A couple of weeks ago, I was very excited. My friend and I had decided to go to Vilcabamba in the south of Ecuador for the holidays and we were looking forward to four days of hiking, doing yoga and relaxing by the pool. I told my friend that I could hardly believe it - for once we were going on holiday without any drama! I could almost hear the universe laughing in my face as I said it. Yeah, right.
We had already reserved our accomodation at the beautiful Hostería Izhcayluma so all we needed were the bus tickets, which can normally be bought on the same day or sometimes one day before the actual trip. Since it was a national holiday coming up and we knew that most people would travel, my friend went to the bus station a couple days early to make sure we would have tickets. She was told to come back on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. So on Tuesday (the day before our trip), I took the two-hour Ecovia ride to Quitumbe station, arriving there at 4 p.m. only to be informed that all tickets to all destinations had been sold out in the morning. Sigh. Welcome to Ecuador!
Time for plan B. Neither of us had been to Ibarra, a small town about two hours from Quito so we decided to try and get there instead. Buses to Ibarra run every ten minutes and tickets can't be bought in advance. Even so, there was a three-hour wait to get on the bus when we arrived at the station on Thursday afternoon. So we ended up sharing a taxi with two other travelers, which only cost us six dollars more than the bus would have anyway.
We finally arrived in Ibarra just before sunset, happy to have a hostel reservation and Google maps to navigate the streets of La Ciudad Blanca (the white city). Unfortunately, the hostel staff had never heard of us and they had no rooms left. Sigh. Thank you booking.com! By now, it was already dark so we used the hostel's wi-fi to search for hotels online and called the first one we could find. Luckily, it was just around the corner and they offered us a double room each for only $12 per person, including a gorgeous view and soft beds with tons of blankets and pillows. As my friend put it, we spent two heavenly nights sleeping on a cloud.
The next morning, we had breakfast in Olor A Café, a cosy little coffee shop decorated like a library and playing French music. We were served a delicious torta de choclo (corn cake) and as we were leaving, the staff gave us beautifully wrapped meringues and wished us a lovely day. We later learned that this is the most romantic spot in town; it's a popular place for proposals and many anniversaries have been celebrated here.
Feeling energized after our hearty breakfast, we took the local bus to nearby La Esperanza, a small community at the foot of volcano Imbabura. Once there, we knocked on the first door we could find to ask for directions. By chance, we had arrived at Casa Aida, owned by a charming old lady in her eighties (we're guessing). Aida immediately invited us in, asked us to sit down and brought out her guestbooks along with some of her homemade marmalade. The dogs fell asleep on the floor next to us as she told us the story about how once upon a time, the hippies had made it all possible.
 |
| Aida and her many stories |
Over forty years ago, Aida was a poor woman. She had three kids but no money. Her house was dirty and didn't even have a bathroom. One day, two Italian hippies knocked on her door. They told her that no one wanted to take them in, their hippie clothes and long hair made everyone think they were thieves. Aida generously offered them to stay in her humble quarters. They thanked her for her hospitality and left the next day. Two weeks later, 35 hippies knocked on Aida's door. The hippies ended up staying for months, paying Aida more money than even the wealthiest people in Ecuador earned at the time. With this money, she built her hostel and if the stories in the guestbooks are anything to go by, it has been a great success. People who visited forty years ago continue to return, some even with children named after Aida! An incredible woman who showed kindness to two strangers who turned out to be wealthy foreigners. Also, believe it or not, one of the hippies that came later was, in fact, Bob Dylan!
 |
| Outside Casa Aida |
The rest of our stay was relatively uneventful, apart from receiving the news that burglars had broken into my friend's building (my previous home) on Friday night. We decided to return to Quito on Saturday, along with hundreds of other travelers. It was a stressful journey but we made it and back at the bus station, a persistent taxi driver managed to convince us to let him drive us home. Just to make conversation, I asked him how his holiday weekend was going and to my great surprise, he burst into tears.
I'm far away from the loves of my life, he sobbed. My wife left me for another man and took our two daughters with her.
He showed us pictures of his beautiful girls, played love songs that made him cry even more and told us about all the things he was planning to do to get his family back. We did our best to nod sympathetically and offer him some gentle advice. We've all been there and it does get better, we know that. We've been through this story a hundred times already. But for him it was a first and he hadn't even told anyone yet. I got the feeling that this meeting was about him, not us. We were the teachers in that car, in every sense of the word. He needed someone to listen and we could give him that.
Everything happens for a reason. That's what a friend told me when I was feeling disappointed about not making it to Vilcabamba. And maybe he was right. Our first choice is not necessarily the best one. The hostel that I had reserved in Ibarra actually looked awful when we saw it up close and I would not have wanted to stay there. If the hippies hadn't been turned down so many times, they may never have arrived at Aida's house to help create a good life for her and her children. If the taxi driver hadn't picked up me and Jas, he may never have found the courage to open up and share the burden that he was carrying alone. So even when life throws us a curveball, let's trust that eventually it will lead us to the right place.
