Fin de Año

We are early people.  All four of us in this immediate family are early people.  We put the "immediate" in family every morning.  One of our kids is always up around 6, which is really great -- and you never know which one it will be.  Sometimes, when we hear a child foot-slapping his or her way across the tiles towards our room in the early morning, we play "guess those footsteps."  Kerry has gotten very good at it.  I get up grumbling and make some coffee.

So I don't think we've made it to midnight on New Year's Eve for at least a decade. Usually we do a countdown at 10 o'clock, maybe call it a Brazilian new year, except without costumes or samba marches, or anything Brazilian really.  We toast, and then we shuffle off to bed.

When we started hearing about Ecuadorian Fin de Año celebrations, I thought, this is the year I make it to midnight.  The Ecuadorian tradition is to erect big cardboard, plastic and papier mache effigies, stuff them with explosives, and then ignite them on the countdown to the new year.  And every block has at least one display of life-sized cardboard doll-bombs.  That sounds awesome!

The effigies represent local and national politicians as well as popular cartoons and super-heroes, and a mish-mash of random representations of human vice and folly.  The whole thing has a carnival-esque feel in that it subverts the dominant power-structures by pointing out its (many) faults -- that, and at the same time, people run around in masks and wigs and costumes having a grand old time.  Ecuadorians apparently started this tradition more than 200 years ago, and it's since spread to other Latin American countries.

The symbolism is pretty obvious: by burning these viejos -- or "old ones" as the effigies are called -- people are torching the bad stuff from the previous year.  It's a purification rite of sorts.  In addition, many of these life-sized dioramas display hand-scribbled litanies of bad things and misfortune that have occurred during the year.  And all of this sheit is heaped onto the blaze at midnight.  The final touch is to leap over the cardboard bonfires, which when loaded with fire-crackers (and people loaded with drink), might not be the most prudent course of action.  Depending on your timing, you might get a real new year's surprise.

But that's not the only tradition of reversal and renewal.  Men and boys also dress up like women -- very busty, lusty, and scantily clad "women" -- and go around harassing people for spare change.  This significance is a bit more elusive -- perhaps it's a yearly attempt to become more intimate with their feminine sides.  Or maybe it's something deeper, I'm not sure.

Regardless of the meaning, these guys go at it with full gusto.  By 9 or 10 o'clock the streets in the center of Otavalo are packed, both with pedestrians and cars.  Many cars, incidentally, also have smaller effigies strapped to their hoods and roofs -- the party does not stop at the sidewalk.  On any given block you can see these boy-girls blocking each car as it comes into an intersection by hooting and gyrating, and even simulating sex with the hood of the car for a minute before heading to the driver's side and collecting the toll.  Often, revelers pull a rope taught across the road to stop the cars as they pull up.  

The drivers for their part seem to enjoy the spectacle, happily forking over some coins for the show.  Usually these guys have a girl on the sidewalk who is plying them with beer the whole time.  The young cross-dressers who are not stopping traffic wander amongst the crowd, often embracing other young men in sandwich fashion, humping them like dogs, and then running off giggling.  It goes without saying, that this is a really good time.

Fortunately, I was able to avoid being groped when I headed back downtown to document the chaos.  Unfortunately, sleepiness got the best of me, even after two cokes.  I could only take so much wandering around drunk people, maybe since I wasn't reveling with friends.  Otavalo was already too far gone for me, so I wandered back home, and happily slid into bed.  

As a post-script, I'd figured that there would be piles of smoking ash everywhere around town the next morning, but this was not the case at all!  Road crews -- and a fleet of fire-trucks -- had made quick work of the debris, and the streets were relatively clear.  The only thing left behind were half a dozen dudes sleeping off their reveries on the sides of the roads.

Maybe next year we'll make it on East Coast time.

Field Trip: A Circum-bura

I didn't set out to go around Imbabura, but I'd had my eye on the route.  I'd followed these orange arrows that say "vi," which is either "I saw" or the Roman numeral six, neither of which really make sense.  Turns out they're markers for a bike race around the Imbabura Volcano that runs in October called Vuelta Imbabura (or VI for short).  The entire circuit is around 50K.  The highest pass is around 3000m.  

From Otavalo, it does not take long to get into the high country.  Roads run the contour, or the run up to other roads that run along the contours.  So the ride is out and up, and out and up, etc.  Each time I'd followed the arrows, I'd gone a bit further, until finally I'd ended up on the opposite side of the volcano from Otavalo, with several hundred feet of climbing before I could make it through the pass.  

On the other side of the pass, there is a 1000m descent into the regional capital of Ibarra, 30 full minutes of tooth-rattling, forearm-busting dirt and cobble.  

But I wasn't setting out to do that.  I was on a leisure cruise on a beautiful day.  My supplies consisted of three granola bars and 1.5L of water.  

After just over an hour of riding, I was making a final climb through a little village.  Kids ran out yelling, "bicicletas!" and "a donde va?"  I always say "arriba" (up) or "no se" (I don't know), which amuses the kids.  

As I passed a man on the side of the road, he said, "sus compañeros pasó por aquí" (your friends passed through here).  Friends?  Assuming he meant other cyclistas, I asked how long ago they'd come through.  Ten minutes ahead of me.  Now I had something to do.  A mission.

I'd been looking for other cyclists, but since most of my time, and thus long rides are on the weekdays, I hadn't run into many, or any other dirt-warriors.  Now I knew they were around.  There were at least 4 or 5 sets of bike tracks, which I also figured was in my favor.  The bigger the group, the bigger the chance that the fast guys were waiting for the slow guys.

So I ate a granola bar and dug in for the chase.  It took twenty minutes or so to catch them on a grueling climb, where two of spandex-clad wheel-jockeys were walking.  These guys had nice bikes, really nice bikes -- 29'ers, the first I'd seen in Ecuador.  One of them was a carbon Orbea; another guy was on a BMC.  Bikes like these cost a couple to several thousand bucks in the states, and three times that here in Ecuador.  So these guys were serious or rich.  Or both.

I was short of breath from the chase, so I just continued the climb.  Sure enough, the fast guys were waiting for their friends on a flat traverse.  They said they'd come from the other side of Ibarra, by way of Otavalo, which meant they were well over 30K into their ride.  No wonder some were walking hills.  I asked if they were headed up through the pass to Ibarra by way of Esperanza (a beautiful little mountain town above Ibarra) -- they were indeed.  And they did mind a gringo hanging on.

When he found out I could hang on the climbs, Anibal -- the apparent leader -- was more friendly.  We chatted, I wheezed.  Thank the good Buddha, I'd had five months to acclimate to the elevation.  I asked if they were a club.

"No, solo amigos."  Just friends out for a ride, just like back home.  In fact, this crew reminded me a lot of the FOGs in VT (fast old guys).  I've noticed before, there are sometimes analogues or dopplegangers, Ecuadorian versions of people I've known from the US.  They were training for a big multi-day multi-sport endurance event that includes mountain biking, along with trekking, kayaking, repelling, and orienteering.  My kind of psychos -- Cool!

We made it to the pass, and waited for the others.  I snapped a few photos.  They chatted, occasionally asking me questions, more or less accepted in this gang having passed the initiation climb.  

Finally, it was time to descend into Ibarra -- at least a full 30 minutes of descent, minus a few stops.  Thanks to a bit more DH experience, I was able to get out in front of them and take pictures.  The descent was awesome -- I had to hoot and holler.  

Finally, we reached Ibarra and cruised the streets like we owned the road.  When we got to the Pana (Pan-American Highway), we slapped a few fives and they were off to someone's house.  I waited on the bus back to Otavalo instead of riding another 20K on a busy highway in the hottest part of the day.  Before I did, I snapped one more photo of the Cayambe Volcano, on its rare appearance in the afternoon.  (Usually, it's only visible in the morning before getting cloud-cover rising up from the Amazon basin.)  It's cool to see palm trees and flowers in the foreground with a 20,000' glaciated volcano in the distance.