Through the Eyes of a Gringa

Wednesday, 10/23/02

            We sleep longer these days. It’s about eight-thirty in the morning when I wake up. After breakfast Angela and I are on our way again to La Granja. Having a divided new highway now the trip is so much faster. It used to be more like an obstacle course with parts of it covered with many potholes so that Angela used to drive like a drunken sailor trying to avoid most of them and I want to stress most because it wasn’t always possible. In fact one time, right after my last visits here, she had a terrible accident that almost killed her. She was on her way back to Guayaquil at night and trying to escape one pothole she ended up in another, turning her car over and throwing her into the ditch. Luckily she is tough and thank God still around. 

            “They had to wire my ribs together. I feel this wire inside of me,” she tells me.

            “Well, the armor the knights wore on the outside you have on the inside now.” 

            “Yeah,” she says laughing.

             We have to pass two toll booths, one where we pay and the other where we have to show the ticket that we have paid when we use the highway under construction leading to Angela’s property.

            Once there we find that they have done some more grading to the road and the descent into the property is even steeper. I’m thinking that pretty soon we’ll neither be getting in nor out anymore.

            After my walk I head straight to the cabaña and my favorite hammock. It’s much cooler there and I think a hammock is the most comfortable way to relax. Gently swinging back and forth I enjoy the breeze and watch the birds coming by looking for crumbs that guests drop. As a matter of fact I’m getting company from a young couple moving into the hammock next to me hugging and kissing. Yes, hammocks are also good for togetherness.

            We drive back to Guayaquil that night again. Amelia and Rosa are in the kitchen.  Amelia invites us at once to come and have something to eat with her; she always wants to feed the world. She has Rosa take down breakfast every morning to Segundo, the vendor in front of the building. She is the nicest, kindest lady I can think of. I love her dearly. At ninety-two she is still in good physical and excellent mental condition, although for the past eighteen years I remember her always telling me that she is not so good when I ask her how she is. She also lost quite a bit of weight, her face is not wrinkled and her very dark hair has only some gray strands. She walks without a cane and her mind is sharp. Her hearing is not good anymore. For the longest time I used to think she doesn’t understand me because of my accent and limited Spanish but now I see that Angela and Ivanovich also have to repeat many times what they say in a loud voice.

            As we sit and talk with Amelia, Ivanovich and his wife join us. They, with their children, have the entire floor below. We all talk for a long time about Ivan’s visit in Arizona in August and life here. It’s an animated conversation among good friends who have known each other for more than eighteen years and no need to pretend anything. I feel very comfortable here calling it my home away from home and feel like a member of the family being treated as such also.

Angela and I have been friends for more than twenty years by now. She has always said for me to come down to Ecuador and spend more time with them. She and I have had many fun times and trips together. Like her mother, she looks young. Her hair has its natural color without any gray. Her skin is smooth, she is slender and about my height. She speaks English with an accent but has a wonderful vocabulary. Angela has traveled the world and is largely responsible for my own globetrotting. I met Maria through her on a trip around South America opening up a whole new world for me when she invited me for the first time in 1985 to come and visit her in Ecuador. She took me to Quito, the capital founded in 1534, situated at over nine thousand feet close to the equator. We took part in the annual founding celebrations in early December and were dancing in the streets of Quito like everyone around us. I fell in love with Quito instantly.

From Quito we went on to the high Andes and the colorful Indian market of Otavalo, a new experience for me and a feast for the eyes and the mind. It was in Otavalo that an Indian at one of the stands pointed to my diamond ring and suggested I turn the ring around to the inside of my hand and hold my handbag tight. I did as he said but that was also the last time I took any good jewelry along on a trip. I came to know artsy Cuenca in the Andes south of Quito and Salinas, the resort by the Pacific. In 1986 I traveled around South America with Angela for almost five weeks. She heard me say I was thinking of going to Australia.