The Black Poet

It was early morning in Ibarra, Ecuador, and all the bars were closed except for a small, one-room tavern at the edge of the old city. It stayed open for men who were committed to their drinking. The police did not bother with it so long as the drinking was done quietly. At a wooden table inside, I was sharing liter bottles of beer with an out-of-work carpenter, a belly dancer, one very drunken photographer, and the Black Poet of Ibarra.

The belly dancer had just finished her performance and returned to the table. She wore a green sheer dress and a sparkling bikini top, and she jingled when she moved. Four old men at the other table looked at her longingly. She smiled and was not ashamed of her bad teeth. She very much enjoyed the attention.

The Black Poet stood and announced that his poem for me was now complete.

He asked that the pasillo music be turned off. From the pocket of his corduroy jacket, the Black Poet produced a jagged piece of convex glass. It looked as though it had been broken from the bottom of a bottle. He held the glass to his eye and he began to read the poem he had written on both sides of a small square of paper:

– PETER –

Undiscovered friend, pollen of light,
Dragonfly that heeds the pollen of the setting sun,
Torch of wind inflamed,
You noble rebel of thought
Your heart is a tear of rain
That no one can undermine to fail

Your thought is perfect, but cold
Like a game of death
On the outspoken lips of life
You love not philosophy,
But love instead the sad and cloudy mirror
Of the fool’s heart

Go and fill your pockets with wind
And having no longer the ugliness of words
All shall be yours
The perfect, impressible beauty of the heavens.

The photographer had his head on the table and was asleep. The belly dancer put her hand on my thigh. Your poem was beautiful, she said. Take her upstairs if you want, said the carpenter. The Black Poet handed me the square of paper. The poem was written in a shaky but elegant script. The poem is now yours, he said. Please, will you do me the favor of walking me home? 

The Black Poet was old and very sad. His wife of 48 years had just died. He walked slowly and talked to me of Augustine and Nietzsche and the Pre-Socratics. He talked of how life might have been had not men become so reasonable, had not the myths been rejected and the gods exiled. I told him that his verse about having pockets filled with wind was going to stay with me a long time. The Black Poet lived nearby and I slept a few hours on his couch until the sun came up.

A Message for Suscal

There was no one else staying at the hotel and the doors of the empty rooms were left open. My room was on the third floor and looked out at the plaza and the basilica and across the rooftops to the higher mountains. Cañari men and women crossed the plaza. The Cañari were short and dark and wore wide-brimmed felt hats and the women bright pink wool skirts. It was cold in the mountains and the shops closed early. The plaza was empty and clouds came up from the valley.

From the window, I watched the clouds rising. They covered the mountains beyond the town and covered the town itself and then, finally, the plaza. The clouds covered everything. There was only the glow of the hotel’s pink neon sign below my window.

The next day, it was clear and bright and I went out of the hotel for lunch. A Cañari man stopped me and wanted to know where I came from. What was I doing in Suscal? He was called Alberto and he wanted to know my religion. Was I married and did I have children? He wanted to show me his hardware store and together we walked to it. Inside, Alberto presented his wife to me. She was very short and dark, and she looked at me from beneath her wide-brimmed felt hat.

Then Alberto asked if I might prepare a message for the people of Suscal and deliver this message to them at the evening church service. I agreed to do it. We would meet at 6pm in front of the basilica.

I walked back through the plaza and made the steep climb up through town to the main road. A man passed me carrying a basket of potatoes on his shoulder and wished me a very good afternoon. Within an open door, there were women weaving on a large wooden loom. At the top of the hill there was a restaurant, and I went inside.

A young man and a girl were drinking bottles of Coca-Cola and they watched me sit down. The young man wore a New York Yankees baseball cap and a red Nike t-shirt. “Guci” was misspelled in glitter across the girl’s shirt. The old woman came out from the kitchen and I ordered the lunch special. The young man and girl laughed and whispered something.

I began to consider the message I would deliver to the people. I thought to make remarks about the simple beauty of the Cañari mountain culture and the strength of their religious beliefs and how it sustained their happiness. But were they happy? I did not know. What did I really know of them? I had seen the ruins at Ingapirca, and I knew the Cañari had resisted the Inca successfully — until the Inca used intermarriage with their women to defeat them.

The old lady came back out with a tray and set down the plate of carne, rice, and plantains, along with a glass of tree tomato juice, and she wished me good eating.

They defeated you through the women. That was one way to do it. I would tell the people not to be defeated again.

Do not let the gringos defeat you. Ingapirca will bring gringos and maybe one day some of them will stay at Suscal and make a hostel. That is how it will start. Then other gringos will create a bar and a restaurant and more gringos will come. There will be gringo money in the town and so far you will think it is good.

With the gringo money, you will pay others to do what you once did for yourself and you will begin to forget how things are done. You will learn to want gringo gadgets and pleasures. So you will have to learn the professions that make gringo money. A few will prosper in this, and the rest will be promised to prosper one day.

You will learn to stop sharing. You will learn to hoard. You will learn to take advantage of your neighbors and to create marketing deceptions and clever accounting tricks. That is called economic growth. The economic growth will cause bankers to come and make loans, and these loans will raise the value of assets. Those with assets will become very rich. Those without assets will have never been poorer, but with bank loans and indebtedness these poor will make of their lives an approximation of the rich.

With the gringo money, you will be able to live in large homes without your parents or other family members, and you will fill the home with things and diversions. They will say that you have achieved a higher standard of living. They will build tall towers so that many can live inside them and be closer to shopping centers.

They call this economic development. It is measured by the size and number of parking lots and shopping centers. They will expect you to become sober, aspiring, middle-class wage earners. But still, with a few of you, they will expect you to wear traditional clothing, work the traditional trades, and be a curiosity for tourism.

To repay the loans and maintain this standard of living, new income must be found. Foreigners will come to dam up the rivers. Corporations will come to farm the soil until it blows away as dust. Others will cut down the mountains to extract valuable ore. What cannot be monetized in the natural world will be called waste and treated as waste. They determine this through a cost/benefit analysis. There are professionals who perform this analysis and you will learn to trust them.

What is fast and cheap and efficient will be what is important regardless of its consequences. And there will be consequences. The families will break apart and mothers will be less important. The pleasure and happiness of the individual will be the primary value. The women will lust for cocktails and shopping instead of raising children. The basilica will be empty, and other than the very old and the incurables, no longer will the people have any need for God or the helping spirits.

I thought it was a good message. I finished eating and called the old woman over and paid the bill. The young man and girl were gone. I walked back down the hill through the town and crossed the plaza and went up to my room at the hotel. Perhaps my message would not be understood. Perhaps it would not happen that way at all. I stood at the window looking out. Beyond Suscal, far away in the valley, the clouds were gathering.

Indeed, I had come south to receive messages, not to deliver them.

Huaquillas

 

The bugs fed on me during the night and I awoke in Pasaje bitten and scratching. I had accumulated an impressive number of bites on my legs and back during the last two nights. I planned to make Huaquillas, the last town in Ecuador before I crossed the frontier into Peru. I brought the bike and gear down the narrow stairs and packed it up on the street. I made a scene with this display and a number of people stopped to stare at me.

 

 

It was cool and overcast and the road passed through a corridor of banana trees before dead-ending at the Pan American Highway. On this stretch there was much construction and I rode much of the way on gravel and sand and slowly as the country began to change from bananas to pastureland and then to rolling scrub. This area was both a protected ecological zone as well as a military base and testing area. The military buildup here until the border was no doubt a result of the fighting over this area during the 1940s between Peru and Ecuador.

 

 

I stopped at a roadside comedor and a had a seco de pollo and then continued over the rolling country into the gritty little border town of Huaquillas. Along the main road into the center I saw a fine looking hotel, one that looked clean enough as to not have bed bugs, and I pulled in and inquired about rates. Rooms without air conditioning were $10 a night and I took one. It was a nice enough place that I decided to stay another night. I was now only a short ride from entering Peru.

 

 

 

Pasaje

 

On the flats and at sea level I felt very strong. I had built up a great confidence in the mountains. I rode hard through pastureland and then the banana country began. Banana trees lined the road on both sides and there was the darkness of the mountains I had come down from to the East. It was overcast and there was some mist during the day. There wasn’t much to look at and I put my head down and rode.

 

 

After the excitement of the mountains this was boring riding. I remembered that this type of country and the cloudy days were why I had ridden up into the mountains. I was again thinking about getting out of Ecuador. This part of the country was particularly uninteresting to ride as well as poor and, according to what I had been hearing, also dangerous. At least along the northern coast of Peru there was sun and desert and beaches.

 

 

But I wasn’t looking forward to the thievery of Peru. I had seen northern Peru by bus and it was a sandy, hot, trash-littered desert pressed between the ocean and the mountains. There were tiny impoverished pueblos along the way and the beaches were filthy. I had also been told that criminals worked the road and sometimes in cohorts with the police. I thought about it while I rode and realized that outside of seeing the sun I wasn’t that excited to be going to Peru either.

 

 

I made the gloomy town of Pasaje just after lunch and took a room at one of the two hotels along a side street from the main plaza. The bed sheets smelled of mildew covered over with that awful spray disinfectant that is used in many hotels in Ecuador. I lay in bed awhile until I realized things were biting me. A second straight night I was going to sleep in a flea-ridden bed. I was still scratching my legs and back from the night before.

 

 

I got out of bed and made adjustments to my brakes and the front fender. I again removed the rear fender because it was rubbing against the wheel. Most of my gear was breaking down or worn out. There were tiny holes in the rain fly of my tent and the ground pad was punctured in many places; the grill on my camping stove had broken off and the rubber o-ring no longer sealed the gas well; my cycling gloves were torn and filled with holes; my rear panniers were held together with duct tape and extra screws; there was now more duct tape on my handlebars than handlebar wrap; the rubber soles of my shoes had large holes that leaked in water; my computer battery only lasted a few hours; the on/off button on my camera was damaged and the lens was scratched and filthy; and even the new cycling shorts I had spent $35 on in Guayaquil had ripped the first day I had worn them. The only thing working well these days was my body. That was due to the blessing of the Virgin at the Santuario de Las Lajas in Colombia. Perhaps I had made a mistake neglecting to pray for my gear to be fixed. But it was best not to ask too much of the Virgin.

Naranjal

I went to open the door of the house thinking that if Betty came by while I was packing I could thank her. I tried the key but the bolt wouldn‘t withdraw. I tried more forcefully and could feel the key bending in the lock. I stopped. The bolt was jammed. I couldn’t get out of the house. Then I remembered the small open window in the bathroom. Perhaps I could get out through it.

 

 

Looking at the rectangular opening I saw the bike was going to be a problem. I removed the seat post and loosened the handlebar post, turning the bars lengthwise with the front wheel. I dropped my sleeping bag, ground pad and tent out through the opening. Then, standing on the toilet, I lifted the bike up and pushed it through. As I held the bike half out the opening an old man came walking up the gravel path. I held the bike half out the window, making no movement and he passed without seeing me. I dropped the bike onto the ground. Then I dropped my panniers and the seat post out through the opening and climbed up on the toilet and pulled myself up.

 

I was half out the opening and trying to get my leg through when I see another villager coming down the path. I froze. I did not know what these villagers would think of a strange gringo exiting a house through a bathroom window. But the man passes without seeing me and I am able to pull my leg through and fall out of the window onto my pile of gear. I was out.

 

I put the key in the lock on the outside and then reattached the seat post and realigned the handlebars and loaded up the bike. Then I slowly brought the bike down the steep hill and pushed it into the main plaza. I ordered a desayuno of eggs and bread and coffee at a restaurant and asked about the way out of the mountains to Naranjal. A man explained I had to ride back to the road I had turned off on to get to Molleturo. That meant I had to climb back the descent I had made into the pueblo. My map was wrong.

 

 

I went to pay for breakfast but the woman had no change for a $10 bill. She saw the $5 I had in my money belt and asked for it. It was a five I was 90% certain was a fake. That woman at the artesania stand in Cuenca who sold me my wool hat had snuck it in with a good $10 as change for the $20 bill I had given her. (I had broken one of my rules: only use big bills in supermarkets to avoid getting hit with fakes from street vendors.) I told the woman that the five was a fake. She looked at and disagreed with me. She said she would take it and gave me my change. I didn’t argue with her.

 

 

I started back up the steep climb to the main road, hoping I didn‘t run into Betty. I felt badly about her lock. What a bad impression I had made for future gringos arriving in Molleturo. I had busted a lock on a home, passed counterfeit currency and perhaps been seen crawling out a bathroom window. But the climb was brutal and the mistakes of Molleturo were soon behind me and I was back on the main road and still climbing. The sun was out and it was hot and I hoped I was going the right way.

 

 

Finally the climbing stopped and the descending began, a screaming descent that cut down the mountain. It was steep and technical and at this speed any error would mangle me or send me off the mountain. Suddenly I saw cones ahead and a man is standing at a turn watching me descend. Suddenly he fires up his hands for me to stop. I immediately think there must be a single lane around the curve and a bus or truck is coming up it. I hit the brakes hard, but I’m not slowing fast enough.

 

 

 

 

Why this idiot waited to tell me to stop I didn’t know. I put my feet down on the concrete but this elevates my center of gravity and the handlebars start shimmying hard and almost out of control. I am losing the bike and I can feel I’m about to go down. I’m nearly at the point of dumping it and going over the handlebars but with all my strength I steady the bars and slow to a stop near this fool standing on the curve. Ahead I see part of the concrete has been dug up and men are filling it in. That was what he had stopped me for. Why didn’t you tell me sooner, I ask him. You watched me coming down the mountain and said nothing. You’re supposed to guide the traffic, no? The man stares at me and shrugs.

 

 

Then there was more descending, bombing down the road carved into the mountainside. It was too fast and steep to stop for any pictures and it was too fast and dangerous to look out into the valleys for more than a glance. It was also a zone of landslides and there was much evidence of fallen rock along the road.

 

 

There was 40 kilometers of descending and then I hit the clouds. These were the same thick clouds I had ascended through a week earlier and the visibility was equally as poor and I took it very slowly, braking all the way, wearing my yellow rain jacket to be visible to traffic, and riding the shoulder dodging glass and fallen rock.

 

 

Then the clouds broke and I could see across the flat plain and after a long gradual descent I was back at sea level. The road wound through pastureland and ended at the Pan American Highway and I turned south. I continued another 30km through banana plantations to the gritty, impoverished town of Naranjal. I found a hotel with a room for $9 a night. My room and the whole town had a chemical smell to it like vinegar. I was also certain there were fleas in my bed. I could feel them biting me and decided to go out and look for a Tia supermercado. After receiving bad directions four times I found it and bought cereal, water and cookies. As I walked around everyone in the town stared at me. Naranjal was a dump even by Ecuadoria standards and I was happy to get back to my flea ridden room.

 

 

Molleturo

 

I awoke at 5am in the refugio. It was still dark. During the night I had wrapped my emergency blanket around the exterior of my sleeping bag for additional warmth. It had been ineffective. My feet were still cold. I went back to sleep.

 

 

I awoke again after 6am. Daylight came through the cracks in the wooden slats of the refugio. Outside thick fog covered the lake and the brown, scrub-covered mountains. El Cajas is an eerie place, cold and wet and foggy, with hundreds of lakes formed from melting glaciers. I packed up the now dry tent and the rest of my gear and made myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I was cold and wanted to get riding to warm back up.

 

 

 

From Lago Toreadora there was 8 km of steep climbing. After a series of long switchbacks I arrived at a mirador called Tres Cruces, marked with three stone crosses, with a lookout over the valley behind and the valley ahead. At over 4000 meters it was the high point of the road’s climb and was the point of demarcation between the Andes region and the Pacific coast region of Ecuador.

 

 

From here the road began a furious descent and I was scorching down the side of the mountain, aggressively leaning into every cutback and down, down, wearing my wool sweater with my rain jacket zipped up against the cold, my wool hat pulled low on my head and descending fast.

 

 

I saw a sign for a restaurant ahead and since I had eaten only a package of cookies and a coffee I slowed and pulled off onto a gravel road that led to a stone building. Two girls came out to greet me and led me inside a conical hut built of large stones. Inside was a fireplace with a big fire going and room for two tables and I took a seat. It felt wonderful to be out of the cold and to be near a fire. The girls brought out sweet coffee and hot rolls with cheese and a plate of steaming hot maize with melted cheese. Then an old man came in with a guitar and began to play and sing and the girls sang along with him.

 

 

A young man came in with a thermos and offered me a glass of clear, hot liquid. I asked what it was. Hot aguardiente, he told me, and we each drank a glass full. It tasted delicious. I sat down by the fire and we talked and listened to the old man sing.

 

 

After I had eaten and warmed up by the fire the descent continued and the scrub and grassland covered mountains gave way to green and trees and the clouds broke and it was warm in the sun. The road cut across the mountains, always fast descending, and far below was a river bed.

 

 

There were three different roads that descended out of the mountains that were indicated on my map, all near the pueblo of Molleturo. I never saw the first of these indicated roads and came to a turnoff for Molleturo. It confused me because the pueblo should have been along the main road. The map indicated I should pass through it. In any case, I figured I could stay in the town. There wasn’t anything else up here in the mountains and so I turned off and descended a series of steep cutbacks into the little town and arrived at the town square.

 

 

There was a woman exiting a shop and I stopped her and asked about a hotel. There was nothing, she told me. I asked if there was someplace I might put up my tent. She smiled and said she owned an empty house that I might stay the night in and told me to follow her. She led me up a brutally steep gravel road and I pushed the bike up it behind her. I needed to stop three times to rest before we reached a white cinderblock house. Her name was Betty and she gave me the key and welcomed me to Molleturo. I asked if I could give her some money and she refused.

 

 

The one thing that bothered me about the house was the windowless opening in the bathroom. All the other windows were glassed in except for the bathroom. I figured the town was probably safe but still didn’t like the idea of someone being able to come in through the narrow opening while I was sleeping. I devised a fix with my bungee cords wrapping them around the bike tightly and stringing them to the door handle. The bathroom door could no longer be opened by someone coming in through the open window.

 

 

I cooked up some pasta for dinner and afterwards made myself a coffee and studied the map. I still couldn’t figure out why I had gotten off the main road to get to Molleturo. I looked at the map until darkness came and then lay down inside the tent. My computer battery was dead and so I lay there zipped up inside my sleeping bag listening to the children playing outside. I heard someone at the front door and then the lights came on in the house. Outside was Betty. She had come to turn on the electricity for me. I thanked her again for her generosity and again tried to offer her some money which she again refused.

 

 

With electricity I was able to finish reading Hamsun’s Mysteries on my computer. It was a strange and exciting book and I was sad that it ended. For weeks now I had been reading a little of the strange life of Nagel every day until my computer battery died. But I was excited to have four more of Hamsun's books yet to read. Then there were all the others that had not yet been translated from Norwegian. Perhaps they would be translated or perhaps I would learn Norwegian to read them. Hamsun was that good.

El Cajas - Laguna Toreadora

 

I awoke with the dawn and stepped out of the tent. It was cold. The mountains were brightly outlined as the sun was coming up the valley behind them. Sometime during the night the rains had stopped but the rain fly was soaked and condensation from my breathing had dampened the inside of the tent. I packed up my gear and carefully folded up the tent, making an effort to separate the wet rain fly from the inside portion of the tent. Try as I always did, I knew from experience that everything would soon be completely wet inside the tent bag.

 

 

I pushed the loaded bike down the steep gravel path and out onto the road. I had changed my jeans for shorts and was still wearing the rest of the clothing I had gone to sleep in. It was a slow climb up the valley towards the higher mountains.

 

 

The sun was coming up over the mountains now and lighting up the valley behind me. Then the sun caught up to me and it was hot and took off layers down to my t-shirt. The road continued climbing, over a bridge to the other side of the river and then series of cutbacks and higher. With the higher altitude the country began to change from green pastureland to rocky and jagged, brown and barren mountains. I was feeling the higher altitude and felt dizzy and nauseous and out of breath and I stopped more frequently to rest.

 

 

Just before the El Cajas park entrance there was a comedor and I stopped for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bread and cheese, coffee and a fresh mora juice. I had read there was a campsite at Laguna Cucheros, 3km from the park entrance, at the first of many large lakes inside the park. The restaurant owner asked me where I was headed I told him of the lake. He made a face and cautioned me against it. There were delinquents that often vandalized that area around the lake, he said. You should go to Laguna Toreadora, 7km further. There is a refugio there that you may stay the night inside.

 

 

I was not looking forward to another 7km of difficult climbing but I did not want to be attacked by vandals and I thanked the man and began my slow climb again. It was desolate country and very cold now and I saw some of the small lakes that the park was known for. Along the roadside I passed wild llamas feeding. Then after a 5 long steep cutbacks the road leveled out and began to fall and I was coasting down the rocky mountainside, leaning deep into the turns, feeling so good to move without pedaling and I saw ahead a couple of buildings and a large lake and the sign for Laguna Toreadora and I braked and turned down a gravel road that led to the refugio and a restaurant.

 

 

The refugio was a drafty old wooden two-story shelter with a kitchen. Inside bunk beds had fitted wherever there was room. There was a tiny room under the stairs and I took it and hung my wet camping gear over my bike and from some nails on the walls to dry and spread out my wet sleeping bag on the top bunk. There were no sheets or pillows for the bunk beds.

 

 

I walked down to the lake. Coming from the west were dark storm clouds. El Cajas was known for its wet and brutally cold weather and I hurried back to the refugio. The temperature was dropping and I put on my synthetic long sleeved shirt and made myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

 

 

There was an Argentine named Pablo who was staying the night. He was from Mendoza and was traveling by car. It was nice to speak of Argentina again. It was a country that I liked very much. Pablo explained that things were getting bad there. Economically things were very bad. It was expensive for him in Ecuador and even in Peru now.

 

 

We talked awhile longer but the rain had started and it was very cold now and I told Pablo I needed to get inside my sleeping bag to warm up and I excused myself. Though it was still early I fell asleep for awhile When I awoke I ate a bag of peanuts instead of getting out of the sleeping bag to cook dinner. It was too cold. Outside the rains pounded the refugio. I had not ridden very far this day, but I had ridden high. I was now well above 4000 meters.