Last Friday was a national holiday, so my friend Katie and I climbed a mountain with fifteen moppets (Ecuadorian children), a dog, and a tiny puppy. The children were from a barrio only about fifteen minutes outside of Loja by car, although their standard of living was much more similar to that of campesinos (people who live in the country, usually poor). Neither of us brought our cameras, although there were many moments in which I wish I would have.
I started off the hike hoping that my new running shoes wouldn’t get too muddy. Little did I know that by the end of the hike Katie and I would be sliding down the mountainside, using our shoes as makeshift mud-skis. The hike began innocently enough, walking through fields and pastures. There was a rainstorm early on, but it was blessedly brief and provided us a good laugh, as we took the children’s hands and rushed across a cow-filled pasture to take shelter under an abandoned shack.
The group of kids we went with was wonderful. The oldest of them was 12, and the youngest was 5. Even though their neighborhood is only a little ways outside the city, their community is quite self-sufficient and the kids were unspoiled, not jaded know-it-alls like many city children. As we hiked along merrily, the children picked berries they called salapas along the way. They shared these little treasures with us, and although we were hesitant at first, the berries were delicious and soon Katie and I were eagerly foraging for them along with the kids. Roughly the size and shape of blueberries, the salapas were a reddish-green in color and tasted like nothing I’ve had. Probably not the absolute smartest thing in the world to be eating unknown berries in the mountains, but hey, they didn’t make us sick.
The kids were so sweet. They picked us berries, clamored to hold our hands, and one little girl even gifted me with a bouquet of wildflowers. One little boy, David, seemed to be the wise man of the group. He never said much, but showed us the best route to climb when the trail seemed impossible and told us which berries were poisonous. When Katie and I lagged behind the children (we told him we were viejas, old people, when we couldn’t keep up), I was relieved when I saw him waiting for us.
The elevation increased sharply, and the last hour was spent climbing up the perilously steep side of the mountain. While Katie and I arduously made our way to the top, trying not to fall on the slick, clay terrain or poke our eyes out on the thorny plants that dotted the landscape, the children clambered up like mountain goats. The whole time, they took turns carrying a two-month-old cachorro (puppy), that they had brought against our advice. I still have no idea how this puppy arrived to the top of the mountain unscathed.
As the hike became steeper and steeper, I looked back and worried how we would get down. I forgot about this momentarily when we reached the top of the mountain after roughly two hours of hiking. The top was marked by a cross, as seems common to many hikes I have been on in Ecuador. The sun came out just as we reached the top, and we broke out snacks to share. Never have popcorn and crackers tasted so good. From the summit, the city of Loja stretched out before us, a tiny metropolis nestled in the green valley.
Getting down the mountain was quite an adventure. It began to drizzle as soon as we began our descent, and the rain made the already-steep trail even more perilous. I was tired and thirsty at this point, and I admit that I fell several times going down. It got so dangerous at one point that Katie and I took to crouching down and attempting to slide down the mountain on our shoes. We tried to grab at the grass to steady ourselves, but the ground was covered with these thorny little bushes, which pricked our hands terribly. At one point, my hand was bleeding and covered with mud, but I didn’t even care, I just wanted to get down. The view of the city that had seemed so lovely from the summit now seemed desperately far away.
After about 45 minutes of this unbearable descent, the terrain slowly became less steep and slippery. The rain stopped and we were able to gain our footing again. The late afternoon sun beamed through the clouds, casting shadows across the verdant mountains. As we arrived at the grassy pasture where we had begun our hike, we broke out into a run. It was definitely a “Sound of Music” moment. When we reached the barrio, one of the children shouted, “Mira, un Arco Iris!” (Look, a rainbow!) and pointed to the end of a rainbow far in the distance. I am not making this up. As cheesy as it sounds, it was a fitting end to a wonderful adventure.
