Mr Tea in Latin America

I stood mired in the greyness; the rain searing through my skin with manic ingenuity. The unflinching drizzle brought an unexpected warmth to my frozen skin, and the tingle of sensation was strangely welcome. I shook my jacket with a passive futility, and continued to stare at the lonely figure sketching invisible lines on the uneven slabs beneath him.

Almost 3000 metres up in the Ecuadorian Highlands, a skater of around 13 or 14 was investing this dilapidated basketball court with a new sense of purpose.

His board, which, on first impression appeared better suited to removing spinach from dental cavities, nevertheless allowed a very individual bag of tricks to be performed on it. He was deterred not by the rain, nor the fact that the nose of his board was joined to the main body by a piece of connecting ply, or even that the resulting imbalance gave it the incline of a drag car.

Attempted double flip nosepick on a courtside rock....a kind of ollie with a delayed kick to the nose (producing a decidedly violent shuvit flip of sorts)....boneless 5-0 grind with one leg hopping adjacent like an old man who missed the last bus by a split-second. These tricks were idiosyncracy in its purest form. Calculated in their conecption, yet see-what-happens in their execution. In a word; different!

Why?

I started to think loosely on this juxtaposition between cultures, and reflected that skate culture was just another manifestation of a universal constant.

If we step back a little and think about this, it becomes a little clearer. Consider, for example, the Inca culture of the South American Andes. They constructed an advanced society and edifices to match. They did not, however, have a system of writing, and their society was markedly different from that of Ancient Greece, Byzantine or Ming China. They did not build upon these elements, as they did not know much of their existence. In the Eurasian arena, ideas were traded, religions fused and overlapped, and a fairly linear "progression" was entrenched .

This idea of linear advancement does not, for me, carry the admiration of what we have acheived so far, but rather a concern of what we have failed to achieve! What have we missed?

To scale down again, we just have to look at our skate culture in the ´developed´ world to see how the vast majority follow well-worn trails. The massive media influence we are subjected to, leaves us with little room for independent thought. I am so over-exposed to 360 flips that my skin glows in the dark. In this remote part of Ecuador, there are no skate magazines, skate shops pushing products or trick-trick-trick-homie pose handrail videos. Tricks and styles therefore expand and evolve in their own direction, sequestered from what we see as normal, or average. There´s not much inter-spot travel, and each town has it´s own style and set of tricks. I am serious!

Everyone in Baños (another highland town) is crazy about freestlye skateboarding, whilst the Riobabambans from the next town just can´t get enough of 50-50-jump of your board while it´s still grinding-back on-180 out. Nobody knows who Chad Muska is, and there is a distinct lack of assholes who bite your style because it´s not modern enough or because they see you as somehow inferior. The whole concept is patas arriba, and it reminds me of why I started skating.

Watching this kid, I reaffirmed my commitment there and then to keep travelling, keep growing and building and never taking anything for status quo just because it´s in Transworld Magazine. I wish more people would swap their nollie crooks for a plane ticket and see what they can discover.

I walked up to the skater and introduced myself as Paul Rodriguez and he didn´t bat an eye.

After a couple of weekends in Baños, we decided to just get out and do something. luckily, the offer came up of a lift with our boss to lake quilatoa; a volcanic crater-lake 4 hours drive away, and a further 2000 metres up.

in true road trip fashion, we were delayed in getting away. even with Scott Skinner hundreds of miles away, his influence still reigns.

We took the scenic route. Two of us, Our bosses, Wouter and Mayra, their daughter Karlijn (dutch name), Our friend and colleague Christina, and her two exceptionally cute wee daughters.

The scenic route was a bumpy excuse for a road, but took us through some very remote countryside, with a stop-off at a great hideaway restaurant.

The farmland around the rio pastaza is up near vertical inclines, with the campesinos (country people) intent on utilising every square inch of this rich volcanic pastureland. With poverty so rife in this country, it´s quite understandable.

The roads here are pretty dangerous. nobody really uses their headlights...cannot understand why...too feminine for the macho men? At any rate, it makes driving interesting tosay the least. Did you know that people here BUY their licenses from corrupt policemen (just about every one of them) and this even includes BUS DRIVERS!!I wish i hadn´t found that out.

The other big danger is dogs. They are everywhere, and the sides of the major highways are littered with their corpses. Unfortunately, we added another one...two dogs playing in catch-me-if-you-can, and one of them one by default as the other mangled its way through our undercarriage with a bump, a few whimpers from the passengers and a dead silence for a while after.

The car, although a flashy 4-wheel drive on the outside, is an austin allegro on the inside, and proved this several times on the steep ascent. At one point, in pitch darkeness, the car failed utterly. We were in the process of resigning ourselves to a very cold night in the car, when it sputtered to life again, bump started in reverse.

We finally limped in to the tiny highland outpost of quilatoa late at night, and found an incomensurately warm welcome from the indigenous householders. Tbey whipped up some very tasty grub in the blink of an eye, and then got back to their dancing. The place was warmed by fireplaces and stoves, and had a homely atmosphere. Watching the families dancing together after a hard days slog in the fields was a welcome treat.

We settled down under the mountain of blankets they provided, and slept deeply. The altitude quickening our heartbeats, but fighting a losing battle against our desire to rest.

The next morning was a gloriously sunny and incredibly cold day. The village looked like a barren wasteland, but closer inspection revealed a more colourful side. Invested with smiling people, and furnished with a three-piece brass band trumping away at the end of the road, i decided i liked this place very much.

10 minutes later, after haggling for llama wool hats to keep out the cold, we peered over the edge of the crater. Breathtaking.

It took about 30mins to descend to the lake, scrambling down sandbanks marked dishearteningly with the skull and crossbones. We all rented a boat to paddle out onto the lake, and were the only people out there. The lake is sulphuric in its makeup, and hence, deviod of plant and amimal life. The wind at the top is furious, and hustles the puffy nimbus clouds quickly over the crater. the result is an ever changing play of light on the waters surface, which makes the whole thing glow a phosporescent green, and sparkle sublimely at the edges. The contrast with the milk-white sands is incredibly photogenic.

The boat was knackered, though, and we took on a lot of water. The laughter soon turned to mumbles and we silenced ourselves with the effort of getting back in one piece. Soaking and squabbling, we beached once more to be greeted by our canine companion, who had shown us the way down, and raced aliong the shoreline to keep track of us (he had even swam alongside us for a while!). Beside his wagging tongue, waited hordes of local indigenous boys, asking for candy or just staring.

The walk back up was hard. Very steeo and burning sun to boot. While we hacked our way back up the near vertical terrain, old inca women trotted past us in their brightly coloured garb, ushering their herds of sheep onwards and knitting simultaneously. They knew they were shaming us utterly, but we were too breathless to complain.

the route home took us through zumbuahah, which was in the process of celebrating its existence with boxes of cheap local brew, raucous dancing and wearing two hats. Dont ask.

It was a great affair to witness, except for the two tourists, towering overe the locals and staggering about with stupid smiles, trying to dance with the local girls (very shy up here) and even getting on stage to try and wrest the microphone from the singer. Bad show guys.

I never slept so well in my life, than when we arrived back to Baños late that night, although my foot kept tapping that folklorica rythmn long after i was out.

The weather here has taken a turn for the better. at last!
Work has been quite good, with the classes rather more organised and all. They´re a great bunch of students, and it will be sad to move on again.
Spanish classes have been going very well, and It´s amazing how much they can teach you in such a short period of time...being immersed in the language outside the classrom helps as well of course!
skateboarding has returned to my life, alongside a fresh set of tendons, which I bought off a guy in Quito.
We finished building the grind box and fly off, and a new flt off with a manual pad is underway to complete a fun box idea. Cant seem to buy a new board anywhere tho...this guy in a shop had FAKE flip boards...light as a feather and only two thick plys made out of the worst wood ever. I though he was kidding me. I asked him if he could get new boards in and he said that, in 15 days, he could. "will they be fake as well?" I enquired...."yes" came the reply. Oh well...

Off to the amazon this weekend for some fun in Puyopongo...how exotic does THAT sound. Its my 2nd favorite name next to riobamba!