Luna de mile: Part I

By Ann Ferro

With frugality as our continuing watchword, we had uncharacteristically hired a taxi to take us to a Native American site outside of Quito.

The we included me, my newly minted spouse and two Brits we had met on a bus from Ipiales to Otovalo on the Incan highway.

The driver, who was, by the way from Brooklyn, was taking us on an impromptu search for a pharmacy to buy something to fix my week long illness.

Our day didn’t start out in search of meds, but the driver took one look at me and asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

Let me tell you, I was in such a bad state that I thought that he was speaking Spanish and I had become suddenly fluent.

But no, he was speaking a heavily accented Brooklyn English and had noticed, which apparently my spouse hadn’t, that I was sick.

Did I mention that we were on our honeymoon?

This had all started the day after we landed in Bogota, the capital of Colombia.

Before I go any further, you might want to ask why Colombia?

Well, this was 1967. My husband, a Peace Corps volunteer, had spent two years there designing and building rural schools in the middle of several Colombian nowheres.

His stories were enticing and we had to go somewhere for our honeymoon. Colombia it was.

So, back to day two in Bogota.

I had armed myself with all of the information that a Gringa could by reading everything that the Auto Club had on the country and its environs and had picked out a hotel for us to stay in while in the capital.

Upon inspection of this medium rated hotel, I had other thoughts.

What words could I pick to describe the floor in the room that we were shown?  Antiquarians sometimes use the word patina to describe the accumulation of years of wear, tear and dirt, while cooks use the word “ fond”  to describe the stuff that accumulates on the bottom of a fry pan, a mixture of grease, protein and other substance.

Put the two together and you have the general idea. We went to another hotel.

I awoke on the day after we checked in with shaking chills, a fever, a massive headache and the sense that all of my insides were trying to get outside through various orifices.

My spouse, who never gets sick, couldn’t connect with my awfulness and urged me to take some aspirin, buck up, get dressed and get going.

I was young and stupid.

We had places to go and things to do. Our goal for the day was a residencia or rooming house where my husband  had stayed while in Bogota just before leaving for home, a place where he had left some of his cosas tipicas  (souvenirs).

After using my much practiced, “I am pleased to meet you” in Spanish  I sat quietly in the tiny  living room while my spouse and the owner chatted away.

The landlady kept glancing my way.

Did she expect me to join in the conversation?

My Spanish phraseology was limited to painfully memorized things like “Take me to the American Embassy” and “I need a new napkin.”

But, no, it was my pallor that had caught her attention.

She asked my husband if I was ill.

My spouse told her, or at least I think he said, that I had an upset stomach.

Aha!

The woman, being of a nurturing sort, disappeared into the back of the house and returned holding a green, furry fruit with instructions to crack it open like an egg and eat the insides, saying in her best English … “ Pain in stomach go away”.”

The inside of that fruit looked like an egg all right, one that had been around for a few weeks in the hot sun.

There I stood, staring shakily at something that was inciting ever more stomach lurches  while my husband and the proprietress were smiling, urging me to consume the pale grey green, gelatinous, purple seeded “cure.”

I caved and ate it and then asked for a bucket.

I didn’t make a good impression on this woman at all.

This turned out to be the high point of the first week of our honeymoon.

Things did not get better until my hero, the Brooklyn cab driver rescued me.

Our plans then were to head south by air, over the mountains to Ipiales.

More next week.