by Jerold Last
“To further glorify Christianity in the conquered territories of South America, what little of the gold and silver the Conquistadores hadn’t stolen to send back to Spain dripped from the alters of many of these churches, except in the poorest villages and from churches that were looted by later arrivals from Europe. Little or none of the mineral wealth taken by the Spanish was invested in infrastructure improvements or modernization of these colonies.”
Barbara Kaufman summed up all of our reactions at this cathedral quite succinctly. “Wow! Look at all the gold, gilt, and spectacular artwork. It looks a lot like the tradition of the Inca’s gold being laid at the feet of their gods was continued after conversion of the natives to Christianity. Except after the Incas were defeated the wealth seems to have been laid at the foot of the alters in all these cathedrals. The cathedrals are magnificent, while the everyday life of the indigenous people seems to have been exactly the opposite. They just seem to have substituted the Catholic God and Saints for the Incan Gods.”
Suzanne looked around us once again before commenting, ”Everywhere I’ve gone in South America my lasting impression is that there are memorials to generals, plus churches and cathedrals. Ecuador and its neighboring countries seem to have been populated only by saints and generals. You don’t see much left to commemorate the indigenous natives and Spanish colonists, at least in the cities. The wealth of gold and silver that attracted the Conquistadores either went back to Spain or was invested in the alters of these cathedrals and the monuments to military heroes. There doesn’t seem to have been any investment in improving the roads and housing or in modern systems for water and sanitation to make life better for the poor.”
There are three major cathedrals located within 100 meters of the main plaza of Old Town, so we saw a lot of religious art and ornate gilded church fixtures on this tour. Gretchen Kaufman, who had majored in Art History at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, pointed out examples of interesting local styles. “You can see Ecuadorian baroque in the art of the times. It’s most obvious in the mix of Spanish, Italian, and indigenous influences, and makes art from Ecuador during this period unique and easily identifiable. There’s a lot of similar work on exhibit in several of the major art museums in Europe, especially in Spain and Italy.”
A short walk from the plaza brought us to the narrow streets of the old town’s residential and commercial zones. Most of the colonial houses were built of adobe around an enclosed patio. I really enjoyed Barbara’s ability to dramatically summarize what all of our reactions were to what we were seeing. “Yech!” was Barbara Kaufman’s comment after we had stepped out of the relative glamour of the cathedral and museum to get a closer look at some of the places where people actually lived in Old Town. “It looks like the whole neighborhood was spray painted by giants with soot, diesel exhaust particles, and concentrated poverty. And look at all the beggars everywhere around us.“
And, in fact, we saw beggars wherever there was space for one to sit and beg. Most typically, they were the very old and the very young. We were all struck by the pervasive feeling of poverty, despite Quito being a major center for cocaine distribution and export throughout South America and also to North America. However, in addition to the ubiquitous beggars, Old Town is also a neighborhood of restored colonial architecture and lively plazas, a bustling area of yelling street vendors, ambling pedestrians, and crowded traffic in the narrow, congested one-way streets.
Barbara Kaufman found a way to lag behind and get me alone with her. She immediately asked me about Bruce. "Most single women in San Francisco develop gaydar pretty quickly, so we know who to flirt with. My sister and I grew up in the City, so mine is stronger than most. My gaydar is telling me that your nanny is very gay, but he's also very cute. So tell me, is he or isn't he?"
I couldn't help smiling. "Sorry, but Bruce is very, very gay. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be interested in you. He's also a veteran Navy SEAL who saw quite a bit of combat in the Middle East, so I can understand how you might get some conflicting vibes from him."
It was getting late as the guide hustled us back to the minibus on schedule. Our flight to Guayaquil, and from there on to Baltra, was scheduled for early tomorrow morning, so we planned to make an early night of our stay in Quito. We were also warned in the tour information we’d been given not to walk around on our own in the dark in most neighborhoods, so everyone stayed on the bus as it returned to the hotel. Barhopping and clubbing later on for the young and adventurous would be by taxi from the hotel.
When the bus got back to the Hilton Colon, Raul Vonhorst invited us all to join him for a drink in his suite. “You get three choices in most of Ecuador: beer, imported rum, and homegrown aguardiente. The beer is made locally, but it’s made by the same multinational company the makes Miller Genuine Draft Beer in the USA and tastes about the same. As the old joke goes, our horses seem to have diabetes, too. Aguardiente, Ecuador’s moonshine, tastes like burning alcohol with a molasses aftertaste. We make it by distilling fermented sugarcane, so it’s a type of rum. The 80-proof version of aguardiente is common all over Ecuador. It’s usually drunk directly as shots or mixed into cocktails with fruit juices and grenadine, or even as a flaming concoction called a Bob Marley made specifically for Quito’s tourists. You can pick up a three-liter bottle of aguardiente for around five bucks, so you can imagine the quality.”
We all tried the local specialty---Suzanne and I took it as a straight shot. It tasted like cheap mescal or tequila, but worse. The Kaufman sisters had their aguardiente as sonrisas (or screwdrivers) diluted with orange juice. Neither one asked for a refill. Raul laughed at all of us and poured himself a glass of Johnny Walker Black Scotch on ice.
"Guess what we found out about our new friend Raul?" asked Barbara, with a cute little giggle.
"What did you find out?" asked Suzanne, playing her designated role as the straight-woman in this conversation.
Barbara took a long sip of her aguardiente sonrisa, made a face, and put the glass down on the table. She very clearly had no intention of picking it up again. “Raul is coming with us on our boat trip on the Santa Cruz through the Galapagos. It turns out that our charming guide really is a guide. He works for the largest tourist agency in Ecuador, which just happens to be the agency that booked our trip for us. How about it, Raul, do you want to tell them what you really do here?”
Raul had been quietly sipping his scotch while Barbara was spilling his beans. He took another sip, then turned towards Suzanne and me. “I confess, I work for the agency that booked your trip as well as the girls’. I’m a new employee. I started a few weeks ago. They hired me to be the manager in charge of quality control and program development for the agency. My first assignment is to learn the product line. What better way can you think of to do this than to take all of the tours and trips the company offers, while pretending to be a customer so I don’t get any special treatment as a VIP? This way I get a sense of the structure of all of the tours, how the guides do when they don’t know they’re being watched, and how the clients feel about the product while they’re experiencing it.
“I have to write a report after each tour, and eventually make recommendations on which tours we should keep, which ones to cancel, and how to improve the product line. This is a dream job for me. I love travel and like working with people. I understand about half a dozen languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Russian, and German, so I can hear what most of our tourists are actually saying to each other even if they say it in their mother tongue. I’ll see all of you for the next several days on the Santa Cruz. Please don’t tell this to anyone else; I want people to speak candidly about their experiences with the guides and the tour company when they’re around me.”
I had watched the interplay between Raul and the Kaufman sisters carefully since we had joined them in Raul’s room. I was still picking up vibes telling me something was just a little bit off, but couldn’t yet figure out with who. Raul was very
smooth and liked to talk, mostly about himself. Barbara handled most of the conversation for the sisters, and chattered about anything and everything. Gretchen seemed a lot more thoughtful than I might expect for an attractive single woman on a big vacation, watching and listening, seemingly content to let Barbara handle the social niceties for both of them.
I focused on Raul, wondering which sister he was viewing as the conquest he hoped to make tonight. He continued, “I think we should visit El Disco Jazz tonight. They have a live band as well as the Disco music, and the band is pretty good. I assume you both like to dance?”
Barbara giggled. “Of course we do.”
Raul looked at her. I hope you can last a long time, Barbara. I want to take you to El Tigre afterwards. That’s the best pick-up club in Quito, especially after midnight.”
Barbara giggled again. “I know I can last all night. I’m not so sure about Gretchen. She’s beginning to show a few signs of old age!”
Gretchen gave Barbara a dirty look, but didn’t say a word.
Somehow, despite the sexual innuendo, I felt like Raul was just playing the part of the lustful tour guide. He didn’t seem to have any real passion involved for either of the sisters. Gretchen just sat there watching, saying nothing. I had no idea what if anything was going on in her head. Barbara giggled a lot but really didn’t say much of anything. If Barbara and Gretchen hadn’t looked so much alike I would have wondered if they really were sisters.
Strangely, by the end of our drink and chat I still couldn’t tell which of the girls Raul was planning to make his moves on. I started to wonder if he might be gay, just playing the role of the macho South American male because he was expected to act that way. I also wondered what the Kaufman sisters were doing with him. I just couldn’t visualize any of the trio pairing off with each other. My sense was that all three of them were not particularly talented actors playing a role of oversexed, bored tourists, and none of them were exactly who they said they were.
Later on, as we prepared for bed in our room, Suzanne asked me what I thought of Raul’s job.
I thought a bit before answering. “I’m sure he’s just what he said he is, but wouldn’t that make a great cover identity if he were a spy or an undercover narcotics agent?”
Suzanne pondered my answer for a moment. “Yes, it would. But it would be an equally good cover identity if he were a drug dealer, especially if he was an exporter. Transferring cocaine to a tourist of any nationality on one of these tours would be simple and very safe for him to do. There aren’t any police coming along on the tours and no baggage searches on these domestic flights.”
As I got into bed and plumped up my pillows, I finally answered her unspoken question. “You know what? We have to learn how to enjoy a vacation like this one and not to automatically see bad guys behind the pleasantness whenever we meet someone new.”
Chapter4.Monday Morning-Baltra
Darwin: Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
The next morning was challenging. South American airlines seem to prefer flights leaving in the early morning. To get to the airport in time for these early flights you have to leave your hotel long before the scheduled departure time. Otherwise the overwhelming rush hour traffic can delay taxis and buses and cause missed flights and other dramas. We were scheduled for a 4:30 AM pick-up in a tour van for delivery to the airport for our flight via Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second largest city, on our way to Baltra. Suzanne and I awoke to the loud chirp of the telephone with our “llamada de despierta” (wake-up call) at 4.
The hotel earned its 5 stars with virtually unlimited hot, fresh, and very strong coffee with fresh pastries available in the lobby, especially when we and several other tourists had to sit in the lobby waiting for our van until shortly after 5 o’clock due to a mix-up by the tour company. That extra half hour of sleep would have been wonderful! Among the sleepy and hung-over crew of motley tourists were the Kaufman sisters, who had been out checking the nightlife with Raul until almost 3 AM. “Don’t worry, we’re planning to catch up on our sleep during the flight,” mumbled one or the other of the sisters. “Hangovers are a lot worse at high altitude. Please wake us up when the van gets here.”
We were at the airport more than two hours early, in plenty of time for our 8:30 flight. The driver explained that the trip should take less than 45 minutes at 5 AM, but could take 2-3 hours during rush hour, which commenced at about 6 in the morning. He recommended breakfast at the airport while we waited since we might not see real food again until supper on our boats in The Galapagos, especially for those who were taking the smaller boats for their island hopping. On the flight between Quito and Guayaquil we got more coffee, which was rich and flavorful, and sweet rolls, which weren’t. Proximity to Colombia meant very good coffee in this corner of South America, as well as the far too sweet pastries.
The stop in Guayaquil was to deliver several of our passengers from Quito to this sea-level port city and to pick up several new passengers for the flight to Baltra, some 600 miles offshore. Two of the new passengers boarding at Guayaquil were a real shock, especially when they pointedly ignored us as soon as we saw each other. Our Paraguayan friend Eduardo Gomez and a middle-aged companion I assumed was his wife Sophia, who I’d never met, were part of the group boarding the flight to Baltra. We took our cue from his behavior, and ignored them.
Suzanne carefully looked everywhere except at Eduardo and the presumptive Sophia before suggesting, “they’ll probably introduce themselves after we land in Baltra. I think we have to assume Eduardo is here on business and act accordingly. And here in Ecuador, Eduardo’s business is most probably some kind of spy business.”
We flew on a jet similar to a Boeing 737 from Guayaquil to Baltra Island, which is situated more or less in the middle of the Galapagos Island chain. Baltra is distinguished mainly because of its military airfield, built during World War II as a base for the United States Army Air Force to use for protection of the Panama Canal and to patrol the ocean area for Japanese submarines. After World War II the facilities were given to the Ecuadoran government in return for use of the island as a military base during the war.
The base is still used by the Ecuadorian Air Force for patrolling broad expanses of the Eastern Pacific Ocean to discourage drug smuggling, as a facility for protecting and patrolling the Galapagos Islands, which are owned by Ecuador, and for search and rescue operations in and around the Galapagos Islands. Baltra airfield is also one of two possible ports of entry for scientists and tourists arriving to, or departing from, the Galapagos Islands. To begin their Galapagos adventure tourists are typically bussed from the airport to one of the many small boats that cruise the Islands.
Suzanne sat on my left, the aisle seat, for the flight west from Guayaquil, with Robert and Bruce directly across the aisle from her. That put me in the middle seat of three, somewhat scrunched together and yearning for more space. Fortunately, the man next to me on my right was not particularly wide. The passenger in the window seat, who had boarded the flight ahead of us, was a short middle-aged Ecuadorian gentleman wearing the green uniform of a Brigadier General in the Ecuadorian Air Force. I spent most of the flight talking to General Vincente Aleman, who was fluent in English and a goldmine of local information.
“I didn’t expect to be sitting next to a high ranking military officer on this flight. Are you free to discuss what brings you to the Galapagos Islands today?” I asked the general.
“Of course,” he replied. “As you may already know, Baltra, where we’re flying to today, is an Ecuadorian Air Force base, as well as a port of entry into the Galapagos Preserve. I’m the military commander at Baltra, which is one of the three large airfields the Air Force uses in Ecuador. Our mission on Baltra is to patrol and enforce Ecuador’s 200-mile limit offshore for the Pacific Ocean. Nowadays that means military security,
drug smuggling enforcement and interdiction, and patrol and protection of the Galapagos Islands and several important fisheries off the coast of Ecuador. Much of this work is done in collaboration with the Ecuadorian Navy and your U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Today I’m on my way back to my base after spending a couple of weeks in an advanced course in the United States where I was trained and certified to fly a new type of long-range jet plane we just acquired for our Air Force.”
I wanted to hear more. A little flattery and a demonstration of interest often is the key to keeping a stranger talking. “Your work sounds fascinating General Aleman. What do the pilots and crews under your command actually do on a typical day?”