Ah, living by a volcano

The bus ride from Salasaca to Baños should take about 30 minutes. Today, it took me almost 4 hours to get home. So, what´s the deal, you ask?

Between me and my friends there is a very inconvenient volcano called Tunkurawa. After the eruption last year, there have been dramatic mudslides and flash floods that wash out the road every time it rains. And now is the rainy season. Tractors just sort of push the mud around if there is a break in the rain, which is rare. In the style of Latin American infrastructure planning, nothing is really being done. It rains, the road gets washed out, and, if you are lucky, tractors push away enough slush for your bus to bounce roughly through the landslide area. If you are unlucky, you will be walking through the mess running down from the volcano or you will be stuck wherever you are, sometimes for a day. Last week, I couldn´t get home at all from Baños. I left at 6, the bus got stuck, then I had to hike an hour back to Baños, no way out all day.

Here is a great example of Ecuadorian transportation. This morning, I got up at 5 am to leave my friend´s place in Baños. There was no way out. So I started walking, hoping to hitchhike, a common practice here. At about 6 am, the police decided to let buses through. So a bus picked me up. Then the police changed their minds. I sat in the bus for about an hour, then decided to get out and walk through the landslide, about an hour of dangerous trekking through the debris from the volcano. Just then, the police changed their minds again. The only bus that would pick me up was a small little local bus filled with campesinos going to Ambato. As luck would have it, they decided to bypass Salasaca, even though I specifically asked the driver to let me off there when I got on. So they dumped me off in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, after hiking about 30 minutes in what I hoped was the direction of Salasaca, I hitched a ride to the town center. Arriving home finally at 8:30 (3 and a half hours instead of 30 minutes!), I had to leave immediately for my 45 minute walk to school. Over 4 hours to get to school today!!! I am not going back to Baños for a little while! I hate getting stuck!

After school, it´s a 45 minute walk to my Quichua teacher's house. She read my Quichua diary today, and she freaked out! She actually told me that I write Quichua with almost no mistakes at all! I just need to learn to understand and talk better... She said "alli killkarkanki" (you wrote very well) three times before I understood her, haha! She also said that people have noticed how I speak Quichua with the youngest children (that´s because I am less embarrassed with them). I am so excited! I thought she was going to cross out the whole five pages I had written, but she hardly corrected a thing! Now, if only everyone would slow down a ton and stop having that truncated Salasaca dialect... I´d be in good shape.

Salasacapi chiri chiri kan. Ñuka Bañosman rinkapak munani, shinapash, Bañosman risha, ñukapak wasikama mana tikrankapak ushanichu. Shina, kunan tutapi chiri chiri Salasacapi puñucrini. (Salasaca is so cold! I want to go to Baños, but, if I go to Baños, I can´t get back to my house. So, tonight I am going to sleep in freakin´ cold cold Salasaca.... a loose translation) I am so happy with my written Quichua :) Maybe I can pretend I am deaf and have everyone write whatever they are saying down on a little chalkboard slung around my neck. Yeah... good idea.