Isinlivi High Up in the Andes

The mountains here are unbelievably green and very big.. We stayed in a small village with probably about 100 people, thats it... The whole town could be walked in five minutes with outlying houses everywhere spread throughout the hills...Of course, no one spoke English -- and our Spanish improved while being there... When people slow down, we have a really nice conversation about life in a simple way...We got to know several of the people in the village by talking to them on a daily basis... This area is unbelievably beautiful and incredibly remote, we are talking several hours on a bus just to get there...Michele and I did some wonderful hiking up and downsome very large mountains/hills... In fact, we walked from one village to the next via some beautiful trails built by the local people... The local people are all indigenous and have been living here their whole life...It was also Michele and my first foray into teaching Spanish in Ecuador -- and we really enjoyed it... We taught a high school boy and his younger sister one day as we were walking in the hills. We started talking to him as we came upon his little village --and the next thing you know he brought out his English text book and we studied English with him and his little sister for about one hour or so, it was very fun and rewarding and by the time we left he was reading English to us, he was shy at first but then he really started feeling comfortable with us and so we made some good progress...On another occasion we walked into a woman´s house in the village we were living in to talk to her, and her son and cousin decided they wanted to study English with us... So we set up a time and they came over to our hostel and we did a one hour lesson with them too. They were much younger than our first student, both boys were eleven years old, and they enjoyed our class...Because it is such a small town, several days later as were walking around the hills we saw a lady tending her crops -- mainly corn and we started talking to her for awhile... The next thing you know we were in her home and she was showing us around where she lived. Turns out her husband is one of the furniture makers in the village and he made all of the furniture in her house, along with all of the doors too... Simply lovely...Turns out that towards the end of the conversation she told us that she was the mom of one of the boys we taught English too and she was very grateful for us taking out time to teach her son English...As we were leaving her lovely home, her husband gave us a hand crafted turtle that he made in his furnitute shop out of gratitude for what we had done...And this is the corazon of the indigenous people in the village, full of heart and soul... These people are incredibly poor, but its not at all obvious from their spirit, simple living conditions, and what appears to be a very happy nature....Money and materialism and being the super power of the world certainly has its draw backs as we are well aware and it is incredibly refreshing to me to meet people like this and literally bond with them in my mind in a very deep way... Its hard to explain and I am not sure why I feel this way, but I believe its the very simple life that I like and think is beautiful in my mind...The village is fascinating, all day long people are walking their cows and pigs and sheep out into the hills to feed for the day and night. They tie a leash around the pig and then pull him out into the green hills.. They then put a stick in the ground and the animal has some rope in which to wander around a bit and eat the grass etc around them... Then at the end of the day the people come and pick them up and lead them back home. So as you are wandering around the hills you see all of these animals eating...The villages are all connected by very primitive roads in which the buses pass usually about once a day from village to village... There are also some milk trucks and village trucks that drive these incredibly primitive dirt roads, but thats it, hardly anyone has a car, obviously when you are making a couple of dollars a day literally, you can´t even conceive of buying a car, let alone the expenses associated with it...The main business in these villages is agriculture, every one grows their own food and takes care of their animals which eventually they take to the market to be sold. Michele and I went to one of the local markets... We walked over two hours up and down some really steep mountains and finally arrived at the next village for their market day... At the market was the animal market where people are buying and selling their pigs,sheep, cows etc...Along the way you see other people walking to the market. We befriended an older woman who saw us walking in the hills one day and we were clearly lost and she pointed us in the direction of where we were going... The next day we were walking again, got lost, and magically the exact same woman appeared from underneath a fence. Turns out she was walking to the market too, and she walked with us all the way to the market showing us the way...To be clear, these mountains are huge and the indigenous people have done a marvelous job of maintaining trails that go every where, it is their only means of transportation... And not only are they walking everywhere, very old women are carrying over fifty pounds on their back filled with corn, potatoes,or whatever else they harvested that day, and then they carry it from their fields to their humble home,and then to the market on market day...At the market are all sorts of local produce plus people are cooking food of all different kinds. In Ecuador, the banana capital of the world, there are many sorts of bananas. But where we were they don´t grow bananas. The bananas are grown down in the lowlands on the equator near the coast and/or in thejungle.Because Ecuador is divided by the Andes, you have the coast where the rice paddies and bananas grow. Then up in the highlands where we were they grow corn, potatoes, and other crops that can grow at 10,000feet. Then as you travel further in Ecuador from the coast you end up in the Amazon jungle where they grow the bananas and other crops of that area...At the market, people are making the local dishes, lots of rice and home made french fries, and this corn kernels that they roast off the cob and add some spices and salt. So it kind of is like pop corn before its popped. Eating in the local markets is quite a culinary experience and each time you eat the food you are taking a minor risk, but we have been lucky and wouldn´t pass up the experience as time evolves -- yummy, but most meals are on the up and up...So, this journey into the depths of the Ecuadorian highlands was one of the most incredible things I have ever done in my life... It ranks up there with some of the incredible camping trips Michele and I have gone on over the years and touches my heart and my soul more than anything...I continue to be thankful each and every day for having the opportunity, resources, and most importantly the courage to go on a journey like this in my life -- its certainly not an easy journey and each and every day I feel also like a "Stranger in a Strange Land" but this is what keeps us going...I continue to be patient with living in the present and focus on the moment in this magical time in my life...