An Entirely Different Ecuador Than The One I Knew

Santi and I at our graduation/his Dads birthday party
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The last time I came to Ecuador was the Summer of 2000. I came with a bunch of other high school kids from across the US to do community service and explore the Andes, Galapagos Islands, and the headwaters of the Amazon. We bathed once or maybe twice a week, ate very simple meals, and shared bedrooms and tents with all manner of creepy critters. In short, it was fantastic. This time, although I was not foolish enough to expect that I would have the same sort of trip, I was not at all prepared for the incredibly different point of view I would experience Ecuador from. This was not the Ecuador I had seen from the back of a livestock truck or a Balsa wood raft, this was Ecuador from behind the bullet-proof, tinted glass of a Mercedes Benz. It could not have been more different. As I sat down into the palatial, if-you-can-imagine-it-it-can-probably-do-it back seat of my friend´s car I was stricken by a strange sensation. First of all, it was COOL. I felt like a little kid who had been mistakenly upgraded to first-class on a flight. I couldn´t resist the urge to fiddle with various buttons and knobs that inflated, heated, cooled, and reclined the seat into any of some rediculous number of possible configurations.

Santi, myself, and unidentified friend of Santis at the party
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When I finally looked up from my personal control panel, Quito was whizzing by silently. There were only faint car horns and hardly a whisp of the omnipresent diesel exhaust made it´s way through the big German air filters. Whereas the last time I came here, I was immersed in the nitty-gritty reality in which the vast majority of Ecuadorians live, this time I felt at once isolated and even more deeply immersed, only at an entirely different level of society. People no longer stared at me because I was a noticeably American kid zipping by in the back of a truck. Instead, they stared at the car and when they saw me in it, they seemed less surprised by my white skin and red hair. At that moment, it really dawned on me that the coming weeks would feel much more like visiting a friend in a different state than a different country.

As I sat down into the palatial, if-you-can-imagine-it-it-can-probably-do-it back seat of my friend´s car I was stricken by a strange sensation.