Thermal healing...

When you arrive in Oyacachi you see the houses and the people, you will walk to the river and nothing else will really grab you. It is like being in a B movie without a soundtrack; beautiful, but kind of boring if you are not participating. But stay a while, plan on it so you can relax. Pay for three days, not one. Why not? It is still under 20.00 USD. Then you have time to chat and ask the questions you have.

I think that you will find restaurants, that will open for you if they know you are comming, and what you want, and with how many people. You will probably be staying in the large wooden hotel with four stories and a view of the whole valley. There is also no doubt you will learn about the hot springs...

Across the river from the village, there is a gorgeous nook. It is dripping with climbing vines that explode in pink flowers as big as your fist. These suspended firecrackers in reds and pinks are always accompanied by small black, green or yellow irridescent hummingbirds. This is where in the 1930's, long after the independence of Grand Colombia from Spain, the first mestizo visitors to Oyacachi encountered the thermal hotsprings of the village. At that time there were one or two small natural ponds. Bubbling up from the rocks came the extrordinarily hotwaters, and the villagers would come after the work day to wash before returning home.

Although this ritual hasn't changed, the hotsprings have. After the access road to the village was built, the hotsprings were developed quite quickly. Now a large cable suspension bridge helps visitors to cross the river. The architect who designed "Las Thermas de Papllacta" was commissioned to develop the thermals in the village. Tourists say they recognize the curvy feminine masonry walls stained by the iron and magnesium rich waters, as well as the emaculate gardens and paro-thatched gymnasium. Although the local villagers contributed the latter two, not the architect.

This is how they look today, gorgeous even with clouds and rain. The waters are at 47C and rich in Mg, Ca, Na, and Fe. You can tell it is raining by the raging river...the same one I have been trying desperately to measure discharge on.

On the lucky days...when I manage to catch a ride for one of the legs of my daily data gathering (up to the control or down from the control) I actually have some daylight time and energy left for myself. On these days I go to the pools "Las Piscinas" as the villagers call them. It is nice to get there at four (when I took the pics) and shower, then soak and watch the people arrive, families comming all together to bathe, infants, adolescents all the way to grandmothers and grandfathers. Also a very hot spot to "vasilar" = flirt and expell pent up hormones. The pools are generally ringed with earlier bathers as the young men arrive. They walk slowly... muscular, with hard faces but eyes excitedly looking below the badass eyebrows and half closed lids, their heads are thrust back... With this mix of elation and conceit they come down the stairs, reaching deeper and deeper waters. Then they casually naturally reach down and splash their chests with water.

Women and girls (myself included) are much more likely to drop in quietly from the wall and quickly submerge, or start to chat with cousins neighbors and sisters. They calmly continue talking, apparently oblivious to the handsome roosters strutting and damply flashing around the pool. But they are watching .....

Not every young man is extroverted and flirty...here is one of my friends in his kitchen....very shy even with his brother taking the pictures.

Speaking of heating qualities and being warm, the stove (fumeless stove of the things that escape my camera post) is back. Unfortunatley it has re-surfaced for some of the saddest reasons. A friend's father in the village has been diagnosed with what I understand to be a form of lung cancer or chronic respitory infection. But this is a little ironc since the village is Evangelical (protestant) and therefore smoking, alchohol and other drugs are not allowed so how did this otherwise very healthy medium aged man become so sick? Some of the regular readers probably already know.... the nice warm cookhouses. This man has been cooking for decades in a small, unventilated, smokey cookhouse and can now barely breathe. So all the appparent effects of smoking cigarettes...lung cancer and/or emphazema where caused by naural wood smoke.

I passed on the manual for the stove to my friend and tried to explain as best I could the sonstruction process I witenessed with two kinds of mortar, cutting of bricks to maintain perfectly exact dimensions, constant measuring and importance of sealed long chambers in the stove. Unfortuately not until I wanted to pass on the information did I realize how incomplete the manual was...With NO references....so you start your search with nothing not even a standardized name for the type of stove....All this on top of the fact that my friend can barely use a computer and a google search is pretty much out of the question.......almost garuntees he will not be able to construct the stove...So I do the search in the Netherlands in English then Spanish, and try to print new better complete directions. The concept I believe is a very hot insulated low oxygen burn....

But the learning will do me good eh?? To understand so I can then properly teach and share the information and resources......