Filed Trip: Volcán Puracé, Pilimbalá, Colombia

I zipped up to Colombia for a little hike last week.  By "zipped" I mean that I took a two-day bus ride to the awesome and beautiful colonial town of Popayán, Colombia, from which I launched an assault on Volcán Puracé.  And by "assault," I mean that I walked up... and then I walked back down -- nothing technical.  (Popayán, incidentally, might just have the most beautiful women per capita of any town on the planet -- which I mention strictly out of academic interest, and knowing that I contradict Jack Kerouac who said that the most beautiful girls in the world reside in Des Moines, Iowa.)  

The trail for Puracé starts an hour or so way up into the hills from Popayán, from a little village called Pilimbalá (the triple-P threat).  From there you usually have a 30-40 minute hike to get to the trailhead and the ranger station, where you pay the $20,000 fee (which is in pesos of course, and comes in at just over 11 bucks).  Much to my chagrin, I overshot the village.  Or I should say that the bus overshot the village.  Assuming the shotgun guy on the bus would let me know when we hit my stop, the Cruce de Mina (mine road crossing), I'd let what looked to be the right place go by.  Fortunately, with the help of a local passenger, we figured it out pretty quickly -- and I only had an extra 20 minute walk to the turnoff in Pilimbalá.  With dawn coming on, it was a stunning stroll through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen, Johnson County, Iowa notwithstanding.

The walk evolved from lush subtropical-feeling forest mixed with pasture, quickly up into páramo grasslands (still frequented by many a cow), up to rocky scrambles (still yet incredibly dotted with cow patties), and ultimately into the cinder-cone cloud-drenched moonscape of loose gravelly volcano bits.  You can smell the sulfur from two fumaroles (steam vents) near the summit, which tops out at 4650m, or about 15,200'.  There's a huge 500m wide crater with a lone steam vent that lets loose its vapor only to blend with the seemingly omnipresent clouds.  

Thanks to Volcano Discovery (dot com), I just learned that it's one of Colombia's most active volcanoes, last blowing its top in 1977.  I was happy to learn that its most recent "violent" eruption was over a hundred years ago, however.  Puracé is part of a huge massif (redundant?) with 7 craters and cones, the last of which sits 6K to the SE, is named Pan de Azucar, and sports a "permanent" glacier.  (As a multi-day technical climb, that one was out, unfortunately).  Maybe more worrisome than its active status, hikers are told to keep to the trail, as designated by the yellow blazes, since the area had been spiked with land-mines the last time tensions flared between the FARC and gov't forces.  Nobody had to tell me twice, though if that were true, I did wonder why there weren't more exploding cows.  (Maybe there were, I don't know).  

In all, the trek took just under 5 hours, with a 25 minute stay at the summit crater.  As soon as I hit the cinders, the clouds dropped, and I was glad for the yellow blazed boulders every 25' or so.  As soon as I topped out, the clouds opened up with a hailstorm of... yeah, you guessed it, hail.  I was surprised to find that the ice-balls stung my bare hands, and I thought I might have to put my backpack on my head for protection at one point.  Fortunately, the granizo (as it's called in Spanish) never increased in size.  Yes, my heart did swell to see my beloved frozen precipitation after so many long months apart.  But it quickly accumulated, and I quickly became cold.  I hadn't prepared myself with gear for a high elevation hike when I set out from Ecuador (hat, gloves, etc.), but I did have sense enough to bring an emergency alpaca sweater and dry clothes, including a pair of socks and a (clean!) set of capilene(tm) boxers -- thank you PataGucci and Darn Tough Socks of Vermont!  Being solo, I had no qualms donning an underwear-balaclava.  (This, as I'm sure some of you are already thinking, recalls the now infamous Padraic Monks Poker Night Wellingtons and Tightie-Whities Hat episode -- something I was keen not to repeat.)

While I descended, the clouds lifted a bit, and the air warmed -- unfortunately, that meant that the precip. did as well.  Once off the cinders, I packed everything away, took out a fresh bottle of water, and began a slow hustle to make it back to Pilimbalá for the 2:30 bus.  I made it down by quarter to 1 and checked out with the ranger, who informed me that there was a 1:00 bus as well.  On hearing that, I did a brisk jog to the road, making it with a couple of minutes to spare, where a woman sweeping her porch informed me that the next bus would pass at 4:30.  Like most bus-routes in Latin America, these times are estimates and depend on many factors and moving parts, not least of which is the whim of the driver who might stop for an empanada and a bowl of soup wherever and whenever.

So I walked some more.  Leisurely.  The countryside below Pilimbalá, as I said, was beautiful and speckled with many farms and forests.  I'd caught a 5:00AM bus (as recommended -- which of course left at 5:30), so much of the way down was new to me in the light.  I walked for an hour an a half conserving my last 1.5L bottle of water and hoping that the huge rolls of thunder didn't portend anything too bad.  I was passed by at least 5 trucks and a dozen motor-bikes heading up, but nothing headed down, until finally, a baby-blue vintage Land Cruiser pulled up blasting Salsa music (which is HUGE in Colombia, and which I thoroughly enjoyed after the ever present monochrome Cumbia electronica in Ecuador).  

"Coming from the Volcano?" the driver asked, matter-of-factly.  Yup.  I hopped on a bench in the back, so happy to be off my feet for the first time in seven-plus hours.  The driver took it easy on the gravel, babying his ride and goofing with his shotgun buddy, occasionally turning down the music to hear a joke.  I'd be floored to learn they did not smoke a doobie before heading out on the road at such a leisurely erratic rate, but I guess I'll never know.  The Land Cruiser was equipped with a "woo-woo" horn and a standard horn, which the driver used to wolf-whistle and beep at every car, bus, bike, woman, and guy on horseback we passed.  This apparently didn't get old for the entire 1.25 hour ride back down the mountain.  We picked up a few more passengers who filled the back benches, and finally rolled into Popayán proper.  

The first step out of the truck sent a searing pain through every ligament and muscle fiber in my legs, having spent the maximum, and then sat motionless for the ride.  I handed my stoned chauffeur a $5,000 note and hobbled straight to the nearest tienda where I purchased a 4-pack of Poker "lager" and popped one of those pain-killers right on there on the street, which by the way is perfectly legal in Colombia.  Later, I'd enjoy a FAT meal at "Petir's" restaurant, tamales, soup, and the "typical" plate of rice and red beans, platanos, slaw, and a big fried piece of chicken.  A most excellent adventure, which underscores for me yet again what a lucky mofo I am, and what an awesome wife I have!

*****

****Google seems to have re-installed the slide-show option.  Photos looks better that way -- click on any photo to start it.

*****

Morning in Pilimbalá 

Ranger station/trailhead

Follow the yellow blazes!

Cows in the paramo

A glimpse of the volcano

Colombian gate hinge

Sulfur stained rock-heads

My bag of granola puffed up with the altitude.

Chochos flower

Andean Condor re-habitat.  One swooped in out of the clouds as I passed.

Blazes!

Same trail, more light on the moonscape

The old grimace/smile

fumaroles venting sulfur steam horizontally

Steam vent in the summit crater

Sock/gloves, glad I had them

Borderline/cattle guard

No Quiero Quejas

"No quiero quejas," he says.  

I know instinctively that this is some sort of smack down, maybe because the word "no" is in it.  Maybe it's his tone, stern and clear.  I sit in a row in a desk, probably wearing an Ocean Pacific T-shirt, even though this is central Illinois.  It's hot, always hot and humid by mid April, and I'm probably sweating in my Levi's.  He passes out the quizzes, freshly rolled off the "ditto" machine, and shortly that iconic blue smell washes down the row of desks.

The only Spanish class I ever took was at US Grant Middle School.  Like French the semester before, it was mandatory.  I remember thinking that French was way cooler, but we all had to take Spanish with Sr. Martinez.  Sr. Martinez was Cubano -- and I hope he still is.  (All teachers look ancient when you're in eighth grade.)  He wore guayaberas and punctuated his "T" sounds with pursed lips and bared teeth.  He had shaky jowls,  especially when he played the bongos -- as promised all semester -- on the last day of class.  

I know he talked about Cuba, but I don't remember any details.  For one, I wonder how he ended up in the Land of Lincoln.  I don't know what he thought of Castro, or the Bay of Pigs, or the Mariel Boat Lift, which would have occurred just three years before.

I do remember three things:  puedo botar el papel, puedo afilar mi lapiz (which we sung to the tune of the Mexican hat dance), and no quiero quejas.  It fascinates me what scraps of language bounce around in my head, sometimes for decades.  "No quiero quejas!"

We joke that it was our third date when Kerry and I moved to Central America for most of a year, and that's pretty close to the truth.  We landed in Heredia, Costa Rica to start, and after a week or two, Kerry told me unequivocally that she could not be the only person I talked to.  To my horror, she said I was driving her crazy.  

Actually, K has informed me that, as a matter of fact, I am the one who said that.  I declared that she could not be the only person I talked to.  (Memory is malleable, untrustworthy.  Makes the whole thing suspect, but we keep at it anyway.)  I believe her; it would be like me to be frustrated by dependence.  Now that I think about it, yeah, I guess I would have said that.  Sometimes I drive myself crazy.

However it happened, I hit the library with my sister's Spanish I textbook in the mornings, and hung around cafes and markets in the afternoons, listening and eventually venturing into the murky area of oral expression in a new idiom.  The first lesson is that nothing translates exactly.  Forget exactness altogether; the whole process is littered with ambiguity and nuance.  Even the tenses don't translate; time, especially, is relative to place.

Fast-forward eighteen years: we find ourselves in South America, again for most of a year, but this time with two children (5 and 7).  Our children go to school here, in large part because we want them to learn Spanish.  Now Spanish is cool.  I myself have been known to wear guayaberas and play congas.  Now we see the value in being a polyglot, multi-lingual, moving past the native tongue.  The only native English speakers in their respective institutions, it has not been easy for the kids.  

But they get it.  They know instinctively that their survival depends on communication.  In the black-and-white world of children, words carry even more weight.  Progress is slow, impossible to see when you're up too close, at a day or a a week.  It took six months for us to see them turn the corner.  Yesterday, Kerry sent our blond-haired blue-eyed son into a toy store.  If he wanted something, he was going to have to ask.  And he did, much to the delight of the lady running the store.  He didn't know the name of the toy, but he knew how to explain where it was and to ask its value.

"We don't get many American boys in here who speak Spanish," she said (in Spanish), lavishing him with praise.  These are proud moments for us as parents, where this endeavor seems worth it.  They still don't speak much Spanish when we're around, but when they play with the neighbors, that's all it is in its emphatic yelling and exuberant Spanglish chaos. 

A couple of weeks ago, fed up again with limits, I took my first real Spanish class since eighth grade.   Professor Juan began to fill in some of the blanks in my serviceable but limited street Spanish.  I am not sure why, even as one who teaches grammar, it took me so long to come around to this angle of learning.  Things have begun to resolve even more, become sharper.  A whole lot of "I get it now."

One of my assignments was to translate an essay I'd written in English, into Spanish.  And I'd come to the verb, "quejar."  Suddenly I heard Sr. Martinez: "No quiero quejas."  I'd always heard "chaos," so phonetically close to quejas, but it turns out that a queja is a complaint.  "I don't want any complaints."  More implicitly, "no whining, you spoiled, naive, entitled little weasels."  I get it, Mr. Martinez -- now I get it.

I love the click of a word when it comes freshly into your personal lexicon.  A modismo is a spanish idiom or particular turn-of-phrase.  I keep my eye open for these windows into meaning, views into a culture.  Darse cuenta de is a great one.  Meaning to realize [something], it's more literally, "I got the bill (cuenta or count)" -- "the check came due, and I picked it up"   For me, the check for Sr. Martinez' words came due, fully thirty years later.

Things novel and poetic stand out in my mind.  The more you wade into language, the more you see things standing in for others, the metaphors.  (I keep close to me John Ciardi's words: The root meaning of every word is either onomatopoeia or metaphor.) Popcorn is palomitos, or little doves.  Grasshoppers are saltamontes or jump-mountains (or is it mountains of jumps?).  A speed bump is a rompe velocidad or speed-breaks.  Possibilities are infinite.

Down here, "To miss" is extrañar, to be estranged.  Te extraño, I miss you.  Elsewhere, it's echo de menos, or "I cast out for less" or "I grasp for what's gone."  There's no way to translate it exactly, but the phrase emanates nostalgia.  Really, once you get to know them, all words do.  

Cancelled

"So, you mean I don't have to come back here with the factura?"

"No, it's in the system as soon as you pay the multa," says the very nice, patient woman at the desk in the Ventanilla Unica Empresarial (VUE), which translates literally and somewhat mysteriously to "Window Only Business" or maybe "Stop Shop for Business."  Anyhow, she sports the typical pinstriped vest-suit most public service workers wear, including teachers.

But something was fishy here.  Something here did not compute.  Seven months in the land of paper trails, where everything requires a receipt and a minimum of three transactions at three different windows, and I'm thinking this trail goes further.

The whole thing started a couple of weeks ago.  Our landlord-friend William had told me to be sure to cancel my SRI (Servicios Internas Rentas, or IRS) number, the number I'd obtained in order to get to be paid by the university -- after I'd already worked there for several months.  The process of getting it was relatively painless, only requiring two trips and two waits to receive my RUC number, a sort of SS number so that I could pay 8% of my wages in taxes.  Of course, since I was voluntarily paying into the system, that would be easy.  

So William says casually: "Don't forget to cancel your number.  You don't want to come back to Ecuador, maybe ten years from now and get stopped at the border where they'll tell you you owe $1,000s of dollars in back taxes."  It happened to William, who's Ecuadorian -- after closing a bar (and his SRI account) years ago, he went to open another business, only to find he owed $8,000-plus in back taxes.  Fortunately his wife had meticulously filed the factura away, and when he presented it to them, the SRI basically said, "Oh, my bad.  Carry on." 

OK, so I get it.  Cancel the number.  How hard could that be?

The first step is to go to the municipal offices in Otavalo, wherein there's an SRI office.  As in any office, you first have to find the info desk and wait in line for a number.  After waiting for two people to cut in front of me (the incredulous look apparently wasn't working), I assert myself before the third guy by giving him an elbow to the chest, and obtain my number.  Then it's time to wait.  The fact that there are only three rows of chairs bodes well -- the wait has yet to be bad in Otavalo, I'll give it that -- it's nothing like waiting in Quito where it's prudent to have at least two books and a meal on hand once you receive your number.  

When my number dings on the overhead display, I pop up and head down the line of desks separated by plexi-glass.  Two of the five slots are occupied by professional-looking women.  I sit down at the second, and explain that I want to cancel my SRI account.  

The first thing that I understand for sure is that "we need a color copy of your passport to start the process."  OK, so after a couple of clarifying questions -- the kind of questions I've made a habit of asking here -- I leave the office, unlock the bike, and scan the downtown area.  There are no fewer than eight copy shops visible from the patio above the central park, obvious for their vertical red "copias" signs.  I head to the first one, with a sign that says "b/n y color" (blanco/negro and color), head one block over, lock the bike up, and go in.  Here again, two people jump in front of me when I was clearly here first in this amorphous "line."  What's up with that?  When it's finally my turn, I'm told that they don't do color copies here.  Argh.

Still, not that big of a deal, I go unlock the bike and head to another copy store, another block away, fish my lock out of my bag, lock the bike, and head in.  

"I need a color copy of my visa and passport," I tell the girl at the desk, handing her my documents.  She makes the copies, and I fishing in my pocket, I realize that all I have is a ten.  Oh no!  There is never any change in Ecuador, and I still don't understand this.  Finding correct change is pretty much the unofficial national pastime.  Can't you just get some rolls of quarters and dollars?  That's probably too straightforward.  Instead, there is a constant change game.  You can see vendors in all kinds of stores hustling around the other stores trying to break a ten to make a sale.  People hoard their dollar coins here like it's a baguette during the French Revolution.  

"Ok, fine," I say, "I'll be right back."  Head out, unlock bike, store the lock, and go to the phone store a block away, where I figure I can put 9 bucks of credit on my phone.  Called "recharging" here, and like change, it's a constant game to balance juuust enough saldos (credit) to keep your phone going.  If you run out of saldos during a phone conversation, your phone just cuts out.  Kerry's gotten used to that.  Of course, how hard would it be just to put 50 bucks on the phone and not worry about it for two months?  Anyhow, I think I'll add $9 to my phone, get a buck in change, head back to the copy store, get my copies, and then go back to the SRI office.  No sweat!

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't do $9"  For real?!   To be sure, I have not really been put out too badly, but this is getting comical.  Apparently, I can get $8 in credit, which is fine, give me 8.  I pay, check to make sure the saldos have actually been put on my phone, and head back to the copy store.

Despite this Herculean effort, I did not in fact successfully cancel my SRI/RUC number on Friday.  I did, however, go back into the gov't office with my color copies of passport and visa, wait in line, get my number, wait, talk to a different lady, hand over my copies, and then, after filling out a form -- which took three tries because I kept messing it up -- I got a carbon-copy SECRET PASSWORD!  

I was not really sure what to do with this, but I thought I understood that I was to pay $31.50 at any bank I chose (I'm sure of this part, because I asked the clarifying questions) to get out of the system, and I thought I understood that I was to hand the bank my carbon copy SECRET PASSWORD.  

After 3 banks, I gave up, went home, had a beer, and forgot about it for the weekend.  In retrospect, I'm not sure what I was thinking -- like I'd be able to slide my SECRET PASSWORD under the glass with a wink, pay the fee, and all would be forgiven.  As it was the carbon copy SECRET PASSWORD travelled all over Otavalo by bike in my "wallet" (duct tape card holder with rubber band), and it was now beat up and sitting on the dresser, where it would stay for the weekend.

By Tuesday, I'd try again, and I'd understand the missing step with a familiar shunsho feeling (a Kichwa word for stupid).  I'd gone in, waited for the number, gone to the correct office, restated the issue, and the very nice, patient lady -- this time with gestures -- directed me across the hall to the Ventanilla Unica Empresarial (VUE), which translates literally and somewhat mysteriously to "Window Only Business" or maybe "Stop Shop for Business."   

But I could not just stroll casually across the hall.  First, I would need to go get another number...

And here, at last, I was to present my carbon copy SECRET PASSWORD (which required yet another submission of color copies of my visa and passport to obtain) in order to make a DECLARATION.  (What I was declaring was yet a mystery.)

Unfortunately, due to it's travels and long life outside of the world of the SRI, she could not make out one of the digits on the carbon copy SECRET PASSWORD.  Fortunately, this lady was nice and patient, and after many tries, reissued my password, and put my declaration in the computer.

Now I was free to go to the bank of my choice to pay the multa!  And I now know that the multa of $31.50 was levied because I did not declare anything on my RUC for the month of March, mostly because there was nothing to declare.  This brings us back to the beginning, where I was told that was it, I'd be cancelled, and I did not have to come back with the factura.  ("So, you mean I don't have to come back here with the factura?" Which was fishy, if you recall.)  

After more consultations with William however, and the amazing insights of my beautiful wife, we realized the problem: I'd been using the word cancelar, which does indeed mean cancel in Spanish, but more commonly here it means "to pay," as in "to cancel your check" or "cancel your debt."  

Ah-ha!  

I did go to the bank and pay, and I did have the sense to save my factura.  So now, with factura in hand -- proof I'd paid the multa -- I went back to the SRI office with total confidence.  I got my number, waited, and went up to the woman in the vest-suit at the row of desks separated by plexi-glass.  There, just to be sure, I used the words "close," "exit," "leave," "extinguish," and "stop."  Apparently she caught my drift, and after signing a few forms, which of course had to be stamped a couple of times, I received the official notice that I was free of the system. 

As ever, communication is context.  Vivimos, for example, means both "we live" and "we lived," depending on how it's used.  Bomba is bomb or gas station.  Mandarina is either a small orange or a henpecked husband.  Of course the meanings are completely different.  Add to this a second language and the complications multiply.  

"You have to think in Spanish -- you can't translate," says Juan, our Spanish teacher.  Easier said than done, but I get the point: a lot of things just don't translate, especially word-for-word.  Robert Frost famously said that "poetry is what's lost in translation," and if that's true, then I have to chalk this whole experience up as poetic.  

Orlando y Cintico, 3 Marzo 2013

Fotos se ven mejor como una presentación de diapositivas - haga clic en uno para empezar.  Esperemos que los disfruten!