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Published: September 2nd 2009
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Loja was cold on Sunday! Now I understand why a Vilcabamba local, looking at the influx of cars one recent afternoon said, "Oh, those are Lojans, coming down to Vilcabamba to warm up." It didn't register at the time, and I made the mistake of wearing a sleeveless top to the city 40 kilometers up the hill instead of my black leather jacket, which would have been just about right.
It is winter in Ecuador. We may forget about that in Vilcabamba, "land of eternal spring," but we got a chilly reminder in Loja. Elevation matters. Vilcabamba's combination of 5,600-feet and latitude may create the perfect climate, but going up in elevation just another 600-feet and it's time to dig out the jacket—or at least that was the case on Sunday. I'm sure Loja's equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce would say the weather there is as perfect as it is here, but there's a reason the mountains surrounding Loja are much greener right now.
Getting to Loja was easy. Jack and I discovered there were three ways to go—we could pay a regular truck taxi $15 for the ride, we could hop on a bus for $1,
or we could pay $1.50 for a ride in a yellow taxi at the bus station, sharing the trip with one or two others. We chose the latter, prepared for the usual "pass on a curve over the yellow line with maybe another car passing at the same time" kind of ride. Our drivers were actually pretty mellow though.
Or maybe they were just temporarily sobered by the three accidents Sunday. Coming and going, we saw crunched cars being hauled out from over cliffs. Some were likely lost forever down the huge dropoffs. The taxi driver was explaining the gory details to our Spanish-speaking companions, too rapidly for slow gringo ears to understand. We did understand the other passengers' "Dios mios" and sharp intakes of breath though. "Dios mio, Dios mio," the woman next to me kept repeating as she made the sign of the cross over and over again.
When the taxi driver had finished his story, I asked how many people had been killed in today's carnage and the woman next to me said "diez o mas." Ten, or more. This was just one day on one road in the Andes.
Nonetheless, if you want
to go to SuperMaxi, Ecuador's modern grocery store with clean, flyless, refrigerated meat, and yogurt that's not two months past its due date, you've got to go to Loja. After awhile of living out of the little hole in the wall mom-and-pop tiendas and the relatively small Sunday market in Vilcabamba, you keep your fingers crossed and take the plunge (hopefully, not literally).
After the taxi dropped us off at the small Vilcabamba taxi parking lot in the middle of town, I asked a friendly policia where the "nuevo centro commercial" was, the closest I could come to "new shopping center." He pointed and told us three blocks. It wasn't nuevo, but it was huge, and turned out to be Loja's major market, held in a huge building with sections dedicated to clothing, shoes, underwear, backpacks, sweets, meat, and fruits and vegetables, and haircuts. It's not what I had in mind, but it was fun wandering through to see how the Lojans did it, and Jack found some new underwear, Ecuadorian style, which is much more "stylish" than anything else he has and only cost $1 a pair. He didn't appreciate the fact that, in Ecuador he's an X-Large
More Caring Siblings
What's the magic that makes brothers and sisters so nice to one another in Ecuador? though, and an XX-Large would have been even better.
Although most of Loja was closed up in deference to it being Sunday, there were a lot of people wandering around, and an outdoor mass was being celebrated on one of the plazas. The streets of Loja have much more of a European feel than most of Ecuador's towns, and looks like Beverly Hills in comparison to most of them. We were the only gringos we saw all day.
We went to a lovely hotel Jack had discovered on an earlier venture, The Gran Victoria, shared a bite to eat, and went on a $1 taxi ride to the Holy Grail, SuperMaxi. It turned out to be a whole shopping center of sorts with about eight other modern-looking stores. I love Vilcabamba and its Wild West streets, but every once in awhile a 21st century fix is nice. There was even a computer store where I picked up a couple of CD-roms.
The shopping center had a food court, too, and it was packed. It featured a Chinese Wok, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Cuban food, pizza, a hamburger/sandwich place, and a couple of ice cream stands serving a flock
Queen of the Veggies
Vendors in the fruit and vegetable section of the Loja Market sit high above the crowd. of nuns out for a Sunday afternoon treat.
SuperMaxi lived up to its promise with brightly lit aisles, a huge fish and meat section, and more kinds of cooking oil than I've seen in any U.S. store. It could have something to do with the fact that apparently most Ecuadorians don't have ovens. Everything is cooked on top of the stove, thus the need for a wide variety of cooking oil. I was just happy to find a small bottle of olive oil, refrigerated chicken and pork, salad dressing, and some great-looking organic veggies.
But if shopping was largely successful, one frustration on the aventura to Loja was our inability to find out what was happening in the city. Loja prides itself on being the "music capital of Ecuador" with a music conservatory and two universities, but we've been unable to find anything going on at all except for the occasional poster advertising a guy or two with a guitar. We've even studied the Loja newspaper the day before we went with no luck and no apparent entertainment section except for the comics—which is a fun way to teach yourself Spanish, but doesn't help you find local happenings.
Chickens in the Market
Who needs refrigeration? There must be lots going on in a cultured city with 150,000 people—if you just know where to look!
Meanwhile, it's back to Vilcabamba where Pardner's in trouble because of the latest book that he's written and run off, apparently a tell-all treatise that has some of the locals up in arms. Hmmmmm.... Sounds worth looking into.
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