I have never been much of an active-adventure traveler. I don’t feel the need to wear myself thin everyday having to take in every market stall, temple, mountain and lake 
to feel that I’ve made the most of my time on this planet and die a happy man without regrets. I am a surfer and have spent many of the last years seeking out waves in place widespread and exotic from Morocco to Mexico, Indonesia to Ipanema, San Diego to Sri Lanka. And when I arrive I usually plunk my bags down for months at a time and only concern myself with the patch 200m in front of my face. I have been accused of sloth, and while I enjoy partaking in deadly sinning as much as the next atheist, I like to attest to the fundamentals of idleness. One of my heroes of the idle revolution was the Earl of Sandwich whose namesake, the Sandwich, was created for long, idle stays at the poker table which the acclaimed Earl was fond of. To avoid the interruption of sit down meals at the dining table with fork and knife to consume bite after agonizing bite of meats, breads and vegies, he so astutely had them placed in a convenient one-hand-a-able medium, freeing his other hand for betting and reviewing his stack. Noble indeed.
It was with this desire for idlesness that I came to La Luna guest house in the hills south of Otavalo. Now, Otavalo does offer some amazing hikes including the scaling of Cotacaxi, one of Ecuador’s tallest snowcapped peak, horseback riding around lake and nature preserves, not to mention the best outdoor indigineous craft markets in all of Ecuador. But after a month in Quito being pounded by the pavement and traffic, pelted by rainy days, and pounding a lot of drinks on the weekends with friends, I wasn’t going to be seeking much active-adventure non
sense. Luckily, La Luna is a place that you can go to when you want to do little or nothing. And that’s what I did; pretty much nothing. Hammocks around the porch . Herb tea and fresh naranjilla juice. Pizza and soup with veggies plucked strait out of the garden. Staring out toward the snowy crags of Cotacaxi with the morning sun on my face. Siestas in the hammocks. Yoga on my balcony. There is actually a lot to do when there is little that you set your heart on.
But as some friends had hired a taxi to take them up to the Mojanda lakes for a good hike, I thought I should at least circulate a bit of blood before heading back. So I looked up on the wall in the dining area with big color and photoed posters announcing various activities on offer in the vicinity and the approx. time it would take to complete. The mirador(view place) was nearest at 2 minutes up the hill, though even I couldn’t justify the benign effort it would take for this. The next closest was the waterfall, merely thirty minutes on foot back toward town
So I took to my heels, saying goodbye to my hammock.
I wound my way down the cobblestone road that took me to La Luna. Around me were fallow fields and pastures filled with blooming purple bells of wildflowers. The sky here in the sierras is so close to you at 2000 meters+, the clouds are reachable. One can’t help but want to reach out toward everything here. After spending a month in a city where so much is “hands off” a trip to the country is so tactile by comparison. There are flowers to pick, hills to climb and fields to lay in. The mark on the road pointed to a narrow path in the crack between hedgerows leading sharply down a muddy dirt path. I carefully descended down into a neighboring valley, walking besides the drying rows of corn hugging in contours to the hillside. That which wasn’t cultivated was fallow and home to cows concentrating on chewing the grasses and leaving fertilizer behind. I descended on through the valley egged on by the occasional splatter of red paint on trees to mark the trail and further guided by the sense that downwards in valleys there must be collections of waters forming streams and water which collects in valleys has usually cascaded down as waterfalls.
Coming finally to the stream the terrain had changed. It was rockier, moss covered, ferns flourished. Gone were the neatly ordered rows of corn and flowers. The cows and houses. When you find yourself in narrow gulleys where water flows out from deep, mountainous spaces, you feel like you’re stepping back to a place slightly more primordial. The flora becom
es simpler and spore producing and the scene becomes much like a colored page in an imagined scene from the Paleozoic. The brush densifies, ferns after fern, the rocks moist from the constant spay of water held together by lichens and moss. Mushrooms pop through at intervals through what soil there is; and here the soil is shallow and permits little that is deep rooted and complex to flourish. The trees that hug the perimeter of the ravine are permitting little sunlight to enter what needs edible cash crops to flourish. And these trees are all in a state of falling in as if plate tectonics are converging sucking them back through time.
It is in these narrow little gulleys natures seems to preserve her oldest genetic pool. Evolution doesn’t seem to have much sway on things here. While the cultivated is a constant clash of genes: pollination, cross pollinization, genetic mutation, invasive species, gene splicing, migrations, immigration, conquering tribes, ice ages proceeding and receeding, demographic revolving movement of people, animals and plants around the globe affecting each other in the dance of life and death and procreative urge and urge to pass along oneself, these gulleys discourage such movements. Movement is much easier in the valleys and pampas where winds blow freer carrying seeds; horses and people and trains and boats and planes and cats and dogs and viruses and bacterias and everything else travel and access others so much easier than in little stream fed gulleys up in the hills south of Otavalo.
Yes, it is much more difficult to access these dark places on the planet, even with the obvious trail markers of red paint splattered on the occasional tree travel. They seem more mysterious to me, more sexy. Like the small of the woman’s back, the nape of her neck. These places of limited accessibility. I think that’s what attracts us to them. I like to think that there are places on this planet that are still little explored for their inaccessibility and remoteness. I like seeing the bars drop on my cellphone till I lose reception completely. Footprints peter out; Frost poems are recalled; the bamboo 
brush get a little denser; and the sky is shaded out a bit. These places stay wild, such inaccessibility allows for little movement of DNA in and out. Cows find it difficult to graze, humans find it hard to build The tones and color hues stay predominately green. The colors of complex flowering plants find it difficult to penetrate in. the occasional burst of yellow and pink is dwarfed by the mass of green. There is little to carry in seeds, just the occasional hiker or the bird which has a precarious nest. Anything coming in has more intention than not.
I think that’s what I ultimately like about waterfalls: when we go to them we go with intention. It is not just some random wandering, it is more a homage to nature, to ferns and mushrooms, fresh pure water and darkness. We are seeking the subconscious, seeking our roots and the base of our nature. We are seeking that single celled first emergence of life that evolved into us. We are seeking that thing before even that, the source. And so I finally come to it. And It is impressive to say the least. A large clearing with boulders pocking the stream gurgling by. The plunging of water and the constant mist and movement of air cooling the body, chilling it actually as we sit in the shadow of the cascade. There are two others here, a couple. I shed the idea of stripping down and seeking my evolutionary roots with a skinny dip. American puritanism wins out over primordial urge. I find it hard to shed clothes and inhibitions when surrounded by strangers. Oh well, if there must be some semblance of civilization here, let it be me. I pass the hour lingering on a large boulder and look up at the falling of water.
The constant OM of the cascade bring that final peace and calm. I drink it in with my eyes and cup my hands to drink it in with my mouth. And then I am ready to go. I leave the couple to perform whatever acts they might have intended to perform together in such a garden of Eden. And there act would be so much more primordial and necessary than my simple urge to run naked as a monkey and dive into a shivering cold pool under the constant pound of falling water. I walk out following the stream back to civilization, back through corn rows and whitewashed house. Back to hammocks and vistas and menestre soup, a little more relaxed, ready for the my bus back to Quito.
If you would like more on what to do in Otavalo and to make a booking at this amazing lodge visit.
http://www.lalunaecuador.com
For more on things to do around Otavalo, check out these past posts.
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