By Bus

We hopped on one from Otavalo to Ibarra, thirty minutes, which was easy enough.  Then we went to catch one from Ibarra to San Lorenzo, a Columbian border town on the northern coast, which proved slightly more difficult.  

Bus terminals -- at least in our experience so far -- have several things in common:  busses for one.  Lots of busses of various vibrant colors, indicating the specific cooperative/company.  They all sport various decals, often featuring either a woeful-looking Jesus or numbers of national soccer stars, or both.  Apparently, it is also mandatory to display that classic eighteen-wheeler mudflap icon, a nude silohoutte of the reclining woman with impossibly pointy boobs (even -- or especially -- school busses have this sticker, sometimes also accompanied by a pot leaf, the significance of which, I suspect, escapes most drivers).  Every bus comes equipped with a driver (duh) and a barker/money handler, the latter being responsible for spotting potential customers, which in our case was pasty gringoes with ridiculously big backpacks.  Later, the money guy works his way through the packed bus collecting fares from the various pick-ups along the way.  There are bathrooms at the terminals as well, manned (or womanned, as the case may be) by a person who takes a dime (for number one) or fifteen cents (apparently for number two, which includes your papele hygenico).  Rarely are there toilet seats in men's rooms; I haven't been in the women's, but Kerry assures me that seats are also optional for the ladies.   When necessary, K. espouses the hover method.  As for the children, they are generally suspended over the bowl by their arm pits while the holder repeats the mantra, "are you done yet, are you done yet, did you go, are you going, is it coming?" (& cetera, ad infinitum).  

Then there are the vendors.  Most terminals have a row of vendors, and I believe that they all sell the same, basic sugar staples (whether there are five stalls or twenty, it doesn't seem to matter):  there are a shocking variety of chupes (lollipops of various diabetes inducing levels of hidden surprises within), cookies (either sweet or sweeter), white-bready confections, and a bazillion soda drinks.  There are also usually a couple dozen kinds of potato chips.  In general, I purchased the most innocuous food I could find:  a big bottle of water and several tubes of ritz-like crackers, which the kids lived on for days.  Finally, every terminal tends to have fruit vendors, which we typically (unfortunately) avoided unless they sold things we could peel.  Mandarinas, sweet little oranges, were another staple for us. 

We stood on the "tarmac" in Ibarra, the regional capital of the province of Imbabura, looking lost and pale, hunched under our backpacks.  (This is the "basic gringo look", you can see it all over Ecuador without looking too hard; there is a Euro version, too, which includes nicer shoes and slicker jeans.)   Finally, I asked a family who also seemed to be boarding the bus for San Lorenzo whether we paid on the bus (which we had been doing up to this point), or whether there were some other method.  After apparently looking sufficiently confused by her response, mother and daughter led me into the terminal building, "venga" (come).  We had to find the right booth for the right cooperative, and there I purchased our seats for our trip to the coast.  It seems that if you want a seat from the place of origin, you have to have the ticket.  It cost a nickel to leave the terminal; I'm not sure why.

The ride to San Lorenzo was to take us out of the inter-Andean plain, over the western ridge, and down into the super-lush lowlands of northwestern Ecuador.  It would take us six or seven hours, and we would stop frequently to pick up and let off passengers in each little town we came through.   About half way, in the town of Lito, we were boarded by army guys who instructed me and the one Columbian national on board to come with him.  

"Solo mio?"  I asked, looking at the automatic weapon strapped to his chest.  

"Si.  Vamos."  OK, no need to ask twice.  I felt for the passports in my pocket, walked out into the sun, and wondered weather it would be cool to take a piss while being interrogated by the army dudes who had set up a little tent kiosk on the other side of the road for foreigners like me and the Columbiano.  I'm not sure why, but they only took down the kids passport numbers and names, while I shifted from foot to foot adding up the hours it had been since I'd last emptied my bladder (three and a half?) against the number of cups of coffee I'd had (six?).  The soldier taking names handed back the kids' passports; I smiled and thanked him.  His face was solid stone.

Mercifully, the bus stopped for a lunch break a couple of miles up the road, and most of the passengers emptied out of the bus.  More bathrooms for a dime (yes!).   I bought some empanadas, but drooled over the chorizo sizzling on a grill.  Without warning (that I could see) the bus started up abruptly and took off.  One guy caught it when it stopped for a speed-bump, but the rest must have left off at Lito.

At just about every town (several times and hour), the bus would slow enough for a few vendors to hop on.  I'm not sure, but I suspect that the barker would give the OK or not to prospective sellers.  Vendors sold everything from fruit, to homemade breads, to soft-drinks and water, even chorizo on a stick and kabobs.  (The yeasty yucca bread quickly became one of my favorites; the kids hated it, another advantage for me.)   Most vendors employed a straight-forward approach in repeating the name of the product they were moving, as in "mandarina, mandarina, mandarina, mandarina, mandarina," no fewer than a dozen times in a high monotone.  Very effective.  Most things sold pretty well this way -- then again, food pretty much sells itself. 

Then there were the pass-the-product-out pitches.  Our personal favorite was a miracle salve, apparently made into a paste from big meaty grubs (or maybe we just mis-interpreted the picture).  It was a cure for -- as far as we understood -- headaches, arthritis, prostate issues, lesions, and varicose veins.  Amazing!  A guy two seats up from us bought three cans of it (it came with photocopied instructions for its usage) thus likely making the seller's quota for our bus.  With some subtle variations, the technique was generally the same: first the seller would board the bus.  If there was music blasting (which there often was), the driver would cut the tunes.

"Damas y caballeros" (ladies and gentlemen), they'd start earnestly. "Un ratito de su tiempo por favor" (just a little bit of your time please)…  The introduction done, they would work their way down the bus handing out samples to everyone (most of which they'd later collect), talking the whole way about the product and greeting people.   Most people took the product; others waved it off like a pitcher waving off the catcher's call.  Then the hawker would squeeze his way back to the front of the bus for the main pitch.  Not that I got half of it by a long-shot, but I did learn that there were also two various tones to the sell.  One was the humble approach, as in "I'm just an honest guy trying to support my family," and the other was the hard sell, with the subtext that "I could sell some of my stuff or I could rob you… maybe later."  We did buy some candy-coated peanuts at one point, thank the good Buddha because I think Oakes would have imploded had we not.  (Times like those, I think parenting is one big game of chicken; in this case, I swerved, and it was the prudent course of action.)

We did not go all the way to San Lorenzo.  About five miles out of town, there was a left turn for the coastal road at the "Y" (everyone knew it as such).  We were told not -- under any circumstance -- to go into San Lorenzo.  "It's too dangerous for you," the "you" meaning gringoes in general.  Ah, of course.  So we were left at the side of the road with a woman who had been looking out for us the whole way.  ("Stick with me," she'd said, "I'll show you where to go.")  They'd left her three crates of supplies in the middle of the road, which Kerry helped carry to the edge while I held the kids' hands and tried to look hard and tough.  I have to say that on each of the half a dozen busses we took on our trip to the coast, someone (or ones) kindly helped us figure out what to do. 

After standing out on the side of the road with several people for fifteen or twenty minutes (including the kind but laconic Columbiano with whom I'd shared the passport-check), we hopped our last bus of the day, spent another hour and a half bouncing down roads, sweating, listening to hawkers, watching people come and go, stopping in small towns, and buying yucca bread.  At last we got to the corner for Las Peñas, and there we were exhaled from the humid bus in a pile of backpacks and kids.  

One more 10 minute ride in an open three-wheeled taxi and we were on the beach, completing the first of three legs of our first big bus journey.  We'd hopped our first bus at 8:30 in the morning, and we were on the beach by 4:30.  Other than learning upon our return "flight" the unbelievable painful Third Law of Travel in Ecuador (never ever ever travel on a Sunday), we will probably do it again.