Cuenca, Ecuador – El Chorro above the town of Girón

Diane: Tom and I joined our new friend Carlota; her 12-year-old daughter, Carina; her mother; and her nephew, Edgar. We left the city for the day to get a breath of nature at the foot of a waterfall. The waterfall was extraordinarily tall, and yet the water came down in fine rivulets with a huge spray of water vapor tumbling over the rivulets. It was delicate like fine embroidery, but powerful like vast quantities of moving water tend to be.

The environmental regulations were very strict. We were allowed to bring water, but they almost didn’t let me bring my Spanish-English dictionary. And definitely no food allowed. It’s not wise to do a proper hike without food, so we didn’t go far. But, why so strict? Certainly there is trash on the side of the road as in most places. In Cuenca, there is a cadre of street cleaners in their bright, single-color uniforms sweeping the streets most every day. There are some hints that the problem is more severe here than other countries. For instance, on the trip from Quito, there were signs as we approached many of the towns, instructing people not to throw their garbage on the street, because it caused sickness. You don’t see that everywhere.

On the way home, we made several stops of interest. Edgar drove through some farmland so that he could show me the field in which he had brought a young woman at midnight to have a romantic dinner under the stars. He brought everything with him including a table, chairs, tablecloth, silverware, candles, and of course the meal. They spent more than four hours there, enjoying each other’s company. It was interesting story in that Edgar is 27, single, living at home with his parents, working with his Dad in their jewelry store, and attending University for an advanced degree.

This may be a pattern. Gustavo, who took us out to Cajas National Park last weekend, was 35, single, living at home with his mother, unemployed, and biding his time writing a thesis in order to finish his Masters Degree. Gustavo made sure that he explained the good reasons why he was still single. I don’t know, but perhaps parents don’t let their daughters marry young men, until they have finished their education and are on secure financial footing.

Our last stop was Tarqui, a neighborhood outside of Cuenca. We visited an older man, who was out in the fields when we arrived. He came over to chat with us and told a long story in Spanish. I came away thinking that he had been talking about killing a rooster. My Spanish is a still bit off, because he was actually talking about two people in a house across the main road who had been murdered the week before. I had actually read about it in the local paper two days before. There was a lot of blood and evidently it was all about $200.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day, and it wasn’t until we arrived in Cuenca that it started raining. The six of us had loaded into the cab and open bed of a small pickup truck. By the time we got back to our apartment, the three in back were quite wet. As we ran up to the apartment, it started HAILING. The hail fell so hard that we couldn’t hold a conversation in our living room – due to the noise. Finally, when all the rain had subsided, there were paint flakes all over the steps just outside. Addition: the next day in Quito, there was so much hail that it blocked the storm drains and flooded certain areas of the city. It delayed a national soccer match between Ecuador and Chile, but not by much, because, the importance of a soccer match should not be underestimated. Evidently, this is a common occurrence and the authorities knew how to handle it.