Some observations by Clark – Post-Galapagos

Some observations by Clark – Post-Galapagos

We very much enjoyed our time at the Galapagos.  We were surprised that some folks came for only two days (between two travel-days) – That is clearly not enough time to see the area.  From C’s blog, you can see a lot of the highlights regarding the flora/fauna/terrain.  What C did not really seem to notice was some of the sociological disparities/contradictions of the islands or the mainland.

On the islands, the Ecuadorian government is really trying to keep the Galapagos pristine (and >97% of the island area is protected wilderness.  There are massive efforts underway to hunt down and eliminate goats/dogs/cats/mice which were introduced and have threatened or eliminated a number of endemic species – but these creatures hide well.  Fishing and visits to islands (especially the smaller islands with no human population) are heavily regulated.  Visits and immigration to the islands, even from Ecuadorian citizens, is restricted.

However, in the 3% given to the people, there is a lot of talk about ecology and a bunch of posters on the walls, but practical matters dominate.  I saw folks painting a dock, and all of the run-off and excess paint was pouring into the ocean.  Streets are littered.  Dogs (obviously not fixed) roam the streets.  There is a real clash between the desire to keep the area as pristine as possible (both for scientific reasons and for the tourism industry) and real need to support a ‘traditional’ Ecuadorian life on the same island.  Kind of a Tale-of-Two-Cities.

At our hotel, everyone knew Christopher.  He even got a ‘bum-bag’ from a professional travel-reviewer and a bookmark from another visitor.  And, of course, all of the staff knew him.  However, the staff at the hotel, though fortunate to have the jobs they did, suffered penalties – many of them live on the mainland and work (away from their families) for 5 weeks of 12 hour days, and then go home for two weeks.  Our favorite waiter (Carlos) is married with two kids of similar age to Christopher.  I can’t imagine having to be apart from my family 5 weeks of every 7.  And for those outside the tourism industry, life can be much, much more difficult.

On the way to Las Grietas (about a 1km walk over a very craggy path – there is no Disabilities Act in Ecuador), there is a salt-mine.  As we walked past, we watched a woman bent at the waist to scoop salt off of the ground and into a 5-gallon bucket.  When the bucket was full, her son helped her to empty it into a large sack.  There were about 15 full sacks and about 10 empty ones on the flat.  Once the sacks are filled, have to be carried about 1km to the nearest dock. 

The section of the island where our hotel is cannot be reached by car.  Only by boat (about 500 yards by water taxi from Puerto Ayora and another 500 yards walking).  It is difficult to imagine that the hotel was built by folks unloading bags of cement at the dock and then carting them all to the hotel location (we saw this exact thing happening for a nearby house).  Of the 24,000 people at Puerto Ayora, most of the folks must have jobs closer to the salt-works or ferrying bricks than hotel staff.

Mainland Ecuador is similar.  We visited a hat-factory yesterday in Quito, where felt hats are made from raw wool.  This is considered to be a good solid job for folks without a high-school education (obviously, a good education opens up other opportunities).  There are machines to assist, but the work is highly manual.  The wool is carded, soaked in acid to remove other organics, washed, spun, thin sheets piled and piled over rotating cylinders into a basic cone shape, compressed, dyed, recompressed, domed (for the head-shape), sorted – and I don’t know what I forgot .  At every one of these stations is a person (130 at the factory) working at a machine, and about a half-dozen ways that person could lose a hand.  The unfinished ‘bells’ are sold to a large number of countries: to one company in TX –  the bells are sold for about $6 each, where they have the brims trimmed and folded/fixed to the right cowboy-hat shape and the final, finished project is sold for $350 with a made-in-the-USA label.  Minimum wage at these factories is ‘recommended’ by the government to be $1.50 an hour.

Driving through the country-side on our journey to Quenca, it is clear that the rural population earns less.  There is a lot of farming on the side of the sides of the Andes.  I didn’t see any mechanical equipment used at all (and the hillsides are much too steep to support it).  It was all folks with machetes carrying their crops along the roadside or to a Toyota pickup.  Or older women with full-brimmed hats and shawls collecting loose sticks along the roadside into enormous bundles and carrying them off (presumably for cooking-stoves).  Or a woman leading a cow or three down the highway (to feed along the way?).  A lot of the smaller houses don’t have chimneys, and the smoke from the cook-stoves spills up through the roof, which can’t be all that great for their long-term respiratory health.  However, all of these people on the roadside smile as our guide waves as we drive by.  There is no food shortage in Ecuador, and the weather is very temperate.  Many years back, the government took the land from the dominant land-owners and redistributed it to the people, so they are able to support themselves.  But it is a very demanding, very physical life.  Very, very different from ours.

And then there is the religion, which is Catholicism with a pretty heady mix of pagan tradition.  We were in a church that had a crucifix, a Virgin Mary, a Saint, a Sun, a Moon, and an Incan cross – all above the altar.  Our current guide says that he (and his people) are a fairly superstitious lot, and spend some time studying astrology – but that the Catholic Church has very recently made reading the daily horoscope a new sin.  Today we visited a convent/museum of Ecuadorian religious art and artifacts;  many of the depictions of Christ included sun-worship and many of the depictions of Mary included the Moon.  Our guide also told us about a famous Ecuadorian painting of The Last Supper that included Jesus eating cuy.

Finally, there are all the things I unconsciously have taken for granted I my life that just don’t exist here: major thoroughfares are not paved (outside the cities and the Pan-American Highway), some major roads suddenly end at a large blockage or have huge piles of rock spilling into the street covering half their width, outside of the cities most streets don’t have signs, people allow their livestock to roam the streets, we’ve driven probably 300+ miles so far without seeing a golf course, there is no ice (I miss ice in my drinks), drinking or brushing teeth from the tap is not recommended, and many more.

A lot to think about.  For all three of us.  I hope C can understand and appreciate it (more than us just pointing stuff out to him).  However, I think I am asking too much – at this point I don’t think I can fully understand a lot of these conflicts or deltas from USA myself; when I discuss some of these topics with the guide, it is clear that my perceptions and the local reality are frequently not overlapping.

A lot to think about.