This post is to communicate ideas that don't always fit in other themes.
For instance I have an interesting perspective on transportation. I go where the red pickup goes most of the time or I pay for the bus to go were I want to go...This means that I spend a good deal of time waiting in places where the other CESA workers have business or trees to plant or agricultural workers to help.
One of those places is Papallacta, a bit of an Amazonian industrial wasteland. Really, it is filled with nice people who don't want to be there. Everyone has a family in some city far away and they are working in Papallacta...but "just for a while" they will tell you. It is a hole the sucks people in because there is work to be done...all the gasoline, natural gas and water for Quito rises there in huge ominous tubes that climb the mountains of the continental devide like large kinky worms. These arteries must be maintained. People who almost never drink,....drink in Papallacta. The town has a dulling lonely look and feel, like Detroit after the big car brands left. There are three small shops and several diners open almost all hours. It is just damn lonely, no matter how you look at it. Beautiful scenery but still so lonely.
But there are moments of beauty in Papallacta aswell. One day I arrived late to find the room of CESA really full with three people allready, and I was the fourth... We only have two beds. I sighed and unrolled my sleepy. The room is cold, with no sun all day long, and damp because we are in the Amazon. I wasn't going to have a ride to Oyacachi until the next night but I didn't know that. I was faced with a cold room, insufficient bedding, too many people, little sleep and a long night with nothing to do.
Papallacta also happens to be blessed with natural hotsprings and all the houses have hot water that arrives from the thermals. I just wanted to be warm. So I went downstairs to the properly kept lavador...the place where all the workers do their own laundry. It is a square box that your fill with water then brush your clothes clean with detergent and your own hands. It was late probably 10 and I filled the lavador with hot water. I waited a little bit then hopped in with my two hats on....because it was still that cold. So just to be clear I was sitting naked in the equivalent to a washing machine in a town full of men who miss their families and kids and dont really want to be working in this industrial carcas of a town.
I sat for two hours watching the piercing stars in the sky and the moon that lit the whole of lonely Papallacta. Everytime it got cold, I would open the drain valve and turn on the hot for a bit. Even though I wasn't really warm, I was happy and satisfied. It was a good night and I cried.
The next day I made it to Oyacachi with tourists, and here are the photos to prove it...
