rants and the trip to Pasachoa

So its been awhile since i wrote. and now i am going to have to catch up in installments. today i am a little frustrated feeling. i have just spent a week and a half ill with bacterial infection and parasites. i have learned how fragile and dangerous it can be to just eat whatever, drink whatever. i simply have tried to eat cheap and at everyday restaurants. i cook at home as well, but here i am, after a month of feeling tired and wondering if my enemia had reasserted itself, depleted from bugs in my stomach! so yes, immobility, and the scariness of illness have left me feeling like i am falling behind. i have to recapture momentum.
i plan to secure some contact in Peru for volunteer work after the holidays and to spend december volunteering here in quito. i am not ready to leave here yet. its been good to absorb one place and practice spanish. im going to back up and tell some stories but first i just want to comment how difficult it is for me to assimilate a new language! i have learned the grammar, but my ears and tongue are still stupid! it comes in waves. one day i will feel pretty capable, the next retarded. and its a struggle to find new spanish speaking individuals to speak with. its necessary to practice everyday outside of class but this can be difficult. okay, thats my rant. now to Pasachoa....
over a month ago 3 women friends and i went to hike one of ecuadors national forests. a cloud forest no less- full of hundreds of bird species and cloaked in fog. we left with minimum money, food and equipment with the idea that it was an overnight trip. we descoverd that national parks charge a premium to foreigners, something not listed in my guide book, and overall, the caretakers showed some animosity towards our presence there- i have no idea why.
so we planned to rise early and begin our assent towards a lookout a couple thousand feet higher than quito (numbers later) that would take about 8 hours round trip. but, becuase it was still light, we decided on a short loop hike for the afternoon. we had about two and a half hours until dark and i thought well, this could be interesting. we started through a meadow and up into bamboo forest with bird calls all around, bromelaids (tropical plants) perched on trees and stunning views across gorges than ran steeply down. it was cloudy and had obviously been raining a lot recently. the trials were muddy, slippery but not at all unmanagable if your from the northwest. i felt right at home and slopped up the trail, enjoying being out of the bus exhaust and in the quiet. we passed a sign that indidated our half way mark and walked onward. the trail began to angle down and this is where the adventures begin.
my hiking partners hailed from Paris, London, and somewhere in Australia- some not exactly versed in the ways of mud and fuana. slipping and falling, injuring knees, trembling and wet, oh, and some laughter, my friends discovered the unpredictable side of tourism. nature is wild and doesnt care about you or whether you get good pictures or not. the journey became stressful and as the light began to dwindle, fear. however, i am not afraid of the dark or navigating through the forest, only of people.
then a strange thing happened: we rounded a corner and came upon a wailing little girl and her giant german shepard, standing in the trail. luckily, one member could speak excellent spanish and was able to ask what the matter was. apparently, this tiny child of like 6 or so was separated from her uncle and was told to go to a certain place to meet him if she got lost. the direction was back towards the forest and she was terrified. we convinced her to come with us so we could call someone. this took half and hour or so and now it was pretty dark. we reached the meadow from where we had begun and at that point we heard someone calling for the girl. another camper helped us call the man´s name, backtracking, trying to hear how far away he was. we called, "Lucho!" for 20 minutes or so and then suddenly a man on horseback appeared, smiling. he didnt say anything, nor did Monica, the little girl, but silently climbed onto the horse behind him and off they went into the night.
on the return home, some of my comrades felt that the man was rude for not saying thank you. this really frustrated me. i was just sick of every action thats taken by an ecuadorian that is not exactly the same response as a westerner being attributed to some character flaw. indeed i have learned more about judgementalism, racism and how narrowmindedness prevails among well educated, sane westerners than i ever cared to intimately know!
the stereotypes of the "other" as lazy, using and dishonest seems to still find a foothold and i have talked with people a lot about this, both with ecuadorians and tourists. there is no good reason for it. its just too easy to point rather than consider the position and conditions from which another person is acting. this topic encompasses the questions of whether immigrants should learn the language of their host country, why they dont actually learn and whether they feel compelled to do so and for what reasons; do hostfamilies actually need the money they earn from homestays or are they just after a higher living standard and is this somehow dishonest- should they instead only be concerned with facilitating a cultural exchange; do ecuadorian women seek foreigners for marriage as a way to better their lives; and does machismoism effect the wellbeing of women and limit their opportunities towards education, work and self betterment.
yes, there is more to be said about the elections in the US, opinions on Correa and the revisions of the Ecuadorian Constitution, economics and my visits to Centro Historico and the amazing Basilica there, but in bites.