Wednesday 6/11/08 Salcedo, Ecuador
“Just go to the hotel on the corner. It’s expensive, but you can try the one across the street, too, if you want.” The police officer glanced back down at my bike and then looked at me, her face blushed cool with indifference. I thought she might have misunderstood what I said to her in Spanish a minute before, so I repeated myself.
“No, we don’t want to stay in a hotel. We want to camp. We have tents,” I said, patting the tent strapped to the back of my bike. “Is there a place near here where we can set up tents? A safe place?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a hotel there if you want to stay there,” she repeated.
I hate wasting time—mine or anyone else’s—so we turned the bikes around and left. The sun was sinking in the sky above us. We needed to figure out where we were going to sleep and we needed to do it soon.
“Hey, dude. I have an idea,” I said, turning to Mikey. “I read about a cyclist once who traveled all through South America by staying with firefighters along his route. Do you want to see if we can stay with the firefighters here in town?”
“Sure, sounds good,” Mikey said.
A few blocks away, on the edge of town past a set of train tracks rusting under a patchy blanket of knee-high grass, we spotted the fire department. As we approached, I took off my goofy sun hat, tried to flatten down my fluffy beard, and wiped the dirt from my nose and forehead.
A short man in a red jumper was sweeping the dirt on the floor of the station garage into a perfect circle. Whether a man be a monk or a firefighter, he can make even the most menial of tasks a meditative one.
I startled him with a greeting.
“Good afternoon. We’re cyclists and we’re looking for a safe place to camp for the night. We have tents. All we need is a flat, safe spot to camp. Do you have any spots here where we could sleep?” I asked in my clearest, most polite Spanish.
“Hello,” the man said. “Where are you from?” He asked, looking at the bikes, smiling uncontrollably, the way people smile when they see something so foreign that it appears silly.
I told him.
“Whoah! That’s amazing! Wow. OK, please wait here, I have to ask the chief.” Minutes later, he appeared with a different type of smile on his face, a congratulatory one, a smile laced with a touch of relief, one that said Relax. “Just wait a few minutes, the chief will be right with you.”
*****
From the roof of the fire station, with the surrounding mountains spread out before us like wrinkles in the green quilt of land upon which the town of Salcedo rests, Mikey and I talked with three of the station’s 14 firefighters. They asked us questions about the United States. We asked them questions about life in tiny Salcedo. From our conversation, I learned the following things:
–Firefighters in Salcedo earn $300-350 U.S. per month.
–To rent a one-bedroom apartment in Salcedo, it costs about $150 U.S. a month.
–There are about 30 fires a year in Salcedo, most of which are related to motor vehicle accidents.
–Firefighters spend 48 hours at the fire station, sleeping in a dorm room at night, and then have 48 hours off. Most of the firefighters, even the ones with families, enjoy this schedule.
–Each year, 1,500 school children come to the fire station to learn about fire safety.
–To buy a good used car in Ecuador, you need $4,000-5,000 U.S. (and even then, that will only buy you something that’s seven to 10 years old). Most new cars in Ecuador cost at least twice what they cost in the U.S.
–Many firefighters eat at restaurants that serve meals for $1 U.S. because they don’t get paid enough to eat at other types of restaurants.
–Like many people I’ve spoken to on my trip, the firefighters in Salcedo are extremely curious about life in the United States and how much things cost there.
Mikey and I showered and spread out our gear on our beds. When the awesome-ness of our place-to-stay situation finally sunk in a bit, after we had a few laughs over the little luxuries at our fingertips (a fluffy pillow makes nights spent in your tent with your head resting on a ball of your dirty clothes seem absurd), we made our way downstairs and asked where we could find a good place to eat. Armed with directions, we started walking out the door when two firemen followed us.
“I’m hungry, too,” one of the men said.
As we walked to a restaurant on the corner, one all the firemen frequent so often that the owners know the men by name, I spoke to the hungry man.
“My name is Andrew,” I said, “what’s yours?”
“Darwin,” the man said, “like Charles Darwin, but different.”
*****
For $1 U.S., the four of us each feasted on a plate of llapingacho, an Ecuadorian staple consisting of mashed potatoes, eggs, avocado, and salad. We waddled back to the station afterwards with bloated bellies.
“Hey, are you married?” one firefighter asked when we returned to the station.
“No, are you?” I asked, guessing he’d say he wasn’t because of his youthful face.
“Of course! I’m 25-years-old,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I have two kids, too! One 6-year-old and one 10-month-old!” he exclaimed.
I was shocked. This was the same man who, minutes earlier, was trying to teach me Ecuadorian slang for dirty Spanish words in the same way a little kid might eat a bug in front of his friends to impress them.
“Man, you’re so young!” I said.
“Yeah, but not too young to be married. Here, people sometimes marry at 15 or 16. But they need their parent’s consent to do that. But it’s no problem—lots of parents give their consent for those types of marriages. I’d say 18 is a common age. I got married at 18,” the man said. “If you see someone here who is 27 or 28-years-old and he isn’t married, something is wrong with him! Something is really wrong!” he said, laughing.
Feeling like a weirdo because I’m the owner of two ring-less ring fingers, I made my way upstairs and slipped into bed.
