Cayambe and our first Work Away Experience

Well here we are again, Jess to my left, my headphones on, listening to messages from the other side via Scott Weiland and The Stone Temple Pilots as the autobus takes us away from the town of Cayambe. We have spent the last 12 days here with our first workaway experience and we couldn’t have asked for a better one. We stayed with the sweetest family and from the first moment we met Eduardo after being dropped off from our stay in the Intag we have felt nothing but genuine love and friendship. Eduardo’s workaway post had mentioned that he lived with his Mum and little brother. He wanted to practice and learn more English, learn about different cultures and to have us to help his mum with cleaning and cooking around the house. I don’t think nervous is the best word to describe my feelings before we first met but I was feeling something. “How hard would it be to communicate “ was a big one because our Spanish is so inadequate! “Are they cool and easy going?” “What is their house like and what will our living arrangements be like?” Just usual stuff I guess given the situation. Eduardo greeted us with a big smile and a open heart. We chucked our bags into his car and set off to get the “case”. I thought he meant that we was going to get some paperwork for a contract or something but it turned out he took us to a Centro of sorts which consisted of many fruit and vegetable stalls. I was a little confused but just going with it. The penny dropped when he pulled some “keys” out of his pocket to get cut for us! We were quite hungry so he took us to one of his favourite cafes where we chatted and started learning about Eduardo. He was 28 years old, studied something similar to structural engineering at uni but his big love and passion was for the outdoors and exploration. He takes clients up the Volcan Cayambe which watches over the town with its snow covered peaks and is the fourth largest volcano in Ecuador. It’s a very physically demanding job but I can see the sparkles in his eyes when he speaks about this. He also trial runs, paraglides and was instantly very likeable. His English skills were more then adequate despite what he told us. We had no problems understanding him throughout our time together. It was more just him asking questions to see if his sentence structure was correct, if he was using or could choose a better word for context and some pronunciation adjustments. He took us back to his house and I was actually shocked at how nice it was. There was a big metal gate attached to high cement walls in a little street about 5 minutes drive out of the town. As we pushed the gate open it revealed a courtyard complete with basketball ring and two dogs. One named Pitusa who looked like a Spaniel crossed Beagle and Trebor (Trevor) who was a solid American Staffy looking dog. We lugged our bags inside and up 3 flights of stairs to our room. We was huffing!! The altitude was kicking our asses and was such a strange feeling. Downstairs was the dining area complete with toilet. A sliding glass door revealed a massive kitchen and a door that led to a outside courtyard with some nice plants. Through another door was the laundry and another toilet with a shower. The second floor was where Eduardo and his family had their rooms, 5 rooms and a bathroom in total. The last set of stairs led to our room, complete with toilet and shower! 3 showers, 4 toilets equals ballin! There was a heavy metal door just outside of our room which led to a rooftop area and amazing views of Volcan Cayambe and the neighbourhood. We unpacked, got settled and spent the night chatting with Eduardo, Nicko his younger brother and his mum Patty! Nicko was 15, in school and he loved mountain bike riding. Patty owned a hardware store in town and was in her mid to late 50s but looked young.

There was no sign or mention of their dad. I assumed that he may have passed away but found out later Patty and him were divorced and they don’t see him anymore. The order of events may get a little whacky because I was about to take a pretty bad turn but it won’t matter to much in the grand scheme of storytelling. Eduardo had to take some clients up to Volcan Cayambe the next day and we was invited to come with Patty for the drive. We were both still struggling with the altitude and also trying to battle a fever hitchhiker that had attached its self to us from the Intag. It’s hard to describe the effects of altitude, it feels like your lungs can’t get enough oxygen, always short of breath, my heart rate normally sits around 45bpm before we left Aus, here it was sitting between 100-120bpm! The drive took us out of the town and up and up! We went through some little small town as the road got smaller and more rough. We arrived at Eduardo’s friends accomodation where he would meet his clients. Their plan was to hike to base camp, get a few hours sleep, get up around 2am to reach the summit as the sun came up around 0630. It’s much safer this way because of the glaciers being harder and the ice becomes more slippery as the day gets on. We said good bye to Eduardo and I wished him luck. Now it was just us and Patty who speaks zero English! We had to go down and pick up Nicko and his friend from a mountain bike race. We got to wait around a little town where we bought some snacks from a little old vendor lady as we watched a group of locals playing music from their car whilst dancing and enjoying some drinks! I used to love a good ol car party back in the day! Patty wanted to take us to get some chocolate so we went for a little drive. The place was right on the equator so there was a little monument there. The chocolate was delicious and we got to sample 100% coco!

Later that night we made tea for Patty and Nicko and thanks to the wonders of Google translate and good internet via their WIFI we was able to talk and share stories. We told them about our plans for El Salvador, spoke about how it was living in Australia and the associated cost of living. They were in shock. Even more so when I said that at a guess I thought their house would be worth at least $2.5 million back at home. I assumed incorrectly that Patty was religious and Catholic. She explained she believed in a higher spiritual power but didn’t consider herself religious. It was a very nice time and it felt good sharing our experiences with each other. It was around the next day I started feeling worse. I was still having fever sweats and dreams and the glands in my throat were well large. I also started to have a chest infection, coughing up brown phlegm. I was taking our low dose nurophen and trying to take it easy. We walked into town which took about 20 mins to get ingredients for tea and to find some lunch. The supermarkets were an experience trying to find the ingredients that Jess needed to make her recipes! The supermarket had everything we didn’t need including clothes, washing machines, motorbikes, tyres, gardening, absolutely everything under one Gran Aki roof!! It was extremely hard to find food for our lunches. We have to be on a vegetarian diet 2 weeks before our Ayahuasca ceremonies and every thing we walked past was meat based. There also was amazing bakeries with wild looking cakes and snacks that I so badly wanted to sample but we also are not aloud to consume sugar, watch violence (no UFC) no sex, no self pleasure…. Jess got very excited when she saw a sign that said “Tacos e Poutine”. We was able to communicate enough to get 3 bean tacos and a grande poutine which was beans, fries, some nice sauce and a little bit of cheese! We would frequent this place many times in the following days! Eduardo returned safely from his expedition later that afternoon and told us about the journey. I was holding it together but my fever was high, I felt very weak and the nights and mornings were the worst. We had planned to get up and go for a walk with the dogs and Eduardo to a park the next morning. It was not to be. Another night of sweating up the sheets led to another morning feeling shit house. I really wanted and felt like I needed to go make a effort but my body said otherwise. I opted to stay in bed and sleep. I was so weak and ill I couldn’t even walk Jess to the markets. I felt very uneasy about Jess walking the streets by her self but there was nothing I could do. She was confident and had the phone to call if anything wasn’t right. Eduardo had told us not to leave the house at night. There was a influx of refugees who had fled Venizualea and relocated to Cayambe bringing its own set of crime and problems. We had seen some dudes in the street and when our eyes locked you can tell you are looking at a different kind of person. Someone who has seen some shit and done more. Everything was fine and Jess returned safely. I slept all day and all night. 36 hours in bed and no food but I was feeling a little better. Eduardo had organised to take me to their family doctor and friend. Patty told me that he has studied traditional medicine but was more into natural healing and not just going to give me pills. He was younger, around Eduardo’s age and nice. Eduardo translated for us and he gave me a very thorough inspection. A lot more care and attention then I would have expected from home. My blood pressure was fine but my Temp was 39 degrees. I wondered what it was when I was at my hottest. He took me into a room and told me that I was going to use a inhaler, breath deep into my lungs which would help bring the funk off my chest. I sounded like the walking dead breathing deeply on that machine. He said I had a bacterial infection and it wasn’t uncommon for tourists to catch what was going around with the change in season. Combined with being run down from our transit and the altitude, it seemed to be the perfect storm for me. He gave me a shot of vitamins and minerals to help fight the infect and prescribed me some antibiotics from the chemist. We had a check up the next day and I was feeling much better. I just needed to slowly introduce food back into me because it had been about 3 days of not eating. The next two mornings I was able to get up to meditate and nurse myself back to health and even being able to do light work outs on the roof. I believe Eduardo had another expedition in this time. It was around here that sadly Jess started to feel poorly again with her glands in her throat becoming quite enlarged and sore. Not good and all to familiar. Nicko had another race on the weekend and we were invited to come watch and support him. It was now Jess’s time to stay in bed and rest up. The race was high up in the mountains and gave us another angle of Volan Cayambe. The track was 3 laps of what i would describe as miserable riding! It was steep, hilly, lots of rocks, technical and brutal! Nicko ended up wining his age group and category and it was really nice to share in the moment with him. Later in the afternoon we went for a drive to go check out a ranch of sorts that was on property measuring 100 acres. The tour guide was happy to try and speak English with me but he hadn’t spoken much since he left university. There was alpaca’s, lama’s, goats, sheep, dancing horses, fast horses, donkey’s, lots of chickens and other birds, and they even had Australian animals and fauna. It was a really nice property and good to walk around the nature and pat some animals.

Jess didn’t get as sick as me thank goodness because we had our Ayahuasca coming up soon and we definitely didn’t want to be sick for that. Other activities we did included a day trip to Otavalo to get me some new pants, Eduardo some new tees, and have a little look around. I ended up scoring a bad ass wolf poncho that seemed to call to me because I definitely wasn’t in the market for one! It only cost $25 as well and is now one of my prized possessions! One of Eduardo’s friends and the guy that taught him how to paraglide was having a showing at a theatre of some films they had made recently and was a big deal to Eduardo to go see. We had to go to Quito which was a fair old drive. Jess stayed home because she wasn’t feeling well enough. Long story short we raced through the traffic, got caught in a massive traffic jam as we approached Quito, for reasons unknown the turn off we needed to take was blocked from both ends which meant we had to turn around and head home. There was nothing we could do and I could sense Eduardo’s disappointment. We ended up stopping at a big mall on the way home so Nicko could get some new clothes and shoes, get some tea and have a stretch. It was over a 4 hour round trip not including the mall stop off! Our time was coming to a end on Cayambe. We bought the family a mandarin tree so they could remember us often. On the last night Eduardo’s sister was returning from her studies in Colombia. They had organised a family event to welcome her home. It was a full house but also really nice to be apart of the occasion. The love that they shared for each other was so nice to witness and it’s a lot different then what I am used to seeing back at home. The next morning we said our final heartfelt  goodbyes to a family that opened up their hearts and homes to us. They looked after us so well and they won’t be forgotten. Eduardo dropped us off to the bus station and we said our final goodbyes. We was onto the next chapter of our journey. Little did we know that all the joy and love we were feeling would be taken away from us savagely within the next few hours.