Squat and clean-shaven, with lips barely moving when he speaks, and a middle gone thick from physical idleness and perhaps bad food, the tattooed Pennsylvanian rests on the cot across the room. Turgidly proud, he shows off the self-inflicted ink etchings swirling around his triceps and forearms.

This offensively cheap-looking hotel, with its harrowingly squeaky elevator, inadequately scant lighting, and smell reminiscent of a formaldehyde-spilled mortuary – is someplace in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It’s Halloween night, and our Delta flight from Atlanta to Quito has just been diverted to Guayaquil, although it’s expected to leave tomorrow morning, if the notoriously blubbery, high-mountain fog parts by then.

A crude curiosity of a man, Jerry, is one of three people I’m sharing dilapidated digs with tonight, part of Delta’s decision to wedge, er, lodge four strangers together until morning. Short, weaselly-looking, divorced, and middle-aged, he works in Ecuador, as he says, “overseeing counterinsurgency techniques for the US Embassy.”

“And to watch Correa,” he quickly adds.

A US-educated economist, Rafael Correa is Ecuador’s 43-year-old president. He is handsome, nationalistic, purported, by some, to be quite rash, and he’s making waves by stirring the waters of anti-Americanism, and by cockily, defiantly aligning himself with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. The guy’s got sex appeal but no political history or experience, and seems refreshingly eager to strike down his country’s egregiously corrupt political order.

“Ecuador is going to be in the club of Latin American countries with governments that loathe the United States,” says Jerry, stretched across the cozy confines of his chintzy cot.

It’s been more than 30 hours since I departed from Missoula, Montana, a cool, relatively hip, recreational oasis, whose most violent political flare up comes in the form of a few bedraggled pseudo-hippies (or trustfunders) passing out anti-meat brochures at the weekend Farmer’s Market. The only similar looking people to me – tall and white, with perennial locks of uncombed hair – in these parts are aging crazies, or mountain climbing, goal-oriented egoists, or trustfund plundering, pseudo-risk takers.

One of the other men in the room is named, of all options, Garry (great, we’ve got Garry and Jerry). He’s a personal fitness trainer, mid-30s, tall and pale, resembling an undertaker. I know much about this healthy California weightlifting and exercise guru, because we sat next to one another for more than five hours in the sky from Atlanta – and also during the three hours our plane spent circling the atmosphere hoping the heavy winds would alleviate.

If that wasn’t enough time to get acquainted, we also spent an additional three and a half hours decomposing on the tarmac, talking, - or me listening, really – to him discuss how many pushups he does during an average day: 200.

Garry looks to be a formal man, he wears dark blue suit pants and matching vest, and wears a khaki-colored fedora. He says that he likes mixed drinks and that he is quite fond of swapping partners in the sack (the ladies, he says, never demur) and he really seems fixated on explaining, multiple times in fact, that he will be ice-climbing Cotopaxi, a 19,344-foot symmetrical volcano, Ecuador’s second-highest peak, a few days from now.

Garry, the deeply entrenched narcissist sleeps without his shirt on. Jerry, the US Embassy employee – who answers my questions about his work and life in such cryptically creepy ways and says he speaks unflawed Mandarin, German and Spanish – is not to be outdone: just barely clothed, he sleeps in a tight pair of Haynes. The fourth man in the room, who spends a substantial chunk of the night tempestuously banging and cussing, in Spanish, at the spastic yellow rotary phone, is presumably Ecuadorian.

The flight to Quito, the 30 hour miscue, marked by heavy winds, faulty capabilities, and strange swingers, makes a fitting prelude to Quito’s vast ugliness. The knotted smog tastes like kerosene. The air is asphyxiatingly vulgar. In La Mariscal, the ‘tourist district,’ aka Gringo Metropolis, Internet cafes dot the landscape as do dingy hostels, taxis and buses emitting awful, dire black fumes, as well as some bars and coffee shops. People who appear to be quite ill-fed and ill-clothed are talking on their cell phones.

Ecuador has the highest population density of any South American nation – about 49 people per square kilometer. And as a city Quito does nothing to defy cynical comments that all Latin American cities are poorly planned, nightmarishly overcrowded and horrendously polluted. While the city has been making a steady modern headway – cell phone billboards are ubiquitous – the trappings that afflict all cities in this and every hemisphere are quite apparent: petty crime, homelessness, begging, and diesel belching trucks.

Quito has a reputation for being a dangerous city. Perhaps quite amusingly, the area with the most tourist services – the Mariscal Sucre – is one of the most dangerous areas in the city, especially at night. The Mariscal has been beset by drug trafficking, muggings, assaults and prostitution, and only recently has the city taken even the most token steps to control the pickpocketing and other problems.

In Quito, prescription drugs, medicines, and super pills touting cures for almost every malady and medical annoyance known to man can be obtained without a physician’s signature, over the counter. Drugs best suited for men worrying about being able to keep an erection during intercourse, which are designed to help maintain blood flow for ‘firmer, fuller erections,’ are advertised in the windows of the La Mariscal Quarter, a lively, party-hearty, six or ten block area known for its nightclubs, boozing, diverse cuisine, and late-night muggings.

After two days of airline delays and forced anxiety, I feel as if I’m a frayed, moth-eaten coat stuffed in a garbage bag, destined for Goodwill. For a few moments I’m panic-stricken and terrified by the emotional residuals of past prejudices, deep, embedded ones. Troubled by the thought of being robbed in an increasingly dangerous city, or drugged and left penniless after accepting a tainted piece of fruit from a plotting old woman – or young one. I make wise decisions, I think. I must, but I’m never sure. Sometimes I second guess the most trivial choices: should I have tea instead of coffee to wash down my oatmeal this morning?; shall I buy two books restoring to memory the nightmare of the Korean War today, or just one? Where first, Medellin, Columbia or Quito, Ecuador?

Karma: To bemoan or accept?

Karma can be a bitch or a blessing, depending on what side of the bed you wake up on, and one’s karmic outlook is greatly determined, of course, by how badly or beautifully the day is unraveling. Fortunately for me I’ve found a new home, a lushly gorgeous, richly-soiled, agriculturally-dependent, organic farm at the base of an extinct 2,500-year old volcano.

This unique crater is inside a Geobotanical Reserve, home to multiple microclimates and abundant with various overrun flowers and orchids, and miscellaneous special birds and other animals, including nimble-footed pumas. The farm’s bilingual owner, Renato Espinosa, owns an Internet café in Quito; an E-mail exchange and harrowingly adventurous three hour taxi ride later, and I’m one of the first guests at his newly minted Pululahua Hostal.

I arrive very late, and I’m desperately sleepy, but Renato and I chat the night away about political developments in Latin America and peak oil, while sipping home roasted coffee blends. The organic coffee is picked from the plush, dense mountains around the Pululahua Crater by locals, whom Renato pays well for their plucking, about $5 a day. 

His coffee has not been planted, growing naturally underneath the cloud forest canopy in the altitude range of 1800 to 2000 meters.

“The Arabica type of coffee we drink was introduced by the Spanish to old farms nearby,” says Renato. “The birds spread the seeds across the cloud forest.”   

The coffee is, I must admit, quite delicious. The fruity aroma of Renato’s handpicked coffee beans might even make me discard the urbane tea thing and get hooked on the local stockpile of java. In between extolling the virtuous health benefit of consistently popping garlic pills, and explaining his homemade dairy and chocolate making operations, and trying to ascertain and describe the nature of mob psychology, Renato praises his homegrown harvest.

“This wild coffee has a great flavor, rich aroma, and excellent body,” says Renato, with the vocal flair and capitalistic energy of a man who knows he’s got something good – and hopes to make a quick buck off of it.

Pretty soon it’s back to the political dynamic of Ecuadorian life. It’s 4 a.m. I rarely drink coffee, no less at 4 a.m.

“Correa is no Chavez,” says Espinosa, “He wants to get rid of the oligarchs, the men who’ve plundered our budget, and get rid of the business interests that control our leaders.”

Streets protests have toppled three presidents in the past decade in Ecuador, most recently in April 2005, when Lucio Gutierrez was thrown out. In 2006, five former Ecuadorian presidents or vice-presidents were either living in exile or in jail. While in power, Ecuador’s politicians seem to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imagining.

“Did you know we had soldiers in Iraq, too?” asks Renato.

“As part of the coalition of the willing, I presume.”

“Your president thinks very little,” says Renato. “Do you feel that way?”

“Our president is known for his brute stubbornness. It is an obstacle to clear thinking to believe that his, or our, foreign policy serves God’s plan to expand human freedom. Ideological thinking of this sort contorts to fit an abstract illusion. Many people predicted the consequences of invading Iraq and rightly evaluated Bush’s motives that led to the action.”

The Pululahua Hostal has six rooms: four of which are inside the main house and share the same communal toilet, kitchen and fireplace. These rooms have five or more bunk beds in them; the other two cabanas, located outside near the horse stables, offer three beds and their own bathroom. A British tourist, walking through the small common area to go piss, wipes the sleep out of his eyes, and after, ostensibly, eavesdropping our conversation, he feels it’s okay to unrelentingly opine about US foreign policy decisions, J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored sexual indiscretions, the moral efficacy of political assassinations, the “bloody ridiculous” gay rights movements “emboldened by Brokeback Mountain,” and Tony Blair’s duplicity. Then he calls Princess Diana “a harlot.”

“It’s a good thing Princess Diana died when she did, it saved her the humiliation of being looked at as old and unbeautiful. She was dating an Egyptian man, and her death probably saved Britain the embarrassment of having to accept a Muslim prince.”

Luckily he soon somehow remembers why he awoke from his slumber, walks to the toilet, belching loudly enough to make Manchita, one of Renato’s three dogs, a scraggly and stinky but absolutely darling Dalmatian puppy, arch her sleepy eyebrows with inquisitiveness. The noisy interloper says nothing upon return and saunters back to bed.

The following morning I realize that Renato is a man who has stayed true to the roots of self-sufficient food production and cultivation. He eats three fine meals daily; lunch is always beans and rice with chicken or pork, tomato and cucumber salad, and chocolate or banana cake. Dinner is invariably the same as lunch, although the allotment of food is greater. Renato refuses to turn a blind eye to his family’s agricultural roots (His father grew rice to feed the Ecuadorian army, so it could be strong enough to win its border war with Peru in the 1940s).

The condo sprawl of US cities has replaced and destroyed gardens and good eating. Subdivisions of tarmac and drywall have superseded apple orchards and amber waves of grain. In an era when transcontinental food consumption has exploded – the value of international food trade is up threefold since 1960, the tonnage of food shipped between nations up fourfold – there’s nothing like eating a global sandwich with obscure condiments from the Middle East and Middle America, right?

Renato is unfailingly polite, mild-mannered, and eager to both talk and listen. His looks are handsome, trustworthy, resembling more of a smart-alecky pizza parlor owner from Brooklyn than a web-savvy (indeed he is) Ecuadorian hostal operator. On day two we set out on a six hour hike, which weaves through pumpkin and watermelon patches, vegetable fields, chicken sheds, resting burros, and thick, hypnotic mist, stretching out the calves just enough to make the hostal’s front steps seem ultrafriendly and very comfortable.

At dinner Renato explains to me that Ecuador’s ecological problems are perhaps a microcosm of the myriad challenges facing the western United States: wildlife and habitat destruction, systematic clear-cutting and deforestation, and swiftly encroaching land and housing development, predicated off the need to satisfy incessant human growth and migration.

The threat in Ecuador, he says, has been escalating over the past decade largely because the opening of forests to logging and land extraction means that roads connect once impenetrable places to towns. Despite being national parks or protected areas many continue to be susceptible to oil drilling, logging, mining, ranching and colonization, threats that are completely incongruous with true protection.

“Renato, you know that the setting aside parks and other conservation areas is only as good as local enforcement, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he grins.

Over the course of one week Renato and I embark on a half dozen, very similar seven to ten mile hikes: through wild orange patches, wild avocado trees, stepping on banana fields, lugging across intricate trails of ant colonies, across river beds dotted with blooming orchards and berries, and past farmers raising roosters for local cockfighting events. Cockfighting is popular nationwide, and most towns of any size will have a coliseo de gallos (cockfighting arena).

The feint trail zigzags through lush canopies of unruly vegetation, retracing the hallowed footsteps of pre-Inca peoples, and whizzing around the rough remnants of 16th century Spanish farms, churches, bathtubs, and limestone and gold smelting kilns. Stray dogs saunter past indigenous women carrying impossible loads.

The backcountry is spiritually liberating and incredibly diverse – not so surprising considering that Ecuador is one of the most species-rich countries on the planet. Ecologists have often labeled the country one of the world’s ‘megadiversity hotspots.’

Each day we eat plenty of the cheese, chicken and vegetables harvested in Renato’s backyard. I’ve found some semblance of peace. I sleep not in agitation or anxiousness, but in peace. The taste of peace is moist and refined, like the taste of that blueberry pie your girlfriend bakes for you the day before you leave to go play Jacques Cousteau, or Inspector Clouseau. It feels like an empty house on moving day, all echoes and loneliness. It’s the icicles of winter memories, when you get to see your mom again for the holidays, and she’s glad to see you, treating you as if she’s welcoming a prestigious infantry war hero – and as if you’re truly worthy of her unconditional love and support. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t

At lunch one day, Renato tells me that fresh water is probably the most valuable and limited resource in Ecuador, which is about the size of the US state of Nevada. The politics surrounding water rights and usage, he says, has become more and more charged. Many people argue that in our global future, more wars will be fought over water than oil or other natural resources. Some scientists estimate that if present patterns of consumption continue, two out of three people will live in water-stressed areas by the year 2025. Battles over this precious resource are already occurring in Ecuador and neighboring Bolivia.

It’s my last day, and Renato and I spend it using a machete to whack and gash a new trail on the east part of El Chivo, a steep 9,000-foot summit north of the hostal. We rotate turns chopping in vain and victory. I’m slow and clumsy. My palms quickly enlarge with raw machete burns. Renato reminds me of Errol Flynn, a Hollywood swashbuckling sensation from the 1930’s: neat, precise, slitting any piece of annoying vegetation in his path.

“Deforestation is Ecuador’s most severe environmental concern,” says Renato, hacking the dense thicket of prickly plants. “In the highlands, nearly all of the natural forest cover has vanished, and only a few pockets remain, mainly in private nature reserves. Along the coast, once-abundant mangrove forests have all but disappeared.”

“The worst thing is this,” says Renato, pointing to a beautiful, bright orange orchid, with enough natural grandeur and exoticism to leave a man – even one not usually moved by the presence of flowers – truly breathless.

“What do you mean?”

“People steal orchids from the preserve often,” he answers. “They sell them in Quito. I would kill them if I found them do it, but I don’t want to go to jail.”

Dollarization and Discredited Systems

My fourteenth and final day ends with Renato driving me back to Quito airport in his 1980 Jeep Cherokee. Yellow, with egregiously bald tires, gaping holes in the floor wide enough to drop a microwave oven through, a mangled, foul-smelling radiator, and nearly 250,000 miles’ worth of exhaustion under the hood, it handles surprisingly well.

“Two Japanese tourists were decapitated on this road two months ago,” says Renato, twitching his neck in the direction of a billboard advertising one of Quito’s many crematoriums. “It’s safer to take the bus.”

I don’t ride the bus at home, and I refuse to ride it in Ecuador. Renato is taking me to the airport because he knows I can’t speak a word of Spanish. He knows that if he doesn’t take me I’d probably end up traveling the wrong way, deep into politically tumultuous Columbia, and get abducted by an international cocaine trafficking ring. Plus, I’m paying him $35 for his chauffeuring skills. In fact, for two weeks’ worth of isolation, conversationally lively talks, and droll companionship, I fork over to Renato $440, which isn’t too piddling a sum considering $148 per month is the average monthly wage for an Ecuadorian.

Fortunately, US citizens need not exchange money here. Indeed, it hasn’t been necessary to do since the dollarization of Ecuador went ahead in September 2000, when the US dollar replaced the unstable sucre as the country’s official national currency. The cost of living in the country soared immediately. Although only one year before dollarization, 6000 sucres bought one dollar, people were forced to exchange their sucres at the dramatically inflated rate of 25,000 to $1.

“People lost a lot of money,” says Renato, steering his Jeep into the poorly labeled pandemonium of an airport. “A severe amount of money was lost. Another lasting effect of dollarization was rounding up. Things that previously cost 21,000 sucres, about $0.84 cents, now sells for $1 because it’s easier to deal with than $0.84.”

It’s natural for me to wonder, perhaps even worry, about Renato, and about whether or not he’ll be able to prosper one day, primarily because Ecuador’s political and economic system has been so thoroughly discredited. Support for democratic institutions is one of the lowest in Latin America.

“I’m not worried,” says the small and compact Renato. On the right side of his neck are eight diagonal scars, each about an inch wide and about the thickness of a paper clip. Perhaps they are from tending livestock, or perhaps not.

He shakes my hand firmly, patting my back in a gingerly, even fatherly, manner, and then looks at me with a distinct set of ‘this may very well not happen again but it’s been damn fun’ eyes. Then, instead of a goodbye, or a buenas noches, or even a perfunctory hasta luego, his final comment hints at the political eruptions of a country where volatility, like insidious lava from the earth’s crater bed, originates far from below.

“If we have a president we don’t like, we riot until he leaves and gets the hell out. Ecuadorian presidents are afraid of the people.”