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..3 masses and a whole load of theatrics

Holy week is a big deal here. The saints are taken out, dressed and paraded round the streets in daytime and candlelit rituals. The church in Perucho looks more beautiful than ever.

I have the opportunity to see holy week through the eyes of an Ecuadorian tourist as Michael is guiding some local tours. We first get a tour round the church and up the bell tower where one particularly vocal member of the group who’s been helping Michael remember all the facts, announces ‘80% of my friends are lesbians”. Ok, perhaps I came in late on that conversation?!

We descend in small buses out of Perucho, into the pitch dark, climbing gradually down the mountain on a bumpy track to a beautiful hosteria. We sit down for traditional Holy Week fanesca and follow it by a good dose of ghost stories told by Michael’s cousin the owner of the hosteria. A good old Ecuadorian favourite.. As we sit in the semi darkness, he brings us under his spell. He has us captivated. The very place where we have been eating, there have been manifestations experienced by all of the family for years. The area around us is uninhabited and centuries of local people have been scared away by demons, ghosts and apparitions of the devil as a goat.

The tour takes us back to Perucho, to sit in the mass. The church is packed and somebody has been so kind as to save me a seat on the front row. Yesterday the priest didn’t turn up, today he has made a real effort. He emerges from the back of the church, his clergy in tow, his whites pressed and his hands clasped. It does not occur to me until we are over and hour and a half through the service when he has taken centre stage to sing a self composed song, that he is the spitting image of Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run. After this I notice the row behind me have left. The priest is sweating profusely, he is in full swing. I think he’s been watching too many gospel channels on cable. Michael gives us a nod that signals the get out of jail free card and we leave. Outside are milling many people, the huge doors of the church are open and many people come and go. The mass is a long one and only the dedicated last.

Friday we head to an area to the South of Quito. We are here to watch the Easter Play (more technical name to follow). It’s an amazing production. I am staggered by the scale, participation and the costumes. The ‘stage’ is marked out by branches and the audience surrounds 360 degrees. There must be over 100 characters. The immaculately dressed Roman centurions are key and later after they file through town they take position at the head of each pew in a very packed church. As the different scenes takes place, the dramatisation moves through La Merced, the characters and followers (hundreds) and the microphones are plugged into mobile generator speaker systems least the crowd miss a word. Jesus carries his cross over a mile to the church. Uniquely here in La Merced they also have people dressed with turbantes, huge black and white 5 metre tall hats, the bearers supported by friends and helped under telephone wires and the like. The parade is then swarmed by naughty demons with black gothic boots with spars, long wigs and fantastically elaborate masks. Their role is to play havoc, they have no law, until it is announced the next day that Jesus has risen. They really take to their roles, scaring children and puling at women’s skirts.

All the characters congregate in the church (save the demons). The front part of the church has been completely covered by a wall constructed out of branches and on this placed Jesus on the cross. The small church is brimming with people. The service is the called seven words but it is long, about 3 hours with different speakers, songs and videos presentations and considerably more than seven words. It’s all a little much now that I can’t help but understand nor shut myself off. I leave for outside with the constant stream of people entering and leaving. At 2.30pm the demons arrive again in swarms and enter the church parading up and down making as much noise and disruption as possible. Then I notice smoke coming from the top of the wall of leaves, then fireworks start spraying from the front of the church, there is pandemonium with the noise of the demons. At 3pm every year there is a thunderstorm and precisely on queue there is a torrential downpour. The dark clouds let rip and pound on the tin roof. I can safely say I’ve never seen anything like it!

..a picture postcard from Perucho..

The night is fresh but not cold. We’re sitting outside the old wooden church in Perucho. After the bell rang at five thirty and we hurry down the street, an hour and a half passes sitting in mass, waiting to take photos for the tours the following day and observing from the side wings the small congregation of old rugged faces, hats removed placed on pews, warmed by dusty coloured ponchos. The church is wooden and the roof beams slope at a gentle angle making the space seem very communal. The church is surrounded by elaborate figures of saints. The altar is spectacular and it’s from here that most of the light emanates from the church. The service is long and children wander in and out and I’m left with no doubt that the dog by the altar has fleas. He is in some discomfort wriggling and twisting and turning to try and scratch every part, ending up with his paws wrapped over his nose, scratching scratching.

Eventually I get to take some photographs of the saints and we climb the wooden steps to the bell tower. It’s dark, the light has faded, I need to come back to take photos tomorrow. As we leave the church we go to shake hands with some folk Michael knows. They are in no hurry, there is no urgency in their grip. We stand and talk and I listen to Micheal and the older people chat; firstly locating me in their filed of experience with other foreigners they’ve known, then reminiscing and singing old songs. I like people who know how to talk to people. This village is very small and people are friendly.

It’s dark now and the orange glow of the plaza illuminates the front of the church. High up above in the night sky unusually I see the lights of an aeroplane bound surely for Quito. My eyes pass back down to the old people singing. Their features captured frame by frame. In front of me the portrait of a man in his 60’s, a face worn with years of life, but his hair neat, combed and gently gelled in place. The older lady in track suit bottoms and a cardigan, her figure long disappeared in order of importance. Both are singing and filling each other in on words that have disappeared with the years. I am atent but unable to join in the singing and my eyes glance back up to the plane. I think of how many times I’ve been in a plane at night flying over remote tiny pueblos like this one, the little conversations on street corners and millions of individuals lives going on all at the same time.

… and next we have Niki Taigel being broadcast live across Quito…

“So tell me”, the host says “about your experience volunteering with Michael’.

I see the red sign illuminated on the desk in front of me ‘ON AIR”. There’s myself, Michael and the interviewer sat around a large semicircular desk with four mounted microphones. We can see through to the other studio where the host is waiting patiently for my reply. I find that I am not too nervous. Perhaps it is that I have not thought too much about the interview, convincing myself they’d only really ask Michael questions, or that no-one I know would be listening, or perhaps because it’s not my language. But someone clearly believes I can do this. I find words and I speak. I tell it like it is.

Staying with Michael has been incredible. It’s been potluck. I’ve been helping out wherever. It’s not possible to predict what will come up, things don’t work like that. I’d never have guessed I’d have sold fruit and vegetables on a market, harvested beans on the side of a mountain, pollinated fruit trees, painted ceramics or give a radio interview. I can only say that the experience has been a positive one. I understand the relationship between peoplei the city and countryside and so many more things beside. Most of all it’s been great to share time with someone who is such a positive force, has so many ideas and the energy to realize them.

I have come with Michael to Radio Vision, Quito’s largest radio station perched on the top edge of the city, high up with a view over its audience. He has organised the interview to raise the profile of the Organic Market. The city authorities although fine with the idea to begin with, now want a piece of the cake or to close the market.

“So what have I learnt at the market”, the host asks me “I imagine you had lots of admirers”… oh Lord I think, and I try to erase the image of the guy who came up three times just to buy one (albeit rather huge) avocado. “Not at all”, I laugh in an over the top and extended manner hoping the question will go away.

I can only tell it like it is, I try to get some serious points in. The market is a great place. It is refreshing to meet so many likeminded people, to see variety and healthy food options, to see producers and consumers in dialogue and relationships established between producers. To see that organic food can be bought by all. Michael is of course a better speaker than I am and does an excellent job of getting the main points in, although he is cut short at the end with still more to say. The host has just had an email through.. an admirer would like my contact.. am I single?!

I remember, so this is radio and I’m in Ecuador and it’s a show and this is the way it goes.. And I continue the interview. And it’s good and I’m glad I got to do it and actually it appears I did have 1 listener. One dedicated mother listening via the means of internet radio.. laughing across continents.

..Niki learns about how babies erhmmm... and all that jazz

Michael’s wife is a mid-wife. With an imminent niece or nephew coming onto the scene, it’s natural the topic of pregnancy and birth should come up. And what a fascinating conversation it was.

I’d always wondered how women gave birth in more remote areas. Katia accounts to me that conventional medicine in Ecuador is learning from the way that indigenous women give birth, standing up and squatting pulling down on a sheet rather than lying down. This way there is so much more force that can be naturally drawn upon to help deliver the baby. I’m fascinated by her account that many indigenous women will go off to the river by themselves to give birth, their active lifestyle allowing them to give birth much more quickly and easily, them returning to the village with babe in arms.

My knowledge of childbirth, an impression gained mostly through overly dramatic scenes on TV are those of hospital beds, long drawn out labours, vital medical persons on hand, ante-natal classes teaching you the how to and things to remember. We need to learn how to give birth in the right way. Right?

Oh I was so wrong. But am greatly reassured. It’s all about instinct. We need the least medical intervention possible. With medicine and our health generally we have increasingly become not to trust our ability to know our own bodies. The doctor knows best and health information is given to us in a background of fear inducing headlines. But we know that we know our bodies best and rather than overthinking things we need to trust our instinct. In a world where we are trained out of this, often we need activities to help us let go and tune back in to listening to our bodies – free dancing, salsa, swimming. It’s good to be reminded of this. It makes so much sense.

There’s so much paraphernalia you can buy when you’re having a baby. It’s useful living in Tena and seeing how little you need. The babies are carried I sheets tied around the women’s shoulders like a sling and it occurs to me how little babies cry here. And Katia agrees. Of course it makes sense. If you hardly put a baby down, always carrying it against the warmth of your body, prepared to feed it whenever it needs, it really has al it needs.

Whereas babies used to be whisked away to be cleaned and the cord cut, Katia says they now try to maintain the umbilical cord in place for as long as possible, the baby gaining most directly from the mother in this way and bonding at the same time.

And this is just how it is. The places I go, the things I do, are nothing without the people I meet and talk to. I tell you …it’s the conversations and the people I meet that are priceless. Day after day learning more and figuring (muddling!) my way through. That’s what it’s all about.

..Mucho mejor si es hecho en Ecuador…

From the moment I entered the country, on the luggage carriers at the airport was the propaganda..” Mucho mejor si es hecho en Ecuador’ – ‘much better if it’s made in Ecuador’. And I see this stamp on almost all the food products we have in the house. I’ve been undecided on how I feel about it. Local producing is great right? The government is keen to press it as one of it’s key policies, the reasoning behind it beginning complicated, as I remember the trade laws being fought over when I was last here. Ecuador wants to go it alone and major producers such as Nestle and Coca Cola have their own factories here in order to get round trade restrictions..

And with any policy there are good points and bad points. Quality control on food is not great for products here and the result being that many products that are championed as being Ecuadorian are not as good as those exported to foreign markets. And the imported products are extortionately expensive.

Never more has this policy been so apparent as on this day.

When a girl I met rafting offered to change my opinion of Quito, to show me around and make me like the big smoke, I took the opportunity. Travelling has a way of throwing opportunities at you and when you take them you never know what you gonna get, quoting Forrest Gump there.

Arriving, having gotten very lost, I met V eventually, ready for a weekend of potluck tourist attractions. I had no idea of the line up. We met up with V’s friend who was also hilariously called V, and they both had the same surname.. I tell no lies! We zoomed off in a taxi to get lunch however we first stopped to run an errand. I couldn’t have guessed moments later I would end up in Quito largest (and quietest!) sex shop. Apparently we were here because V2 needed V1’s advice on buying a vibrator. Oh Good Lord, I thought!

I hovered about the underwear and nightwear section trying to keep my eyes of all the incriminating items around me. The one shop assistant focussing on the two V’s and the other took to popping up wherever I was and showing me (and explaining!) various items of clothing that were very small, for instance a bra that wasn’t really a bra at all and a thong that was less than a thong, if that’s actually possible. Wherever I looked she pounced. Oh heavens.. I just glanced at the sexy uniform section… here we go! I had to um and ah a lot whilst wanting to burst out laughing… it was a bite the side of my mouth moment…do I really look the type to wander around with a red PVC bodice and a feather duster and edible underpants?! Do I? Apparently so. Perhaps it’s the tan. I also do not have the incredible amount of money it would take to buy these tiny pants.

Exiting the shop after what seemed an eternal lifetime. V2 proudly showed me her new purchase. $126.00 worth! ‘How much I ask!!! I am reliably informed that these cost a fraction of this in the UK/US. ‘It’s because it’s imported’ - ‘Mucho mejor si es hecho en Ecuador’. But that’s the deal –there are no Ecuadorian producers of sex shop items. These guys have got the monopoly. It pays to think sexy in Ecuador… but I’m just thinking pure thoughts!

…finding home in an unexpected place

On our way back from the terraces and harvesting beans, Micheal’s wife Katia drives across and up the other side of the mountain. The roads are steep and very bumpy. We are going to pay a visit to her sister. We come almost to the end of the lane, high up with a staggering view down behind us over the suburbs of Quito… we park and enter the property through a door in a high wall. I am staggered. There are two houses, well one is a house the other, as is the art studio. Both are beautifully constructed, painted white with dark wooden windows with small square panes of glass, stained glass in parts and flowering creepers blanketing the sides. As we enter the hall it opens out into a sitting area raised up and a series of steps down to an open airy kitchen and dining area all with floor to ceiling views down the mountain. Beautiful pictures and objects hang on the wall, every piece of furniture designed but comfortable and the floor tiles spiralling in accordance with the curve of the stairs. The art studio is of a similar appearance but a two story round design with views out from every side. Perfect for an artist.

And the strange thing, I feel instantly at home in this atmosphere. I have spent so much time in Ecuador surrounded by utilitarian design quite happily forgetting how great good design makes you feel. Perhaps it is this or the fantastically warm welcome that Katia’s sister gives me but I feel like I never want to leave this house, and part of me wishes it was mine. It’s strange, the experience of coming across such luxury in a country where I spend most of my time avoiding the issue of wealth. It makes me realise that for me the whole process of reconciling any wealth I have with the world I see around me I find incredibly hard. I seem to want to be in constant denial of having, wanting or needing anything. I seem to want to live on nothing whilst also knowing the reality is different. I’m rather lost in the middle somewhere between wanting to live on very little but knowing that to deny yourself of almost everything you want is perhaps unnecessary and liable to make you unhappy. There must be a happy medium somewhere, but in this country where I am a foreigner and the culture foreign, it’s hard to know my place. Could I as a foreigner, come here and buy land and build a house with all I could afford whilst seeing people around me with so much less. It’s just the same in the UK, there’s a wealth gap, but here this isn’t my culture and I feel the need to tread everso much more carefully. For me the solution isn’t simple. How can I be happy having things when so many have so very little?

..a different side of Quito…

Getting to know Quito has been a grounding experience. I think I have generously adopted the phrase ‘hay de todo’ which I use often at the moment. Put simply ‘there’s something of everything.’ There is poverty but also a lot of relative wealth. In Quito you can pretty much find anything you want. And the same cannot be said about Tena.

My experience of Ecuador is so based on my experience of the culture in Tena. There it is so the norm to have your own business, it comes as second nature and isn’t such a big deal. I like that people are so enterprising, be it out of necessity or not. When you have specific trades, specific places to buy things the value is so much greater than the ‘super’market which sells a homogenous standardized version of everything. Micheal has a large copper pan which he likes to make granola in. It’s his Grandmother’s and is beautifully crafted, indeed priceless. A visitor to the house asked how much it cost., in the tone of asking where he bought it. Even here crafts are beginning to be forgotten as ‘super’ shops and mass production along with an unhealthy does of advertising and consumerism take hold.

An antidote. The organic market in the central park in Quito – the preoccupation an all energy spend in the last few days has been getting things ready for this. Harvesting, washing, polishing, peeling and packing vegetables.

Another early start after being up after peeling beans.. the market was full of people and their products. Beautiful cheese, chocolate, vegetables. It was great to be in a plcace with people who all shared the same values. And fascinating to meet with different people to most I’d meet in Tena. Women with their dogs, some in running tracksuits and oversized sunvisors. People asking what the vegetables were we were selling, how to cook them, where they come from. I assume so much that it’s just me who finds things here foreign – It appears agriculture is also a more foreign concept to many who live in Quito. Spending time in Tena, for me shopping is to go to the market, not the supermarket. When in Quito confronted with a visit to Supermaxi (giant supermarket) I am overwhelmed with the choice but also the prices!

For me what’s interesting about the organic market is that no one is in competition with each other. The prices are agreed and set by the market consensus. And the prices are less than the supermarkets for great quality products. The market is not aimed to exclude people who cannot afford organic products. I’m not sure of the reality of transferring this to the UK but I don’t think organic should be marketed so much as it is in the UK as an exclusive product for a minority who can afford it.

…Ecuadorian bus etiquette.. The dos and don’ts

Quito has a good public transport system. Well at least you can say it’s comprehensive. But like any city at peak time, the public transport system is crammed.

The first weekend I am here, Michael and I take the bus from Perucho to Quito and hit peak time on the buses. I have made the fatal mistake of bringing my large rucksack with me. My heart sinks when I see that we have to get another bus. I enter and am left standing in the aisle unable to take off my bag or turn round. I am wedged. At the next stop I have the opportunity to lower it to the floor. More and more people enter the bus which already only has standing room at least. It however, occurs to me as more people squeeze up against me however will I get off the bus? To observe is to learn. I watch people getting off the bus. The method could be named ‘barging’. I therefore barge through the people that are wedged in the aisle, recklessly with very un-English abandon, one stop in anticipation of getting off the bus. People aren’t happy but it’s common practice.

Someone has still yet to explain to me why people will sit in the seat closest to the aisle first. When you go to get in the seat next to them they do not shift closer to the window, nor do they get up to let you in, they make you squeeze past them. I find this, above so many other petty things, incredibly irritating. Seconded by people blatantly and outrageously queue jumping…ooo it’s makes me mad!!

…Glimpses of another town..

The second day I am here, after dark we set off to San Jose de Minas (about 20km away) to deliver some products for the Saturday market. I am absolutely cream crackered and ready to hit the sack after a day full of harvesting and meetings under mandarin bushes . Unfortunately I am wedged rather awkwardly round the gear stick in the front of a very full cab and sleeping is not an option. Michael and his cousin chatter away. It’s farming chat and I like it. Where one suggests a problem he has had, the other offers suggestions as to how to solve it. The pair are just as excited and involved in conversation as at lunchtime testing different versions of a mandarin syrup.. a new recipe Michael is trying out.

All I can see is darkness and at every bend a steep rock face illuminated by the headlights of the pickup. I imagine I could be in Spain, or a similar Mediterranean country. Its dry, mountainous and we’re winding our way round and up the valleys. But being in South America never really feels like you’re in Europe, my mind is not in Europe, it feels different. Eventually we reach San Jose de Minas, the biggest town close by. Even so at this time of night it’s quiet under the glow of orange street lamps. We pass the central square, and I see the beautiful church on the plaza. We plunge down steep narrow dimly lit lanes and I can glimpse lives through cracks of light in doors and shutters ajar.

Finally at our destination we deliver the goods for the market on Saturday to a friend of Micheal’s who is an art restorer. His workshop is fascinating. Odds and end of everything, glowing under a dim yellow bulb. The art restorer offers me a plastic beaker with a clear liquid. My guess is it’s not water. I rise it to my lips. It’s almost pure alcohol. I’ve learnt. I do the polite thing, I take the tiniest sip, say ‘salud’ and hand it on to Michael. My gaze is preoccupied by the most unusual object .

It is quite simply the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It’s beautifully made and executed. It is a bottle holder made out of a cow’s hoof and lower leg!! The old glass bottle is entirely sewn into the leather of the cow’s foot, with only the rim poking out the top. Long lost, the lid has not been replaced by a Coca Cola lid creating a peculiar juxtaposition of old and new. The proud object stands for itself on the substantially sized hoof.. in a corner of a room with plaster busts, Catholic iconography and leather saddles. I have always wanted a hip flask and this would be fantastic…. But I don’t think somehow it’s for sale!

…Chipotle.. a test in endurance..

Being here is giving me the chance to be creative and I’ve had the opportunity to cook again and it’s something I’ve really missed. Breakfast, lunch and dinner we grab a cauliflower, carrots, some herbs, fruit from the garden and create some great Ecuadorian specialities. In the basic kitchen (of course with the necessary blender!) we prepare some amazing things.

And we make bread and we toast coffee. And I sit down to a cup of real coffee something I have not drunk in months. And I paint ceramics and we make granola and chiplote (sweet chilli) sauce and my hands are on fire for two days. I cut up a shopping bag full of chillies.. safe in the knowledge I have protection.. a mask, goggles and rubber gloves. Only unfortunately the gloves we also use for weeding and with the heat of the sun and my hand profusely sweating inside, the hot chilli is activated. I am convinced for two days that I have an allergic reaction to latex, not a problem I’ve experience before, but we realise after some spot testing and many hours of my hands in bowls of water, that yes, indeed it was the mountain of chilli that was to blame. Still it tastes great, if not a little on the picante side!

…Avocados grow on trees, Niki…

Perucho is clearest seen at day break, the scene looking down the valley usually reveals the clouds on a level with the village but are different minute by minute.

We get up at 6am in Perucho and from the moment I get up till I go to bed I am learning through doing. It’s knackering but great. Every day I face the task of a dancing routine with the biggest cockerel you ever seen. It has talons like a golden eagle and it doesn’t like me. To feed the chickens I have to carefully negotiate my way in, out and around the pen all the positioning the large compost bin between it and me. And then it’s time to fatten up the guinea pigs!

But life on the farm is great and varied. I am helping Michael with whatever needs doing. I’m weeding a lot. It involves getting very covered in soil and I’m finding soil in places in rather unusual places, and muscles that I haven’t worked in a long long time.

Mid morning calls for an impromptu meeting under a mandarin bush.. problem solving at 1800m. And the chance to pick and eat what we fancy from the garden.

This week’s preoccupation is harvesting and preparing for the Sunday market. We are harvesting the avocados, savoury bananas and carrots. I, hilariously, did not realise that avocados grew on trees. Well know I know. And I know that harvesting them involves climbing up trees and balancing precariously whilst trying to hook them and knock them to the ground with a large cane. And beans.

Beans, beans beans. Beans are hard work.

Harvesting beans means climbing to the top of the world first. I tell a lie, first you drive half way to the top of the world in a 4x4 until the car cannot go anymore vertical, then you get out and walk the final part. Harvesting beans is hard work, on the terraces on the side of the mountain it’s hot but I cannot take my jumper off as I am attacked from the ground up by tiny mosquitoes who appear unfussed by the altitude. 4 terraces of beans fills a large sack. A late night session with Michael’s wife and children sees us peeling beans for 4 hours to fill one large bowl! Aaaaaahh! I never want to see another bean again… but they’re very pretty all the varieties mixed together!

I think that Michael is giving me all the hard jobs until I realise when I awake fresh (almost!) the next morning that I have, at least, had the benefit of a good night’s sleep. He has had to get up at 2am to receive his water allowance that will runs down the carefully designed network of channels on the terraces between each row of plants until 3am whereby his neighbour’s turn with the water supply takes over. It’s like this every two weeks and I am start to learn that farming is round the clock, hard work.

.. Welcome to Perucho..

Perucho is all ayAla ayala ayala!! It is here that Micheal is from and in this small community of only a few hundred people, most are closely related. The people we meet in the street, are cousins, aunts and uncles.

The community sits in a corner, nuzzled by a curve in the mountain about two thirds if the way up the valley. The river is far below in a deeply hollowed out ravine. We are high up with views across the valley of a wind-whipped landscape. It used to rain a lot here, but the past 7 months there has been an intense drought and it has barely rained. The landscape is dry, the weather hot and sunny and the nights mild.

The village is small but has a beautiful plaza and one principle street that winds up and round the corner towards San Jose de Minas. On the corner, on the first floor balcony a husky dog patrols. He reminds me I am in cooler parts now. Old earth houses with wooden fronts and shutters, their interiors dark and cool sit side by side with newer ones constructed of concrete, reflective glass and painted in bright colours.

The front of Michael’s house would never give away what was behind. There are floor to ceiling piles of donated books ready for the new library and the walls are dotted with ceramics and years of productivity. It is full of all kinds of seeds in the process of drying and the smell and ambience put me at ease, it smells strangely familiar and reassuringly wholesome.

One morning, sitting out the front of the house, about 5am. We are waiting for a bus and it is dark and silent. A dalmation wanders past and looks at me suspiciously as I am perched on a doorstep. It’s times like this when it’s quiet that you learn a little more. Michael reminisces about when the road was one vehicle wide and there was only one bus a day. Everyone would come out to see what was happening. A real event. To me, Perucho seems a very sleepy place,. However the silence is briefly interrupted by the occasional bus or lorry passing by the front of the house, whereby the windows vibrate in their frames creating an unbelievable racket! I guess it’s not like it used to be and everywhere changes.. people move away to the big city to get jobs.

Time has not stood still here, but it moves more slowly. People have time to sit, to talk. One day when I wasn’t feeling amazing a lady in the square stopped and chatted to me like I was an old friend. -.. it made all of the difference. It felt slightly confusing but rather wonderful too. Afterwards I walked up to the church and I could see through the tall solid wooden doors, a chink of yellow light, when I neared inside the locked church I could see a dark wooden interior and a beautiful altar stretching from floor to ceiling lit with flickering candles. I was intrigued.

The village has several shops, all of which have outside selling a mountain of avocados. Perucho does not lack avocados. The village shops all sell similar things, some more variety than others – one has a rather interesting mix of bumper boxes of pregnancy tests, stationery, floppy disk and avocados.

But my favourite aspect of Perucho is the village speaker. From the plaza’s parish office, you can pay a few cents to read your announcement to the village. This has got to be the best thing.. in a land where mobiles don't rule!

…picture this…

Puellaro a small town with steep narrow streets, a house, it’s door to enter raised off street level. The door open, the tiny front room dimly lit. In it, a barbers shop, a metal and leather barbers chair, a large mirror and all the paraphernalia. In the corner enough instruments for a small band. Under the dim light that enters through the hazed window a stout man with high trousers and braces sits with a boy, both have trumpets in their hands and are reading music. It is a snapshot of a moment in time in this town I have just arrived at. It is just how it is.

You capture a scene and you know it’d make a fantastic photo but all you have with you are your eyes and then a memory and then if you succeed a vision passed on to someone else through words.

…back on the road and on to pastures new…

To travel is to open my eyes, you don’t know what to expect all you know is it’s likely to be different from what you imagine. I didn’t know how much I needed to be on the road again until I’d left. I’d been in Tena so long that by the time I left it felt like I was travelling to another country just by going to the mountains.

Michael is named after Michael Collins one of the men on the first mission to the moon, hi birthday on the day of the first moon landing. A momentous claim to fame… and one which effortlessly fits with his personality. A man of many talents , interests and ideas. His ‘project’, to convert the farmers of Perucho (his home village) to organic farming. Along the way, teaching volunteers about organic practices, improving the teaching in the primary school, setting up Quito’s first organic market, helping to put Perucho on the tourist map (La Ruta Escondida – the hidden route!), organising courses for the village, starting a library in Perucho with access (by post!) to 300,000 books, designing and making ceramics.. the list is quite frankly enviable and seemingly endless.

I’m here to spend 3 weeks with Michael and follow in his footsteps. Travel where he travels, and learn something on the way.

… treading in the footsteps of Shamans..

When you’re looking for adventures sometimes two turn up just at the same time.

I’ve just got up and showered and I’m sitting having breakfast my hair momentarily under control wrapped in up in towel turban. As I’m pushing something very suspicious round my plate, I wonder how this Sunday will pan out.

Outside the front of the kitchen I hear a motorbike. The kitchen is not great for people watching, the window being high up requiring you to bob up and down. As I bob up, someone calls ‘Good Morning’ and then again and then my name. When people arrive unexpected or when you enter a shop and no one is there (happens often as most people have them on the front of their houses and they’re not that busy) you’ll call out ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Good Evening’ until someone comes or a neighbour gets so tired of the shouting that they’ll come and tell you something to make you go away.

However it appeared that the man on motorcycle was for me, in fact there were two. In my excitement I go to kiss the first man on the cheek which is embarrassing as he is wearing a helmet and this doesn’t work. However we laugh. I know these guys, they are friends of the girl with the hair in the turban trying to kiss the helmet. My God son’s uncle and cousin.

I like how I can be sitting wondering what to do next, when an invitation comes in. We're going to visit their finca where there’s a cascade and natural pool.

So we go off in the afternoon, firstly watching a pig be castrated at the Grandmother’s house (not sure if this is part of the tour?!).. a long line has gathered of the ones who like gory things and then keeping well back are all the ones who don’t appreciate the sight nor sound of this spectacle. But after the usual confusions and procrastinations we bundle into a pickup and travel the 20 minutes to their finca, my hair now modelled into a superb pair of batman wings.

But the early morning call was worth it. The cascade is beautiful, the water fresh, the water shallow enough to immerse myself if the pool which is like a Jacuzzi from the pressure of the water falling over the giant rocks. And spectacularly for the first time my eyes are opened to another phenomenon. I can’t believe I had passed as much time near Tena without knowing about the petroglifos. Carved into the giant boulders in the rivers around Napo, little is known about them, their age or interpretation. Here at Batan Cocha, all they know was it was an area where Shamans used to gather to perform rituals. It’s steeped in legend. For me, except for the trees in the primary forest everything I know about Tena seems quite new. This place makes me realise how long everything has been here.

We all stand around the petroglifos talking about the possible meanings. We have no idea, we are making as educated guesses as possible. But then of course, I say, it could just have been a lone fisherman, bored and thinking.. I wonder if I draw something here then a load of people will stand around wondering what it means. This is not an educated guess, but luckily the joke is not lost in translation, or if it is they at least laugh and humour the girl with hair that has now moulded itself into a stylish version of a pufferfish.

..rewriting the tourist map..

Before I leave Tena I decide that I must fit in an adventure. By chance the week before I find myself sitting in the front room of my friend’s house, well the front room is actually an empty shop that opens onto the road but that’s just detail. We pass the entire day deep in conversation speaking over the top of the trucks going past every fifteen minutes to the river to collect gravel and rocks for building roads. Our conversation is about development and so very ironic that in fact I should be deafened and my voice drowned out by the sound of progress.

My friend showed me for the first time a GIS map of the region, on it located all the communities, the river and different sectors. I was fascinated. I have spent so much time in Tena without seeing maps with only the consciousness that there is the mountain range of the Andes to the left of me and a vast expanse of rainforest the my right, extending thousands of kilometres to the East and the Atlantic Ocean. But here it was, this was where people were living, and here were the roads and rivers, the lifeblood of the Amazon. It was certainly unlike any tourist map I’d ever seen!

And on the map I saw there was a road near Tena that no-one had ever mentioned. From where I live to the other side of Tena, San Antonio via the mountains. Super excited I roped my friend Emily into the mission. We set off without exactly having a physical copy of the map but a grainy picture on my camera. And admittedly we had a few wrong turns and had to ask quite a few people, but that’s all part of the adventure right. And admittedly we got to the bridge to cross the river and it had fallen down (twice), but taking local advice (of two girls bathing by the river and a cohort of children) we crossed the river carrying our bikes. Not the easiest manoeuvre but another first!

Careful as always for our safety, and not knowing how long this route was going to take (food was an issue) we asked the few people by the river, what the route was like. Responses ranged from, sighs, shakes of the head, to it’s very rocky, to it’s very muddy, from it’s a long way but about an hour to..oooh it’s a very long way about 3 hours.

And they were all partially right. People will always give you an answer, and I feel they are searching your face for a clue to give you the answer you want. We are mad gringas. Who else would cycle a steep incredibly rocky path in the midday heat for fun?

And yes, they were right it was a long way, and although I was super keen to carry on we were running low on water and food and we turned back after and hour and a half and I dived into the freshest most welcome river ever….. to be continued..!

…I could get passionate about kayaking!...

..getting a bit creative with photos.. inspired by kayaking