"Señor, you should look at that bridge carefully, because if it breaks, you're probably going to die," said the sweet little-old-lady at the bus stop: in Spanish of course. After a quick double-take, I almost began to chuckle. I'm not sure if it was her nonchalant tone of voice, or the context of her warning, but I never expected to hear something like that from her. I had ridden past this bus stop just minutes before on my way to Baños, and was forced to return and seek directions. A couple miles further down the road, volcanic ash covered the road's surface, rock slides covered parts of the right lane, and a sign reading, "High-Risk Area," stated the obvious. Baños was only six miles away, so I tried to push through the mess, but I eventually came to the end of the road...literally. A 40 yard section of the road had given way, and it looked like the collapse had occurred several years ago. I road up to the edge hoping that I could ride down and back up the other side. I could certainly do it on foot, but not with the bike. I took a quick look around but couldn´t find any scrap wood, so building a ramp to jump it wasn´t an option either. (no, I'm not serious) I turned back, slightly baffled that not even one of the signs indicating "Baños" throughout the last hour, had mentioned that the road was closed. There wasn't even a "Road Closed" sign at the point of the collapse, although any reasonable person would have noticed that something was wrong long before that point. Then again, since the collapse had happened years ago, I was probably the only person in Ecuador who didn't know that the road was closed.
When I arrived back at the town, or should I say, the lone bus stop that people somehow appear at, there was a little-old-lady sitting in traditional dress. I stopped and sat down with her for 20 minutes or so, and she told me that she thought I might be able to get to Baños without riding all the way back to Riobamba. It wasn't a direct route, but it was better than nothing. She told me that I had to cross the bridge that I had caught a glimpse of when the road turned bad, and follow the road 20km to the next town. Thrilled that I wouldn't be back-tracking for an hour, I stood up with a smile and thanked the lady for her time. As I walked to my bike with a new sense of resolve, I heard the familiar soft voice come from behind me, "Señor, you should look at that bridge carefully, because if it breaks, you're probably going to die." So much for the new sense of resolve! With a little less enthusiasm, I got back on the bike and returned to the volcanic ash and rockslides, and found the turnoff for the bridge. It was a narrow suspension bridge, barely wide enough for a car, and the wooden planks were laid lengthwise, rather than across like on most bridges. The bridge looked passable at first. There were a couple planks missing, but nothing too bad. My eyes continued to pan across, and that´s when I saw the last 20 feet of the bridge; and the solitary plank laying in the center. The little-old-lady´s voice chimed in, "...you're probably going to die." I couldn't have said it more eloquently. Looks like I'm backtracking!
After two days of checking out waterfalls, riding my bike on horse-trails, and visiting Baños' volcano-heated hot springs (think big cement bathtub with more people in it than water), I made my way to Cuenca. My stomach didn't feel right when I was packing my bike in Baños, and things became really bad, really fast, once I was on the road. I was forced to call it a day at only forty-five minutes into the six hour journey. (Yes, probably more information than you needed to know, but everyday isn't as nice as the pictures!) I spent the night in Ambato, and continued my journey to Cuenca the following morning. My stomach problems continued as well. After more than a day of not eating anything, the antibiotics finally kicked in, and I was able to stuff my face at dinner the way I'm accustomed to. In Cuenca, I met up with two other bikers from Toronto, Moe and Mike. They've been on the road for six weeks and expect to be in Ushuaia by January.
Riding south from Cuenca to Vilcabamba, I stopped in the small town of Saraguro for lunch. As I walked out of the restaurant, a nearby elementary school was being let out. Within seconds, I was surrounded by two dozen kids in their blue and grey school uniforms, complete with backpacks in tow. The majority were between six and nine years old and they stared at me as if I were an alien. I guess the combination of being 6ft tall and having red hair, along with being dressed in full motorcycle attire and riding a "huge" bike by Ecuadorian standards, probably does make me an alien of sorts. The kids took a lot of interest in the paper map on my tank bag, so I laid it out on the ground for them to see. As they each struggled to get close enough to point at and name a different place on the map, I took my camera out and showed them pictures from different parts of the country. After checking out the map, we had an impromptu English lesson in the street, which mainly involved me repeating the days of the week at least 10 times, and translating simple phrases and greetings from Spanish to English. They seemed to get a kick out of my accent, and they were incredibly enthusiastic. I only wish my students in Guatemala were as eager.
One of the younger girls asked me how long I had been traveling for, and when I told her that I started in May, she counted the months out from May to December on her fingers, and then stood there silently for a moment, before exclaiming with big eyes, "That's a very long time!" One of the boys asked me how much my bike cost, and when I told him, he seemed completely shocked. Not in a "trillion-million dollars" type way, but in the way that he knows and can appreciate how much things cost in life: Something I certainly couldn't do at seven years old. It's been a while since I've been around kids, but I was really blown away by how these children seemingly understood and could appreciate what are typically abstract ideas to children: time, distance, money, etc. In a way, I felt like I was talking with people two or three times their age. The group of boys in the picture below, hung around the longest, and asked,"When are you leaving town?" When I replied, "In 15 minutes or so", they looked truly disappointed, as if they had wanted to swap stories over a beer or something.
When I think about it, most of the children I've seen or met, have all seemed much older than they are. Whether it's really young kids trudging along a muddy mountain road in the rain on their way home from school, herding goats or cattle, roaming or working in the streets of a city, or working in restaurants and stores alongside their parents, they definitely seem to grow up fast. I can remember sitting down at a small eatery in a market back in Nicaragua. As I sat and waited, I watched the 6 or 7 year old waitress in the comedor next door take the order of the two men that had just sat down. She walked, talked, stood, and had all the mannerisms of someone in their late teens; complete with attitude. She had just finished listing off the meals of the day, and one of the guys asked her to repeat something. She sighed, gave the guy a look like, "You must be kidding me," rolled her eyes, and then rattled off the meals of the day again, though this time she counted off each meal by bending a different finger back on her hand. She went back into the kitchen and recited the order to the cook, who I assume was her mother, and then came back out to jokingly give the guys a hard time about something. When the meal was all said and done, she accepted payment, held each bill up to the light, presumably checking for counterfeit money, then wished them a nice day.
The hour I spent with the kids in Saraguro was a lot of fun and as I road out of town I couldn't have been happier with how the day turned out. It always amazes me how the most memorable moments of the trip are found when I least expect them. They´re not places I've read about in guidebooks, and they´re not things I can take pictures of. They're the chance conversations I've had with people at bus stops, teaching spanish to children in the street, and all the other faces I've seen and personalities I've met along the way.
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