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 Journey
to Ecuador: Part 2Papallacta,
Pululahua, Pasachoa, Baños
May 1-6, 2001
The Spiritual Traveler
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 On
Tuesday morning, I found an inexpensive hotel in the tourist district,
went for a walk down the Avenida de las Amazonas, and stopped by a tour
agency, where we inquired about day trips. I decided to sign
up for one, to begin familiarizing myself with the country.
The next morning, I arrived
at the tour agency promptly at 8:30, only to find that, according to
them, the guide was due at 9:00. I waited patiently at a
nearby coffee shop and at 9:00 someone tapped me on the
shoulder. It was my guide, Marco Guillen, a tall Ecuadorian
with a smiling face and enthusiastic manner. He ushered me
into his the back seat of his car, the front seat being already taken
by a young woman whom he introduced as Miriam. Miriam did
not seem like a tourist, so I inquired about her interest in the trip.
"She is in training," Marco
said. "I am teaching her how to be a tour guide."
 This
was welcome news to me, for Miriam seemed to be equally good company as
Marco, and I essentially had two guides for the price of
one. As soon as they discovered that I was interested in
practicing my very elementary Spanish, they were more than
obliging. I was surprised how quickly they had me speaking
to them. In the company of other people, I was not nearly as
talkative, but Marco and Miriam made it their business to be language
tutors as well as tour guides, and nothing could have pleased me more.
Our destination was the
thermal baths of Papallacta-a relatively easy day tour from Quito, but
a good destination to choose for one's first venture outside the
city. The scenery was very impressive along the way, and
offered numerous photo opportunities. The vegetation changed
with even the subtlest differences in altitude. As we went
higher and higher, it became sparse and lay much closer to the
ground. At high altitudes, the wind and crispness of the air
reminded me of mountain passes in the Alps.
 When
we arrived at the thermal springs in Papallacta, the first thing I
wanted to do was a little hiking. Marco and Miriam left me
to my own devices for a couple of hours, and I was determined to see
how high I could get up the surrounding slopes in that
time. As it turned out, I didn't get very far, for my boots
started chafing early in my climb. I regretted not having
broken in the new hiking boots before my trip, but there was nothing to
do about it, so I decided to content myself with a short hike instead
of an ambitious one. The thinness of the air was noticeable,
and the walk up the mountain road was not easy. At one
point, I noticed a tiny footpath going off to the right, and followed
it. It led to a rushing river, where I sat down with great
contentment. I closed my eyes and began chanting the name of
the ECK Master Rami Nuri. My chant mingled with the sound of
the rushing waters, and a strong feeling of the ECK Master's presence
enveloped me. Even after I stopped chanting and resumed my
walk, I felt the name being whispered by the wind blowing through the
grasses and the trees, and hummed by the rushing river in the distance
behind me.
 The
thermal baths had been constructed as a very attractive
facility. There was a large pool with many-mainly Swiss and
Ecuadorian-which I avoided. Instead, I gravitated to a much
smaller pool that was completely untenanted. Next to the hot
pool was a tub sunk into the cement patio that contained very cold
water. I started alternating between the two, enjoying the
luxury of the hot pool, but every now and then plunging into the cold
tub for a few seconds, and then quickly running back to the relaxing
warmth of the original pool. Eventually, a few people showed
up. It was an Ecuadorian family, including a very beautiful
young girl that I guessed to be of college age. She waded to
the center of the pool and stretched her body out in languid fashion,
while the rest of the family was content to hang out at the edge of the
pool like wallflowers at a school dance. I couldn't resist
trying to sneak some candid shots of the young girl, whose gestures
seemed designed to attract attention, with my digital
camera. Eventually, she caught me at it, and shot me a
glance of outward disapproval but inward satisfaction.
 Within
a few moments, I got a little more understanding of the femininity of
the women here. The young girl came over to me without any
trace of self-consciousness. From the conversation I
overheard between her and her family, I gathered that her name was
Eli. I was too tongue-tied to converse with her in Spanish
the way I had with my guides, but I showed her my digital camera, and
asked if I could take another picture of her. She shook her
head with mock primness, and then asked if she could take a picture of
me. I had to come around in back of her, put my arms around
her shoulders, and show her how to look into the viewfinder until the
little green light appeared. The little moment of physical
intimacy came so quickly and so easily, that I was quite surprised by
it, and the memory of it lingered with me for the rest of the
day.
 When
I got back to Quito in the evening, I attended a discussion group at
the Eckankar center. The subject of much of the discussion
was the technique of Soul Travel, how to recognize when one is having a
Soul Travel experience, and the role that imagination plays in this
type of experience. Once I got the gist of the discussion, I
offered a few comments of my own.
"For a long time," I said, "I was convinced that I did not have any
inner experiences. I used to be quite emphatic about this
with everyone in Eckankar. But I changed my mind quite
suddenly. I was in a discussion group much like this
one. We did an imaginative exercise, and then went around
the circle, one by one, and described what we had experienced during
the exercise. When it came my turn, I started to describe my
experience in minute detail. I went on and on until suddenly
the entire group burst out into laughter. Suddenly I saw
that my previous assertion that I had no inner experiences was quite
ridiculous. I was having the experiences, but only lacked
the ability to recognize them for what they were. The
recognition, strangely, came only in the process of describing them.
 "Paul
Twitchell's book, The Tiger's Fang, perhaps the key work among the
various books he published, revolves around this very
issue. The book claims to be the record of a monumental
series of experiences on the inner planes, and yet Twitchell himself
prefaces it by saying that some will view it as merely the work of an
overactive imagination. Then you find, if you take up the
study of Eckankar, that imagination is the key to having these types of
experiences. So, The Tiger's Fang is a
paradox. Were Paul Twitchell's experiences real, or were
they imaginative? What, actually, is the difference?"
The discussion at the Eckankar center got me thinking about my own
experiences, or lack of them. I had had sufficient inner
experiences in the past to prove to myself the reality of Soul's
existence beyond the death of the physical body. But in
recent years, I had fewer and fewer such experiences, whether this was
due to my lack of discipline in keeping up with my spiritual exercises,
or perhaps simply that I no longer had a need for these
experiences. Other members of Eckankar that I knew seemed
very immersed in their inner experiences, kept voluminous dream
journals, and apparently had a vivid awareness of their dream
life. The question nagged at me: How essential were such
experiences to living the spiritual life? What was the point
of such experiences if they did not make an individual happier, more
secure, and more productive?
 I
spent the next day in Quito, allowing my sore feet to
heal. In the evening, I attended a lecture by Germán
entitled "The Re-Discovery of America." Germán showed a number of
slides of old maps that dated from Columbus's time, but before his
discoveries. The maps clearly showed the Orient with a
coastline that matched not China's but South America's. The
implication was that mapmakers knew about the South American coast
before Columbus's discoveries, although the coast was assumed to be
that of the Orient, rather than that of an entirely new
continent. But how was this coastline
known? There was no answer to this question, but it implied
that a whole area of history was lost to us.
In the discussion that followed, an audience member suggested that most
of the world's history has been lost, and that the history we have is
only a small fraction of the history that once existed, citing cited
the loss of the great library of Alexandria in antiquity as an example.
Germán mentioned the Inca tradition of the Pachacuti in his
lecture. According to this tradition, we are currently
entering the tenth of these 500-year cycles, and this would indicate
that the Incas traced history back approximately 5,000 years-but we
know virtually nothing of this portion of man's history.
 I,
in turn, mentioned a television special I had seen concerning the ten
lost tribes of Israel. In Biblical times, the Hebrew people
were divided into twelve tribes, and these were constituted into two
kingdoms. The kingdom of Israel in the north included ten of
the tribes, and the southern kingdom of Judah included only
two. When the kingdom of Israel was conquered, the ten
northern tribes were dispersed and lost to history. The
program was the brainchild of an independent researcher who had tracked
down the remnants of these tribes, which were scattered from the
Mediterranean all the way to China. What we call Jewish
history is actually only the history of the descendants of the house of
Judah. The fact that we have this history and not that of
the other tribes has a great deal to do with the limitations of our
Western perspective. If the historians had been in the
Orient, rather than the West, we might know a great deal more about the
fate of the ten Israelite tribes. In the same way, the Inca
history was lost and replaced with Spanish history, after the Spanish
conquest in the 16th century.
 After
the lecture, I reflected on the idea that the same is true about our
history as individuals. Each one of us has lost most of our
personal history-that is, the history of the lives we have lived on
this planet throughout the ages. We are walking
erasures. The real challenge of a spiritual path is to
recover our memory of the past, and the prescience of our future
destiny.
Friday was a very eventful day. Marco and Miriam picked me
up at the hotel at 8:00. We first drove to La Mitad del
Mundo to see the equatorial monument. Then from there we
went to the vast crater of Pululahua. Without being told, I
would have taken it for merely a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by steep
mountains on all sides.
 It was so huge, it was hard to believe that all the mountains ringing the crater are really all part of a single volcano.
Marco pointed to tiny trail
starting from the edge of the crater's ridge, and said I could hike
down to the bottom of the crater and then come back up in less than two
hours. It was a steep descent from a height of 2800 meters
to about 2500 meters, and took me close to an hour, walking very slowly
so as not to start sliding uncontrollably. I didn't really
stop to contemplate how difficult the ascent would be. If I
had, I probably would never have started down at
all. Luckily, at the very beginning of my way back up, and
old man came by, also about to start the climb. I offered
him some of my water, pouring half into an empty bottle for
him. He accepted it, but did not drink.
Then we began the climb
together. Without him to pace me, I doubt that I would have
made it up.
 I
asked the man how old he was, and I understood him to say he was 70,
although he could have been even older. I also asked him how
often he made the climb, and he said three times a week. As
I followed him up, my breath was as audible as that of a horse, while
he trod completely silently, stopping only occasionally to mop his brow
with a handkerchief. A couple of times he complained about
the sun, but it was the altitude and the steepness of the trail that
was really exhausting. To see the kind of shape this old man
was in was really astounding! We made it up in less than 45
minutes-less time than it took for me to make the descent.
 Marco was there to greet me at the top, quite self-satisfied at the clever way he had tested my endurance!
At the top, I asked the old
man if I could take his picture, and he agreed for the price of a
dollar. I was very pleased with this photo. But
later, when I was transferring the photo images from the day to my
computer, I found that all I had transferred were links to the images,
not the images themselves. All my photos had been wiped out,
erased. Perhaps the old man who helped me climb up the
crater at Pululahua was more than he appeared to be. Perhaps
I had lost all my photos from the day so that his image would not be
printed, published, or disseminated!
From there it was on to a
small, protected area called Pasachoa. At a certain height,
this deeply forested region is always enveloped in foggy
mist. The caretaker took us through an orchidarium,
 and
then led me deeper into the jungle to a beautiful waterfall whose name,
he told me, meant "invisible" in the Quichua language--a reference to
its highly protected location. The cascade tumbled straight
down the jungle escarpment, and the guide told me that the ultimate
source of the water was not mountain snow, but simply
humidity. There was such a peaceful feeling at this spot
that I could have stayed there all day. Again, I gently
chanted the name of the ECK Master Rami Nuri, and felt the presence of
the ECK cloak me over the shoulders in response.
 The
next day, Marco picked me up early in the morning and gave me a free
ride to the bus terminal, where I caught a bus for Baños. It
was about a two and a half-hour ride to this very beautiful tourist
town nestled in the mountains, about halfway in altitude between the
peaks of the Sierra and the jungle of Oriente. It had
virtually everything an adventurous traveler could
want. There was a 22-km. avenue of waterfalls (once could
rent a mountain bike for $5 and see spectacular views, then take a bus
back). There were tours of all kinds-climbing tours to
Cotopaxi and other volcanoes, rafting trips, jungle
safaris. There were all sorts of hiking
trails. And there was the quiet charm of the
place. Tourists mingled amicably with the natives, and the
atmosphere of the place was very tranquil.
I stayed at the Hostal Anais,
mainly because it was located right next to the bus
station. "Why carry my backpack all the way into the center
for town, when I could dump it right away and walk around
unencumbered?" I thought to myself. The hotel was a good
one. Although not visible from the street, it had the form
of an American-style motel, with small, clean rooms, painted bright
yellow, a hot shower, and multi-channel TV. The first
evening I spent there, I had the 'privilege' of watching Jim Carrey
perform as "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" in Spanish, the effect of the
language making him seem even stupider than he is in English.
 Sunday
morning, I had a breakfast of rice, boiled potatoes, and boiled
chicken, with mixed fruit nectar at a café next to the hotel, and
contemplated my itinerary for the day. It was cloudy, and
not very promising for the trip to the waterfalls. So
instead of going to the bicycle rental, I decided to walk up the
mountain on the south side of town, purely for the exercise, hoping
that the weather would clear on my way up. It turned out to
be another workout, with quite a steep ascent, and after an hour or so
it became clear that to reach the top was an unrealistic
goal. You kept climbing to what you thought to be a new
peak, only to find that there were more and more peaks that lay
beyond. At one point, the train narrowed and darkened, and I
found myself hiking up what appeared more like a muddy creek
bed. Only fresh footprints provided evidence that this was
indeed a trail. Eventually, the muddy slope intersected with
a cobblestone road (which I might have taken from the beginning, if I
had known where to start), and the ascent became easier. I
reached a beautiful little lodge with very modern accommodations,
overlooking the valley. The Alpine scene reminded me of
times spent in my youth in the Tyrol region of western
Austria.
 I
got back to Baños with the help of a free taxi ride by 2:00 and went to
the bicycle shop, Taller de Bicicletas "Alexander." I asked
the owner if it was too late to make the trip to the waterfalls, and he
said not if I went right away. The weather still hadn't
improved, so I faced the choice of going now or waiting till the next
morning. There was no guarantee the weather would be any
better the next day, however, so I decided to go for
it. According to the map the owner gave me, there were three
major waterfalls to see-the Rio Blanco, the Manto de la Novia, and the
Pailon del Diablo. I set out on the mountain bike, and about
the time I got to the first fall at Rio Blanco, it started to
rain. Luckily, I had brought a waterproof windbreaker,
complete with hood, with me, and I cycled on quite
contentedly. At one point I stopped to take a
photo. Some Ecuadorian children were playing nearby, and
laughed at my hooded face. When I tore the hood off
self-consciously, they laughed even more.
 At
the Manto del la Novia, I met up with a young Canadian couple from
Ottowa. We made the steep descent to a rickety wooden
suspension bridge that looked somewhat like the one in the film
"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." With each step, we
could feel the bridge sway. Once we got to the fall, the
Canadian guy started climbing up the muddy embankment that led directly
under the fall, and I followed his lead. When he got under
the fall, he started a rapid descent down what amounted to a mud and
rock landslide.
I hesitated, wanting to take
some photos first. The spray from the fall stung my eyes,
probably because it was mixing with sweat from my
forehead. When I finally decided to go for it, the Canadian
was already out of sight. My boots were not made for the
slick terrain, and I lost my footing a couple of times, sliding down
the rocky and muddy slope uncontrollably. I was very lucky
that I didn't get hurt. If the rocks had been just slightly
sharper, I could have easily sliced the palms of my hands to ribbons as
I tried to get a handhold during my slide. Finally I made it
into the river itself, and now completely soaked from head to foot and
stumbling a few more times, managed to wade to safety.
 There
was no sign of the Canadians, and I felt a little miffed that the guy
had led me on to near disaster and then simply
disappeared. After another stiff climb back up to the road,
I recovered my bicycle and carried on. Shortly before the
Pailon del Diablo, I was passed by a taxi, and saw the Canadian couple
inside. I caught up to them and asked the guy if he'd seen
me struggle under the waterfall.
"No," he replied. "I saw you hesitate, and didn't think you
were going to do it, so I just went on."
We met at the Pailon del Diablo, and decided to visit the last
waterfall together. A youthful guide took us on another
steep hike down to the fall, and then back up again. It had
been an eventful day, and one that left me quite
exhausted. I piled my bike onto the top of the Canadians'
taxi, and got a lift back to town. In the evening, I ate at
a small restaurant called Verito's, with a tranquil view of the small
but charming Palomino Flores park. It was a tiny place with
few customers, but you could sit practically on the street and look
directly across at the park, and I liked that. The dinner
cost less than $3.
 I
hung around the town the next morning to take a few last
pictures. Again, I was struck by the femininity of the
indigenous people. It was particularly noticeable in
contrast to the female North American and European
tourists. It may have been because Ecuador attracts more
adventurous travelers, and therefore more athletic individuals as
visitors, but I noticed that the female tourists were almost
universally tall and athletic. They looked like Amazons in
contrast to the native women and even towered above the
men. In stark contrast to what I had witnessed during my
travels in the Middle East, the native men here seemed to be barely
conscious of the female tourists as members of the opposite
sex. It was as if they were an entirely different species,
and thus easily ignored.
Again,
compared to the Middle East, there seemed to be a much more natural
expression of sexuality visible in the streets. Ecuador is
scarcely a place for libertines, but neither is it sexually inhibited
like the Arab world, or sexually ambivalent like the United
States. There is enough sexual innuendo on TV and in
magazines to make young people quite sexually conscious, and one can
see young Ecuadorian couples walking hand-in-hand on the street, openly
amorous, and sometimes stopping to exchange long kisses. The
young men and women tended to be of equal height, and they walked
together as much like brothers and sisters as lovers. Their
displays of affection seem more close, more friendly, more comfortable,
and more communicative than in the U.S., where couples tended to pair
up out of convenience, mutual interest, economic alliance, social
visibility, vanity, loneliness, or a hundred other reasons having
little to do with genuine love or affection.
 I
had also been prepared to expect the stature of the indigenous people
to be small, but this was even more noticeable here than in
Quito. The leathery faces of the elderly reminded me of the
faces of the farmers and cowherds in the Tyrolean Alps, and their
native costumes with felt hats was also reminiscent of the Austrian
style of dress. Only their size was incongruent with that of
Austrians, and more congruent with that of Irish leprechauns.
The dogs were also curiously small, like their human
counterparts. They were of distinct breeds,
however. I noticed chows, poodles, dachshunds, and even the
mongrels each had their own unique appearance. This was in
sharp contrast to the Middle East, where there is only one type of
dog-a mid-sized, short haired, yellow variety of mutt so inbred that it
is devoid of any individuality. And, unlike the Middle East,
where dogs are generally despised, Baños seemed to be a paradise for
dogs. It was not overrun with them, but had sufficient
numbers and diversity to constitute a community of creatures both
content and endlessly curious about each other.
 In
many ways, Ecuador is a tourist's paradise. First of all,
there is a great diversity of landscape, ranging from jungle to Alpine
conditions, as well as dependable weather patterns throughout the year,
and many places of touristic interest. Secondly, it's cheap,
although I was admittedly roughing it. My meals were
generally under $3. Breakfast could be had for half of
that. Room prices ranged from $6 to $11, half-day tours cost
35, and full day tours were $50. Thirdly, and most
importantly, the people seemed to understand the tourist's desire for
directness, openness, honesty, and freedom of choice. Unlike
the Middle East, there was no constant haggling or debate about
prices. I hardly encountered anyone who tried to charge me
much of a higher rate because I was a tourist. The taxi
drivers inflated their prices by a dollar or so, but this was hardly
comparable to the Middle East, where drivers would routinely charge a
Westerner double or triple the fare, if they felt they could get away
with it.
 In
addition, I felt safe and never hassled. There was no fear
of leaving my valuables in one's hotel room. Beggars were
not pushy, as I remembered they had been in Mexico years
ago. Children did not trail me, asking to shine my shoes or
sell me Chiclets. No one pressed me to buy
anything. It was quite amazing to me that Marco sent me off
on a 2-3 day trip to Baños on my own, even driving me to the bus
station for free, when he could not possibly profit from my leaving the
vicinity of Quito, except in terms of good will. Finally,
also in comparison to the Middle East, there was a greater sense of
cleanliness here. The streets were, for the most part, free
of litter. There was also far less smoking or habitual
coffee and tea drinking than in the Middle East. In short,
people apparently lived a much healthier lifestyle, and were vigorous
in their old age, rather than prematurely aged. |
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Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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