Prologue

Prologue

April 2015

I lay on my back, and let Dr. Hannah dig into my foot.  No anesthetic, but the callus was deep.  So was the spine from a shell I’d stepped on two months earlier.  

After a few minutes of goofing around on the surface with tweezers, she she held up a tiny spear and said, “I’m just going to get right in there.”  I gnashed my jaw and winced, but it only took a few seconds before I heard the clink of piece of shell dropped onto stainless steel.  Relief was immense, immediately.

After trying a dozen times to dig it out myself, and then weeks of ignoring it, I’d finally had to see the doctor about my foot.  This because standing on the rungs of a ladder (to paint) just wasn’t happening.  Otherwise, I’d been able to modify my gait, to hike and run even, in order to avoid the pain.  Ultimately, my sister who’s a bodyworker and osteopath-in-training, said that my right leg was “shorter” than my left -- presumably from compensating.

“Well, that’s the last little bit of Ecuador in you,” she said.  What a line, I thought -- yes, that’s certainly true, physically anyway.   It’s not the best metaphor, and it’s not the worst -- like these essays -- but some things stick with you longer than you think they will at first.

On July 4, 2012 my wife Kerry and our children (Sylvia and Oakes, ages 7 and 4 at the time) embarked on a year abroad, mostly taking up residence in Otavalo, Ecuador -- a smallish city a few miles north of the equator and two hours’ travel-time north of Quito, the capital.  What follows are a series of regular check-ins from South America that kept me off the streets, kept my mind occupied, and kept me out of trouble.

While we share many opinions and experiences, if Kerry wrote these, I’m sure they’d have a different angle and flavor.  These are my takes, my opinions, probably some of my errors in fact and judgment -- so take them with a grain of salt, preferably rimmed around a full margarita glass.  There are at least as many holes in the narratives as there is substance.  There’s no way to capture everything in words.  (But the pictures sure help!)

This is definitely not meant to be a guide, and definitely not a how-to manual.  Rather, I see these pieces as a blend, first and foremost, of narrative.  After all, life is stories, and stories are life.  There is also a fair amount of cultural analysis, if you can call it that, and a wee dose of research where I might have had to fill in the gaps.   

As far as information goes -- not to mention just plain living day-to-day -- we couldn’t have done it without our good friend and soul brother, Mr. Pete Shear, Don Peter.  If you can get past the cynicism, there’s a lot to learn from this man!  

Ultimately it was Pete who got us to Ecuador and even Otavalo.  He’d been married for a time to an Ecuadorian woman, and they have a beautiful and sharp girl named Nina.  Pete’s adopted teenage daughter Camila is also fabulous -- and it was great to get to know and learn from her.

Pete maintains a farm and sustainable learning site in a throwback of a place, a region called Intag, high in the cloud forest of the pacific slope of Ecuador.  We first attempted to live in Pucará, but for a variety of reasons, that just didn’t work out.  We were too isolated there, and wouldn’t have enough freedom.  Still, what an incredible place to visit a few times.

Pete also maintains an apartment in Otavalo, which is ultimately where we settled.  There we found an apartment, enrolled Sylvia in school and Oakes in a “pre-kinder” program, and set up a life.  I taught English at a university for a semester while Kerry began to work as a massage therapist with our yogi/Satnam Nasaya guru landlord, William, at his alternative health-care business.  In short, we made friends; we traveled; we lived.  And we worked a little.

But first we had to get there.  

The first problem was money.  We’d been saving -- or more accurately, Kerry had been socking away money -- for nearly five years -- specifically for the purpose of living abroad with family.   We’d moved to Central America (I joke) on our third date (though it’s true, we did that year only after having known each other for a few months).  By the time we left, what money we’d saved wasn’t quite enough.  We got a little help here and there for sure (thank you mom, thank you Cassie, thank you Jim!), and still we’ll be paying off that credit card for another couple of years.  

The three biggest logistical issues, besides funding, were where we would end up, how we’d rent our house (a make-or-break scenario), and what we’d do with our jobs.  We knew it had to be Latin American since K and I have a foundation in Spanish.   After ruling out Costa Rica (for expense), we went with our friend Pete, whom we have known for more than 20 years.  As for visas, well, we decided that we’d cross that bridge and pay that toll when we came to it.  I wouldn’t necessarily call that a mistake, but we’d certainly arrive with a few more documents if we did it again!  

So Ecuador it was.  Still, that was all we knew when we took off.  We were going to live, one way or another, for a year on the equator.

As for renting the house, thank goodness we found Wes and family from Maine.  The first few “groups” who responded to our rental ad looked like they were trying to find a place for their meth-lab.  “Do we have to mow the lawn?” is not the kind of question you want to hear.  But being able to leave our house -- and everything in it -- in good hands meant that we could worry about other things.  The only things we didn’t leave for Wes, Abby, and their three children, were my family’s table and our wedding pottery.

Jobs proved to be the easiest thing, mainly because we teach high school in a great district.  We were allowed to take one-year leaves-of-absence.  This meant that when our contracts came around to sign -- as they do each year in the spring -- we would have the opportunity to re-enlist.   It turned out that K was also able to do a “work-study” a sort of sabbatical-light, which paid for our health care only on either end of the journey.  (Defined by our district anyway, a leave is unpaid, while a sabbatical comes with full salary -- and a lot more strings attached.)  Health care in Ecuador, which we accessed plenty (!), was pay-per-visit.  This was more of an insurance policy, more peace-of-mind that allowed us to concentrate on the journey.  Still, it was quite a leap to sign those leave papers.  After years of thinking about it, everything started to jump forward quickly in the spring of 2013.

The rest was packing.  Putting one’s life in a bag or two is easy for some -- especially when you’re 23 and your only dependent is a lab.  When you travel as a family unit, you have to make some careful choices, some of which, like a supply of Annie’s Mac and Cheese were good calls, and others, like heavy hiking boots (which I sent home with my mom after a visit) were unnecessary.

In some ways, the kids made the biggest sacrifices, not least of which were friends and their “space.”  But they have a of of things.  And while part of the point of the year was to get away from excessive things for a year, they were only 4 and 7.  We tried to help them make some good choices.  Playmobil toys, for example, were going; American Girl dolls were going to sit out the year.  Big decisions!  

As for my toys: as a devout cyclist and bird-nerd, a decent bike and binoculars were essential .  A good rain shell.  A comfortable pair of shoes to wear everyday for a year.  The rest was decoration, but the bike was essential.  It performed several integral functions for me: one, I can’t sit still, and if I didn’t have that bike, I surely would have gone insane.  Two, I got to know the surrounding area intimately by touring on bike.  I am infinitely grateful for that.  And three: I did most of our grocery shopping by bike, which must’ve saved us the $100 it cost to bring it.  The cost of the oversized box came with no weight limit, so I was able to bring all the tools and spare parts I thought I’d need for the year.

This digression is for my fellow bike geeks: the “whip” I built up myself.  I went with a hard-tail, 26” wheeled mountain bike for a couple of reasons: primarily cost, ease of finding parts, and its universality.  The frame is great, a cheap, aluminum $100 “Leader 516h” if you want the specifics -- I’m not sure you can find a better frame for the money.  I put a nice Fox coil fork on it (not air… I wanted to have the coil just in case of air failure -- though I did have to go to Quito to get the seals redone once).  The components were all Shimano LX and XT junk, but serviceable.  Cable disc brakes were a must, since repair is easy.  Because there was no weight limit for the box, I stuffed it with parts: brake and shifter cables, housing, one tire, couple spokes, a fresh chain, even a new cassette, and a shitload of tubes.  Tubes!  I went through a dozen in the first couple of months.  I also trashed a rear rim trying to bunny hop a drainage chasm that came up out of nowhere and “casing” the landing.  My mother brought a replacement that I’d ordered online and had to her house when she came to visit in early 2014.  

The bike was often a source of conversation with Ecuadorians.  There are cyclists there, both road and off-road -- but BMX and downhill are very popular, not so much the type of touring I was doing.  I might take a 29’er given another chance, but the Leader was ideal for me, for the time.  I sold the bike to Pete when I left for $400, and I think we both got a good deal.

So that’s it for me -- this is the last thing I wrote, and so the beginning is the end -- or better yet, the end is the beginning.  If these anecdotes are half as fun to read as they were to write, well, then I’m happy.  Have a nice trip!