Cayagama Puerto Santa Ana... Pagracho! - Part 1

We left Quito on a cold, rainy morning and boarded a bus for Puyo. The cost for the 5 hour bus ride was 7$ per person… Can you imagine doing Ottawa-Toronto for that price?!?

The road from the capital to Puyo winds through mountainous terrain that takes your breath away – and you heart, if you forgot to take your Gravol! The scenery is stunning, with lush green mountains that seem to have erupted from the bowels of the Earth only yesterday and deep gorges where the rivers run fast and wild. This part of Ecuador, the Sierra (the Mountain), is all green and water and life is abundant.

Puyo is the capital of Pastaza province and proudly claims the title of “Ciudad Canela” (Cinnamon City – although I’m told that cinnamon is not a traditional crop here). It is a non-descript mid-size city, full of “bazars” (shops) and restaurants, and a regional bus station. There isn’t much to see, but Puyo is the entry point to the Amazon basin so many come here as a jumping off point to jungle tours. Sadly, however, the forest in this area is secondary forest – that is to say, the primary Amazonian forest was decimated 40 years ago by landowners and businesses who stripped it of its precious woods and planted various non-traditional food crops in its place. Slowly, the area is being reforested and while it looks jungle-like to us gringos, one has to travel quite far from here, to the Yasuni or Cayambe reserves in the North, to see true-blue, primary Amazonian rain forest.

We were met at the bus station by our host, Esteban Freire. Esteban is of the Ashuare people: short, swarthy, with dark eyes that aren’t afraid to meet yours and a solid handshake. He is intense, a man of few words, but we liked him instantly. Later, we would learn that he is the elected chief of the village, as well as the president of a local “fabrica” that processes fruit into juices and jams, creating employment for approximately 200 people in the region. He is a man committed to his community and completely dedicated to fostering progress and change. Interestingly, he almost never used the word “I”, always referring to himself as “nosotros” (we) and referring to “nuestra communidad” (our community). It became quite obvious to us that he is a particularly insightful and principled leader, much respected by everyone.

Together, we boarded the local bus that would take us to Puerto Santa Ana, about 1.25 hours beyond Puyo. The bus left the city and followed the main road for a while, but suddenly veered to the right and turned into a narrow and bumpy dirt road that seemed to plunge towards a small river. We thought at first that it was going to stop here, let some people off, and continue on the main road but… No! Instead, it plowed through the river and onto the dirt road that continued on the other side, for another 45 minutes. The road seemed deserted, with the occasional cluster of wooden houses or lone cow to confirm that the area was indeed inhabited. And then, suddenly, the bus stopped in front of a two-story wooden structure, on the shores of the mighty Rio Pastaza…

As we stepped off the bus and looked around, Chloée exclaimed incredulously: “This is all there is to the village?!?” And then, to add to the exoticism, we watched some of our fellow bus riders climb on top of the wooden structure, where they jumped into a “tarabita” (a metal basket mounted on a zip line that serves as a ferry across the river), to catch another bus that was waiting on the other shore to take them to Palora. It has been raining a lot in recent weeks, and the chocoloate-coloured Pastaza was running wild and furious. In the distance, you could see three parallel ranges of mountains and the peaks of volcanoes shrouded in clouds. We knew instantly that this tarabita ride would be one of our daily activities…

Esteban invited us to climb up a set of steep stairs carved into a rock face to reach the village, which sits on top of a cliff overlooking the river. First, we walked passed the school, which was comprised of 4 small buildings, clustered around a rusting play structure. Then, we reached a large, square, open area, around which you could see a covered football (soccer) field (known as “la cancha”) and some fifty or so wooden houses, partly hidden by trees and hedges of flowering hibiscus.

There it was: Puerto Santa Ana, population 318, comprised of a mix of Kichua, Shuare, Ashuare and Zapara peoples (most speak Kichua, however, as the village is in traditional Kichua land). Esteban gave us a quick tour of the village, explaining that some of its population lives along the roads that lead in and out of the village, and that most tend “chacras” (gardens or fields) outside the village for their daily sustenance (mainly yuka and various kinds of bananas and fruit trees).

Esteban’s house is comprised of three buildings: a two story wooden house with two bedrooms and an open space with a small work desk and a hammock (we were given one of the rooms, while the family shared the other room). The second story is still open (i.e., no walls) and serves as a space for hanging laundry and for storage. The kitchen is in a traditional bamboo hut, with thatched roof, adjacent to the house. It has a cooking area, with a stove and a few dishes, a table, and a fire pit – they often cook part of the meal on the open fire. Finally, there is a small cement block outhouse, where you must “flush” by pouring a pail of water in the toilet. This house is actually one of the more comfortable ones in the village, and it has the luxury of having electricity. No one has running water, but again, Esteban has the luxury of having two 200+ gallons tanks to collect rainwater, thus avoiding the need to carry water from the river.

We met Esteban’s wife Letitia, with whom I would develop a strong bond, and whose father actually founded Puerto Santa Ana some 50 years ago (of his eight children, six still live in the village and have large families, so they all played a prominent part in our Santa Ana experience). Esteban and Letitia have twin daughters, Shirley and Samira (7 years old), who are as different as two girls could possibly be! Shirley, the dominant twin, in outgoing and fearless, while Samira is tiny, shy and always giggling. Their older daughter, Sacha (12 years old), was sweet, shy and soft spoken, and got along wonderfully with both our girls. Sadly, she would join us only on the weekend: she is attending school in Puyo because she has “graduated” from the village school. However, because of the distance, she must live in the city – alone in a small house with her cousin, also aged 12.

We would soon learn that children here must grow up very fast, often too fast, because their parents simply don’t have the time or resources to care for them as they would like to. Most families have at least 4 to 6 children, and some have up to ten. Some parents work outside town, while others work in the fields. And even if there is a stay-at-home mom, she must manage all the household chores, the children and the fields on her own. Recently, the government set up a daycare for little ones aged 1 to 5, providing some relief to their busy mothers. Almost every woman I spoke with told me that they had married and had their children very young – it is not uncommon for women to marry and have children by the age of 16. Not one of them failed to point out, in a matter-of-fact way, that life here could be difficult: their limited resources are stretched thin, some shared stories of abuse, they must constantly fight (that word came up time and again) to improve their lot every day, for the benefit of their children.

On the day we arrived, we were treated to the first real dose of sun and heat we’d had since we arrived in Ecuador. We were ecstatic! And on that clear, starry night, we went out to the football field to look into the night sky and track the constellations with our nifty StarWalker iPad app… In minutes, we were surrounded! Kids and adults alike swarmed us to see this amazing contraption and reveled in rediscovering the night sky this way.

However, that pleasure was to be short-lived… While we slept, the clouds returned, bringing buckets of rain... It rained practically until the day we left. Ugh!! We tried to do laundry 5 days before leaving and even though we hung our clothes to dry inside the house, everything was still wet when we left. So much so that we had mould growing on our clothes and bags!