Map of Ecuador

 


Location: Ecuador

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Preamble to my South American Sojourn

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As it happened my 1978 six month solo sojourn across Canada in 1978 was just a prelude to a longer, and somewhat more exotic, trip.  In November of 1978, as the days and nights grew colder, it was clear that continuing to camp in Canada, as beautiful as Canada may be, was not going to be comfortable – or fun.  But the Canada trip had really just whetted my appetite for travel.  I’d started on the road to discovering Canada – and myself – but I wanted to keep going.  I’d decided to go to South America.   I was disappointed, but not surprised, at how little support I received from family and friends for this travel adventure.  Some were concerned for my safety.  I heard countless warnings of the lawlessness in Central and South America, the muggings and murders, and the duplicity and complicity of the police, who commonly extorted money from anyone they apprehended.  I was warned, repeatedly, of the risk of being m...
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Oaxaca December 17-20, 1978

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Mexico City was just a transit point - t he first place I landed on my South American journey.     In a way, I wasn’t truly there, more caught up in the novelty, strangeness and scariness of what I had embarked upon.     And preoccupied with thoughts of ‘now where’ and ‘how to get there’.     I’d heard good things about a quiet, paradisical beach town called Puerto Escondido, southeast of Mexico City.     The road there went through Oaxaca, a not-to-be-missed traditional market town.     With the rudiments of a plan in mind I ventured out, found the huge central bus station, and bought a ticket to Oaxaca.     It was an all-day bus ride to get there, and I wouldn’t have a pre-booked hotel, as I did in Mexico City, when I got there.     So now I felt my trip had actually begun.    Now I was truly traveling.   The bus ride to Oaxaca started out okay.  The bus itself was of course old and tired, a...
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Playa Zipolite December 20-26, 1978

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Jonathan and I stuffed ourselves into Ken’s VW bug and we all headed to Puerto Angel.     Lucky me, I got to sit in the front seat!     The first part of the journey – across a rolling landscape of dry red soil studded with cacti and cornfields – was like driving through a Mexican cliché.     Peasants tilling fields with old ploughs, mostly with one or two oxen or burros, but sometimes by hand; or carrying large colourful sacks of corn on their backs; the burros carried the stalks – their supper – on their backs.     It’s too easy, for those of us who have never worked at subsistence farming (or any farming), for those of us who eschew the highly mechanized approach to agri-business now prevalent in North America and Europe, not to see or appreciate just how hard and back-breaking this ‘real’ farm work is.     We see the bucolic photo-op, the ‘indigenous people in traditional clothes working on, and in harmony with, the land’.   ...
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