The Best Travel Writing

by James O'Reilly

  Candy Joe also takes me by a mansion where a woman named Beatrice, a silver baron’s daughter, once lived. The house was a wedding gift from Beatrice’s father, he says. On the day she married, her father had the streets of Alamos lined with silver bars for a few hours. Leaving the church after the ceremony, though, the groom’s horse was spooked and reared up; the groom was thrown and his back broken, and several months later he died. Beatrice subsequently lost her mind, and for the next six months could be spotted in the cemetery late at night, digging up his grave with a shovel and pick. Because her father was the most important man in town, the cemetery caretaker left her alone. She died not long after and was buried beside her husband, but people continued to see her ghost, in front of his grave, praying.

  I find that the stories all intersect, weaving around each other, cross-pollinating. Is it the virgin bride, the woman in white, or the unfaithful wife who haunts the beautiful mansion they call Las Delicias? Or are these spirits one and the same? The legends are fused, details blurred. They have been repeated so many times.

  The night before I leave Alamos, I have dinner with Suzanne, Jean-Philippe, and a few other travelers. As we swap stories, I realize that for the first time, I’m not eyeing the door, waiting for a break in conversation so I can escape. I’m content in the company of others. I even talk about my father.

  For a place I hadn’t heard of a month ago, Alamos has given me precisely what I wanted—gentle quietude and privacy, solitude without isolation, uninterrupted time and space to heal, no one asking anything of me. A summer season so slow and lazy that even the jumping beans won’t jump, so hot and muggy it holds little appeal for tourists.

  It’s also provided what I didn’t want but somehow needed. When I walk through town now, I know people. Jose Luis, the bartender at Casa de los Tesoros, is teaching me to conjugate verbs, Lynda from Casa Maria Felix has given me a driving tour, Candy Joe hollers “Buenos dias!” from his little tourist office, and Marta from the co-op waves exuberantly whenever she sees me.

  I came here to be alone in my grief, but it’s the people of Alamos who have helped me move beyond it. Without even trying, they’ve taught me to remember the dead in a way that keeps them alive—by continuing to tell their stories.

  Lavinia Spalding is the author of With a Measure of Grace: the Story of Recipes of a Small Town Restaurant and Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler, and is the editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011 and The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8. A regular contributor to Yoga Journal, her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including Sunset, World Hum, Galding, Post Road, and Inkwell.

  CAROL SEVERINO

  Engagement Ceremony

  It’s all relative—that is, becoming family in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

  My son Mike and my assigned husband Bolívar explained to me what will happen during the pactachina1, the Quichua engagement ceremony. They even told me why we must display to the future bride’s family both humility and wealth—a kind of reverse dowry of subservience and material goods given by the groom’s family in exchange for the bride. But I am not prepared for how long I have to petition for her, kneeling on the hard cement floor, crawling from one set of grandparents, godparents, and uncle-aunt pairs to the next, along an endless receiving line. Why is it taking so long to move down the row, especially since the ceremony was supposed to have begun hours ago? My knees and back are killing me, but all of Jacqui’s relatives to whom I must appeal are sitting comfortably in chairs.

  I feel sorry not only for myself, but also for the musicians, a violinist and drummer, who must sing, Greek-chorus style, a monotonous litany of what is happening during this supplication process called the pedida: “Now Angel, the groom’s godfather, is asking the bride’s grandmother for her hand. Now the groom’s father Bolívar is asking the godfather and godmother. Here comes the groom’s mother asking the bride’s uncle and aunt.” That very morning Mike had to take the bus to their village and drag the musicians here himself. Without the visaru and the tocadur and only the discomóvil for music, the ceremony would not be a traditional pactachina. To prove himself worthy masha (son-in-law) who is integrated into the Quichua community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and not just any Peace Corps Volunteer, Mike wants to do the right thing, exactly as his stand-in godfather and actual village sponsor Angel has taught him.

  I look down the line at the countless relatives I have yet to ask for the hand of my future daughter-in-law Jacqui, a hand I am not even sure I want or know what to do with. At my side, my “spouse” Bolívar, dressed like Mike and Angel in the ceremonial white vest and straw hat, is on his knees murmuring a lengthy solo discurso in Quichua, a language I have studied but still can’t get a handle on, especially this lowland dialect. I would later have the daunting task of giving a speech in Quichua to these 250 of Jacqui’s closest relatives assembled here in the largest grass hut I had ever seen. I am dreading my discurso—more apologizing and promising, but also expressing gratitude for accepting Mike into their fold. I would be reading the speech from a script that native Quichua speakers and Mike have already checked to make sure it makes sense and that I don’t make a fool of myself and embarrass the groom’s group or cari parti.

  I can clearly understand, not all the words, but the tone of Bolívar’s appeals—an attitude of humility and obeisance. I know that as a woman I have to act even more abject, even though, like many North American women and of course men, I am not known for my subservience. But the Quichua, an indigenous group subjugated for hundreds of years by the Spanish, have been forced to develop abjectness into an art form. They have had to serve their patrones, who look as white and European as I, in humiliating ways, even carrying them on their backs the day’s journey up thousands of meters from Amazonía to Quito in the Andes. “Turn-about is fair play,” as my (real) husband always says. I will make a concerted effort to act humble. My world suddenly feels like that map of North and South America I first saw in the New World Resource Center in Chicago—with the compass reversed so that South was up, placing South America on top where the U.S. used to be and North America on the bottom.

  To each pair of relatives, I apologize—first, for even having to apologize in Spanish because of my poor Quichua. Then I apologize for the absence of that real husband, a homebody who works at home in his shop, rarely leaving the house even for the hardware store, let alone for the Amazon. Next I apologize that because of his job my other son hasn’t made it to Ecuador either—these absences of our Caucasian blood relatives necessitating all this indigenous subbing in the cari parti. Then I beg them for their permission for Jacqui to join my family and come to the U.S., promising to help my son feed, clothe, and pay for the education of this woman-child I barely know who has not yet finished the 10th grade. In keeping with the Quichua custom, I acknowledge their profound sadness in losing her to another family and country. But I can’t help thinking to myself that since every Quichua family has about nine kids and those nine kids in turn have another nine kids, would Jacqui really be missed that much? I figure that faced with my generous offer, they would graciously respond, “You are surely welcome to take Jacqui to your land of opportunity. And we will have one less mouth to feed.” Then I could beseech the next in line.

  No such luck. They initiate difficult discussions with me about cultural differences. They demand further promises. They want to give me a hard time.

  “We have heard that the divorce rate in the U.S. is extremely high. What will you do when Miguel and Jacqui disagree? Will you take sides and make it worse, or will you mediate and help solve the problem?” inquires an uncle. I admire his deep knowledge of psychology as I fumble for a reply.

  “We have heard that it is brutally cold in your land,” comments the next elder. “When Jacqui gets sick from the ice and snow, will you attend to her and give her the necessary medicamentos?”

  Only when I assure them that I will care for Jacqui as her own m
other does, that she is indeed that daughter I have never had, which I silently hope is true, and only when Bolivar has finished his latest discurso can I crawl down the line to the next pair of challengers. When the pain in my knees and back has grown so severe that I am about to give up and stand up, ruining both the ritual and the image of my false humility, one of the youths from Mike’s village brings me a chair, for which I quietly thank him.

  The pachtachina is the second phase of the three-part Quichua marriage ritual. I have missed the first part, the tapuna, which, of course, I must also apologize for. During the tapuna, representatives from the future bride’s family or the warmi parti meet and negotiate with those of the future groom’s family. But when I was scheduled to fly to Ecuador, a three-day blizzard—the very weather the compadre referred to—hit the Midwest and most flights were cancelled. Mike felt abandoned when I could not participate in negotiations that quickly evolved into the traditional borrachera—meaning “Big Drunk.” But when Mike could not meet me at the airport, I felt abandoned too, especially at the creepy Quito bus station; I realized that the youth I thought was a bus company employee had “helped” me get my baggage through the turn style and onto the bus by relieving me of the CD player and all the CDs in my backpack. I spent the six-hour bus trip to Jacqui’s city, the gateway to the jungle, thinking of my revenge when he found my CDs were all Classic Rock rather than Latin Pop.

  I am actually secretly glad to have missed the tapuna because excessive drinking is hard to avoid with the Ecuadorian style of alcohol distribution. Each person takes turns “hosting”—pouring a cup of beer or wine which is then passed around to each person sitting in a circle—a kind of secular communion celebration. Those plastic cups come fast; you can’t linger with a drink and slowly sip because the next person is waiting for it. You can, however, pretend to drink from the cup, a strategy I was trying to perfect.

  After the pedida finally ended and we in the cari parti had the freedom to stand up, there was traditional Quichua line dancing by the members of the immediate engagement party. Somewhat unsure of their moves, Mike and Jacqui watched what Angel and his wife were doing. Jacqui, who according to tradition had to be hidden during the pedida, was now dancing opposite Mike in a long, red Chinese-style dress with a slit up the side, her long, straight black hair done up by a beauty salon. She was smiling radiantly at him—the first time I had seen her looking so happy during their year-long courtship. Mike gazed back at her with adoration. I took lots of pictures, as Mike had appointed me the official wedding photographer. “No one else has a camera here, Mom.” I was pleased to comply with a task I could perform standing up.

  After line dancing came dinner, a welcome event because my stomach was growling. The first course though was authentic jungle meat flown in from the Peruvian Amazon, as the Ecuadorian jungle had already been hunted out. As the groom’s only real family member, I had paid real money—hundreds of dollars for dozens of pounds of tapir, armadillo, alligator, and bush pig. My son’s substitute relatives had awakened early in the middle of the night to make the long trip here from their village of Campana Cocha with the huge pots for rice and vats for chicha, the fermented yuca beverage the Quichua drink. In their servile role as members of the cari parti, they had been dutifully cooking all day. They handed me styrofoam plates of this foreign mammal meat, the shells of the armadillo chunks menacingly protruding. I carried the plates to Jacqui’s mom Berta who distributed them to the relatives in their order of importance before returning to the kitchen area for more plates. Then, the Campana Cochans and I served the less important relatives, and finally Mike’s Peace Corps Volunteer friends sitting at a table in the back of the hut.

  Then it was time for the second course—chicken, rice, and salad. Jacqui’s dad Sergio, carrying around for display and consumption a large bottle of brandy Mike had bought for him as a ritual father-in-law present, had assured me that I had gotten a good deal because I only had to pay for half of the chickens. He paid for the other half even though Quichua custom specifies that the groom’s family pays for all the food. We observed the same routine for serving the chicken course. Angel’s wife, aptly named Piedad (Piety, Devotion), informed me to my dismay that we in the cari parti were not allowed to eat a bite of food until everyone in Jacqui’s family was served both courses. I was starting to feel woozy from repeatedly walking back and forth to the kitchen area without anything in my stomach. The familiar chicken smelled enticing, but my head was pounding and I thought I might faint. I hadn’t had anything to eat since a light early breakfast, thinking that the party would start at two and I would have a late lunch. I would later learn that the delay is intentional; it accommodates guests who arrive via unpredictable buses from villages deeper in the jungle, and most important, it teaches the groom’s family a lesson in patience, discipline, and humility.

  Finally it was the cari parti’s turn to eat. Not a morsel of jungle meat was left, which was fine with me because I was scared to try it anyway, but I managed to scrounge up a chicken thigh and a mound of rice with the typical delicious relish of purple onions, tomatoes, and lime. I wolfed it down and instantly felt better.

  Next came the speeches: an extra-long one by Sergio, a medium-length one by Mike, and mine—short, sweet, and hopefully comprehensible, followed by drinking and dancing for the youth, and adults, and candies and cookies for the kids. The soda and beer I had purchased were conspicuously displayed piled up in jabas or cases, along with the guests’ presents of cooking pots and bedding, which Mike and Jacqui would never be able to cram in their suitcases and take back to the U.S. The discomóvil alternated between danceable tunes in Quichua and mainstream Ecuadorian pop. Men and boys from Jacqui’s family asked me to dance, and after a Pilsner, the most popular beer in Ecuador, I was happy to oblige. One of Jacqui’s cousins, already inebriated and incoherent, shouted over the pounding music questions about where I had come from. All my answers—the U.S., America, North America, Up North, Iowa, New York—didn’t seem to register with him. My new relatives from Mike’s village also wanted to dance with me. Maybe I was such a popular partner because I was an exotic curiosity—like someone from another planet.

  I ate and drank with the Peace Corps Volunteers at their table in the back of the hut. Nobody from Jacqui’s family had invited me to eat with them, and after having to serve them, I didn’t even know if according to tradition, I deserved to. My principal relatives seemed to be the cooking and serving villagers from Campana Cocha, whom I didn’t know that well either. My mock mate Bolívar was engaged in some heavy drinking with a group of men, and it didn’t seem appropriate to join him. One advantage of sitting with the Volunteers was that I could nurse my own beer since they didn’t subscribe to the Ecuadorian drinking method—we each had our own private beer bottle. We could also speak English, comparing notes on what we thought was going on at the party and speculating about whether the cross-cultural relationship celebrated here would last. Mike had clearly “gone native,” they observed, but would he and Jacqui make it to the third stage of Quichua marriage, the actual wedding? “Clearly they love each other, but she seems so young, always pouting until Mike buys her what she wants.”

  Various older male relatives took turns coming to our table bearing those dreaded plastic cups, which they poured full of artificially flavored peach wine for us to drink from and pass around, but we politely declined. We chatted with them, trying to be friendly. They were slurring their speech—as if they had already consumed a box of it themselves. I took more pictures—this time of Jacqui’s immediate family: Sergio still waving around his brandy, and Jacqui’s brothers dressed in the traditional black and gold Iowa Hawkeye apparel I had bought them—a curious cultural combo. One of the Volunteers posed hugging the smaller Quichua kids she knew from working in their village.

  My favorite picture, taken by Angel, is of me, a very dark, Indian-looking Bolivar, whom I was addressing jokingly as “mi esposo falso” (my fake husband—that is, without ben
efits), and Mike—our blondish, curly-haired, impossibly blue-eyed progeny—nuestro hijo, ñuka churi—our son.

  With the help of another Pilsner, I began warming up and socializing. I spoke with one of Jacqui’s uncles about the political and religious situation in the small evangelical community where she had grown up before her family moved to the city. I listened to the Volunteers’ stories about their assigned communities—the failures and successes of their sanitation and agriculture projects, and about their struggles to learn not only Spanish, but Quichua, Tsáchila, or Shwar. The crowd seemed to be thinning out. Where was everyone going? I ventured out to find a bathroom.

  I was unprepared for the chaos outside the soccer-field-sized party hut. I wove my way through groups of drunken young men shouting at, tussling with, and trying to punch each other. Others were retching and vomiting off to the side. After locating the least objectionable porta-potty, I looked for Mike whom I found trying to separate two of Jacqui’s cousins going after one another other. When they staggered off, I asked Mike if he could walk me back to the bed and breakfast after I said my good-byes.

  “I wish I could, Mom, but I have to take care of Jofre,” he said, pointing to one of Jacqui’s brothers lying in a ditch moaning. “He fell down drunk. He’s depressed about his girlfriend who left him. You’ll be all right. By the way, thanks for the speech. Everyone was impressed.”

  I was happy my speech had gone over well, but I felt abandoned again and scared to walk back myself. I guess I would have to get used to sharing Mike with hundreds more of his, or rather our, new relatives. I thought of the reverse map of the Americas again. “Turn-about is fair play.”

  I went back inside and found Jacqui’s mom and dad, Angel, my other Campana Cochan relatives, and Bolívar. I thanked them for all their hard work and their acceptance of Mike into their family and community. Jacqui’s brother Danilo called me auya, extended family of in-laws—a term of endearment—and made me address them as auya too. I realized I had earned the right to receive that label, and ironically, I felt proud of my humility. I understood how we had all just enacted the merging of two lovers, two families, two nations, and two cultures.