Today is Sunday, and we are taking a day of rest. It is market day, though, so we went and bought veggies and fruit for the coming week. Also stopped in at our nearby Super Mercado for some dish soap and my Chilean wine-in-box. In general, there are high taxes on things that are deemed “luxuries” such as high-end hotel rooms, alcohol, electronics, and airline tickets. But we found this wine and think it is pretty good, and it is only $6 for the box which lasts several days. In the plaza near the market there was a family of indigenous Ecuadoreans who were playing and singing. The group consisted of a father and his two sons. The daughter was working the crowd selling CD’s for $2. Mom was doing the off-stage work and watching the baby. They were great and I have posted a video on You Tube so you can see a future Latino rock star. Watched the Open Championship and were thrilled to see Ernie win another major. He is so gracious and easy to like. Tiger had a tough day, but held it together admirably.
On Friday, I almost wanted to just stay home, but Ron said that if we didn’t go back to Paguche and climb up to the top of the falls I would definitely regret it. So I packed my collapsible cane and off we went. This time we took the bus to Otavalo and then asked where we could get a bus to Paguche. It was just across the street from the big bus station, and we only had to wait about 10 minutes. The bus dropped us off right at the gate to the falls. Since we had been there before we knew where we were going. The first time we went we were surprised that so few people were there. Well, not today! There were at least four school buses and the place was jumping with hundreds of kids. We found the path going up and I got my cane ready. It was about a 200 foot climb to the top, and I made it. Some great pictures from up there. By the time we started down, all the kids were starting up. They were so cute, though. They all said “buenas Dias” or “hello.”. One young man stopped us and asked where we were from and said “Welcome to my country.” I doubt if American kids would do that.
We walked down the road to the bus stop and waited for a bus to come by. Soon enough one came toward us. I asked the driver if he was going to Otavalo and he said “Si, si.” when we arrived at the bus terminal Ron whipped out his little Otavalo map and we headed for the main square. We thought there would be restaurants around the square. There usually are, but not this time. We had to walk up and down a few streets before we found a good place. After a very nice lunch topped off with fresh strawberries and cream, we set off to find the museum of the weavers.
Of all the things we have seen and done in Ecuador, this may have been the most enjoyable. First, the entrance did not look like a museum, it looked like a restaurant or cafe. Off to the far right of the path was a small door that said “Museo.”I opened the door but it looked like a storeroom or something. I ducked back out and I guess I must have looked puzzled because the woman outside waved me on and nodded vigorously saying “Si, Si.”We ventured on and crossed a courtyard to another old, rickety door. When we opened that one it was obvious that this large room contained old artifacts having to do with wool, spinning, and weaving. Before we could get our bearings an old indigenous man came in. He started talking to us, but soon realized that we spoke only “poco Espanol.” He was very considerate and patient. He spoke slowly and watched us carefully to see if we were getting was he was telling us. He explained how the sheep are sheared, then the wool is washed. He sat down and took a handful of wool and demonstrated the carding process. After he had the wool carded and rolled into a long strand, he went over to the spinning wheel and spun it into yarn. We went all around the room, from station to station with him telling us what was done at each stage. I shot video of him at several spots. Finally he showed us a magazine with a photo of his son who is a professor of neuroscience in California. Another son was shown shaking hands with Fidel when he was in Ecuador, but we didn’t get what this sons occupation is. He was obviously very proud of them. Before we left, he led us over to a framed certificate, embellished with gold, and displaying a medal on a ribbon. He made it clear that he was awarded the medal, but we don’t know for what. We made a contribution to the museum, or to Señor Maldonado, and left, feeling that we had experienced a truly special treat.
On Thursday we decided to go back to Chachimbiro for a massage and the thermal pools. It is a trek to get there, though. First is a 45 minute bus to Ibarra, then a 30 minute bus to Urququi, then a $6.00 taxi ride up to Sacre Aqua. But this time we found where to go to pay for a massage, and only had to wait a few minutes for my therapist to be ready. She told me to take my suit off down to the waist and lie on the table face down. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I could tell she was using oil or something. Then she used hand gestures to indicate I should turn over. Well, I am accustomed to the very modest ways of Massage Envy, not the customs of a country where women just pull up their blouses and nurse their babies anywhere, no matter how many people are around. This time there was no sheet at all. It was strange, but when in Rome or in Ecuador, you just go with it. I just kept my eyes closed, and she finished the massage with my face. When she told me to get up, I opened my eyes and saw that I was covered in a reddish-yellow mud. she told me to sit in the sun for 10 minutes and then go rinse off in the shower. Ron took pictures, and after I was no longer brown we went into the jacuzzi.
We spent several hours soaking in the various pools, had our lunch that we had prepared, then left to wait for the bus back to Ibarra. Just down the road that leads to the place where the buses park were a couple of little stores and a concrete bench to sit on. We parked ourselves there with our bags. Soon two little girls came walking up and talked to an older girl, probably their sister, who seemed to be watching the shop and also watching a baby who was strapped into a tricycle/stroller gizmo. One of the little girls came over to me and pointed to my camera. I took her picture and showed it to her. Her eyes lit up and she started pointing to her sisters, so I framed the shot, then took her hand and put her finger on the button and pushed it down. Then showed her the picture. We yelled “you did it!” She was delighted.
We took pictures of all of them and she was practically in my lap by that time. We told them we had to go to the bus, so said goodbye. However, when we got to the bus he wasn’t ready to go yet so we had to wait some more. Sure enough, here they came again. This time they had some little packets of powdered candy. Looked like Kool-Aid. The more friendly of the girls grabbed my hand, turned it palm up and poured some in my palm. God, it was awful tasting stuff, bur I didn’t let her see me toss it on the ground. In a few minutes, she ran back and gave me another portion. Ron remembered that we had some candy in our bag, so I got that out and gave it to them. Now we were friends forever. When the bus started up, they both shouted “Ciao, ciao,” and we blew kisses to them. Great moment!
We have been home for two days now, and our experience in Ecuador is beginning to be processed in our brains. My very first thought as we drove home from the airport was how beautiful the United States is. The roads, the landscaping, the homes we pass, even the shopping centers – they all looked lovely after the concrete walls and concrete houses we saw in Ecuador. When I drove to Sarah’s house the next morning to pick up the kids, I realized that every family that lived in one of the houses in Seville lives in a house that only the richest families in Ecuador have.
However, I truly missed the wonderful markets in Ecuador when I went grocery shopping today. Pineapples were $1.00 for three in Cotacachi. In Queen Creek I paid $3.99 for one! Bananas were 79 cents a pound here; there they were 5 cents each. But I could buy everything I needed at one store rather than going to several different shops.
It will take a bit longer to decide whether the lack of government interference in people’s lives in Ecuador works better than the overwhelming intrusion of the government into every facet of our lives here. It is pretty clear that when people are spending so much of their time just providing for the necessary basics for their families they don’t have time to worry about a lot of other things. They also don’t have time for leisure activities. We never saw a single movie theater in our entire time in Ecuador. Nor did we see any professional baseball stadiums, basketball arenas, or football stadiums. I am sure there are soccer stadiums somewhere, but probably only in the largest cities.
My daughter, Nancy, and her husband, Mike, gave me a trip to China for my 70th birthday. Wow! What an amazing thing to do. Of course, someone had to go with me, so Nancy volunteered. In spite of her concern about not being able to sleep because of my snoring, she signed us up for a 10-day trip to Shanghai, Xi’an, and Beijing with Friendly Planet. We left the night of March 26th and returned on April 5th. I have traveled quite a bit, but this was by far the most relaxed and educational trip ever. Being with this tour and its excellent staff, we felt safe and secure, and the itinerary covered so much that we never would have seen otherwise.
One of the first impressions we had was that a lot of the things we had been told about China were just not true. We expected the cities to be so smoggy that possibly we would be issued masks by the tour guides. As you can see by the photos, that is simply not true. It was cold and windy some days, but no matter where we went, there was little if no smog.
Another concern had been that everywhere we went there would be a lot of second-hand smoke. We expected the Chinese to be smoking everywhere – in elevators, in restaurants, in parks. Not true. Of course, there are a lot of Chinese who do smoke, but not in public. The rickshaw drivers smoked while waiting for customers, and our bus driver smoked while he waited for us to return to the bus. But, in general, we did not have any problem with cigarette smoke.
We arrived in Beijing’s modern international airport with welcoming shops and restaurants. The signs were all in Chinese and English, so we had no problem finding our gate, the restrooms, or a beverage. There were no pictures of Chairman Mao, although all the souvenir shops sold copies of his “Little Red Book.” We did not stay in Beijing at this time, but caught a plane to Shanghai to begin our tour.
Shanghai was a city of hi-rises. Coming in over the city, it looked like Alex had been playing with his legos, just building tower after tower and he would never run out of blocks. I cannot imagine that there is enough concrete in the world to build all those buildings. Of course, the skyline is what you always see, with that huge onion-topped tower – the Oriental Pearl Tower – dominating everything. Nancy and I opted out of the tour of the city on the last day we were there, preferring to explore on our own. Unfortunately, it poured rain the whole day, we couldn’t get a taxi to take us back to the hotel, and we got soaked and exhausted. But, the rain prevented the people on the tour from seeing anything from the Pearl Tower, so we didn’t miss anything!
During the Shanghai portion of the tour we went to Suzhou, the silk capital of China. Originally the beginning of the silk road, Suzhou is a lovely little town of about 4 million. (4 million is a small city in China!) We toured the silk factory, had a tour of the city’s canal in a quaint little boat, and were treated to a dumpling dinner and a performance by talented dancers and musicians. We went to the Embroidery Institute and saw an art form I had never seen before. Of course we all know what embroidery is, but until you see the skill demonstrated by the Masters at the Institute, you have no idea. First of all, the stitches are done in fine, fine silk threads and not one of us could imagine how small the needle must be and how in the dickens one threads such a needle. Here is a photo of one of the pieces that looks like a photograph itself.
Next post will be Xi’an, the site of the Terra Cotta Warriors.
Our next stop on the tour was Xi’an where in 1974, a farmer digging a well discovered some pottery shards. Excavation began and altogether over 7,000 pottery soldiers, horses, chariots, and even weapons have been unearthed from these pits. Many have been restored, but there is still a lot of work to do to uncover the entire army built by Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. The figures were buried with the emperor in 210–209 BC and their purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife, and to make sure that he had people to rule over.
Nancy and I particularly enjoyed walking along the city wall, the largest intact city wall in the world. Below the wall, the moat around the old city is still pleasant to walk along. Had it not been late in the afternoon, we would have rented bikes and biked around the old city, all 9 miles of the wall. Maybe next time.
An optional tour was a dumpling dinner and Tang Dynasty show, one of the most popular entertainments in Xi’an. It was featured on Samantha Brown’s tour of China on the Travel Channel. The dumplings were delicious and we must have had over a dozen varieties – the ones shaped like chickens contained chicken, the ones that looked like little fish, were made with fish, of course. One variety was very, very spicy hot, and Nancy and one other member of our group ate all the ones given to our table – they were too hot for everyone else! The show was phenomenal. I loved the costumes and the scenery. The performers were excellent. Here are two photos:
Xi’an was our favorite city. They say it’s small because it only has 8 million people.
Last stop, Beijing, known in my childhood as Peking. The name for the city has changed, but not the name for the famous dish, Peking Duck. I loved Beijing. It is like other international cities – lots of fabulous shopping, great museums, crazy traffic, a sense that life is moving forward. Friendly Planet had a lot planned for us to see, and since Sam, our guide, lives in Beijing, he was also our local guide.
One of our first stops was the Forbidden City, with its 9,999 rooms. When we returned home, I watched “The Last Emperor,” the story of Pu Li, the last emperor to live in the Forbidden City. The story made the Forbidden City come alive for me, since when we saw it, the only people inhabiting the city were tourists – mostly Chinese. If I were to go back, I would like to have time to sign up for a tour with a guide that would show me more than we were able to explore in our short visit. I am looking for a video tour of the Forbidden City, so if anyone comes across one, let me know.
Also that day we saw Tian’an Men Square, the site of Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum. His embalmed body is on display mornings and afternoons, but we did not have time to go through the line waiting to pay their respects. What I did not expect was the size of the square. We were supposed to walk from one end of the square to the focal point, the Gate of Heavenly Peace where the portrait of Mao hangs and have our group portrait taken. Some of the wussy members of our group refused to walk that distance because of the cold and the wind whipping across the expanse of the square. Sam quickly adjusted to the desires of the group and arranged for our picture to be made in front of the Hall of the People, only halfway across the square. This was the only time that there was any indication that we were in a communist country. Sam had instructed us not to have conversations about the 1989 Massacre. He said there were undercover police in the square and we could find ourselves in trouble if they overheard us talking about something that, officially, never happened. The government’s position is that the tragedy of the student demonstrations was simply a media event. That the press “made it all up.”
In his book, Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler describes his visit to Tian’An Men Square.
“After a while, I began to notice that some people in the crowd didn’t look like tourists. They were men, usually in their thirties and forties, and many of them had crew cuts. They were not well dressed: worn trousers, cheap windbreakers. They did not look educated. They did not look like they were enjoying themselves – they weren’t smiling, or taking pictures, or buying souvenirs. They loitered and lingered; they lurked and looked. They dawdled. Sometimes, a man would stand directly behind a group of talking tourists, as if trying to overhear their conversation. Periodically, one of the crew-cut men sauntered over to another crew-cut man, said something, and then sauntered away. Several held rolled up newspapers. I saw one man raise his newspaper, hold it next to his face, and speak to it. Curious, I walked past and took a furtive look. Inside the rolled paper, I caught a glimpse of black plastic – walkie-talkie.” (p. 59)
The following day we went to Badaling, 44 miles northwest of Beijing, to view the Great Wall. Compare the photo from my climb on the wall to other pictures you’ve seen in magazines and brochures. They generally show two or four people walking some distance in front of the camera. That is not what I saw.
While in Beijing we saw a Jade Factory and a Pearl Factory, both of which were interesting because, I very rarely, if ever, have seen any product being made in the U.S. What about you? Have you visited factories in your hometown or on any of your travels to see how different products are made? That is something we need to institute in our country and let people be proud of things that are “made in America.”
Other sites included in our tour of Beijing were the Ming Tombs and the Temple of Heaven. There is so much history in China, a four-year degree would barely enable you to learn about all that we saw. A favorite excursion was the Hutong tour via rickshaws. Though Beijing is a modern city, a visit to the alleyways shows the charm of old Beijing. The hutongs, created by the walls of courtyard houses, were the residences of officials and the well-to-do, although now most are state-owned. Our rickshaws wove in and out of narrow streets, revealing shops of every description, restaurants, bars, and houses. Suddenly we came upon an open space beside a lake where people were walking their children and their dogs, cruising in paddle boats, and enjoying an ice cream on this leisurely afternoon. I could have stayed the whole day there just soaking up the feeling of actually being in the middle of a place I’ve dreamed about since I was a child and watched my mother read Pearl S. Buck’s books about China. She looked so enraptured, I wanted to feel that way.
The grounds around the Temple of Heaven are a gathering place for people to exercise, to play mahjong or other games, and to just hang out with their friends. I shot a video of people line dancing and one of several men passing a ball around with a racquet, never letting the ball leave their racquet until they gracefully tossed it to their partner. There were, again, so many people gathered in one place we felt a bit uneasy. Americans are simply not accustomed to so many bodies sharing the same space. But it made me so happy to see all these people smiling, having a good time, spending time with friends outside in the sunshine. I wish we did more of that sort of thing in our country. Many of our gatherings, like mornings in the park, are focused on the children, not on the adults.
Friendly Planet saved the best for last; we visited a village just outside Beijing and had dinner with a host family. We learned much about the history of the village from our delightful tour guide, who lives there, and had a tai chi lesson from a master. He was so beautiful to watch. It must take years and years to master those movements. This village is known for its hand-carved furniture and we were treated to a tour of a working shop. Then we went to the home of our hosts for the best meal we had on the entire trip. The wife taught us how to make dumplings, but, of course, she made 99% of them since we were so slow! There were many other dishes and the husband did most of the cooking. They were so friendly and gracious – they truly made us feel like honored guests.
I hope I have another opportunity to visit China. We saw only a small percentage of the country – there is a lot more to see and learn.
There are photographs from our trip on my flickr site: santanartist
Travel Like a Scotsman 