Bananas and Hammocks - Las Delicias

I spent the last week living with my Carpe group in the Ecuadorian town of Las Delicias.  That is, if you can call Las Delicias a town.

To the uncultured American observer, Las Delicias is an altogether unfamiliar type of establishment. It´s a semi-official conglomerate of farms and residences, clumped loosely around a couple of stores and a homely futbol court. A quick Google search doesn´t turn up anything definitive, but I guess we can go ahead and use the word ¨town.¨

It´s not actually too important; we spent the whole week on one farm anyway.

For me, the experience was mind-blowing even before it started. The three-hour drive from Quito to Las Delicias, from the Ecuadorian Highlands to the coastal region, was a striking back-and-forth of decrepit rural shantytowns and breathtaking natural scenery. If the view from the bus window wasn´t immensely humbling and somewhat sad, it was knock-your-socks-off, desktop-background-material gorgeous.  I registered a wider range of emotions from that (extremely uncomfortable) bus seat than I ever would have thought possible.  Hadn´t really seen it coming.

We were dropped off about half a mile from the farmhouse, and carried most of our week´s supply of drinking water the remaining distance. I guess the bus driver didn´t feel up to the hike.

Upon arrival, our group was greeted enthusiastically by our first host family, the owners and residents of the farm - which exports mostly bananas, plantains, and cacao.  Our hosts were genuinely excited to have us, even though our Spanish was mostly poor and their English is almost nonexistent.  They showed us around the complex, introduced us to our accomodations, and gave us a slow, clear, and infinitely patient Spanish rundown of the farming process.  My mosquito net bed fort was cozy as all get-out, and I felt right at home.

It was off to work the next morning.  We spent the better part of the day carrying, cutting, cleaning, and boxing bananas, working every part of the process from start to finish - even slapping the Dole stickers on at the end.  It was hard work, but the boost in perspective was huge.  I´ll never eat a banana unappreciatively again.

Thus began our weeklong working residence.  A typical day´s schedule included light harvest work (we also gathered other fruits, like papaya and satsuma, and slaughtered chickens, and created our own hot chocolate, from the cacao bush to the mug - all incredibly delicious, as per the town´s name); Spanish instruction (from the family members, some of whom actually work as low-level Spanish language teachers at nearby schools); downtime for hammocking (under our house, which was raised to keep the snakes out), Frisbee (most people around here have never seen one before), pickup soccer (we somehow beat the local church group 6-5 in extra time), or exploration of the area (the banana trees give way to rainforest a couple of hectares out); and miscellaneous group activities (for instance, a nightly a-capella freestyle session in the woods). I´m putting the latter in the ¨unanticipated highlights¨ category.

For most of us Carpe Diem kids, life on a working farm is something entirely new and different.  This place isn´t a huge-scale commercial produce factory, but an earnest and meager income source - and also a home.  Our host family is a modest, dedicated, and close-knit group of dawn-to-dusk laborers. It´s inspiring to live alongside them, without most of the comforts and assurances that Americans tend to take for granted.

Life improves drastically when you move to a foreign farm with no internet or smartphone access. Every hour that goes by serves to widen our perspectives and treat us to new experiences.  The farm´s laid-back agrarian lifestyle, so full yet so modest, shows what it really means to live in the moment. Spiders are everywhere, civilization is distant, and showers are provided by a rooftop rainwater urn, but I wouldn´t have it any other way; this life isn´t excessively comfortable, but it´s definitely pure.

"Hola, Soy Gringo" - Quito

If you would have told me earlier this year - say, in April - that I would spend three months of 2015 gallivanting around South America, I probably would have laughed in your face.

Yet here I am: Backpack stuffed, Spanish rusty, and water purification tablets on-hand, wrapping up my first Ecuador Week in Quito's Community Hostel and trying in vain not to fall asleep on their guest computer.  

I still don't quite know what happened in the meantime.  First, this "whole gap year thing" was an idea; then, it was a possibility; and now I'm looking back at the last hundred-some-odd hours and trying to figure out where they went and what's going on. It's been a jam-packed rush of acculturation and altitude sickness, empanadas and morocho, meditation and malaria medicine.  I've eaten traditionally-prepared cow intestines, futbolled with guayachos, saluted the sun at 10,000 feet, explored cathedrals and wandered the urban sprawl within these five or six outrageously full days. 

I might be the happiest kid in the Western Hemisphere.

Until early December I'll be living and learning with Carpe Diem Education, an accredited international volunteering organization out of Portland.  My 12 American compatriots and I are spending these 12-or-so weeks wending our way across Ecuador and Peru, volunteering in capacities as diverse as construction, conservation, and elementary education.  

That starts tomorrow, though.  This past week in the Ecuadorian capital has been our "orientation," our brief opportunity to get comfortable with this radically different part of the world.  One major objective: Practice acting just a little less American than we are. 

This is actually pretty difficult. The flagrant whiteness of our skin is enough to turn heads wherever we go, and the naturally loud demeanor of our homeland sets us well apart from the more reserved culture of the locals.  We've been stopped more than once to pose for pictures, asked all kinds of intriguing questions, and given more dead-panned stares than anybody could hope to receive in a lifetime. "Soy gringo" (literally, "I'm a white dude") has become the de facto catchphrase and conversation-starter of our group, and the earnest transparency of the statement is generally pretty well-received by locals. 

Quito's been good to us, and there's definitely a lot more to report, but I'm just too wiped-out to stay up any later. En la mañana we're heading out of the city to Las Delicias, a small family-owned banana farm on the coast. There, we're supposed to be studying some Spanish on top of helping out with the business.  They won't have internet.  I can't wait.