Part 1: Fault lines & Crooked spines
“You better take care of me Lord, if you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.” Hunter S Thopmson
My travel buddy, Eric and I were into our 4th week of travels across the Americas. We had recently crossed the into the southern hemisphere and unyoked our mules in the seismic heartland of Ecuador. For the next week, I was sentenced to live in a hotel in Ambato, a town where tumbleweeds go to die, while Eric lay on a drip five doors down in the regional hospital.
Our second day in Banos, the unabashedly, self-proclaimed, adventure sports capital of South America, was to be the relaxing one after an action packed first day. Eric and I were mountain biking down the mountain beside of the active volcano, Tungurahua yesterday, when he had a very serious fall; off the road and over the side of a steep slope and luckily went headfirst into a tree. I say luckily because a.) he’s lucky to be alive and b.) 5 metres prior there was no trees, just a cliff edge. Split his head right open and has a huge X shape of stitches on his crown, a broken little finger, a cracked rib that punctured his lung and various cuts and bruises. In the ambulance to the hospital and hour away, his chest swelled up and turned bright red, the nurse became visibly anxious, as were the doctors when we arrived at the hospital, which in turn made me worried.
The thing that stressed me just as much, was the state of the hospital and the way that they go about things. Within seconds of Eric being rushed into the A and E, it became pretty clear that I was now an intern, an unpaid member of staff at Ambato hospital. Not only was I translator, porter and runner but there was a couple of times when they asked for my opinion on pretty complex medical issues. I guess, because they are underfunded and understaffed, they have come to view able-bodied friends and family members as the perfect folk to carry out the more menial tasks around a hospital (in hindsight – fair enough i suppose). My jobs included: running back and forth to the pharmacies, once to the private one out on the street to buy a cast for his finger but otherwise to the hospital pharmacy down at the end of the hospital car park in the rain and the freezing cold, lifting Eric on and off the trolley bed as he got various X rays and scans, and then running back and forth from one end of the hospital to the other with the ‘rayos x’ in my hand, no packet or anything, just the x ray sheets. At one point i was marching through the car park with 3 big bags of glucose drip, a sachet of morphine and a packet of needles, thinking to myself, “Where the hell am I and what on Earth is actually going on?”
Now, I’m not a doctor of medicine as you may have guessed and chances are, I never will be but in a Culinary Arts Degree you do learn a thing or two about germs, enough to be pretty repulsed last night. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Eric when he’s out and all healed up, so that we can can look back and laugh or whether this is one of those ‘ignorance is bliss’ situations. Nurses were running back and forth to one very grotty toilet/ shower room with dirty bed pans through the waiting rooms and wards, everything in full view. Trying to wash my hands, I found not a drop of hand sanitizer in the whole place and every hand-wash sink was filled up rubbish and used equipment. One of the nurses was eating a chocolate bar at the same time as hooking up his drip. There were other malpractices that I can’t remember but it just seemed to get worse and worse. I wanted to get away and get a hotel but the doctor kept asking me to stay and watch the A and E ward with 3 men in it. “Come and find me if anything goes wrong”, said the doctor. Actually in hindsight, maybe I might have become a doctor of medicine, or certainly a nurse, if I’d stayed in that place long enough.
Not to belittle Ecuador or their medical system (all free -apart from finger casts for some bizarre reason); i=t’s a beautiful country and it’s people are very caring and friendly. We did receive an unhealthy amount of warnings on the way here from Columbia and the first few days into the trip, about pickpockets but so far, I have felt relatively safe (until last night)- as with Colombia.
Quito – The Capital. For me not a city for first impressions, one that you have to scratch beneath the surface of, we only had 2 days there so I hadn’t done much scratching but I got that sense, or maybe I’m just the eternal optimist. I often wonder, if I did ever become a restaurant critic (long a dream of mine), how would it would play out.. “Well the food wasn’t to my particular preference, but I’m sure someone somewhere has a penchant for deep fried yoga mat”. Quito definitely has two things that no one can dispute: a network of intensely tacky but intricately decorated churches in it’s ‘old city’ and a hopping nightlife, which is all confined to one buzzy hub.
Banos is the adventure capital. Kayaking, bungee jumps, paragliding, zip lines, mountain biking, trekking, waterfalls, canyons, volcanoes and hot springs… you get the picture. We stayed in The Transylvania Hostel owned by a Turkish/ Israeli couple who minded our bags and washed all of Eric’s bloody clothes for him. Nice people. The hostel was full of Israeli backpackers too, who re-taught me the game of backgammon over a few beers. It’s a great game; a mixture of luck and skill. The town has various hot thermal baths dotted around it, open to the public. There are three temperatures to choose, freezing cold, hot and very very hot. Nice to hop in and out of all 3.
The local food specialty is ‘Cuy’; chargrilled guinea pig. Yes, I tried it and then went to sleep with a guilty conscience, the little paws and teeth coming back to haunt me in my dreams. It is very tasty though – a bit like duck in my opinion, lots of fat and a tough crispy skin. Traditionally, the animal was reserved for ceremonial meals by indigenous people in the Andean mountains but in recent decades, it has become more socially acceptable for consumption by all people, not least hungry tourists. Banos is also saturated with little stalls selling ‘jugos de cano’ – sugar cane juice, as well as hand spun sugar sweets, perfect fuel for all of the adrenaline junkies and maybe even the newly recruited morphine junkies.
It makes you think though, when you are on the other side of the world, in a disheveled hospital, far away from friends and family, pacing up and down a hospital hallway with all of the worst case scenarios rushing through your head. It makes you think about all sorts of things. We eventually got released back into the wild (just in time to feed our starving mules). I walked away from that town knowing that life, like backgammon, is mixture of skill and luck, the more risks you take and the more you gamble, the bigger the rewards can be but there’s always the chance that you could loose it all in a split second. So for the love of god, go and hug a stranger!
The swelling and redness on Eric’s chest, turned out, hours later, to be air that had leaked from his lungs and was lying under his skin. They had to put a tube in under his skin and deflate him..
Part 2: Escape from Ambato
Aside from my superiors, fellow workmates and interns at d’auld Sick Bay, I did manage to make a bunch of new friends during the week that Eric was posted up in the lonesome dust bowl that is Ambato.
Firstly everyone that owned a restaurant knew me from eating out three times a day. My favourite though, was the shed opposite the hospital owned by two friendly, middle aged sisters, where you could get a set breakfast for $1. I could choose between: chicken stew with a mountain of rice (yes breakfast) or an unpeeled boiled egg with 2 bread rolls and salsa, either came with a hot drink. They have every hot drink under the sun in Ecuador: Horchata, Coffee, Chicha (made from blue corn), ‘Aromaticos’ (a sweet and spicy drink similar to Chai), and Colada Maizena (a sweet, thick, corn flour goo) but sadly, no Tea. A week of no tea and no beer, or rather, nobody to have beer, coupled with the general isolation = sad week in my world.
Luckily that my sad week never materialised. Four days in, I met an Irish girl, from Cork who was also staying near the hospital because her English friend had broken her ankle in during some late night drunken escapade. Ciara had been living in the jungle doing research for her PhD on Ecuadorian monkeys. She had tea – Irish Tea! We spent the afternoon in the hotel, drinking copious amounts of tea and chatting about monkeys. If there ever comes a time in your life where any situation arrises that you need some Ecuadorian-Monkey-related-knowledge, perhaps on a trivia night or if your friend gets bitten by a monkey , please do not hesitate to contact me. I’m your man man when it come to the Ecuadorian-Monkey-related-knowledge from this moment forth.
Tea and monkeys ran it’s course quickly and the next day I looked to the volcano shaped horizon for fulfilment, via rental car. The owner of the hotel, Ramiro insisted on driving me around the city to all of the companies. However, they were all very expensive and wanted to slap me squarely in the face with a gringo tax so that was the end of that. When we got back to the hotel, he offered me a beer. We then, slowly but surely, preceded to descend into a six hour cerveza and whiskey induced conversation in the most bizarre form of Spanglish ever invented. All the while, he was ‘working’ on reception. His wife eventually came and told him it was bedtime. The next morning Eric got released from prison with his new deflated chest and we jumped on a bus toward that horizon. I left Ambato with that end of summer-camp feeling. You know, when you don’t like something at first and then just as your starting to like get in the groove and enjoy it, suddenly it’s all over and ripped away from in front of you?
Six days behind schedule, we ziplined it for the Peruvian frontiera. We stopped at a few small towns on the way to Lima for refreshments, the highlight of which was Quenca but the rest of the were nothing to write home about and yet, ironically, I kind of am. Trujillo, had as series of ancient pre Incan ruins which where pretty cool but I won’t bore you with that stuff. According to World Animal Foundation: “Spider monkeys are diurnal and spend the night in carefully selected sleeping trees. Groups are thought to be directed by a lead female who is responsible for planning an efficient route for the day’s feeding activities. Grooming is not as important to social interaction, due perhaps to a lack of thumbs”.
Lima is the culinary capital of South America and also very cheap which is music to the ears of any budding gastronome on the budget of a intrepid backpacker. Feasting ensued after a week spent on the road watching action movies on bumpy overnight busses. I was a bad friend and took the plane to Cusco, the sacred halting ground before the trek to Macchu Picchu, while Eric sat on a 24 hour bus on account of his pneumothorax aka collapsed lung.
My hostel, The Wild Rover in Cusco had Barry’s tea too. Everything was looking up!
Tadgh Byrne 