Saturday, April 8, 2006

There's lots of good hiking around Baños, what with all the green hills and such. I love hiking. And there's a supermarket in town, which we don't always have, so we decided to make ourselves a picnic and hike over the Puente San Francisco (San Francisco Bridge) and into the hills beyond the Rio Pastaza. We were torn for a while between that hike and some other hikes, but finally went with San Francisco because bridges are cool, especially the charming hanging kind in the drawing on our colorful little town map.

On our way to the start of the hike, we stopped in the park to load our supermarket haul into my daypack and met a couple of little kids. The little girl was selling candy and she approached us with what seems to be the style of begging and lower-eschelon vending in the area: whining, faux sobbing, and beseeching us to buy candy as though our purchase would save them from imminent death.

I'm not fond of that style. There's something disconcerting about the crying cutting off mid-sob if you walk by without giving. It's so fake that it makes their whole situation seem fake, even if it's not, and the whole transaction seem like a trick even if they're charging a fair price. Well, we decided to buy some candy from this little girl anyway. Fifty cents for four packs of Starburst-esque fruit chews. I couldn't understand the pricing for a long time, but she was honest and made sure I got all the packs to which I was entitled.

Then the little boy wanted money. He wasn't selling anything, he just saw me give fifty cents to the girl and put out his own tiny, grubby little hand. This little boy was just too young to know how to ask strangers for money, much less wander the streets on his own to do it. The girl, who couldn't have been more than six herself, seemed to be looking after him. But when Michael asked, she claimed he was not her brother. Which was either true, or a clever ploy to prevent us from telling them they had to share.

We didn't want to just hand him money for no reason, but Michael paid him for a couple of photos. The little girl tried to stop him from allowing himself to be photographed, but he didn't seem to mind too much. He seemed happy enough with his money, though he did not thank Michael for it.

These two kids really kind of disturbed me. I can't get them out of my mind. It's the same question I've been turning over since the start of the trip and am making no headway in answering - are their families really so poor that the money these kids bring in is more valuable than their dignity? Or is it just a little sideline, like, why not get a couple bucks from the rich, gullible foreigners?

Probably it's sometimes the one and sometimes the other and sometimes both, but I really want to know about the particular kids who have approached us. Because sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no, and I really hope our money is going to the poor kids and not the sneaky kids.

Weighed down with confusion and not-Starbursts, we headed over to the market, where we expected to find the Puente San Francisco. Behind the market was a deep, steep-walled canyon with the Pastaza River at the bottom. Stretching over it was a big, wide, ugly, concrete slab of a bridge. Not what we were picturing at all. But I guess people need sturdy new bridges to drive across, right? You can't deny people their modern conveniences so that you can have a picturesque vacation. Still, I was pretty disappointed as we walked out onto the bridge to look down into the ravine.

It seemed like a mile down the steep, green sides to the brown water rushing and splashing over the rocks way down at the bottom. And then when we stepped to the other side of the bridge to see the view in the opposite direction, we saw a smaller bridge far below, a charming board bridge like we had seen in the pictures. Yay!

We made our way down towards the bridge, but the walk was not as charming as the bridge, since the ground was scattered with trash. I'm willing to accept the modern convenience of sturdy bridges, but soda bottles and snack-food wrappings along the river are another story, I think. Come on, guys. There are gaping-mouthed clowns all over town just waiting for you.

On the way down we passed a shrine, possibly to Our Lady of the Holy Water, but there was no way to know because the glass cover to the saint's pedestal was shattered and the saint was gone. The shrine was covered with now-familiar Paty + Juan Carlos grafitti. It was kind of a bummer to see and made me feel not quite safe in the area. (Surely only the most vicious of ruffians steals a statue of a saint?) But on the bright side, we got to watch a spider crawling slowly down the door to the shrine, sneaking up on a sleeping fly. It was truly fascinating, like something from the Discovery Channel. In the end the fly got away and we continued on our way to the cute bridge.

The bridge had some non-picturesque chain-link happening, but it was much more satisfying than its big concrete brother stretching across the sky above us. On the other side, we figured that since we'd walked at least one hundred yards already, it would be a good time to sit down and have our picnic. So we sat on a little concrete thingy overlooking the river and made ourselves some sandwiches. The view was fabulous.

Then we finally started walking again, this time ready to actually put some miles behind us, right? Well... no. I got tired. I don't think we're at any kind of altitude anymore, so I really don't know what it is that tired me out so much. I know that before we left home, some people expressed concerns about whether I have sufficient energy to complete the activities involved in a trip like this.

Now's the time for those people to nod knowingly, because man, I could barely make it up the other side of the ravine and back across the big ugly bridge. So we don't know what the rest of the hike is like. Also it's not looking so good for the Inca trail. Michael made me promise to drink more water. He believes water will solve all my problems.

So after that we prepared for the more sedentary activities suited to a weirdly tired person like me: we bought bootleg DVDs. (Brokeback Mountain and Capote)You can get them for $1.50 in Baños, and they are the real thing. I mean, illegal bootlegs so not exactly the real thing, but perfect quality, with all the extras. (If you're super-frugal you can get crappy $1 VCDs that are crappy.) Movies, just one more thing the laptop can do for us. So maybe we'll give the hiking another try, or maybe we'll just go back to one of the many bootleg stores and get more movies.

 

Post a comment:

Name:
Email:
URL:
A cat says:
Comment: (HTML is allowed)

Buying candy, Baños.

Boy from Baños.

Non-picturesque bridge over the Rio Pastaza, Baños.

Two bridges, Baños.

Mystery shrine, Baños.

Puente San Francisco, Baños.

Puente San Francisco over the Rio Pastaza, Baños.

The minute I saw the Chocositos Fofys, I had to have them. Tiny chocolate-chip bears plus a new nickname for Michael.

Another clown, Baños market.