Clovers, charangos, and an accidental culto

After a nice night of sleep for the three non-food poisoned among us, I figured I should at least leave Aimee with a quiet hostel room for the morning. So after a simple first breakfast (our room had its own little kitchenette), I took the kids outside to wander around the hostel grounds. 

As we wandered, we met one of our neighbors in the hostel, a Frenchman living in Switzerland (where his wife is from). But for the past several decades, he has been spending his summers in Ecuador, with the last 5 being spent in the room adjacent to ours in Hostal Curiñan. His Andean wood flute playing drifting through the open windows was a delightful soundtrack for the morning, and he himself turned out to be just as delightful. He was in his 70s, and had a warmth that can only come from someone who gets to spend his summers is such a charming setting. As we were chatting in Spanish (which he spoke perfectly, despite it being no less than his fourth language), Jose, the hostel owner, walked by. 

Jose and our neighbor talked about playing music later that morning and invited the kids and I. “It’s great, we’ll play some songs and tell stories,” he said. It sounded like a perfect opportunity to visit with our new neighbors and give Aimee a longer respite. But as soon as I agreed (and milliseconds before I put together what it was that I was committing to), Jose added, “Es un culto (worship)!" Right. Songs and stories on a Sunday morning. Those dots should have connected themselves, but I was too smitten with our surroundings to realize that I had accidentally signed us up for a church service.

But as far as church services go, one that pulls together a dozen people from all around the world and is heavy on songs in the Kichwa language in a makeshift chapel overlooking a charming Andean town is about as good as I could have hoped for. Our neighbor played the part of pastor, singing songs and playing along on his guitar and wood flute. Matilde gave the sermon, and the other 10 or so people in the room participated in various calls and responses throughout the songs and spoken portions.

For the first 45 minutes, the kids did great. Quinn played along to the songs on our charango that I had brought down when I still thought it was just a little singalong (nobody seemed to mind that his tuning was rather distinct from the rest of the group's).  Mimi sat with Matilde and played with her tiny dog, Mole (who Quinn had renamed "Guacamole" the day before to Matilde's delight). But at nearly the exact same time, both of our kids reached their limit and said to me (at distinctly non-church volumes), “Dad, I’m bored.” Appreciative that very few people in that room spoke English, I sent the kids out quietly and remained for the last 10-15 minutes of the service. Although slightly more discreet than my children, I was no less excited that it was wrapping up. It was a charming little cultural experience, but that only goes so far. The history of Christianity among South American indigenous cultures is extremely complicated, to put it mildly. I’m in no place to judge its current value, but I didn’t need to spend my Sunday morning in the middle of it.

But there was another little bonus to accidentally joining a culto. One of the other attendees was actually a musical instrument maker. Jose introduced me to him after he saw my charango and said that the other person (also named Jose) made them in his workshop a few blocks from the hostel. Yes, I already had one. Yes, it was perfectly adequate for my needs. Yes, I still barely knew anything about the instrument. But still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go check out an actual Andean instrument taller (workshop). So we exchanged phone numbers and made plans to meet in a couple of hours.

[Instrument Jose is the person on the right in the photo above. Hostel owners Matilde and Jose are the other two people in the photo who aren't my daughter. I was too shy to take a photo during the actual service, so I snapped the one above afterwards when instrument Jose was showing me how to play my own charango.]

By that point, Aimee was feeling a little better, so she came down to join us and got a nice laugh out of me accidentally sitting through a church service. But she enjoyed meeting the other hostel residents as much as I did. One of them was from North Carolina, and came to visit the hostel as a visitor after retiring as a psychiatric nurse two years earlier. She quickly decided to make it permanent and has been there ever since.

Ecuador is a retired ex-pat haven. It’s affordable (especially outside of Quito), it’s relatively stable for the region, and there are plenty flights to and from the United States. There were several little communities in the region around Cotacachi and Otavalo clearly catering to ex-pats, and we could absolutely understand the appeal.

Aimee felt like stretching her legs a bit after spending the morning in bed, so we stopped by instrument Jose’s taller in what was ostensibly an attempt to get a small repair on the charango I had already purchased. But I couldn’t not look around at the instruments strewed among his workshop at various points in the construction process. They were beautiful. 

It was approaching 1 pm at that point, and none of us had eaten since breakfast. So I didn’t have much time to dawdle at the taller. I silently decided to return later and purchase a second--completely unnecessary--charango. But there was no time for that today. We all walked into town and found a delightful lunch spot literally seconds before everyone melted into hypoglycemic messes.

Since we had a late lunch, I figured we could just snack our way through dinner back at the hostel, so we stopped at the panadería for a few loaves of bread to go with the delicious avocados we had bought for about a quarter each the day before.

Aimee was still touch and go with her illness, and had about two hours of human interaction capacity before she needed to curl back up into our (bathroom adjacent) bed. To give her a quiet afternoon, I pointed out a clover patch by our room and told the kids that finding one with four leaves would be pretty lucky. I watched them frolic around the idyllic hostel grounds, completely unaware of how lucky they already were by simply being there. But what I had hoped would buy us at least an hour of quiet time abruptly ended about 5 minutes later when the kids ran up to our room exclaiming that they had found one! 

Man, those kids really are lucky.

Pigs, ponchos, and parasites

Our sad departure was made slightly less sad by the sound of another pig being dragged off to slaughter at 4:45 on Saturday morning. Lucia and her family were loading it up on their truck to sell it at the weekly animal market in Otavalo. We had said goodby the night before, since they would be at the market by the time we awoke. So we were surprised when we saw them again around 8 am. They told us that they weren’t getting the price they wanted, which meant the pig could live another week. Either way, it was nice to chat with them a bit more before we took a cab to Otavalo, ourselves.

I had a bit of trepidation on whether we’d be able to fit all of our bags into the bite sized taxis that zoomed around Cotacatchi (and I didn’t want to take a pickup truck between towns). But we were fortunate to hail one that not only had enough room for all of us, but was actually driven by someone from Otavalo. He had come to Cotacachi that morning to work the still-ongoing festival, but was happy to head over to Otavalo with us. Most importantly, he knew exactly where our hostel was. Which was convenient, because I had picked it two days earlier based on nothing more than a smattering of positive online reviews and what appeared to be a nice location. 

As we drove up a hill overlooking the village, we saw what could only be described as a villa. It was a beautiful large home with a handful of surrounding structures. It was close enough to town that we could walk (a key requirement after our last stop), but far enough that the kids could explore the grounds without any real dangers to worry about. But it’s not like they were going to worry about anything even if there were risks. That’s my job. They still haven’t developed that part of their brains yet, which is both the magic and the horror of traveling with them.

The charm of our hostel was also embodied by the couple that ran it. Jose and Matilde were an indigenous Kitchwa couple probably in their late 60s. They were strikingly familiar with our own corner of the world, as they had participated in an indigenous cultural exchange with members of the Navajo Nation in the 90s. I barely expect someone from Arizona to know where Window Rock is, let alone proprietors of a hostel in the central highlands of Ecuador. We were in the right place.

We spent the afternoon heading into town for lunch and to visit the artisan market that Otavalo is known for. That would have been an enjoyable, thoughtless afternoon before kids. But Aimee and I really struggle with how to discuss souvenirs with a 5 and 7 year old. We don’t need any more stuff in our house, but on the other hand, it’s nice to support the local artisans. As with tourist markets pretty much everywhere these days, several goods were imported from even cheaper labor markets overseas. But Ecuador (especially Otavalo) still has a decent amount of local crafts and garments. Since I have a soft spot for musical instruments and Aimee has a soft spot for her kids in adorable animal sweaters, we settled on flutes and ponchos.

I don’t have any notes on our lunch. And that’s not a huge surprise. We were really struggling to find vegetarian food in this country. Quito has some, but it was usually bland and clearly geared towards tourists. The outlying towns ate a striking amount of meat, and seemed to have nothing else on the menu. We ended up eating breakfast for lunch at a little coffee shop that would become a frequent destination that week. Breakfast was usually a safe bet for meatless options, and after two weeks of navigating South American streets with two small children, I’ll never say no to a second cup of coffee.

The afternoon back at our hostel was equally delightful as the morning. We took advantage of the stellar view (and the beer fridge in the lobby).

Vowing to have a few more options than omelets and waffles for dinner, we did a bit of research. We had already learned that the post-pandemic restaurant scene had turned over enough that guide books (and even internet searches) were just about worthless. But I found a vegetarian restaurant in town that looked halfway decent and seemed to still be in business.

It took a few tries to find the place, but after walking down the side alley that led to the entrance, we walked into a lovely little outdoor courtyard inhabited by two people who were either customers or the owners. They turned out to be the owners and told us to take our pick of the tables.

The nights at 9,000 feet tended to get crisp, and we didn’t bring the kids’ new pochos, knowing from experience that they wouldn’t survive even a single meal. But aside from the shivering, the meal was looking like it was going to be wonderful. After putting in our order, we saw one of the owners run out to the market. We had grown used to that after ordering any vegetarian food. We seem to be the only two in the country (a feeling that was further reinforced by being the only group in that restaurant all night). I had a passable grilled veggie sandwich, and Aimee had a salad that she described as delicious at the time. Yes, foreshadowing. She’d be regretting that salad over the next 5 days. About two hours after our meal, Aimee excused herself to the restroom, and we only saw her for momentary glances through the rest of the week. It was a doozie.

We were no strangers to food poisoning. But it was usually me. I’m the one who can’t pass up a 30 cent grilled something or other on a street corner. Aimee’s the responsible one. But after building up a robust gut microbiome from 2 years in Nicaragua, she had perhaps become a bit too confident in her ability to ward off pathogens hitching a ride on uncooked vegetables.

Thankfully, that would be our only bout with food borne illness during the trip. And as Aimee said several times over the next few days, at least it wasn’t the kids. Kids with food poisoning is scary. Adults with food poisoning is a blog post. And on that note, I’m going to go get Aimee some more electrolyte powder.

Ratoncito

I don’t recall if we set an alarm on Wednesday. By that point, we knew we didn’t need to. We were started to dial in our daily rhythm. Pre-breakfast in our bedroom, main breakfast with Lucia and her family, then second breakfast (and third coffees) at a cafe in Cotacachi. It was delightful.

I had a bit of work to do that day, but with the time zone difference, there was time to explore a bit with my family first. So we took advantage by going to a little cultural museum downtown. It featured some of the indigenous traditions of the region, as well as several of the more prominent post-independence cultural figures (mostly notable musicians). It was quaint and charming, and almost felt like we were trespassing. Aside from some musicians using an empty area as a practice space, we were the only souls in the building. 

There wasn’t a guard out front or even a ticket window. Just a paper sign in sheet on a clipboard by the door. Through most of our time there, I wasn’t sure if we were actually in an exhibit or just an empty office. Our kids, devoid of any inner, “We probably shouldn’t be here voice” led us into a room that seemed to have been recently used for some type of work training, but otherwise wouldn’t have been out of place in Versailles. 

I love this town.

But, you know, work. I had some odds and end to take care of, but nothing I couldn’t do from a coffee shop. That said, my main task was to find some type of work space for the next day. I’d be doing some telemedicine, and didn’t want any patients wondering why they were hearing pigs and roosters in the background. I was already pushing my luck with this trip as it was. So I scoped out a few options and had a relatively quiet afternoon.

While I was working, our kids played soccer with the host children and smattering of cousins. The only event of note was that Lucia was out at some sort of community meeting that evening. So the usual dinner cues of lights on in the kitchen and the wafting smells of deliciousness never happened. Turns out she prepped some food for both families ahead of time, but each family was way too polite for that plan to work. The rest of our host family was waiting for us to come inside for dinner, but we didn’t want to seem pushy or anxious. So finally, about an hour after we would have put the kids to bed, we meekly walked into the main house to see if, um, anyone, you know, might be hungry for some dinner. Our host dad was visibly relieved to see us emerge from the guest room, and all 8 of us, famished by that point, inhaled the meal.

Thursday was my first day of true doctor work. As in, I would be sitting at a computer in South America talking with a patient on the western edge of the Navajo Nation. What a time we’re living in.

My set up at the house wasn’t ideal. There was decent internet connectivity, and even the animals in the background wouldn’t have been a strange sound to a Navajo cattle farmer. But our room was pretty much just bed and bathroom, neither of which would have been the most professional background for a physician visit. So I woke up well ahead of both families and made my way into town via a shared taxi.

My explorations the day before determined that best bet for a worksite would be a budget hostel. It took a bit of explaining that I only wanted the room for the day (and that I wasn’t a total weirdo), but we worked out an arrangement. Given the lack of any other options, it actually wasn’t a bad set up.

Work actually ended up going great. Despite my end of the connection being a $10 hostel in a tiny farming town in South American, the only hiccup was an IT issue on the Tuba City side. That will not be a surprise to anyone I work with. But once we got that squared away, I had a decent day chatting with patients. I let my patients know that I was out of town but didn’t want them to go without care, and they were very understanding and appreciative of the unique arrangement. Maybe we can make this a regular thing?

While I was working, Aimee took the kids on a guided hike around Laguna de Cuicocha. The guide was arranged by the same person who coordinated our homestay. So I knew that although the information ahead of time would be scarce, it would be a reliable experience and I didn’t need to worry much. 

Connectivity was scarce outside of the city, so I knew I probably wouldn’t hear from them until I got home. So it was a very pleasant surprise when I ran into them at the local market for lunch! They had just arrived and were in the process of connecting up to WiFi to tell me about their hike when the kids saw me walk in. I was in the process of ordering my usual eggs and potatoes when I heard “Dad! Dad!” in very familiar voices before I was tackled by two small children.

Aimee shared some photos over lunch and told me they had a delightful time.

But since the professional hiking guide moved at a much faster pace than our 5 and 7 year old, they were famished. We all enjoyed another massive lunch before I headed back to the “office.”

The rest of my day was a remarkably normal work afternoon, despite the surroundings. Aimee and the kids’ afternoon was anything but normal. In this version of what passes as a work day, the rest of my family went with Lucia to her mom’s farm. But it wasn’t just any farm, it’s an animal farm. The kids got to play with the usual pigs and chickens, but there were also multiple litters of kittens and puppies. You try telling these kids that there’s no way we could get these animals on an international flight home. We’ll see if it goes any better.

Once everyone had made it back home from their respective adventures, we all settled down for a very nice dinner and a lovely chat. We were really starting to connect with our host family and have much more meaningful conversations than the usual tourist/host pleasantries.

Thursday had been a rest day for the festival, but it was in full swing again on Friday. That was immediately evident as I woke for work to the usual animal sounds now joined by a car alarm, super loud music coming from somewhere down the street, and much earlier (yet equally unintelligible) announcements broadcast by the church loudspeaker a few blocks away.

But I didn’t mind the early rise. I had another work day ahead of me and needed to head into town anyways. Again departing before Lucia’s delicious food hit the table, I was at the mercy of whatever I could find in town. The tourist cafes didn’t open until 9, but I knew there had to be something. There was already a lot of activity as the city woke up, and I couldn’t imagine that every one of those people had breakfast at home.

So I headed down to the bus station/main market, and was relieved to see a few food stands already open. In line with me were paramedics, street sweepers, power line workers, and the other people who didn’t have the luxury of waking up slowly. I was dramatically out of place in my buttoned up shirt, but I’d like to think that there was still a bit of camaraderie that crossed cultural boundaries. 6 am is still 6 am.

Five minutes and one dollar later, I had an enormous plate of eggs and potatoes in front of me and knew I’d be good for the day. But like most super tasty food stalls, each one had their thing. The eggs and potatoes place didn’t do coffee, and the coffee place wasn’t open. But thankfully I was now getting the lay of the land and knew I could get a halfway boxed coffee from one of the panaderías.

Caffeinated and satisfied, I set off to my hostel/office. The stairs up to the second floor reception desk (I was working above a diaper store) was barred and locked. Not a huge surprise at that hour. So I rang the buzzer and pressed my ear up close to the speaker, hoping to be able to decipher the Spanish over the buzz of the city street. I couldn’t hear anything, so I said “hola?” into the void and pushed the button again. After repeating that futile routine for about 10 minutes, I took a seat on the bench out front and tried to at least clear out a few work emails over my cell phone.

I tried the door again a few times, and then sent a text message to the phone number listed on the front sign. Nada and nada. Now getting dangerously close to my actual start time (when patients would be sitting in a room waiting for me), I needed to start figuring out a backup plan. There were a handful of other hostels in town, but I had already ruled out a few of them for their limited WiFi, lack of individual rooms, or general creepiness. I walked over to one of the others, and despite the owner being even more confused about why I just wanted a room for the day, we were able to come to an agreement. The internet connection wasn’t quite as robust and the general vibe made me even more glad I wouldn’t be sleeping there that night. But it got the job done.

But as eventful as my day started, at it least it didn’t open with the neighbors slaughtering a pig as Aimee later told me her day did. Our kids are getting the full experience.

The rest of their day was a lot more tranquilo. They made their way into town and hung out at an open air coffee shop with lots of room for the kids to run around. They later even stumbled upon a little playground that we hadn’t seen during our earlier explorations.

There were a couple of other foreign kids at the playground, but this wasn’t their first trip down the slide. They and their parents had been living in Cotacachi for nearly two years as part of a religious-tinged water purification mission. Or was it a water-tinged religious mission? Hard to tell. But the children were delightful and were clearly thrilled to see some other kids speaking English ahead of their return to Minnesota later this year.

Later that day, Aimee helped Lucia capture a few cuy (guinea pigs) to be slaughtered and sold at market. (Remind me never to complain about my work day to her.) Guinea pigs are an unfathomably beloved delicacy around here. You can buy a whole chicken (living or otherwise) for $4, but a tiny guinea pig goes for about 8 times as much. We don’t get it either, but who are we to judge?

But perhaps the most important news of the day was that Mimi had lost a tooth! There had been one hanging on by a thread for the past several days, and it finally popped out over second breakfast. That gave us a great excuse to ask what were the local customs around kids losing teeth. It turns out that the ratoncito (little rat) tradition that we had first learned about in El Salvador was also popular here. Kids here still throw their  teeth on the roof and ask that the ratoncito bring them a little token in return. It was a lovely way to wrap up our last night in this charming little town.

Sensing the moment, Mimi said to me after she tossed her tooth on the roof, “I had a really fun time here.”

Me too, Mimi. Me, too.

Revolutions, historic and present

Not even an "authentic" 5:30 wake up call from the neighborhood rooster could diminish our enchantment with the homestay. Although, in all fairness, it's not like that rooster was waking us up from a dead sleep. The neighborhood dogs did that sometime around 1 am. And then the pigs did the same around 3:30. It was like living inside of one of those Fisher Price animal sound wheels we grew up with. Except we wouldn't throw this one out the window. Sure, it wasn't our best night of sleep, but when when we walked into the main house to see Mimi and her new buddies deep into a multilingual Lego session, all was forgiven.

There would be a lot of that back and forth over the next several days. We were hoovering just over the “yeah, this is worth it” line, but at that point, it only would have taken a stomach bug or a bad day of mosquito bites to send us back to the city.

Much of our back and forth was highly influenced by our level of hunger. Lucia was a fantastic cook. Her food was easily some of the best we’d had in the country. But we ate when her family ate. And for a family that tends to plan their vacations at least three meals into the future, that was a challenge. So we resolved to get some fruit in the market that day to keep around for first breakfast. And that was about all we had on the agenda that day, so we grabbed our daypack and set off for town.

Taxis into Cotacachi from the outlying farms are a bit hard to come by, so sharing them is the default. It's not that much of an issue, since the nearly everyone is heading into town. So the drivers round up as many passengers as they can, and charge by the seat. And by seat, I mean, “a spot in the back of the pickup truck.”

As long as I suspended everything I knew about motor vehicle risks (they’re far and above a greater hazard for travelers than malaria, dengue, typhoid, and the usual things we disproportionally worry about), it was pretty fun.

When I sent that photo to Isaias (who spent his youth in Nicaragua riding in the back of pickups), his immediate response was, “but you put the car seats in, right?” I don’t think I can top that line.

In addition to stocking up on some light groceries, our other goal was to find a coffee shop and talk through our next steps. We had been flying semi-blind on the homestay, so I intentionally scheduled myself off of work that day so we could feel it out. Our goal of getting the kids exposed to some non-school Spanish was met pretty easily. The neighborhood kids were delightful. Mimi kept asking if there were any girls in the village, but it was otherwise about as ideal as we could have hoped for. The rest of the family was equally wonderful, the neighborhood felt safe (as long as we didn’t chance it with the stray dogs), and even the farm animals were a charming part of the experience. The only part that brought us even a bit of pause was that we were pretty far outside of town. Since our living space was essentially constrained to the bedroom (unless you count the backyard we shared with the chickens, it would feel a bit tight for a couple of weeks. That would be particularly challenging when I had to work. A few days, no problem. But we weren't planning to head back in Quito for about three weeks, and it would be nice to do a bit more exploring before then. The upshot of not really having any information about the homestay beforehand is that we didn’t pay a deposit, we didn’t sign a contract, we could pretty much come and go as we pleased.

As we sat at the coffee shop talking through options, I had the realization that this was our first trip since having children in which our itinerary wasn’t fully locked in well before we ever left our house. It was a little unsettling, but also pretty liberating. There’s something very special about just wandering around a place like this, especially since our kids are now old enough that aimless wandering wouldn’t be absolutely insane.

The town of Cotacachi itself was particularly charming. With all the livestock farms on the outskirts of town, there was easy access to cowhide, and leather shops are the big industry in town. Plus there are a handful of cafes and other restaurants catering to both locals and tourists, in addition to the considerable expat population that straddles the line between both. We figured a week here would be just about perfect.

The other big draw for Cotacachi is the festival of Intiraymi, the massive dance that we had been told about yesterday. It would be going on all week, and I’m glad our host family gave us a heads up of what to expect. It would have been more than a little surprising to stumble upon it unaware.

The centuries-old festival has its roots in anti-colonial protest marches thinly veiled as religious celebrations. It clearly hasn’t changed much, based on the considerable police presence lining nearly every street downtown. We heard that it can get a little rowdy at nighttime, but what we saw (from a safe distance) was mostly just dance processions with a variety of costumes and local instruments.

Nothing works up an appetite like trying to figure out if we were about to stumble into some civil unrest. But thankfully, the festival blocks were lined with food vendors. 

Lunch was some sort of pineapple street empanada, followed by a sit down feast at the local market. The kids had a literal mound of shrimp for just a few dollars. Vegetarian fare was a bit tricker to find, but we were able to piece together a meal from various corn dishes and some fried eggs. All in all, it was a pretty delicious feast for less than it would have cost any one of us to eat out at home.

A belly full of delicious food sealed the deal. A week here would be perfect. There was plenty to explore, the internet connectivity seemed good enough for for me to do some telehealth visits, and the town was safe enough that I wouldn’t need to worry when Aimee and the kids were out and about on my work days . So we made our way back to the house so Aimee and I could take a nap after pretending to put the kids down for a nap.

As dinner time came closer, Lucia asked me if I could help pull some giant bean pods down from one of her trees while she and Aimee shucked them with a couple members of the rotating band of cousins and sisters in law dropping by the house.

I've been debating if I should share what Aimee told me they were talking about as I took that photo. I will. It's a good story. But just know that if you're a bit uncomfortable with it, I am, too.

As is often the case whenever we bring our kids abroad, Aimee was asked by her new friends if we were going to have any more children. She replied “no” with enough definitiveness that the ladies asked her if she had her tubes time. She said, “No, el” pointing to me. Her companions almost collapsed with surprise. Vasectomies are clearly unheard of in rural Ecuador, and I’m pretty sure Aimee launched a female empowerment movement throughout the northern highlands with a single sentence. That's just what she does.

Peace Corps, with children

Monday was the end of our time in Quito. Bittersweet, for sure. We were off to explore the countryside, and Alicia had to go back to work. But the goodbye was softened considerably with the knowledge that we'd all be seeing each other several more times this month.

Our driver (yes, Dayana, for sure) wouldn't be picking us up until lunchtime, so we pulled the kids out of bed and dropped off Alicia at work so we could get a peek at the US Embassy. I'm always fascinated by all things Foreign Service, and jumped at the opportunity for a behind the scenes tour.

Quinn was obviously less than thrilled at being awake at 8 am, but the Cars book he found in the embassy library softened the blow a bit.

Our destination that day (and for the next couple of weeks) was Otavalo, a small market town in the north of Ecuador. But our transportation plan was hitting a few speed bumps. Earlier that day, Dayana texted us that she wasn’t able to find childcare for the four hours it would take to drop us off and return to Quito. She asked if she could bring her daughter. I told her, "of course!" It would be a tight fit, but I wasn’t willing to entertain the thought of another driver taking us on the Pan-American freeway.

I knew that seatbelts (and simply even seat amount) are seen merely as suggestions in South America. So it was nothing out of the ordinary (for Dayana, at least) to have 5 normal sized humans, one giant, and a month's worth of luggage in her tiny Korean import. I had no idea how we were going to make to Otavalo. But we made it work. Everyone had a bag on their lap, and Aimee had an extra child on hers. I struggled with the ethics of Dayana's tiny daughter not having a booster seat. The fact that no child in Ecuador uses a booster seat didn't make me feel any better (nor did seeing Dayana's daughter roaming around the car sans-seatbelt even before we got in).

To further reinforce how far apart our concepts for child safety were, Dayana asked me at one point on the drive what our kids were sitting on. “Are they orthopedic seats or something?” Not only did she, a professional driver (and a relatively safe one, at that), not use booster seats, she hadn't even seen them before!

But the drive was otherwise delightful. I was pretty convinced at least three collisions were imminent, but none panned out. Dayana’s floor boards may be forever dented, however, by me pushing on them hoping the brake pedal on the other side would take notice. Mimi even had her first taste of raw sugarcane, when Dayana picked some up from a roadside vendor. To no one’s surprise, she loved it.

By mid-afternoon, we had rolled up to the map pin that our Otavalo contact has told us to meet him at. It was an empty freestanding office on an empty street, in what appeared to be an empty town that wasn’t even Otavalo. The directions took us to the neighboring city of Cotocachi (which barely registered three sentences in our Lonely Planet guide). The only sign of life was an older woman who popped her head out of her window to see who could possibly be coming down this street. I tried to stammer out that we were meeting someone, but I didn't know who, and I barely knew where. It went about as well as you'd expect. She simply looked confused and told me that everyone in town was gone. She kept saying, "They're all dancing! They're all dancing!" Dementia? Population level alien abduction? Either way, this wasn't going to plan.

By that point in the day, I was at least 80% sure that we’d be paying Dayana to take us back to Quito. I ran through the preceding couple of months' worth of communications with this homestay organization. Replies were infrequent and often delayed, information was sparse (even that map pin had only ben sent to be a few hours earlier), and I was never asked to pay a deposit or otherwise lock down the reservation. Only two things kept me from finding another place to stay weeks ago. 1) The organization we were using was run by local indigenous families and was highly recommended by our guide book, and 2) We had the ultimate backup plan. As long as it was daylight, we could make it back to Quito and crash in our friends' apartment until we figured out our next steps. That took a lot of pressure off the situation (and probably the only thing that made it even remotely tolerable with two (scratch that, three) children in the backseat.

About 20 minutes after we got there, I had finally reached our homestay coordinator over Whatsapp. He apologized for not being there, and told be that he was going to take a taxi to meet us and show us where the house was. But even that wasn't as easy as it sounded. Four apparently stranded tourists and their equally confused driver attracted a lot of attention from the passing taxis. So as each one rolled by, I squinted and looked in the backseat to see if there was someone looking for us. Invariably, the occupants squinted and looked out the window to see who was nervously looking at them. Nope. Not the host. Repeat, repeat.

But just as I was getting ready to call it, another taxi rolled up behind us. Out came the homestay coordinator that I had been communicating with. The coordinator had been remarkably casual ever since I had connected with him 6 months earlier. Almost too casual. He told me just to pay when I got here, only confirmed that we had a place to stay after several rounds of me asking, and never even asked for our names. Although I was relieved to see him, I still wasn't taking our sleeping arrangements for granted at that point.

Before you call Child Protective Services and report us for endangerment, home stays in this area are highly regarded. It's what this area is known for. Odds were good that we weren't about to put our kids in harms way. And in fact, our kids were the whole reason we were even attempting this! We wanted to find a homestay with some kids about the same age as ours. Not only would it be fun for them to have more kids to play with, a little passive Spanish exposure might also help consolidate what they're learning in school.

But we still had to get there. I intentionally made sure we arrived with hours upon hours of daylight left in the day in case we needed to execute any of our multiple backup plans. But thankfully we didn’t need to. Claudio, the person I had been texting with, hopped into our car and led us down a few meandering dirt roads. (For anyone who is keeping count, that’s now seven passengers in Dayana’s Kia go kart.) Five minutes later, we pulled up to a traditional rural South American home. A child no more than 10 met us at the front door and took us around back. Claudio seemed to know him and didn’t appear surprised, so we followed along. But my guard was still up. 

The 10 year old showed us a couple of guest rooms off the main house’s back door. Before I had the chance to articulate any of the several questions swirling in my mind, the child’s mother came running up with three foreigners in tow. The mom, Lucia, apologized for not being home when we arrived, and explained that she had taken the other three people with her to the festival in town. 

[As an aside, two of the three sentences about Cotacachi in our Lonely Planet guidebook talk about an annual festival in June that “the locals live and die for.” We later learned that it's a massive, weeklong celebration with non-stop dancing in the streets. So that's what the grandma who popped her head out of the window meant! They were all dancing! She's as lucid as they come.]

After just a few minutes of chatting with our new host family, we knew we'd be staying there. Adventure over. Lucia (and her son, Samuel, 10 year old who met us at the door) were absolutely delightful. They're an indigenous Kichwa family (Spanish is their second language) who, like several local families, subsist on their own farming supplemented by hosting tourists.

What a relief. There was a lot riding on this homestay, about which I had next to no information on. A key reason for our entire trip (in addition to visiting our friends in Quito) was to give our kids the opportunity to befriend some locals and see that Spanish isn’t just a language spoken for half of their school day (and—at least for the time being—when Aimee and I don't want them to know what we're talking about). We had worked hard to find a family in a safe town with kids close enough to our own kids’ age, and still be close enough to a population center that I could connect up with work when needed. I really wanted this to pan out. First impression, not the best. Second impression, this is going to work out great.

While Lucia turned over our rooms (she had been at the festivities with her previous guests all day), we grabbed some lunch in town and came back to watch our Mimi and Quinn immediately become friends with every kid in the neighborhood.

It's already happening.

We were immediately in awe of Lucia's work that day. Between preparations for the festival, cooking for her own family and two groups of guests, plus taking the other group into town, she likely hadn’t stopped moving since 6 am that day. We later learned that this was her normal. She was every bit the stereotypical super parent we had learned about in what has simply become known as “the book” that Aimee and I have been referencing for nearly every parenting decision over the past couple of years.

In addition to the ever-helpful Samuel, the rest of Lucia’s family consisted of her kind husband (who normally works as a gardener near Quito 90 minutes away, but was off this week for the festival), her absolutely adorable three year old, and her elite-level soccer playing 15 year old, Miller, who we later learned walks, hitchhikes, and takes the bus two hours each direction to his soccer practices every day. He’s one of only two indigenous kids on his club team, a fact that the family clearly takes a ton of pride in.

This was going to work. The family was such a delight that we were willing to overlook that we were 30 minutes away from anything besides more rural homesteads, that the local stray dog population made walking anywhere nearly impossible, that the shower was still very much wired for the widow maker style water heater that has long since become illegal in the United States, and that our closest neighbors were three squealing pigs (plus at least 2 roosters and an uncountable number of hens). 

We could even overlook that our children were not actually staying in the same room as us. They were adjacent, but each had their own non-locking door to the outside. I'm sure it'll be fine. Who could ever evade my rope-between-the-two-doors-tied-to-a-coffee-mug security system?

On more than one occasion, Aimee mentioned that she felt like she was back in the Peace Corps. But now with children. And you know what? We were just fine with that.

Finding Religion

Sunday was our last day in Quito. We still hadn’t fully recovered from the jet lag/work lag, but we felt good enough to test the limits of our one activity per day rule. 

We started the day with a trip to the Panecillo lookout, Quito’s version of the hilltop Mary of Nazareth that are so ubiquitous throughout South America. You can see if off in the distance behind the kids and Isaias in this photo from the Catedral Metropolitana earlier in the week.

And one up close.

It's unique in that this madonna has wings, and that it's based on another famous (to people who aren't me, at least) sculpture of the Virgin of the Apocalypse made by Bernardo de Legarda in Quito a few hundred years ago.

The symbolism was wasted on me, but it did prompt dozens of questions from our children about what a virgin is as we ascended the internal staircase to the top. So there’s that. Nothing like biting off a conversation on virginity and biblical mythology while climbing 10 flights of stairs two miles above sea level.

"Well [huff, puff], you know how [huff, puff] we talked about how [huff, puff] it takes an egg and a sperm [huff, puff] to [huff, puff] make a baby [huff, puff]?"

The only consolation is that the kids would consistently be distracted by the museum exhibits along the staircase before I could complete a full sentence. So I was spared anything more than the most superficial explanation.

All in all, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to go to church and take a crossfit class at the same time, this is your place. But at least the view was nice.

We worked our way back down and wandered around the base of the sculpture for a few minutes, although we didn't linger long. Ironically, the neighborhood around the Virgin isn't known as one of the safest in Quito. But we never felt like we were in any immediate danger from anything besides the hangries. The climb up to the top left all of us so hungry we couldn't complete a full sentence (it wasn't just the altitude). Quinn was delirious to the point that I had to effectively force feed him some of the leftover french toast we brought from the apartment. He was so hungry, he couldn't keep it together long enough to feed himself. That's a real thing in this family. But within minutes, we had all come around and were ready to bite off another adventure.

As we took a taxi back into town, I found myself hoping I had built up some spiritual protection from the morning's activities. Not only did the driver seem to be unaware that it is possible to drive a car at speeds below Mach 1, but the zip tie holding my seat belt in place seemed to only serve the purpose of keeping the driver from getting a ticket. I almost snapped it countless times myself every time he slammed on the brakes as we came into an intersection.

At several points on that drive, I wondered if our next destination would be worth it. We were headed to the Basilica del Voto Nacional (or our Final Destination, pending traffic conditions). Made in the 1800s, it is centuries younger than several of the other cathedrals in the city. But this one is the biggest. In fact, it’s the largest neo-Gothic cathedral in the Americas. It’s visible above the skyline from pretty much any point in the city.

I'm not entirely sure what the kids are doing in this photo, but you can see the Basilica off in the distance behind them.

We did eventually make it, and I never had to count on that zip tie to do more than keep the seat belt from tripping me as I very excitedly jumped out of the cab. So, thank you, I guess?

The main (secular) attractions of the Basilica are its four massive bell towers that are open to tourists who don’t mind another stair climb. But if we were to have any prayer (sorry) of making it to the top, we were going to need some real food beyond what we had already used for emergency resuscitation at the Panecillo. So we asked at the Basilica's ticket counter if there was a good place to get some lunch nearby. The staff member told us that the closest restaurants were about ten minutes away. That seemed painful, but doable. However, whether it was just due to a miscommunication or the staff member trying to send us to the type of restaurant she thought we’d prefer, there was actually a charming little cafe right across the street. We easily could have missed the tiny sign on the nondescript door. We worked our way up to the second floor terrace and found a few small tables dotted with locals. It was perfect. The kids sat at their own table and the adults ordered a round of beers for ours. It was a delightful lunch overlooking the Basilica entrance, and just what we needed before taking on another stair climb.

As we were planning our day the evening prior, Alicia and Isaias told us that the stairs up the bell tower were more like a ladder. I pictured some steep, shallow stairs scaled by monks centuries earlier. But I should have taken their description more literally. The last 40 feet of the climb were on a near-vertical welded-in-place rickety set of “stairs” on the OUTSIDE OF THE TOWER. This was not on the brochure.

I don’t have a ton of pictures from this stretch of the climb, since taking my phone out of my pocket would have directly resulted in either it or my children taking an abrupt decent. But thankfully Alicia, knowing what we were in for, stayed back to snap a photo.

My attention was squarely on the child ahead of me, so I was more than a little surprised when I turned around after reaching to summit to see a stranger behind me. I immediately (and correctly) assumed that Quinn decided to turn around after the first few steps, as any reasonable person would have.

The view was spectacular, however. Worth it? Debatable. But it was an amazing photo op.

You can see the Panecillo way in the background. We were at near-eye level with it.

After an equally harrowing descent, Mimi and I met back up with the rest of our group. With unspoken-yet-unanimous consent, we all decided that we could leave the other three towers unascended.

But Quinn was noticeably bummed about missing out on the climb. So I asked if he wanted to give it another go. He did, and Aimee graciously (?) allowed me to take him while she stayed on solid ground. How kind. But at least she got a good photo.

I talked Quinn (and myself) through the climb, literally step by step. But his pride after making it to the top almost barely justified making the ascent for a second time.

When Quinn made it to the bottom, he sprinted to tell Aimee what he had done. He was absolutely buzzing with adrenaline.

Speaking of adrenaline, our taxi ride home solidified my plan to only use Dayana as our driver from here on out. The first mistake of that drive was mine. Although the taxis here cost a lot in terms of life expectancy, the financial burden is typically minimal. The drivers usually use the meters, and we hadn’t experienced any of the usual semi-scams like taking the longer way to rack up charges (let alone anything more serious). So I had gotten used to that and hadn't been negotiating a price ahead of time. That's on me. As we set off on this trip, our driver quoted a price that was twice as high as the going rate. Only after we threatened to get out of the taxi at a stoplight, the driver was open to renegotiating. But not a minute after we came to an agreement, the driver turned a corner and encountered a police officer waving a couple of cars over to the side of the road (including ours).

Our driver nervously put his seatbelt on as soon as he saw the traffic stop, so that wasn’t the reason we were getting pulled over. It may have been because Quito has traffic restriction on which cars can use the roads each day based on the last digit of their license plate. It’s an effective way to keep down road congestion, and even applies to taxi drivers (but not rich people, who Alicia tells us often buy two or three cars to have one that can be used every day of the week).

We’ll likely never know the reason our driver got pulled over. And neither will the city administrators, if my presumption is correct about why the driver took a $10 bill out of his wallet as he stepped out of the vehicle. After a few minutes of quiet conversation between the driver and police officer (and us getting asked by the officer where we were headed), the driver got back into the car, muttered about how the police “just pull anyone over,” then proceeded to demonstrate his obvious agitation via his now even further-accelerated driving style. At one point, he nearly blew through a red light before realizing it and slamming on his brakes.

If that wasn’t enough, there was also what he was playing on the car stereo at max volume. As soon as we renegotiated the price, he turned on what started out as some type of fire and brimstone sermon that shortly devolved into literally nails on a chalkboard. Seriously. It was some type of religious podcast (Godcast?) that was apparently trying to chase out the demons through the listener's ear canals. It was horrible.

So yeah, we’ll be calling Dayana from here on out. 

Middle of the world on Friday, top of the world on Saturday

Thursday was my first real day of work. I started the day leading a hospital committee meeting over video chat. Those meetings are always a little painful, but only more so when the alternative is being on vacation. I had to actively remind myself many, many times during the meeting that a bit of remote work was allowing us to spend a month in Ecuador. This will be worth it. This will be worth it?

But an hour later, the meeting was over and I could rejoin the other 7 people who weren't working that day. Our plan that afternoon was to head out to the historic district for lunch and a bit of sightseeing. Like most South American historic districts, Quito’s revolved around a series of Spanish churches. On Alicia and Isaias’ advice, the destination we picked for that day was the Catedral Metropolitana, the primary seat of the Catholic Church in Ecuador and a decade away from being 500 years old. The building is absolutely filled with history (and bodies of many church benefactors), but all of that was lost on our kids. The real attraction was a tunnel behind a hidden door that leads to the rooftop. And for a measly dollar, they'll let you go in it! Yes, please. It took me at least half of the hike to really believe that they were letting us do this.

But our adventuring that day was limited by more than just a healthy fear of heights and small spaces. I had a bit more work to do, and it was unmissable. I'm responsible for an annual presentation to our hospital's Board of Directors about various projects we're working on. I don't pick the date, and as luck would have it, this year’s board meeting was barely two days into our trip. So I hustled back and reconnected to our work network from Alicia's top-shelf Embassy-grade internet provider. The talk went great, but just like the one from this morning, there was a whole lot of introspection between powerpoint slides. Worth it. "Next slide." Worth it? "Next slide." Worth it...

The upshot of me being tethered to an internet connection is that it kept the vacation pace very tranquillo. We had another delightful dinner at our friends' place and tucked the kids in for another good night of sleep. They were still clearly catching up from the jet lag.

Friday started with a bit more work in the morning, but was mostly vacation. So we took advantage by going on our first little excursion outside of the city. Ecuador obviously gets its name from its location straddling the equator. It also gets quite a bit of tourism revenue from that. The municipal government of the small town right on the equator built a monument to the site that is now the most visited tourist destination in Ecuador. They chose the exact location based on the findings of a French expedition in the 1700s that set off to find the center of the world, or Mitad Del Mundo.

The problem, however, was that their “exact” measurements were later determined using GPS to be off by about 800 feet. But you can’t blame the early explores, it was the best they could do with 300 year old technology. Except that it wasn’t. Nearby pre-Inca ruins that were dismissed by the French expedition were actually located on the exact equator. The Quitu-Cara culture had nailed it almost exactly a century earlier. Yet another example of how advanced the pre-Colombian cultures in this area were.

But no one lets that stop a few good photo ops, us included.

That second photo was taken by "the guy" who has been set up at that spot since the monument opened. He poses tourists in one of two poses (the second one is what the kids are doing above) and snaps their photo for a single very well-spent dollar.

But it wasn’t a long stay. The jet lag and 9,500 foot elevation were catching up with all of us. So we headed back to the apartment for an early dinner. It was punctuated by yet another power outage, but we would have been pretty oblivious if my aunt hadn’t texted to ask how we were doing. Apparently the reporting on this in the US was pretty apocalyptic. We had barely noticed, but it’s a good example of how occasionally the news abroad is reported with a bit more urgency and hyperbole than what matches the scene on the ground. We experienced the same thing with the crime reporting going on right now. It's easy to find pretty terrifying news about the security situation in Ecuador right now. But as I sip my cappuccino and look around the street in from of the coffee shop, I'm not seeing it.

Saturday was my first day of the trip without any work responsibilities at all. Accordingly, I slept like a baby the night before. I finally felt like I was on vacation. And we weren’t going to waste the opportunity. We were excited to head up to another classic Quito attraction, Teleferiqo. It was our most ambitious excursion of the trip so far. It started with one of the world’s highest elevation aerial lifts, going from just over 10,000 feet to nearly 13,000 feet in about 20 minutes. It’s enough to give some passengers altitude sickness. For real. Aimee and I caught ourselves taking extra big breaths every now and then to be able to keep up with our completely unfazed children.

Even beyond the stunning views, the mountain top had a bit of everything. Swings for the kids, a hiking trail, and even a baby llama photo op.

If this photo recorded sound, it would just be Aimee incredulously saying "stop it" over and over again as she melted every time the baby llama did so much as twitch its ear.

But the real surprise was that there was a little horseback tour along one the trails. Well, that wasn’t the surprise. People here use horses for getting around everywhere. The surprise was that I enjoyed it.

I’ve been traumatized on more than one horseback ride. Actually on every previous horseback ride. But this one was delightful. The horses appeared healthy and content. One of the guides walked beside Quinn’s horse the entire time, and the trail was only marginally close to a cliff face.

At one point, Mimi’s horse galloped for a few steps. Mimi was absolutely enthralled, and simply giggle-squealed the whole time. I, somehow, didn’t absolutely lose it. Which says a lot, since as I write this a week later, I’m going into a cold sweat as I play it back in my head. But something about the combination of factors (probably the extremely low oxygen concentration, now that I think about it) just came together for a delightful afternoon.

After a lunch in a little hut at the top of the mountain, we took a taxi back home. That reminds me, our driver out to Teleferiqo was delightful. Dayana was the first driver we had in that city that didn’t make me question how I could have put my family in this situation. So of course, I asked for her contact information and planned on calling her again every time we needed a driver that month.

The rest of the afternoon was particularly quiet. At least for the adults, among whom there wasn’t a single one not napping while all four of our kids somehow still had energy to play throughout the apartment. That afternoon made me realize that this is the first trip we’ve taken when we didn’t have to rush home by 1 pm to make sure we got in a gremlin-preventing nap time for the kids. Or maybe we never did, and I was just projecting. Either way, nap time isn't going anywhere for our family. It's just optional for the kids now.