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Ah, South America (or at least the Ecuador – Peru section of it). It was an amazing trip, but this is going to trickle out from my end because my computer is still in the shop (it makes the boot noise and then it makes the boot noise and then it makes the boot noise and then it makes the boot noise…) and I’ve sneaked onto Dean’s while he’s out of town, but it’s just not my space, you know.
Day 0 of the trip was brutal like all days you spent on impossibly long flights. I went to San Jose to San Francisco to Miami to Quito. The best part of the day being that there was a little man with a sign waiting to pick me up and take me to the hotel. In the dark, in a strange country where (as Paul Simon sings) you don’t speak the language and hold no currency, that’s just like heaven. Well, except that Ecuador uses American currency. I arrived a day early from the rest of the people I was traveling with which turned out to be a fabulous idea because Quito is over 9,000 feet and the first day I was crippled by attitude sickness (headache, nausea) and then *bam* the middle of the second night, I was jolted awake and it was gone and, even though we went higher in Peru, it never came back.
So, the first day, I drifted slowly from breakfast to the park where I stumbled onto an art and musical instrument museum (where there was no one at the desk but a guy rushed from an office to greet me, so excited that someone, anyone, had come in). I had the place to myself, which had the disadvantage of no one to explain to me some of the images. In particular, there was this creature — a fish with a human face and hands and feet that kept showing up in paintings and sculptures. Sometimes it was attacking a boat full of standing demons or gods, but sometimes the boat and the fish were a la carte.
I get the impression this is something from the local mythology, but what? I found the art interesting — particularly the section with portraits of all the Ecuadoran presidents. Would any of our presidents be brave enough / interesting enough to have their official portrait done in Cubist style?
But then I stumbled around the corner to the Pre-Columbian Art museum and things went bad from the moment I stepped in the door. Guns were pointed at me until I took off my baseball cap and surrendered my backpack and cap to the coat check girl. Now, there were no signs that said “No Photography”, no little icons with the camera with the circle slash. So, I was taking pictures with my iPhone (no flash) of these rows of amazing terracotta figures in the 3-4 foot range that looked like nothing I would associate with pre-Columbian art. It’s dim light, it’s a crappy cellphone camera, it was a documentation thing, so I could look up more about these figures later on the web. But an armed guard “caught” me and then refused to speak Spanish slow enough that I could understand him. Pretend you’re talking to a 2 year old and use lots of hand gestures and I’m right there with you. But nothing I said in my best pidgin Spanish could slow him down. So, I’m not stupid, I figured it was the photographs on the iPhone, so I unlocked it and let him watch me delete all 3 of the photos I’d taken and showed him there was no other photos from the museum on the device. But having seen me use the iPhone, he really wanted the iPhone. That I was a stupid old woman, traveling alone, and that he was going to walk away with a little bit a bonus for the day. The whole way he was looking around to see who was watching.
So, I put it back in my pocket and turned my back on him and walked away from him. Everyone wants an iPhone, right? Isn’t that the punch line?
I took this photo later the next day somewhere else. But I’m still fascinated by these human like figures, more like trolls or demons from other cultures that I would not associate with Ecuador or South America.
Eventually I made it back to the room for a long nap and met up with the rest of the group in a wine bar for dinner where the most unfortunate experimental jazz was being played. But it wasn’t a day where a lot of things got done.