Day 2: I Love Leaves, Bus Day

 The noises of a new place are a soundscape when you wake into it. Enter the morning in the city of Guayaquil. The sound of small cars whooshing thru the residual layers of thick tropical rain in the street, squacky honks not out of aggression, just communication. A TV somewhere in the 9 floors of our building. 

I have that New Arrival Phenomenon, where everything is precious and exciting. Tiny bananas! A grocery store where I can't find what I need but don't care. The exotic plants! 

Today was Bus Day. We wanted to leave this big grungy damp city of Guayaquil (biggest city in country, had cheapest flights from US) and head up into the lush and quieter city of Baños. 

A seven hour ride or so. I sat on the bus, temperature-regulated and still, and watched endless fields of bananas as we left the coast. I thought about how humongous banana leaves are, how fast they grow, the intensity of sun and water and air moisture that makes those expansive leaves possible. I thought about all the times I'd passed by huge leaves on my bicycle, not still and not at all temperature regulated. I felt nostalgia for that method of travel. And, it is more comfortable to let a bus do all the work. 

Since I'm not out there myself in stifling heat, focusing on my own suffering and preservation, my mind wanders. Is banana production mechanized? I can't really see how it could be, the trees all close together and the clumps of bananas all individually cased in plastic bags (pest management I imagine). With temperatures pushing 100 some days and all that equatorial sun and the thickness of the air, to work amongst those banana trees, oi I can barely fathom the stoicism needed. And we buy these Dole bananas for barely anything in our grocery stores. Thank a banana farmer next time you make a smoothie.  

Also this thought: does not being on a bike devalue my experience in some way? Is it lower-grade to not be out there moving under my own power, more exposed, more all-consumed with the activity of movement? Then an unannounced rainstorm appeared and I didn't even have to worry about getting wet. 

Rice, bananas, cocoa, mangos, corn, taro. Oh holy goodness, the heliconia plants (in the same order as ginger) with their unfathomably elegant flowers, bright pink and orange, as solid as plastic, zig zag like rick-rack, and they're just growing in the ditches. 

Oh and the epiphytes! Plants that live on other plants. I love them so much, those tropical plants on tropical plants, like putting ice cream on top of cake just cements that this is a very special thing. Some types of epiphytes are shaped like winged bowls and water collects inside, and the plants don't need roots except to grasp onto their perch. 

Then the flats of bananas abutted the range of Andes, which is the spine of the country. The bus down-shifted and we began the ascent. Out the window it was apparent the only way to keep humans from removing the trees and making agriculture is to make the ground nearly vertical. I went from seeing domesticated organized leaves to watching a veritable wild theatre of untamed leaves. 

The mountains are just piles of green, lumpy curves and divits thick with leaves and canopies and trunks. From a distance they are like undulating green shag carpet. And even when it's nearly vertical there are still areas of short grass, grazed by some well-balancing cows. I love this landscape. So verdant and disregarding of humans.   

After enough elevation we were in the clouds. The bus windows condensed up with a grey shrouding screen and the outside world was a fuzzy blur. I had to learn that all the craning around and watching out the windows wouldn't help the driver keep us on the curving wet roads, and I had the opportunity to practice trust and to relax. The public transportation in this country is extensive and frequent and buses are going everywhere all the time. 

Then we exited the clouds and were in yet another world. Officially up in the Andes. Bright sun, so many small square fields of indigenous crops I couldn't even recognize, small square houses, the rising hills now tree-less but lush with grass, sheep and cows. Fields of Chenopodium album (common lambsquarters?). Is that amaranth growing? 

Now the people out the bus windows included folks of smaller stature, wearing intricately beaded waist bands and draped with red and black striped wool ponchos. Women had red cloth draped over their heads. If where we started this morning was ambiguous Latin-X city modern metropolis, we were now in National Geographic.  

And then: Chimborazo was framed and visible. This huge looming triangular form, text-book volcanic perfection. 

What was I feeling when I saw the volcano? It took me a moment to categorize and qualify: wonder. How often do I get to feel that! At first I could see the pyramidal volcanic shape of the thing, and then it became stuck with clouds, like a big piled sweater attracting lint.  

And with these beautiful views, eliciting reflection and contemplation and awe, all of that is tempered by the violence bang-bam explosion killing groaning movies that are shown on the bus. All receive the benefit of this disgusting entertainment whether we want to participate or not. We three roll our earplugs tight and jam them protectively into our ears while no one else seems in the slightest perturbed; the couple two seats ahead keeps kissing with great enjoyment and sweetness.

 

View from bus. Bananas for sale, with reading rest.

View from bus. Man in traffic sells drinks to Datsun.