Chapter 10

We were on our way to the mine before the morning got hot, Ray and I, Cristobal and an old white horse who was carrying the large box we’d made. The horse couldn’t walk all the way to the mine, the trail being too rough the last 500 yards or so, in fact there wasn’t much of a trail. We carried the box through the muddy little Sardinas River, along narrow foot trails and across fallen log bridges till we reached the diggings of the mine. Mama Rosa’s grandson Ramiro was there that day and agreed to let us use his area (I suppose you’d call it a claim but it was nothing so formal) to try out Ray’s invention. The box was six feet long by one foot wide and one foot high, open at the top. It was set at a slight angle and at the downhill side Ray had left a slight gap at the bottom of the end board so that the finer material including gold would pass through there and into his sluice box. We filled the box with gold bearing material, mostly a rocky clay mixture, then worked it back and forth with a pick while Ramiro sprayed a steady stream of water from the two inch hose connected to his gasoline powered water pump. Soon the rocks were clean and the clay, small pebbles and sand had all washed through the sluice. As we turned off the water we could see a half gram nugget sitting at the entrance to the sluice. We picked that up by hand then emptied the rest of the concentrates into a deep wooden gold pan that Ramiro carried down to the river and panned while Ray and I waited expectantly. As he finished and dribbled water over the black sands at the bottom, there appeared another half gram nugget in the shape of a valentine plus a few small flakes. It was encouraging so we tried it again but didn’t get so much. After a few hours we had mined two grams, worth about $20.00 dollars. Then we calculated that even if we did five times that well, we would still only make a hundred dollars per day; and we’d be here a long, long, time trying to come up with the seven thousand we needed to pay off the land. We didn’t look forward to hauling that box all the way back down, and fortunately Ramiro offered to take it off our hands. We were glad to let him. Cristobal had found a good spot to pan and couldn’t tear himself away to guide us back. We waited for him for awhile, till he told us to go ahead down the trail and he would catch up with us. We started down the trail, he didn’t catch up with us. Partly because he just couldn’t leave his mining and partly because by the time he finally did Ray and I had gone a fair distance down the wrong trail.

The main trail led off to the Indian community, Nueva Jerusalén. A small trail veered off to the right back to Cristobal’s house but we missed it and followed the more used trail an extra couple of kilometers till we reached the Jatun Yacu, then followed the river down two more kilometers till we came to the house. When we arrived we were tired, sore, muddy, a bit angry at Cristobal, who by the way beat us back, having taken the direct route and besides all that we were hungry and thirsty. The bread we had brought, besides having gone stale was infested with a tiny little red ant. I’d never seen such small ants, they had penetrated to every part of the bread, there was absolutely no way to get them all out. Our only option other than starvation was to break the buns open (bread in Ecuador is sold in buns not loaves), blow at the visible ants thereby removing a few and smear the rest with a heavy coat of peanut butter and hope that most of them got stuck in that because the loose ones tended to bite. For drinking water Ray had brought a wonderful little hand pump carbon block filter that removed all the impurities including amoebas. Unfortunately we had used it on the dirty water of the Sardinas River and though the filter had cleaned the water perfectly, it had soon after become clogged and with great effort we could get some trickles out but not nearly enough to quench our thirst. Two grapefruit trees grew in the corral near the house and the fruit was ripe. We drank these the same way oranges are done here. First you cut off the outer peel, leaving the inner white peel intact, being very careful not to nick the fruit. Then you cut a cone shape out of the stem end and run a knife around the inside to slice through all the sections, put the opening to your mouth, and suck out the juice while you squeeze the fruit with both hands. This method won’t work with a California navel orange, it has to be a juice variety, something like a Valencia, but it does work for all grapefruit. We drank grapefruits for days until our mouths were sore from the acid, then asked Cristobal’s wife, Maria, to boil us a pot of water. You’d think that boiled water once cooled, would be a fine drink for a thirsty man, but Maria cooked over an open fire and the water tasted like nothing so much as ashes. If you got really thirsty, then held your breath while you swallowed a cupful as fast as possible you wouldn’t taste it till it was already gone.

The second night we had no intention of freezing our buns off again, so we brought our hammocks into the room and started looking for places to hang them. We figured that being inside some walls would at least keep the cool breeze off of us. It came down to the only thing we could tie our ropes around were two 4 x 4’s that spanned the room at the height of the ceiling (had there been a ceiling on this open rafter construction). So we tied both ends of our hammocks to our respective 4 x 4’s. When we were done the lowest part of the hammock hung somewhere between six and seven feet from the floor. The only way to get into the contraption was to wrap arms and legs around the 4 x 4 while hanging underneath it, then lowering our backsides into the hammock while holding on to the rafter with both legs and one hand, at the same time with the other hand trying to hold the hammock open. It was a trick I’ll tell you. We nearly tipped out of the things several times trying to get the hang of it and since Ray and I were attempting it together we kept each other laughing uncontrollably at our own and each other’s near falls. Once we were settled in it wasn’t too bad, I’d used hammocks many times while camping in the States so I had no worry about falling in my sleep but adjusting my blanket around myself was a delicate procedure, one that required a firm grip on my rafter till I’d finished the job. We did sleep a little warmer inside out of the breeze, and for the rest of our stay at the ranch did the same.

Having seen that the mine wasn’t going to provide the gold in the amounts needed, we began prospecting the river, hoping that processing larger amounts of the loose sand and gravel would yield the kind of return we were hoping for. It didn’t. After a long day of working the river we hadn’t mined even half as much as we had up at the mine. We returned in the evening to find Cristobal’s wife Maria trying to burn a dead hog. I admit my curiosity was piqued, so I asked her what the deal was. I was informed in sad tones that her sow had gotten its rope wrapped around a stump and had been out in the hot sun all day without water nor shade and when she’d found it, it was already dead. And in this area burning the outside of a hog, a process they call “chamuscar” is used in place of scalding in hot water as is done in the north, to remove the hair from the hide. I wasn’t much help to the woman because I had no idea how burned the skin should be, I did help her turn the pig from side to side when she said to. I wondered how they preserved the meat here with no refrigeration. I was told that they cut it into two inch cubes and fry it in its own fat to make what they call “fritada” and it will last two or three days like that, during that time they must eat the whole thing. I should add that it will last that long if it is well salted. Apparently the family was low on salt because the meat they shared with us the next day was very lightly salted if at all and by that night the plateful they sent to us didn’t taste all that good, but we were getting really tired of peanut butter ant sandwiches so we ate it anyway. Cristobal had offered to take us to a back corner of the property that reached to the Anzu, far upriver from where we’d crossed in the canoe. He told us the gravel on that river bore much more gold than at the Jatun Yacu. Ray and I woke up that morning wishing that we hadn’t. It didn’t take long to diagnose the diarrhea and severe nausea as food poisoning. We knew it would run its course in a day or so but we didn’t have any time to spare for sickness so we said nothing to Cristobal, except no thanks when they offered us more pork “fritada,” and followed our guide I have no idea how many miles through overgrown jungle trails, burning with fever, dying of thirst (we had forgotten in our misery to bring water) and the whole time just wishing we could lie down and die. We at last reached the Anzu and there was no gold, not that we cared by then, we’d have been a lot happier to find golden oranges than golden metal. We found neither. On the return trip Cristobal took us by a different route past a tiny store where they sold refrigerated colas. Ray and I both asked for one, put it to our lips, and it was gone, just about that fast, the second one did almost the same, the third we wanted to carry with us, but in Ecuador, you buy the liquid not the bottle, so you either drink it at the store or carry it away in a plastic bag. Ours were put in plastic bags. As I stood there sipping that nice cold orange cola in that hot sun, I started looking for electrical wires to the house. There were none, there was barely a dirt trail to it. “How does your refrigerator work?” I asked the lady.

“Propane,” I was told.

That was new to me, I’d never heard of a propane refrigerator. Ray explained the working principle of it to me. Ray’s better than an encyclopedia sometimes. Then I began to look at the size of the thing, it was enormous and as I mentioned there was no road to the house, just a foot trail. “How did you get it out here?” I wondered.

“With six men carrying it on poles,” was the answer.

I thought about how exhausted I was, just having dragged my own weight down these trails and about the three kilometers they would have had to carry that monster from the river and I had to take my hat off to those people, they must have wanted a cold cola worse than I had.

The rest of the trip was pretty much uneventful and unprofitable. Bob was very disappointed when we got back. Natalie wasn’t disappointed nor surprised, it was what she had expected, she didn’t agree much with gold mining. We were all left to wonder how in the world we were going to come up with the rest of the money to pay for the ranch. It was Bob who came up with a solution this time. He was now making a good profit on his cabinet business and felt he could come up with his share. His suggestion was that I branch out on my own and do my own custom jobs to make the extra money needed. It sounded like a fine idea to me. I’d never enjoyed being an employee for very long and had been getting antsy lately. Bob offered to rent me time in his shop, I could use all the tools and buy materials wholesale through him. It was a nice offer and a perfect situation for me. And as Bob said once we had the ranch secured and paid for it would be easy to find investors.

Chapter 8

Ray flew from San Francisco to Miami to fly on from there with Bob and I. We had a meeting before we left to define our goals and strategies. Bob was in charge as was correct, he was the one with the business management experience. He would be handling the business arrangements, Ray would technify the work of the ranch as far as possible to avoid using more of the cheap but inefficient hand labor than necessary and I would be in charge of the cattle production itself. I could not have imagined a more pleasing arrangement, as all I wanted to do was be on the ranch producing beef and leave all the red tape to someone else.

Again our flight took us first to Guyaquil. Bob and I were old hands at this by now and were glad to show the ropes to Ray. We arrived at Quito without mishap, checked into a hotel, and very soon thereafter initiated Ray in the art of eating char-broiled chicken.

Rubéns met us at the hotel the next morning to fill us in on the research he had done. In Archidona there lived a Señor Milton Jurado (a brother of the Sr. Jurado we’d met in Tena), who owned a ranch that was for sale, also living in Archidona was a Señor Anibal Yepez who owned a ranch beside a river called the Jatun Yacu. In Spanish the “J” sounds very much like an “H” in English so the first word is pronounced the way you would say “Hot tune.” I liked the sound of it the first time I heard it. The ranch bore the same name and I found myself looking forward to seeing it.

My brothers and I came up with a strategy for saving time on our travels, we would catch night buses and therefore have all our days free to see ranches, etc. We caught a bus going to Tena and boarded at 5:00 pm. Here on the equator night falls about 6:30 all year round. While climbing up to the pass called the paramos not far to the east of Quito I knew we were in for a special trip. I looked out the window and even in the growing darkness could see that I could have run considerably faster than the bus was moving. At the time we should have been arriving at Tena we were barely over half way. We had been recommended to stay at the Hotel Auca in Tena by Rubéns whose brothers in law no longer managed the other motel there. We didn’t know where the Hotel Auca was located exactly but had been told that it was near the entrance to Tena. We asked the bus driver to drop us off at the right place, and he did. As we were riding through pitch black darkness the bus stopped, the driver pointed to the left and said, “Down that road is the Hotel Auca.” We looked and saw only blackness, no hotel, not even the road he was indicating.

“How far?” I asked, “Two blocks or two kilometers?”

“About a half a kilometer,” he said.

We didn’t have any better options and we were tired of being on the bus so we climbed down onto the gravel road, watched the lights of the bus fade into the distance and strained our eyes to see the side road the driver was talking about. There was a road and there were even houses along it. We couldn’t see the houses but occasionally invisible dogs would come out to bark at us and try to nip our heels. That’s the sort of thing that keeps you awake at three in the morning. We walked beyond the houses and for a long time there was nothing on either side of the road. We estimated that we had walked a lot more than half a kilometer when we heard a river and soon after came to a suspension bridge. The driver hadn’t mentioned any bridges and we’d already walked further than he’d said it was. So we decided to spend the rest of the night right there. We all carried, at my suggestion, a light weight nylon hammock that could fold up to a size not much bigger than a fist and a 6 x 8 ft. plastic tarp. We hung our hammocks between the two cables that supported the bridge, I covered myself with the tarp, Bob and Ray said it felt plenty warm to them and we were off to dream land. At daybreak we woke up, got out of our hammocks and looked around us to find the Hotel Auca about 20 yards up the hill from where we had slept. The practice, we found out later, in Tena, was to shut down the power company at midnight until seven in the morning. So there had been no way to see the hotel by night. But finding it early in the morning we checked in and ate a good breakfast.

Chapter 7

Being back in Miami and working in the shop didn’t seem like the real world anymore, it was just a place in limbo where I had to stay till I could move to the jungle and begin real life. We immediately began making plans for when to go back and feeling that we had hold of something too good to keep to ourselves, Bob and I told our other three brothers about it. Dan thought we were missing marbles to consider it. Earl was tempted but felt he couldn’t. Ray our genius brother considered it carefully along with his family and decided that “yes,” they wanted to do it also.

I should mention here that I had prayed about it too but my idea of praying with faith at that time was not doubting that Heavenly Father would see things my way. I used to spend a lot of time arguing my case with the Lord and if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I would blame him and wonder why I even tried to be good when that’s all it got me. I believe even today that going to the jungle was exactly what I was supposed to do and I don’t doubt that my fierce determination to do so was the Lord’s influence on me. Still it amazes me to think of how much effort I used to put into convincing Heavenly Father that I was right and how little effort I made to learn his will toward me. My feeling of inner peace has blossomed since I turned that around.

During this time I considered myself a good member of the church, I didn’t work on Sundays, I payed tithing, had a calling and attended my meetings but deeply spiritual I was not, I can’t remember depending on the Lord for anything and as far as having an on going communication relationship with Heavenly Father, I didn’t. I think its only fair and honest to the reader to clarify that I was no spiritual giant when I started this adventure. During my mission I had often felt deeply spiritual but 7 years after the mission that was no longer the case.

So with Ray coming along too we set a date for our next flight down.

A date was set for the next trip down and this time all three of us would go. The goal this trip was to locate the actual piece of land we would buy and put down a deposit. Each of us would be carrying a thousand dollars in cashiers checks to do just that. It had been five months since our last adventure and at every free moment Bob and I had been talking of our plans, Natalie had designed a huge house to build there and Bob had also. I build houses but I don’t have Natalie’s talent for architectural design. Everyone of us was excited about the wonderful life we would soon have. Rubéns Burgos had given us some tips on different business we could do while waiting the first year or two for our cattle to reproduce. Raising broiler chickens was one possibility we were studying, also we were thinking of buying young bulls and fattening them for slaughter. There were innumerable possibilities with our intelligence and superior knowledge, not to mention the vast information available to us, it would be like settling the west a hundred years ago but having all the conveniences of modern day heavy equipment and learning. We weren’t over confident, not at all, just sure of ourselves.

Right.

Chapter 6

Back in Miami, I found that things hadn’t gone so smoothly for Natalie. It seems our son William had been playing with some other boys one evening around a large satellite dish and William had decided to climb up the frame which wouldn’t have been a major problem except that he fell, knocking out his two front teeth, cutting up his lips badly and in general bleeding profusely, nor was he taking it calmly. Natalie tried to calm his screaming while taking care of Hanna Louisa and our newest addition, two month old Robert Thomas. But the problems didn’t end there. She drove herself, William, Hanna, and the baby over to Iraiza’s, Bob’s wife’s house to get help. Iraiza is a registered nurse and was very helpful. Together they tried to locate a hospital that would take a child with a broken mouth. Most places it appears wouldn’t touch the situation with a ten foot pole. They drove to one emergency room and were flatly turned away because they said they didn’t treat children. Then back at Iraiza’s house they tried calling every emergency room in the phone book, not one would take a small boy with broken lips and teeth. When they had exhausted the list of emergency rooms, Iraiza called her dentist. No luck there either, but he did suggest she try a children’s hospital in Miami. She called them up and was told to bring him over. It was a forty minute drive, but here at least as soon as they passed through the emergency room doors and the seriousness of the situation was seen they weren’t even told to sit down but were ushered right in to see an oral surgeon who did an excellent job. William ended up with some stitches and only one front tooth which the doctor was amazingly able to save. The fall had occurred at seven thirty P.M. and it was ten forty when they finally got William to the doctor, and three A.M. when Natalie at last made it home. She later told me she kept thinking, “Why do these emergencies always happen when Michael’s not here?” It’s true that that’s how it seemed; not so long before, Hanna Louisa had fallen outside in the yard and cut her hand, requiring stitches and I had been out on a cabinet installation, she couldn’t even reach me by phone. I guess it had to do with the fact that I wasn’t home very much at all back in those days, there was more custom cabinet work around than we could shake a stick at, and Bob was trying to take on as much as possible, but it was the installations that often kept us out late at night.

At least I had been home two months earlier when Robert Thomas made his arrival. He had put off the inevitable for as long as possible, nearly a month beyond the expected date, we were fast approaching the time when it would no longer be considered safe to have a home birth. William and Hanna had been born at home with the assistance of professional midwives and what a beautiful experience those occasions had been. No rushing to the hospital and having someone else run the show. Just being at home, making Natalie comfortable and being her other half during the event. After the births (our babies are always born at night) snuggling in bed with the new arrival. We weren’t anxious to miss out on all that this time around either. Natalie’s mother had come to stay with us for the birth as she had done for the other two children. This time Natalie’s father had come also and we’d done some sight seeing, something I didn’t normally take time to do. Her parents are good people and it was great having them there, but as Robert continued to delay his arrival we all began to wonder if my in-laws would be able to stay long enough to welcome him personally. Then one night, actually 1:00 in the morning Natalie woke me up, I turned on the light and she started throwing up. This was a well-recognized sign to both of us that she was already reaching second stage, hard labor, which meant the baby was in the process of moving down the birth canal. I called our midwife who said she could be there within half an hour, then woke up Natalie’s mother who was there immediately. I helped Natalie breathe through a few contractions and she said she wanted to push. I pleaded with her to hold back and not push for just a few more minutes and the midwife would be there. Just then my mother in law who was standing at the foot of the bed said calmly, “She might as well go ahead now, the baby’s head is coming out.”

I moved down also and said, “Oh, in that case Natalie go ahead and push.”

Natalie has always said she didn’t understand why doctors think they have to tell the woman to push because with a natural delivery when the right time comes to push, that’s all a woman wants to do. She pushed once and the baby’s head was born. I was there supporting the head and trying to remind myself to use the bulb syringe to clear the nose and mouth when all I really wanted to do was kneel there at the end of the bed and marvel at the miracle of my baby’s birth. It was Natalie who reminded me to check for the chord around the neck. There wasn’t any. Another push and he was half way out, his small body lying on my left hand. He had been complaining all the way down the birth canal, but when little Robert got his chest free and could get a good breath he gave full voice to his opinion of this rapid expulsion from what he considered home. Natalie asked me whether it was a boy or girl, even though we had known for months by the way he moved just as we had known with our other children. I told her the baby wasn’t out far enough to see yet. Her answer to that was one more push and Robert came sliding into my waiting arms, tiny and soft, new born babies may look slimy from a distance but they’re not. His face was swollen from the fast trip and he was a little upset about it. I told Natalie he was a boy and laid him in her arms. We oohed and ahhed over him and Natalie felt sorry for his swollen little face. Then he calmed down and took an offered breast, all the hurry was over. Even Grandpa who doesn’t agree with home birth was coerced by his daughter into holding the baby for awhile; there is a special bonding that takes place between a baby and the people closest to it right after birth. Robert is still grandpa’s little boy, even though we’ve been away for years. Bonding is serious business.

Chapter 5

The earth at Tena was too muddy to kiss but the sentiment was certainly there. It wasn’t raining when we arrived and though it was pleasantly warm as evening approached, it didn’t have the still, stifling heat of Lago. We found the motel where Germán and Fernando were managers and were directed by them to go see a ranch just out of town owned by a Señor Wilfredo Jurado. It was only a few blocks away, and still glad to be off the bus, we walked. It was dark by the time we reached the ranch residence, and the lady of the house directed us towards a cement corral where the man we were looking for was just cleaning up from the day’s work. Señor Jurado was as amiable and pleasant a man as you’d hope to meet. He explained the number of hectares he had of pasture and the quantity of cattle and the price. We asked about the house and tractor, if those were also for sale. His reply was, “I’m a man of business, everything I have except for my wife and children is for sale.” By this time we were beginning to accept the idea that we would probably buy an existing ranch instead of homesteading. So we considered his price carefully, it was high, but then he had easy access to town and a gravel road right into his ranch. We told him we’d think about it and thanked him for his time. Back at the motel I was looking forward to washing off the last dust of the day’s travel when I looked in the shower and saw only one knob for water. I guessed correctly that this one knob was not for hot water. I went to Fernando (Bob came along, we were equally concerned) and asked if they had some system for providing hot showers.

“You would shower in hot water in this heat?” was the reply.

Mine was, “Given the opportunity, absolutely!”

Unfortunately the opportunity was not given and though the evening had not turned exactly chilly, it was cooler and the shower was to put it mildly, invigorating. The next day found us tromping up a muddy trail to see another ranch near Archidona, a town only 14 kilometers from Tena. We reached the place at last, dying of thirst and exhausted, to find water logged clay hills and cattle that sunk at least to the ankles at every step in the saturated soil. The place had its charm, there was still plenty of jungle within view and grouse-like birds called pacharracos cackled loudly from several low trees. The fence lines had been planted in lemon-mandarin trees, they bore a fruit that looked inside and out like a tangerine but were as sour as a lemon. We drank a few to ease our thirst but it didn’t help much. The walk back was mostly downhill and we traveled as quickly as possible spurred on by our guide’s assurances of a small store near the bottom of the trail, that sold refrigerated soda pop, here called simply “cola.” Our guide was a very short, very dark man, from somewhere on the other side of the mountains. As we approached the store, recognizable only by its single Coca-Cola sign nailed onto its rain blackened bare board exterior, we could see that the place was occupied by several Indians. Bob and I both expressed our pleasure at finally being able to meet some local Indians. Our guide informed us that the natives were more civilized now but sometimes still hid from white people. Bob said to me in English, “Maybe it’s a good thing this guy is along with us then, if the Indians are afraid of whites.”

“Bob,” I said, “he is the white person he’s referring to, not us, we’re gringos. In Ecuador, either you’re black, Indian or white, they don’t recognize any in-betweens.”

Bob looked at the dark skin of the natives in the store, then back at the darker skin of our guide and realized that the term white is as relative here as it is in the States.

We eventually made it back to Archidona and to Sr. Mancheno, the owner of the property, to talk of terms and percentages. He was offering a good price and giving up to 90 days to pay (a generous offer in Ecuador). We were convinced that this area, Tena-Archidona had the climate both social and weather-wise that we were looking for. We wanted to do a lot more ranch shopping in this locale but our week stay was up. We knew we’d need another trip to spend time in just this area. We told Sr. Mancheno we’d get back with him soon, and took our leave for Quito.

We took just enough time in the capital to see the lawyer Hernán Chiriboga. Our hope was to secure his services for all the legal transactions we planned to do in Ecuador, such as forming a company and buying the land. Also we knew we’d be needing resident visas in order to live there with our families. However we didn’t have the money to pay for all that so we hoped he would accept a 10% partnership in the company as payment. We met with him and made the proposal, holding our breaths while awaiting his reply. We figured a positive answer was crucial to the success of our project. Hernán was silent for at least 30 seconds and when at last he spoke, he said, “For two reasons,” and here we were waiting for the rejection, “I say yes,” finally I could breathe. “One because my son is studying animal husbandry at the university and two because it sounds as though you are going to do some interesting things and I’d like to see it.” Fantastic! With that arrangement made it was just a matter of coming back and finding the right piece of land and the project was as good as done. We arrived at the Quito airport an hour before our flight and together Bob and I reviewed our trip. We were tired, we hadn’t stopped rushing since we’d stepped off the plane but we had done what we’d come to do against many odds and we were more excited than ever to begin new lives as big time cattle ranchers in the Amazon jungle.

Chapter 4

Lago Agrio proved no disappointment weather wise, we landed mid-morning at the airport which consisted of one runway, nothing else. A portable ladder was brought to the plane and we climbed down onto the ground, looked around, and walked 50 yards or so over to a small single sloped tin roof near where some pickup taxis were waiting for potential customers. They could hardly miss, the town was nowhere in view and if a person wished to leave the landing site his only choice was one of the small pickups. The temperature was hot and the weather looked fairly dry as we stood under that little tin roof and surveyed the countryside. It appeared to be mostly flat, and I told Bob this was more like what I was looking for in a jungle ranch. Among the waiting taxi drivers was a gringo-looking guy with his own vehicle, we started up a conversation and found out he actually was gringo and owned a ranch a ways from Lago that supplied a petroleum company station called Minga, with beef and fish. We were invited out to see the place and accepted eagerly, but we had to see a lot of other areas first, areas that were as yet uncleared, and unclaimed. We told the man we’d try to make it by nightfall and hired a taxi to take us into the town of Lago Agrio. There was nothing about this town to make you want to stay. The streets were dirty, and the people we met seemed to have lost the politeness and courtesy typical of Ecuadorians, something they refer to as “educación,” in general it's considered an important part of the culture. We got tired of Lago pretty quick and hired another pickup to take us just outside of town to the local IERAC office to inquire as to where we should look for land. The director was very helpful and showed us on the map where the available areas were, we brought in the taxi driver showed him the map, arranged for him to take us there and settled on the price. We were off again, heading for the unknown and to me there are few things as exhilarating. We drove for hours on well maintained gravel roads, passing mile after mile of supposedly cleared land, but neither Bob nor I could see that it was producing anything, there were tree and brush covered pastures, and some banana trees mixed in among jungle growth, but to me this was not cultivation, this was not efficient use of land, I was confident we could do a lot better than that. We drove till we came to the end of the road, and from there went on foot. Apparently the only flat spot around had been used for the airport, everything else seemed to be more clay hills, though this time covered with trees, it was beautiful to be sure, but was not what we were looking for, besides the fact that no matter how far in we went we would come across people who said they had already claimed that piece of land. We went through this a couple of times and were getting a little discouraged, finally we turned around and drove all the way back to Lago to ask the director of the IERAC what was going on here. Everywhere he told us there was land available was already taken. He informed us that those people who were claiming the land hadn’t yet filed their claim nor paid the fees, so he wasn’t aware of them, but if they had possession already, there was nothing anyone could do about that. We were more deflated still when we left that office. We figured we’d better go talk to some Americans about the situation.

Night had fallen long before we arrived at Minga. We drove past the heavy machinery and enormous pipes to a small house set back away from the lights and equipment. On the screened porch sat four men, one of them being the same American we’d met at the landing strip, one was a chubby blond man we’d made the flight with, also an American. These two we recognized right off as we stepped out of the pickup taxi and sent off our well paid driver. By this time the first gringo, Bill, had come out to the front steps and remembering us from earlier that morning, told us to come on in, pull up a seat and have a beer. We were introduced all around to the other occupants of the porch, all Americans and all it turned out, former oil company employees who’d decided to not leave the jungle when their time was up. The last two were older men, one from Texas in his late 50’s and the other one at least in his late 60’s. We were seated and offered beers again and a few eyebrows were raised when we told them no thanks we didn’t drink, but if they had some soda pop that’d be good. They did and it was. It’d been a long dusty day and the pop had been in the same fridge from where the fast depleting supply of beer was emerging. I’d never seen anyone drink like these guys did, that is, and remain vertical. We told them all about what we were planning to do and the conversation got thick and heavy.

“The ground here isn’t fertile like what yer used to”.

“But even in the States you have to fertilize to get a crop.” we said.

“But it rains so much here it’ll wash that chemical fertilizer right out of the soil.”

“Right,” we continued, “but that’s mostly the nitrogen that washes out, the phosphorous and potassium will stay and that’s what we need because we’ll have legumes mixed with the pasture grass and they use phosphorous and pull nitrogen out of the air and put it in the soil through their root nodules.”

“Right, ya got a good point there son but nobody’s got clover out here in the jungle, that only grows in the mountains.”

“Then that’s because nobody’s planted it yet, out near Baeza it grows just fine, we saw it.”

That sort of talk went on for awhile till they could see we had an answer ready for any problem they could see in our plan. Then the conversation drifted to reminiscing about the good ole days at the beginning of the oil boom in Ecuador and about their exploits and adventures. I have to admit the tales were entertaining if hard to believe in their entirety and as more and more bottles of beer were put away, the stories got wilder and harder to believe till even the other oil men started openly expressing doubt at each others’ exploits most often said in a subtle manner such as, “Nah, I don’t believe that.” So around midnight when no one was believing anyone else, the party broke up. We were treated to solar heated hot showers and went to bed.

On waking up, Bill gave us a tour of his ranch, consisting mostly of Tilapia ponds and cattle. Bob and I were a little disappointed to see that here they were using the same mixed breeds of cattle and the same methods of caring for them as the Ecuadorian ranchers. We figured they were oil men and had simply learned ranching here in the jungle from their employees. We knew we could do better.

At breakfast we started asking about transport out of there. We’d seen about all we wanted to of the Lago area and in fact we were getting a little anxious about leaving. The land wasn’t what we were looking for and the waters held both piranha and crocodiles and we both had small children that liked to swim. We had come to have an overall uneasy feeling about Lago Agrio. Our plane for Quito left at 10:00 A.M. and we didn’t plan to miss it. We were supposed to arrive in Tena that night to spend one full day there before returning to Quito and from there back to the States. A motor canoe had been mentioned to us earlier in the morning that left from Lago and went all the way to Misahualli, a small town near Tena and that sounded good since once we got back to Quito on the plane we’d have to then take a six to seven hour bus ride back out into the jungle to get there. But while eating breakfast at 8:15 we were informed that the canoe left at 8:00. “Well then we’d better catch some transportation to Lago and take the flight.” It turned out there wasn’t much transportation out in that area. There was a ranchera bus, something that looked like a motorized wooden stage coach lacking the doors and padded seats, that would come by in a half hour but it wouldn’t likely get us to town by take off time. However there was a slim chance, so we took it. We quickly said our good-byes all around and Bill drove us out to the main road to wait for the ranchera. We thanked him and asked what we owed but he wouldn’t take anything so we thanked him again and he drove off. The bus came in a cloud of dust a half hour after it was supposed to. We climbed on board and found the wooden ceiling to be three inches lower than where the tops of our heads wanted to be. This was plain uncomfortable and we wondered why the people put up with it. Then looking around at the other passengers we saw that nobody else’s head came to within six inches of the top. Even this unpleasant circumstance would have been more easily dealt with if the leg space in front had not been two inches shy besides. Bob and I both measure six feet and we soon came to realize that that was one foot too many to ride comfortably in a ranchera. The trip was dusty, bumpy, cramped and long. This was not an express. The bus stopped for everyone who so much as blinked at it. I was seated on the outside edge of the long wooden bench and could occasionally relieve a bent up knee by hanging one leg over the side to swing free. I won’t attempt to give more details of the trip except to say that when we finally stopped we’d have bent down and kissed the earth if it hadn’t been so filthy. We were back in Lago. There wasn’t a moment to spare. We asked for directions to the airport office located there in town and walked there at a fast clip (running is viewed very suspiciously in Ecuador and you’re liable to have the word “ladrón” “thief” hurled after you if you try it inside a town). When we reached the office it was closed and people standing nearby told us that the personnel had left fifteen minutes earlier to see the plane off. Just as we were standing there wondering whether or not to try and make it to the runway before the plane left and thinking that if we didn’t make it on time how in the world were we going to get out of this place? The same people indicated a bus with their lips (pointing is bad manners in Latin America) which they said would be going to Tena. We looked, it was a green bus with the name Jumandy written along the side, it was a block away and it was at that moment pulling out to leave...We ran. The plane was maybe, the bus was sure and we sure wanted to leave this town. As we reached the door of the bus it slowed down for us and we climbed aboard as it was picking up speed again. Looking around us at the seats we saw that we could have our pick, there were few passengers so far, and the seats themselves, welcome sight, were padded, and had leg room. This was true luxury. The farther we got from Lago Agrio the better we felt, up to a point, about the point where the oiled road ended and the dust began. The heat was stifling, all the passengers had had their windows open, till dust began billowing in and we shut our window along with everyone else. It didn’t stop the dust though, it seemed to seep through the very floor of the bus and hang in the air almost motionless. It made us not want to breathe through the nose to avoid the choking sensation the dusty smell brought on, but when we breathed through our mouths we could actually feel the grit between our teeth, reminiscent of eating potato salad on a windy day at the beach. After commenting on the situation to each other we rode in silence as did the other passengers. The unoccupied seats began to take on a brownish hue. At first people boarding the bus would pull out a handkerchief and dust off the seats before sitting down, then later as the brown film progressed to a thick coat, the oncoming passengers would walk down the aisle find an empty seat, stare at it for a moment, look away and consider a moment longer, then remain standing. I turned to look at Bob, his hair and face had achieved the same color, only the blue eyes let me know I wasn’t looking at someone’s clay sculpture. Then an obvious thought hit me. “Bob,” I asked, “is my face as brown as yours?” Bob turned to study my face, a smile broke out through the dust. “I suspect it is,” and we laughed at our ridiculous situation, there was nothing else we could do about it but lapse back into silence and hope it would end. Five hours later as we approached the town of Baeza, it did. Blessed rainy Baeza. The place rarely gets dry enough for dust. We wiped and slapped ourselves as clean as possible and settled in for the last three hours of what would end up being a total of ten hours on that green Jumandy bus.

Chapter 3

First we walked over to the American Embassy to see what kind of support we could expect from that angle and to see what information they could give us. The first thing we learned there, was that we weren’t able to find any Americans to ask anything. Everyone was Ecuadorian, that didn’t really bother us, just surprised us. Also they had no information for us except to go check with a place called Iraq. “Iraq?” we asked, “What does homesteading land in Ecuador have to do with Iraq?” Not “Iraq” we were told, but IERAC. Those were the initials of the government agency in charge of colonization. That made more sense so we were off to another office. Taxis were passing by us one after another, but our guides insisted that everything was so close it just didn’t make sense to catch a taxi. I was wearing a new pair of leather dress shoes, and beginning to wonder whether I was breaking them in or if in actuality they would break me first. It was a relief when we finally reached the IERAC office, and I must say we were attended to quite nicely and our questions taken seriously. The director of the place showed us a big map of the Oriente and all of the areas that were available for homesteading. It was an impressive amount of land and he assured us we’d have no problem colonizing as much as we wanted. He also showed us in the southern areas of the jungle where they were having Indian trouble, and suggested we stay away from those areas. That sounded like a good idea to Bob and I, we were ready for adventure but held no death wishes. It was the director’s opinion that we’d be best off if we searched for a place near Lago Agrio, way up by the Colombian border. There were plane flights into the place, and that sounded real good to us. We thanked him and walked...again...to the Ministry of Finance Department to see about importing vehicles and tractors. Then at last to the office of Rubéns’ lawyer friend Hernán Chiriboga to check on legal aspects, and see what was required to set up a corporation and do all our business through that.

Hernán talked briefly about the colonization law and mentioned that as he understood it, foreigners were not allowed to homestead, but if we formed a company, 51% of which was owned by Ecuadorians, then we could get away with it. However, we were fortunate to be talking to him because he just happened to own a ranch in the Oriente and it was for sale, cattle included. We told him it sounded fairly interesting, when could he have time to take us for a viewing? “I’m an independent business man,” he said grandly, “I can take the time to show you my ranch anytime I wish.” We ended up arranging to make the trip the very next day. He would drive us out, and then back to Quito two days later. The ranch was located near a small town called Cosanga, a scant half hour from a larger town called Baeza. Only about four hours out of Quito. Since we’d been talking in English, we filled Fernando and Germán in on the main points of the conversation and took our leave. Though the ranch near Cosanga sounded good, we were still planning to do a lot of checking around before we decided on the place for us. We went, (walking) to a travel agency and bought two round trip tickets for a flight to Lago Agrio for the day after we returned from Hernan’s ranch, and agreed to meet our guides a couple of days later at a small motel they were managing in Tena, a town in another area of the jungle. Then separating ourselves from Germán and Fernando, we caught a taxi, and my feet thanked me all the way to the hotel. Later that night we went out to eat, both of us still amazed at how well everything was going for us. We found a char-broiled chicken restaurant, and then and there decided that given the choice we wouldn’t eat anything but char-broiled chicken the whole time we were in Ecuador.

The next morning we were up early, excited about seeing our first prospective ranch. It turned out, however, that Hernán wasn’t quite as much the master of his time as he had thought, but his brother Adolfo was free and would take us out to see the property, and that same night Hernán would be driving down to spend the second day with us and Adolfo would head back to Quito. Fine, as far as Bob and I were concerned they could have sent Jiminy Cricket as a guide as long as we got to see the land. Adolfo spoke English also, but not as fluently as Hernán and at times seemed to struggle with it. Bob and I made a few attempts to converse with him in Spanish, but he seemed determined to speak only English. We assumed he wanted to take advantage of our presence to practice his second language, and that was okay, we could understand that wish, we’d both been through learning a new tongue. I’m afraid we didn’t give the poor fellow much peace on the drive down. We were full of questions and here was someone who owned land in the Oriente. We wanted to know all the plants and of course they continually changed as we drove first high up into the paramos, the bleak grasslands high in the mountains to the east of Quito, then down lower and lower towards the jungle. We asked about the animals, the pastures, the breeds of cattle, the mineral supplements, the milk production, no doubt Adolfo would have been happy if we’d have stopped at the proverbial 20 questions. As we came over the pass heading east, the weather started getting damper, at first a high cloud cover, then as we progressed, lower clouds, drizzly rain, and occasional fog. Was this the normal weather for the area? Yes, we were told, this was more the rule than the exception. As we passed Baeza and neared Cosanga, the fog had lifted but a slight drizzle remained. I had somehow always imagined jungles to be hot, steamy, and swampy, something like I saw on an old movie once called The African Queen. This place did not fit my per-conceived idea of a jungle. The foliage was there alright, some areas were so thick with it you couldn’t have forced your fingers through, but it was not hot, it wasn’t even warm, in fact coming from Miami, and comparing the temperature there, I had to call this very close to miserable cold. We were still at a very high elevation and the humidity that makes hot feel hotter, makes cold feel penetratingly so. At last we arrived at the ranch to find an attractively built wood home set among steep clay hills mostly cleared of trees and brush, and planted in a pasture that looked like Bermuda grass, but which I later found out was called Kikuyu and was a closer relative to African Elephant grass, than to Bermuda grass. We did some walking out over the hills and took a closer look at the pastures, they were covered with small stumps, and from around those stumps grew a profusion of weeds, not at all like the cleared pastures I had grown up with and at that time, I still believed that only those things which I was familiar with were correct, other ways of doing and being needed changing. Life has since taught me otherwise.

Bob and I talked about how we would have to take a bulldozer and clear out all those stumps, and while we were at it level those steep hills, and put drainage ditches all over the place because the clay ground was saturated with water, we knew we’d lose the four or five inches of topsoil by leveling, but, hey! That’s what commercial fertilizer is for right? Nor did we plan to keep that Bermuda looking pasture grass, it would all have to go, and we would plant a mixture of Rye grass, Orchard Grass, Birds foot Trefoil and White Clover. We’d had pastures of that before, and the cattle did great on it. The weeds showed signs of nutrient deficiencies, but we knew we could fix it all by applying the right chemicals. We had it all figured out by the time we came back to the house. There was nothing beyond our abilities considering our superior knowledge. Now the house itself was something different altogether. Considering the boards had been cut freehand with a chain saw and all the preparation of the wood had been done right there at the ranch, it was an impressive job. The water supply came from a hose stuck into a small stream running above the house and from there to a cement settling tank that served also as a reservoir. The tank was up on a hill above the house and so provided water pressure. There was a propane flash heater installed that heated the pipes as the water passed through and provided steamy hot water. I thought that system superior to the water heater tanks I had known because the hot water never ran out. The house was even tastefully decorated with nice furniture. The only problem was that whether inside or out there was that constant bone penetrating damp cold. Towards evening Hernán arrived and with him had come Fernando and Germán, they were on their way to Tena, and Cosanga was half way, so they’d caught a ride in a car rather than take a bus. We stayed up talking to Hernán and Adolfo for quite awhile. Adolfo was shocked when we started speaking Spanish, he had assumed that being gringos we wouldn’t know how, and so had struggled through the whole day with English. I guess he must have thought that the occasional Spanish phrases we’d thrown in to let him know we didn’t mind speaking that language, were the only words we knew. Just before we went to bed Bob and I walked outside and were thrilled to see hundreds of fireflies, blinking on and off, from the tops of the trees down to the short grass. I’d rarely seen one before and never imagined seeing so many. The night was cold, but I had a wool blanket, a decent bed, and I thanked my Heavenly Father for all of it, and slept well.

The next morning we went out to see some of the less cleared parts of the ranch by horseback. The horses were half trained and small, but the trails were so muddy I was just glad to be riding above them rather than splashing through them. The day started out drizzly but as we were riding through a small pasture surrounded by jungle, the rain stopped. I looked about me at the incredible greenness and density of the foliage, every leaf sparkled with droplets of dew or rain, and I said to Bob, “Do you realize we are riding horseback through the Amazon jungle? How many people do we know who have done that?” Bob agreed that if nothing else came of it, this made the trip worthwhile.

On our way back to Quito with Hernán, we talked with him the whole time about prices and percentages, but even as we talked both Bob and I were secretly looking forward to the flight the next day to Lago Agrio, and hoping it would be a lot warmer.