If you like strolling empty sidewalks with little traffic, and only a few walkers, seven in the morning is good in Cuenca, Ecuador.
It is a downhill jaunt from the end of Munoz Luis Cordero to the Parque Calderone. There are many General streets in this district but I remember Luis Cordero because at one end is Calle Munoz Vernaza, 3-46, where I reside for December 2015.
The Dorado panaderia I like to visit each morning is operated by the nearby El Dorado hotel and offers upscale breads and pastries, coffee and sandwiches. It has an upstairs where you eat or visit with friends and business associates, a clean bano on the bottom floor, modern decor, well presented baked goods.
One of the first things people ask me here is, ” Do you live here?, and, ” Do you like our city? ”
My standard answer is – “I don’t live here but I love your city.”
Even though Cuenca isn’t as big as Montevideo, it has a quarter million people nestled in between high Andes mountain ranges. It doesn’t spring from the indigenous jungle people like Costa Rica or Belize, or the cattle people of Uruguay, but from small, short stature, reserved people who live quietly in the high Andes and spend time growing crops on land that isn’t hospitable to farmers.
Cuenca is a city with a Spanish history rather than British, Catholic rather than Protestant. Ecuador shares more in common with Peru than Uruguay and more with Costa Rica than Belize.
If countries are determined by the traits of their indigenous peoples, Ecuador, and, by extension Cuenca, should reflect the mountain people of the Andes and it seems, to me, that this is true.
Geography does more to determine a countries character than all the books written about it.
Ecuador is now my fifth travel ring.
Leaving one place and moving to another is more difficult when you have enjoyed your stay. Then you have one place tugging at one arm and another place tugging at the other.
The Caribbean is worn, tattered, frayed, chipped, pieced together, bright colors, strange language, intense sun, stifling humidity, rain, mosquitoes, stewed chicken, rum punch, hesitation to do today what should have been done yesterday. The weather, people, traditions conspire to wring compulsions out of you like twisting a wet towel and snapping it in the air. Nature is everywhere; a lizard climbing up the front porch wall, a trail of ants along a fallen vine, fish in a bucket on a pier, a bird standing motionless in the sea until it sees its opportunity and comes up with a jitterbugging silver fish. The music is Latin, African, American rock and roll, Cuban and reggae. Rasta men stay to strict diets and a young crowd wears bling and attitudes more big city than island, more pretend than real.
The Caribbean is a worn pair of house shoes that you favor because they give you support but don’t constrict you. In the Caribbean, you find boundaries erased and a tolerance for eccentricity. You feel your mind slip and inhibitions drift away from their pier.
The vista changes as we fly. It starts with blue green turquoise water, small green clusters of mangrove islands, sand bars, and just above the water line, land. Then, sea and land is obscured by clouds. Breezing across the Caribbean we cut over Panama and Columbia down to Ecuador, over the Andes Mountains. Ecuador sprawls, the color of a leprecaun’s green patched jacket.
Over Cuenca, tonight, you see man-made lights that look like burning matches in a dark room. In San Pedro Town, you see what there is too see in a month. In a city the size of Cuenca, you can only see your small part of the reef, the little hump of coral around which you live, sleep, do your shopping, cultivate friends and neighbors.
We are going to be good friends, this city and I.
Not finding things to do here would take a monumental effort.
This pier is at the end of the Perla Escondita Condos. With tomorrows departure looming, I find my Yo Yo, a bag of frozen shrimp, hooks and swivels and weights and try my hands at some hand fishing in Belize.
It takes a minute to figure out how to cast with this rig. You unravel your line in little loops on the pier deck, gently pick up the weights in your right hand while holding the Yo Yo in your left. Then, you cast the weights as far as you can and move the Yo Yo in the direction of your cast so the line doesn’t snap and whip the hook and bait off. that are connected to the weights.The heavy sinkers take the bait and hooks to the bottom where the big ones are.
I am not having luck today but one of the ladies picked up by a tour boat, on this pier, snaps my picture for me so I can show people I was really here.
Posts are like dipping a spoon into the sea and scooping up teardrops of wiggling, squiggling, quivering life out of a very big bowl.
When and where you decide to dip your spoon is up too you, but you are tucking memories away safely like squirrels saving their nuts.
Later, with a post and a few pictures, I can revisit this moment and relish it like the pearl that it is.
The San Pedro Town Catholic Church fronts the Caribbean Sea, just like every other bar, restaurant, and lodging in town..
As you walk the length of the beach you can look over a fence that separates church grounds from the beach and see cement seats and a statue of Virgin Mary.
Entering the church, in the front, is an inscription from Matthew , a Confessional, a Donation Box, and a clear view of a simple Sancristy. You enter and leave the church through Market Square that is filled with vendors selling trinkets, drunks sleeping off night’s excesses, tourists taking pictures, hangers on with no work and no prospects.
This is a quiet place to collect thoughts, remember those gone, rest weary feet .There is no one here to tell you you can’t be here, and, it doesn’t cost anything.
Along the top of the wall at the back of the church is wire left exposed with jagged edges.
The only way to come into this church is by the front door.
We start on a clear day, end in a driving rain, complete a two hour guided tour of the Hol Chan Marine Reserve,
The fish are many, the coral reef is intact, and there have to be more snorkelers in this reserve than fish. I start my snorkel with ten fingers and still have them when I climb the ladder back into the boat after I’m done for the afternoon.
Underwater, a manta ray glided past me, like an alien space ship with a long tail, passing me like I was a slow farm machine in the right hand lane on a busy highway.
Hol Chan is the most frequented reef locale on Ambergris Caye and it saves lives that tourists meet nature in this safe place with guides. On the other side of the reef, sea currents can sweep you out and turn you into shark bait. This trip, including park fee and a guide who swims you through the reef ecosystem, is fifty dollars U.S. a person.
Ambergris Caye would be nothing but a bald head on the ocean without this reef. A visit to Belize without getting wet is a sacrilege and coming here is almost a rite of passage.
I didn’t see sharks down there but know they are close and pray, for those still in the water, that the predators haven’t been drinking.
I don’t want anyone to be their bar snack.
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