Inti Raymi in Ibarra

This weekend I was invited by a school teacher in Pucara to join her and her family at their house in Ibarra to see the city's version of Inti Raymi.  I jumped at the opportunity, but the day  I was to leave for Otavalo, I woke up with gripe (a cold).  No matter - I couldn't let that stop me.  Inti Raymi is the indigenous peoples' celebration of the summer solstice and seems to be celebrated much more intensely up in the northern parts of Ecuador than in Chimborazo.  Some communities (like in Cotacachi) have a reputation for fights breaking out.  In fact, people look forward to these fights to beat the shit out of each other.  They bring whips and backpacks full of stones and the police can't really do anything to stop them.  However, I was told over and over again the festivals in Otavalo and Ibarra are much tamer.

When I arrived Friday afternoon, I met the family and went for a drive to a lake called Yahuarcocha, which means 'lake of blood.'  A legend says that in the 15th century, invading Incas battled with the indigenous people of this area.  The Incas won, and set to work killing all males over 12 years of age - about 30,000 people.  They apparently did the killing atop this rock you can see when you drive all the way around the lake.  The Incas then threw the bodies into the lake which, little by little, turned the lake red.

The innocent-looking rock upon which apparently thousands of people lost their lives.

The next day, my gracious host had to race to Quito and back so almost needless to say, she didn't make it back to Ibarra until around 8 p.m.  So I just hung around her house making use of the constant internet access.  Around 7:30 p.m. I joined the rest of her family at the grandmother's house where they dressed me in a skirt which only a small group of local indigenous people wear.  The skirt was a lime green color and the top shirt was way way too big, so I felt a bit funny and wished I knew to bring my other clothes from Chimborazo.

We took a taxi somewhere - I have no idea where - and waited outside in a crowd for a while.  Again, no idea why.  Then a blue city bus came and whisked us a group of us costumed dancers away somewhere else that I don't know.  But this is where it all started.  The folk band struck up (they were very ridiculously good) and led us into the courtyard of a random house with some San Juan tunes.  Several circles around them were formed and we began dancing more or less in line.  Every so often a cup of trago (alcohol) or cup of less-than-appetizing chicha (fermented drink) would appear in your hand to down.

I love this picture.  None of my pics turned out particularly clear but this one was actually colorful and alive.

Someone blew a horn, and then we were all pouring back out to the street.  We did this throughout the night - dance and march around in the street, then end up in someone's courtyard dancing in circles in a tiny space.  
It was exhausting.  We got back around 2 a.m. after dancing constantly for five hours.  And now my cold is way worse, I have a headache, and any minute now I'm heading back to site.

Dancing in a parade with 'chivos' (the men in fur chaps with colorful, creepy headdress) leading the way.

The makers of panela: How to transform sugar cane into sugar

Yesterday another group from Siempre Verde passed through Pucara visiting a 'molienda,' or panela-making facility, and the community tree nursery.  When they left, the panela makers insisted I stay with them until the end - and it was just noon.  They began work at 3 a.m., helping themselves to doses of the Mexicano, a drink of trago (alcohol) with cane juice.  They figured they would be done by around 6 p.m.  The process is so incredible, so magical (am I being too cheesy?), that I did indeed stay to see all their 'paradas' through.  And I decided to show it all here and take you from live sugar cane stalks to juice to pure delicious sugar.

So the magic starts here:

Cutting the sugar cane for two whole days prior to the molienda

Next they pass each cleaned stalk through a gas-powered press, and the juice is caught and moves down a tube to a holding tank.

This is the cane juice extracted from the stalk and passed through a few filters where it begins warming in the tank below.

There are five tanks in this molienda.  The first tank (closest) holds one 'parada' (or batch) of sugar, the next two tanks hold the next parada, and the last two tanks hold the last parada, or the one most ready to be poured and set.

While the cane juice is cooking, it requires constant attention.  Sometimes the 'melero' (the person working the sugar) needs to use giant ladles made from dried gourds to pass the liquid from one of the two parada tanks to the other, then back again.

Soon foam forms on the surface of the paradas and the meleros here insist on skimming it off because it improves the taste of the sugar.  They also call it 'otavalillu' and say it's a delicacy, so when they skim off a wooden bowlful, they try to drink it instead of toss it out.

Except it is very, very sweet.  It has a unique flavor from cane juice and from panela, and it's only one of many different products they can create - not just sugar.

This guy is called the 'hornero,' or the guy who stokes the fire below the tanks.  One of the many beauties of this operation is that the squeezed and dried cane stalks are used to fuel the oven.

One of the meleros offers otavalillu to the Siempre Verde students.  The meleros are VERY proud of their work and they should be.  They love sharing every bit about the process with the community and visitors.

Next, a scoop of boiling-hot caramel-like sugar is poured into a wooden basin (called the caballo, or horse) and an artisan begins working a bit of it with a wood spatula.  At first he pushes the spatula around rapidly, then begins twirling the sugar until it turns from dark brown to light brown incorporating air bubbles.

Then in one fraction of a second, the sugar is twisted into a pillar right when it sets.  Sugar left on the spatula is pulled off, rolled to a ball, and stuck on top.

It's called 'santo,' or saint, because it ends up looking like a figurine.  And it is delicious, by far a favorite of everyone of any sugar product because of its light, airy texture.  It just melts in your mouth.

Now the parada in the last tank is released into a wood tank to cool and be worked over for maybe 10 or so minutes with a giant wooden paddle.  Kids love to dip spatulas in this and stick the boiling goo in water to cool, thus making caramel.

These are the sugar molds.  Other operations focus on making grain sugar, which is a slightly different process.  The molds must be slightly damp so the sugar doesn't stick to them (so this guy is wiping them down with a cloth) but they can't be wet or the sugar won't set properly.

The melero then scoops up a gourdful of panela and pours it expertly into the molds as the Siempre Verde kids look on.

It gets tougher as the sugar cools.

When the sugar sets (about 15 minutes, but longer to be on the safe side), they're popped out and joined together into panela hamburgers.  Each hamburger is worth $4.  In each parada, they produce maybe 15 hamburgers.  And in one day, they made a whopping six paradas.  I'll leave the math to you.

What kids wouldn't love to visit a sugar-making factory?

The house tour

Well the long journey acoss the country with all my stuff and animals has come to an end.  Not one little thing went wrong and I arrived on Friday totally ready to begin my new life in Pucará.

The next day my thermometer read 76 degrees (!) and I decided to take some pictures to show you around my house.  Hopefully soon I´ll have a videocamera again to give a better feel of the place.

The front of my house from the road!

Back of the house

The backyard

The new laundromat

Looking down the road to the town center, school on the left

Looking up the road... end of the line!

New room!  Fresh-painted walls!

The other side of my room

Misi seems to be right at home.  Also trying to crochet a rug for my door, but my host Alicia decided we should make a circular rug.

Misi!

And Moo seems to like her new home just fine, too

The art of shopping (or evading it)

COUNTDOWN: 23 days

What's new - not much. A couple packages arrived, including my Ecuador climbing/hiking guide (sobering how unlikely a climb up Chimborazo, etc., will be for me... but still fun to read about, at least), and two pairs of pants by Mountain Hardwear. These pants are especially wonderful because of the material they're made of - a super-stretchy, water-resistant fabric. So they're great if you gain a little weight or lose a little too. Unless they're too big, which for me, they are. The waist is almost perfect, but the legs are incredibly wide and long. I'm hoping they'll shrink at least a little bit in the wash, but another benefit to these pants is they don't change size, and after two years of heavy use, they still look new.

I finally kicked myself out the door to do some shopping. I highly dislike shopping. I'm well aware that shopping fills only a fraction of a percent of a void better filled by more meaningful activities. My mom has (had?) a shopping addiction that I almost caught, except department stores actually make me very nauseous. So, meaning to go to Algonquin for the one-stop mall, I managed to go in the very opposite direction to the stores along Route 14 in Crystal Lake. Towards the top of 'things I most hate to shop for' are sunglasses. None ever fit, and if they do, they wear out almost immediately. And I do feel goofy in 99.9% of the glasses I try on. I shop for black, silver, dark gray sleek frames... so of course I ended up buying pink-framed glasses. PINK. Pink is the opposite of every criteria of mine, ever.

Next was Borders to take them up on their 33% off coupon for a Spanish book that focuses on informal conversation. The book would probably even be handy in English - how many times have I been at a loss for words of praise or interest? It's not that I'm not interested, I'm just sick of saying 'wow, awesome, cool, sweet, nice, etc. etc.' So it'll be nice to be conversation savvy in Spanish.

Next... I got bored of shopping and ended up in Cafe Firefly for a drink.

Success!! Er... well... *relative* success. My kind of success.

I'm in the middle of accomplishing another of my tasks on the Great Big List of Things I Need to do Before I Leave: organizing photos on my lap top and deleting ones I don't want/need. I'm finding some fun ones I forgot about, like:

Dad trying out the new snow blower on our driveway, late 2009 or early 2010?


Where I feel most peaceful, centered, optimistic - on mountains. What is it with mountains? It's the wild places that make us feel human. Where they remind us we're vulnerable, that life is ephemeral but still important. It's not about conquering the mountain, it's not about conquering yourself, it's about finding freedom and total release. Huh... maybe I should post some Henry Miller stuff next.


Sevendust guitarist, 2010. One of my favorite activities is shooting concerts. This night, I discovered how difficult it is shooting metal bands - the strobe lights are constantly flickering, so I resorted to rapid fire shooting with white balance adjustments. I got a bunch of good photos, but this one stood out the most. Right before the guitarist was white washed in blue light, at the perfect moment, I caught him.

Maybe I'll post more another day.