Intag: my program’s first expedition is to the cloud forest reserve about two hours northeast of Quito, in the province of Imbabura. In brief, fantastic. In less brief, I’m scared to write about it at all because I can’t possibly do it justice. Let’s start with the biodiversity:

At night, tenants would shine a light on a sheet to attract moths, which arrived in hordes. Try this in the U.S., and you might see five to ten species; do it in Intag, one of the world’s most biodiverse hotspots, and it’s impossible to count. Every time they do it, they see a new species. Those of us standing near the sheet gradually became festooned with moths – in our hair, on our faces, all over our clothes, and no two alike. It got to the point where I couldn’t lower my arms all the way for fear of crushing a hitchhiker. Some moths were surprisingly loyal, and stuck to my jacket all the way back to our cabin. One hid under my collar like a tiny bow tie.

If only I could remember the name of these prehistoric stumps…

We spent the next day trekking through primary and secondary forest for about three and a half hours, getting to know the land. I’m pretty sure the elevation at Intag is even higher than Quito, so just imagine a light, up-and-down stroll across a small mountain range at ten thousand feet, replete with plants that have too many medicinal uses to count. Some were snacks for dinosaurs (see fuzzy mystery plants on the left). One tree, when nudged with the tip of a machete, secreted a thick blood-colored sap that could be used for sunscreen, treating wounds, repelling mosquitoes or making soap.

(Did I mention I got to use a machete? I’m an adult now!)

Biodiversity means equilibrium: lots of species, but low population density, so no single type predominates. Everything is in balance, a bit like a well-run democracy. And, like democracy, it is as valuable as it is fragile; altering or destroying a few little components can debilitate the whole system. This leads us to a caveat in this bio-paradise: the Ecuadorian government would like to mine the entire area for copper, in partnership with a Chilean company that owns the largest open-pit copper mine on earth (now 133 years old). Company’s catchphrase, according to an employee: “Desayunar cobre, almorzar cobre, dormir con cobre.” (Copper for breakfast, copper for lunch, copper at bedtime).

The trouble with copper is that it doesn’t sleep alone. It is commonly found alongside lead and arsenic, two of the more toxic by-products of extraction. Then there’s the mining process itself. In this case, it would be an open pit mine, which requires removing the overburden to get at the metal nested beneath.

View from the roundhouse. Most of the mountain is covered by clouds

When a mining company talks about “overburden,” they mean “ecosystem.” I’ll leave the catastrophizing to Bill McKibben, but suffice to say this struggle is far from over. The communities in this area are internationally known for having thrown out two mining companies who previously tried to establish operations here, but those weren’t backed by the state; this one is. The day we talked about activism and extractivism in Intag, a fellow visitor said something that struck home: tomorrow or in fifty years, someone will extract the copper under this forest. It may not even be this company, but as long as the global market demands copper, Intag will be under threat, because unlike money, copper doesn’t evaporate in times of economic strife. Stopping demand is the only real way to stop supply. And now I take ten million deep breaths.

Every leaf is about the size of a parasol. Or me in the fetal position, contemplating the global economic system.

On a lighter note: I ate bugs! Specifically, the larva of black soldier flies, frozen and baked and sautéed in lemon, with peppers. Good with guacamole. 4 out of 5 stars, would try again. And, because it would be sacrilege not to include dog pictures whenever I have them:

Code name Desert Fox

Code name Grizzly Barrel

Monte (Cristo)

So who is this charming, small dark stranger?

I cannot say, because I never learned her name, but we made a happy pair trotting around in the avocado groves.

My host family, it turns out, owns a small farm less than an hour out of Quito, so last weekend we piled into the car and drove out of the city smog on newly minted highways. After a while, we pulled off onto an improbably rocky road and followed it up a slope; I couldn’t comprehend why a road encrusted with thousands of uneven, football-sized stones would be preferable to dirt, until I realized that the cobbles probably keep rain from wreaking muddy havoc during the wet season. Right now, the mountains looks arid and inhospitable, to the point where it was hard for me to imagine any agricultural production happening in the area.

Apparently my imagination needs more exercise.

Avocados ripening on the branch, ready for harvest in a few weeks

Dozens of avocado trees, barely as old as me but several times taller, stood stoutly behind a little house. I was told the fruits wouldn’t be ready to harvest for another month or so, but they already looked delicious. A little further back was a lemon grove, easily twice as large and nourished by the stream flowing from an artificial pond. Five hundred young tilapia fill the water with excreted nutrients; eventually they’ll be eaten by the other family that lives on the property, or sold at the market. Closer to the entrance, potatoes, blackberries and hibiscus soak up the fierce high-altitude sunshine.

What else? Nine dogs, four cats and three cockatiels, mostly to be found lounging in the shade. In a few weeks the harvest will begin in earnest, and truckloads of avocado and citrus will make their way to the city. The day passed like a dream, with fresh air and relaxation, until late afternoon. Back to Quito we went; on the way back, I marveled at various projects to tame the geography, in which massive hillsides have been sheathed in greenish, plasticky armor. This helps prevent landslides – no small threat in terrain like this – and make way for future construction. As we drove further I felt the air thicken again. Quito has a million smells, but exhaust is the most pervasive.

Since the farm visit, I’ve been out and about around the city, drinking tea and getting my bearings. This is a magical place, where I can get almost anywhere in a taxi for five dollars or less. I can even tell the drivers how to get to my house when they don’t know the exact streets (navigation here operates based on intersections, since actual addresses are little-used).

First, to the orchestra with my host family: the Ecuadorian national orchestra performs just a few kilometers north of where I have classes, and hosted the Argentinian Trio Aura the night that we went. It was modern and, frankly, far more exciting than I had anticipated, although I was still nodding slightly after a long week. Even more unusually, the show featured volcanic activity. “Cotopaxi I and II,” performed toward the middle, was a gorgeous composition in which the volcano erupted, according to my musical interpretation, 1.5 times. An homage to Mercedes Sosa made up the second half of the night.

The music was 75% of the show; I attribute the other quarter to the government officials who sat a few rows in front of us. These included a former president of Colombia, the Ecuadorian Minister of Culture, and several other men and women who were obviously of the same milieu and heartily shook hands as they arrived in groups. Two suited men entered ahead of everyone, scanned the audience, then sat at the end of the row and stared into their Blackberries for the remaining two hours.

Postcards of Guayasamín’s works “Quito Rojo” (oil on canvas, 80x100cm, Quito-Ecuador 1987) and “Maternidad” (oil on canvas, 80x100cm, Quito-Ecuador 1989). Of Guayasamín’s three artistic periods, the third was devoted exclusively to paintings of mother and child.

Later in the week I had a taste of independent cinema, live music and the discoteca – all pretty self-explanatory. Our SIT group also visited the museum/house of the deceased Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín, a frenetically prolific painter who willed a portion of his works to stay in the country instead of being auctioned off to international collectors.

Many of his paintings dwarf the viewer physically and emotionally, since they tend toward enormity and anguish in various degrees; the works pictured here are light. He dealt with themes including poverty, hunger and genocide, so the museum is not a lighthearted affair, but the art itself is incredible and striking, often with a cubist bent. Some have called Guayasamín the consummate painter of human hands, since the ones in his paintings convey a depth of feeling disproportionate to their size.

Postcard of “El Violinista,” Oswaldo Guayasamín (oil on canvas, 182.5x67cm, Quito – Ecuador, 1966)

The next day, in fact, I recognized a bit of graffiti near SIT’s academic building: there were Guayasamín’s trademark hands, the face behind them twisted into a scream. That’s another thing about Ecuador: the graffiti isn’t ordinary tag. There are some trademark initials and “[Person A] loves [person B],” but much of it is political or downright insurgent. I believe Guayasamín would have approved.

Tomorrow I’m off to the cloud forest, sans internet. Compensations: no internet. Mind-blowing biodiversity. Vegetables. And more. Partial report (with pictures) upon return.

Fruit or fireworks display? From a market in the heart of Quito, which also has food stands, flowers, meat, clothing, chocolate…

My first impression of the Ecuador was from the air, at the end of a 24-hour odyssey to the Quito Airport: mountains, but to compare them to the Rockies would be an insult. The geography is more precipitous, with mountains towering up to 6,268 meters (over 20,000 feet) and valleys that aren’t valleys so much as chasms. Pichincha, the mountain on the western edge of Quito, stands at over 4,700 meters (15,000 feet) and is breathtaking. Even after an all-nighter from Denver to L.A. to Panama to Quito, I was awestruck. It takes a week or two to adjust to the altitude in the city, during which time walking up stairs feels like sprinting across campus and up to the top floor of Maxey when you’re ten minutes late to class.

Rooftop view of Quito, looking northwest

A little geological/political context: the country is currently in a “state of exception” due to the rumblings of Cotopaxi, an active volcano south of the city. A substantial chunk of the region’s food is grown on and around its slopes, so some fear that an eruption could melt the glaciers packed below the summit, causing enormous mudslides that would wipe out production. In the meantime, hay is being shipped from the coast to feed the livestock around the volcano, whose normal fare has been covered by a thin layer of volcanic ash. Most days, Cotopaxi’s summit is wreathed in clouds, so the most I can see is a plume of smoke.

State of exception also allows the government to suspend normal procedure and act quickly in case of an emergency. Since there have been large-scale protests against the current administration in recent weeks, some question the implications of this measure for the opposition. More on internal (geo)politics of Ecuador as time goes on.

For now, I’m living in a more personal state of exception; I’m not the Ecuadorian government, but I am consuming more (fantastic) soup and fruit juice than I ever have in my life. It’s an embarrassment of riches, including almost a dozen kinds of fruit I had never seen before: taxo, pitajaya, guanabana, tomate de árbol, naranjilla, tuna, jackfruit, granadilla…the list goes on. Most meals are accompanied by juice, and no lunch is complete without a soup starter.

On my fourth day here, I ordered a dish called yawarlocro and thought I would be getting rice, avocado, beans, a little chicken (in my defense, that’s how it was pictured on the menu). The cook brought me this:

Scrumptious mystery soup from El Quinche, a small town east of Quito

Soup, with a side of…hm.

It was delicious. Wait, is that throat? And is that tongue? Still delicious. And what’s that on the side? Looks like coffee grounds, tastes kind of like grainy cotija cheese. Pretty good. Later I asked my program’s academic director about it, and I swear he giggled. “‘Locro’ means soup in Kichwa, and ‘yawar’ means blood. It’s a very traditional dish.”

The side plate? Fried blood, with garlic and salt. The soup itself is made with sheep intestine and stomach lining, rich and hearty. It will be awhile before I order yawarlocro again, but apparently my mistake was a blessing in disguise, because animal tripe strengthens the stomach – sort of like probiotics in soup.

Food is not the only difference. I tower over everyone here (not so rare) but cannot tell people my height because Ecuador embraces the metric system, while the US stubbornly does not. Google to the rescue: I measure 1.78m, so I can now tell people if they ask. Their usual follow-up is, “You know, I have a [nephew/son/cousin] who’s [1.85-2] meters tall.” This is how I know that people are looking out for my future.

Transportation in Ecuador is an adventure. Traffic is more madcap but also more entertaining: people jump on the bus between stops to hawk snacks and gum, or to rap, and others stand at intersections, selling newspapers or blowing fire. I take the bus to and fro from the SIT academic building, and there’s only ever standing room, so I gaze over people’s heads and work on my balance. So far I have gotten lost only once, but the semester is still young.

I also made a friend:

More on this, and the mystery location, next time.