The waning light from the ecuatorial sun officially disappears at 645 pm on any given day – seasons being obsolete here.
At 630 pm my host sister-in-law Nicoletta knocked on my door asking me to accompany her to the ravine. When I squinted my eyes in suspicion she explained that Santiago had called, inebriated, needing her assistance on the long hike home from a neighboring community.
I looked past Nicoletta to the fading wisps of orange glow, quickly sinking behind the volcano. I looked at my watch and thought of my pending 3am bus ride down to the capital city for a workshop with my NGO´. I shrugged. ¨Why not?¨ and followed her down the path, carying nothing but the clothes on my back and my cell phone.
For kicks we took along my favorite 8 year old in the world, Lucky, and three dogs. As we hit the steep path that zig zags down the cliff´s edge to the floor of the valley, it was clear who the weakest link was. After 5 minutes of stumbling over my Merrell hiking boot clad feet behind the rest of the search party, I was obligated to slow my pace (in order to physically save my face. After one particularly brutal face plant the thought crossed my mind ¨Now I´ll never be a teen model¨)
With only the scarce light of my cell phone to guide me, I tried to sing all the Disney songs in my repertoire to fend off the dangers of the dark. One dog had stayed by my side while the other two felt no resmorese in leaving me to the evils of the ever encroaching twilight. I sowre my undying loyalty to this four legged friend of man…until we hit a flat stretch of the path and he too ditched me.
Now completely on my own I repeated the opening line to Circle of Light from The Lion King at the top of my scared lungs, searching desperately in the darkness for a trace of Nicoletta´s flashlight. No luck.
After an extended half hour and a comical run in with a drunk that was NOT my host brother, the path opened up into the valley and the cloack of darkness lifted – thanks to the hundreds of fireflies. It felt like the midnight sky had fallen around me, stars replaced by miniscule and curious bugs who greeted me in silence with spectacular obs of brightness.
I hightailed it to the ¨bridge¨ to see if my fellow rescuers had left me behind. Rounding a tight bend in the path I ran into the small group. ¨Aughhhhh!!!!”
Nicoletta had turned off her flashlight to conserve the battery and the dogs were eerily silent. So when I say that I ”ran into” my friends I mean it literally. Disentangling myself from a dog and a small Ecuadorian child, I apologized and asked after the search results. No luck yet. Santiago was nowhere to be found.
No choice but to continue the search. Nicoletta sprinted over the fallen baby eucaliptus tree with the cunning of a Cirque du´Soleil veteran. Lucky, panting like a husky after the Iditarod, stayed closer to my side. Seconds later, Nicoletta´s shadow was a nothing more than a brief memory. They say there is no greater motivation than love, and in this case love mixed with fear makes olympiads of even the most provincial .
I, fortunately, do not love Santiago, and was free to amble up the mountain at a more humane pace.
We reconvened miles later in front of a house. Sister-in-law blackmailed me into asking the residents if they had seen “a drunk young man in a green sweater.” Vague, but small town, big gossip. We go tthe full descriptions and stories of all the wasted boys and men that had wandered down the path in the past 24 hours. But none in a green sweater.
Arriving at the other community at 830 pm, we finally laid our hands on the guilty and drunken party in question. My ridiculous 26 year old host brother had the nerve to tell me, in slurred Spanish mixed with Kichwa, to wait outside until he was done talking to his equally drunken friends.
I lost it.
Nicoletta wrung her hands nervously outside the cantina.
I charged back in and turned off the light of the speak-easy. Shouts answered back. “The bar is closed!! And Santiago you walk out the door now or I leave you here to sleep in the streets.”
Like a guilty kindergarderner admitting that he has killed the class goldfish during his weekend rotation, Santiago hung his head and slunked out behind me, his face alighting on Nicoletta´s in wonder and delight.
“My wife!!”
As our eclectic group set off down the mountain, Santiago´s emotions changed faster than a Colorado afternoon sky. Everytime I looked back to check in he was in the throes of some passion. Either trying to kiss his young wife or crying for the loss of his patria.
For the love of god, I just wanted to go home.
After a few non fatal falls, it was obvious that Santiago would hvae been better off sleeping in the streets. Instead we walked down the poorly maintained highway to cross the river in a different spot.
This is when the situation went from bad to worse.
There was no log to cross the river so we essentially waded through the murky waters at 930pm. Worse still, Santiago managed to nearly clear the river in one preposterous jump, making him the driest of the bunch.
Jerk.
On the other side of the river? Treacherous landslides and low visibility. We bushwhacked our way up the cliff for the next two hours, arriving home with more cuts and bruises than I had accumulated in the past month combined. At one point the way was so washed out that we had to drag Santiago across, one woman at his hands and the other at his feet, to keep him from sliding into the abyss.
Ugh.
But as the retelling proves, I survived, albeit dirty and embittered.
Thanks for reading.
