community is incredibly small and has MAYBE 400 people at most, you can ask anyone who your family is and they can point you toward their house.

My partner, Lara, and I were assigned to Manglaralto, which is one of the last communities, and were dumped out in the heat and sun with our bags after a quick kiss on the cheek and a "¡Buen suerte!" from Lenore and Faba. We walked no more than a block or so from where we were dropped off and, after asking some people, were directed to a small, three-floor hotel where our family apparently lived and worked. We met our host brother, Patterson, first, who was out front working on his car. Then we met Nora, our host mother, who I cannot for the life of me understand most of the time (but she is incredibly nice nonetheless). We pretty much had our pick of the rooms in the hotel, as there was no one staying there at the time. We picked a room on the second floor, in hopes of a breeze at night, and left our things there.

Pretty soon after we arrived, Patterson invited us to a meeting of representatives from all the surrounding communities, including Manglaralto, as well as any citizens who wanted to attend. That was an experience! We sat in an impossibly hot room for about two and a half hours while people made impassioned speeches about their desire for a change in the respresenation system for the communities and their desire to create development and more jobs, as many people here are unemployed. Apparently, the women there and some of the men wanted to change the respresentation system so each village had one man and one woman rep. Right now, the reps from all the communities are all men.

As I watched it all happen, though, I could not help but think that this is why direct representation and participation democracy does not work very well. Anyone there could (and did) speak--thus, it was a lot of people in a room shouting at one another and not really making any real decisions or progress. Eventually, it degenerated into a bunch of people talking over one another and yelling, so they scheduled a meeting for the following week and that was that.

After the meeting, we returned to the hotel, where Nora had prepared a merienda for us. Now, I had some apprehensions about the food. Being poorer and not too familiar with strange gringo stomachs, I was very afraid of the food. Lara is vegetarian and, as a precaution, I told our family that I was vegetarian as well (also just to make things easier). Well, as soon as we got our food, I knew there was nothing to worry about. Besides the fact that we had rice, chifles (green platanos mashed, fried, and mashed again and fried again), menestra (lentils), and a little tuna, we each got a plate of fresh veggies, which could have been a problem until I tasted them and immediately recognized the strong, slightly lemony flavor of antiseptic often used on fresh foods before eaten here to clean them. They had been just about soaked in it! Immediately, I knew that there was nothing to worry about.

After dinner, we talked with Patterson for a long time--about his hopes for the future, the community, about why he supports Correa. And finally, exhausted, Lara and I went up to our room...only to realize that we then had the very lengthy process of filling in our work journals for the day ahead of us! We each changed into our pajamas and climbed under our bed nets and set to work, writing about everything that happened that day. However, since we had to have the light on to do this, many rather large insects kept flying in from the outside and then fluttering all over our rooms. On more than one occasion, I looked up at the net around me and uttered, "I love my bed net..." Lara, for her part, loved hers perhaps even more than me, since we saw a rather cute but very fast lizard skitter across the wall right by her bed.

Finally, at around 2Am, I finished journaling and curled up into sweat-filled, hot, yet exhausted slumber (I do not know how we can be so near the beach and so totally without even a hint of a breeze!).

Today, Lara and I strolled around town, getting an idea of the layout and talking to people along the way. We are here until Monday, when we will take a bus to the Alandaluz Lodge in the north where Faba and Lenore will be waiting for us. Wednesday, we drive to Manta and head back to Quito!

Until later, ciao!

-Alex