Ecuador Day 1: Arrival

The trip itself was all a blur of moments over procedures.

A flight to South Korea, bouts with spicy kimchi plates, cat naps interrupted by emergency landing procedure reminders, day dreaming scenarios of what people would actually do in an emergency, sips of hot European coffee at a standing room bar punctuated by week old email responses and smiles from the Northlander barista, traveling “back” through relative time they say is easier.

I didn’t sleep. But to be fair, I had been working on that talent for the two days leading up to this trip, what with friends wishing me good bye and the combination of work and a school party, I felt fully prepared to take on the thirty-six hour commute to South America. I thought that if I wore myself out that I would sleep right through the discomfort of sitting down for ten hours at a time. But I didn’t sleep.

As it is, our plane arrived ahead of schedule. Seinfeld used to have a joke about arriving early by plane, that if the pilot has the power to push the jet and make it before schedule time, then why doesn’t it happen all the time – after all, it’s not like there are police handing out speeding tickets up there.

The security guards must have mistaken me somehow since when we landed and I collected my luggage off the carousel, they waved me through security. No big line, no reason why I should have been waived through, yet off I was waved to cut around the other slightly more obvious tourist and straight to the awaiting families and limo drivers, both holding up signs with names on them.

Little Emily was the first to see me, she ran forward with sign in hand across the airport hallway to where I had only just sat down to check my messages. She is my oldest youngest sister at nine-years old. Walking behind her came my only older sister, the Gabster.

We took quick taxi ride through the Ecuadorian countryside, humongous Ecuadorian flags of the nation and its capital directed the path out from the airport and into the tamed jungle for the small string of cars and aligning trees. The countryside itself is beautiful. Ritch green trees, flocks of wild birds, curvy mountains that make up the horizon, unfamiliar flora, it all looks so designed in arrangement. The country side is diverse as the greenest Japanese forest and yet not as littered with half drunken beer bottles and the ashes of burnt trash as Cambodia is.


Here sit Emily, Gabi, and I making our way through the country side and up the mountains. They tell me our cabin is high above a valley and from the top, we can look down like kings. I am happy to stay local and in the country side, I've seen what "modernization" does to capital cities and I fear that the Quito of yesteryear is littered with Forever 21's and Nike Pro shops about. But as we climb, I don't worry, I can smell the air and it doesn't smell of chicken nuggets.

Home is a cabin within a small residential area of about thirty or so homes, about a ten minute bus ride from the nearest town. We have a dog named Simba (can you guess that the kids named him?) and huge yard, enough room in the gust house to host another family and their three kids. Physically, the hand-made walls which are white with plaster and the exposed dark brown wooden beams that vertically support the house from room to room, and horizontally above our heads to support the second floor and roof, imbue the home immediately with signposts screaming pueblo design.

Home for now. Ahhh, it will have to do. 


Master of the house, Simba. It's so warming to see my family and break bread with them, so tell and listen to stories and pass jokes. Its something different though, something incomparable, to spending time with dogs. I know Simba picked up on my fidelity with canines because he is still following me around more than my little siblings, and we have communicate through barks and groans in the yard under the avocado tree.

And so by the time all the welcomes, how are you’s, and stories passed over the living room coffee table, the food that was prepared for the dinner meal since before my arrival was cold, and moon light beamed thought the wooden framed windows. There are 9 of us total, I slept that night better than I had all winter.

Love,
-A

The first sunset for me overlooking the cement fence in our yard, overlooking the valley and the mountains in the dark.