A trip to Patul.
by Ben Parzybok

Our friends Marco (German) and Eva (Norwegian) bought a mule, and were camping with it up in the Cajas, a giant section of rugged Andes. They were waiting for us to arrive to help them begin their long overland retracing of the Inca Trail from the Cajas to Quito. After tromping around town getting scared out of my mind for five days, looking for maps (non-existent) and being told constantly that the area in which we were headed was a sure deathtrap because of the smugglers and thieves, the rain and mud, the cold and altitude (12,000 - 14,000 feet) and the fog that sets down on you so thick that trails disappear and you wander mad off of cliffs, we headed up and met up with them and their mule.

Traveling with a mule isn't half as fun as it sounds. Sure, it takes a load off your back, but they didn't coin the phrase "as stubborn as a mule" for nothing. Plus when you consider how long it takes to pack the thing, you could walk to Quito and back by the time the load is properly balanced and the mule isn't careening around on two legs. Two others joined us on the journey, Carlos (Ecuadorian) and Sue (British).

We trotted through the Cajas, or slugged, or slopped, the constant rain making the ground into prime mud wrestling terrain, all of us hiking in knee-high rubber boots. We hiked breathlessly to the top of the world (14,338 feet - taller than any U.S. NW mountain), where thunder and mud and rock and air devoid of all but the occasional, confused molecule of oxygen rule. We swamped the mule and rolled the mule just like drunk teenagers with driver's licenses. Cooked meager meals over impossibly difficult fires (wood soaked through, very little oxygen) until after two days in Carlos and Sue threw in the towel and headed back home. Laura and I traveled on with the supremely tough, good-natured and humorous Marco and Eva, of whom it's difficult to say enough good things about primarily because I'm not Ecuadorian, and lauding your friends is the foremost activity of Ecuadorian drunkenness (right up there with weeping, singing and weaving about).

We headed onward straight to the heart of smugglerville -- Patul. A two-day road-less trek to a village completely isolated from the outside world, dwindled to only thirty people or so, at an altitude of about 12,000 feet. Since our supplies were startlingly low (toilet paper, vegetables, candy all in dire supply) we looked toward Patul with both trepidation -- smugglers who were sure to shoot us dead and take the mule, and with a glimmering of hope, having heard that a tiny Tienda was kept there that just might sell us a little toilet paper.

Immediately after Carlos and Sue left, the clouds cleared off and the trail dipped down into a paradise of a valley, sheep scattered about, green stretches climbing up the mountain sides, a river down the center, a single homestead. At the end of that was another valley, where Patul was situated.

The mule, which we aptly named Mula after the Spanish word for "animal which will infuriate you", smelled freedom and ran the last two kilometers to Patul, surely sensing her release from the gringos at the hands of smugglers. We towed behind, thinking mean thoughts about Mula, who had obstinately dictated the trail from the get go, who wouldn't budge when you wanted her to go, who ran like the wind when you wanted her to stop. We began to compose thank you speeches in our heads to the smugglers who dared to steal her, as we watched her trotting, our gear jangling and crashing about on her back, four switchbacks ahead, descending into Patul.

Patul seemed a ghost town when we finally caught up to Mula, calmly eating grass in the center of town. It was placed in a slim, gorgeous valley, at one end there was a lake fed by three waterfalls. The lake turned to a stream and carved out one end of the valley. A scattering of grass huts with the occasional tin roof climbed the opposite side of the valley and up the mountain. It was the eery quiet of evacuation or surprise attacks.

After an hour we came across a fellow with his four year old daughter, bearing a fishing pole. He introduced himself as Edison, an interesting irony in a place about as far away from electricity as you can get, and he wasn't sure what to do with us. He asked us if we'd been there before and when we said no, he said some other gringos had come through about four years ago. We asked about getting some trout (they're native to the Andes) and after a good bit of thinking he pointed to the sky or up an impossibly high mountainside and said he thought the man up there might sell some.

Then came Angel (AN-hel), shaking all our hands, in his grey canvas fishing hat and another man making three of them, all of them talking together like they were trying to get peanut butter off the roofs of their mouths, with heavy Quechua accents, or in Quechua with its Xluxs Shruluck Xjrix Xixshrs. And we thought about running and if these mountain men would be able to catch our weak gringo-lung escape.

After some debate, Angel told us to come with him and to bring Mula and ordered us with the style of a man who was quite used to giving orders until finally we followed him another kilometer into the mountains where surely he would kill us. We arrived at the town of Tambillo, which consisted of Angel, his wife, his father-in-law, and his eight children -- a little less than half the size of Patul.

Still unsure of what fate awaited us, Laura broke out the colored pencils for the kids, Angel broke out some turpentine, mixed in some warm sugar water and made us all drink, taking two cups for himself for every one of ours, Marco and Eva broke out the accordion and clarinet and played to the horse, pig, three kids and Mula still hanging about the yard, and the fog rushed into the valley like a dam had broken upstream.

After our feet began to launch out in unexpected directions from turpentine consumption, Angel called us into the house with its dirt floor, the light of a deep cave, a fire smoldering in the corner, and fed us all the most delicious trout dinners -- trout we watched being caught and killed from the tiny ponds in his yard an hour before.

Angel, who was weaving a bit now, had focused on me because I more or less talked for the group (for my Spanish). He pulled me into a dark bedroom and pointed proudly to a fifty gallon barrel which he used to refresh his plastic jug of turpentine. We indeed had met up with the smugglers and moonshiners.

We drank a few more rounds and threw caution to the fog. We left Mula at Angel's place, in the hands of smugglers and walked back to Patul where Angel had told us we could camp in an abandoned house. We scurried to get set up as horses carrying two or three people silently showed up in the night, phantom villager shapes emerging out of the fog. They hovered near our house, watching.

Marco and Eva played again, marvelous Gypsy, old Irish, Bavarian folk songs. And the villagers stealthily shifted in to our little casa, sat in shadowed corners, as candlelight flickers over their shy faces.

Laura and I danced, making up the dances to gypsy songs, trying to put on a crazy gringo show. Occasionally we grabbed a five year old to jig around the room with. The only villager who willingly danced was Angel, who had borrowed our gas stove to cook up some more sugar water for the Trago (his homemade alcohol). He swayed this way and that, scattering villagers who thought he'd fall on them. Angel took to calling me Flaco (skinny) and every few minutes I'd hear, "Flaco! Venga aqui!" and he'd go into a conniption of hand gestures to lure me over. He'd have some bit of hopelessly slurred information for me, or he'd tell me to have Marco play some Mexican Pop songs. Marco would start another Bavarian folk tune and I'd say, "Here's another by the Mexican Pop Singer Rico Fernandez!" Angel nodded his head, pleased, and clapped out of rhythm.

Every time I announced, like a showman bringing strange tricks to the lost peoples of the world, that the show was over, thank you for coming, someone would shout out, La Ultima, la ultimita!, calling for just one more, until finally late in the night Patul began to shuffle home.

The next day began silently, like the citizens had evaporated, which they had, up the mountainsides, chasing sheep or bringing down mule-loads of firewood. We listened to them calling each other, a lilting singsong of words that traveled from one mountainside to the other. By 10 a.m. we had a contingent around our campfire, showing us the proper way to peel a potato or make a fire, a combination of curiosity, wonder, and pity on their faces for the obviously inept gringos. I went to the Tienda and bought up everything they had, which turned out to be four eggs scavenged from shelves, a closet and a drawer. The way up was a muddy slog mixed with pig and horseshit, and inside Cuys (guinea pigs, a delicacy in Ecuador) ran wild over the dirt floors. On the walls were calendars, advertisements, tourist brochures and the occasional naked gringa, all covered with several thick layers of soot. The ceiling was a shiny, spidery black with eons of smoke.

By noon Patul began to show up in force, some asking for music, others finally engaging Marco and I in a game of volleyball. Volleyball is an extreme sport at 12,000 feet, and each time Marco or I hit the ball we'd double over holding our stomachs, trying to catch our breaths. But then Angel showed up with his plastic bottle of Trago and volleyball became significantly more fun, the gringos playing up the slapstick angle (intentionally, and unintentionally), Angel already beginning the daily weave, going into twitchy, self-referential sign-language at any occasion.

A young, handsome lad who shouted his name at me five times (Thgralmlo! Que? Hrmanglov! Que? etc.) before I gave up and called him Galo, and an older, good-humored fellow named Jaime, proceeded to get as drunk as possible before their four hour horseback ride to the road to Cuenca. Jaime asked if I wanted to buy his horse ($400) and when I said no, asked if I wanted to buy his finca ($40,000 for 100 hectares), and when I explained I was just a poor malabarista (juggler) he smiled indulgently, put his hand on my shoulder, and gave me a fatherly lecture on the importance of not thinking of oneself as poor. Everyone invited us everywhere. Invitations were like raindrops.

Back at our casa, half of Patul stumbled around our entranceway. As rain beat down outside, we built a fire inside the house on the floor, Patulian style, and the doorway was a traffic jam of people who were smoked out heading into the rain, and people who were rained out heading into the smoke. Angel fell among our dinner preparations, and then into Laura and Eva, and finally Jaime held him against a wall and they told each other what a great friend the other was, as is the tradition. Galo regularly called out Vamanos! as sunset approached and the rainy, mud slide that passed for a trail seemed farther and farther away until he finally gave up, grabbed the bottle of Trago from Angel and circled it around the house again with great cheer. An older fellow named Thomas showed up, took a restrained drink of Trago, and invited us to play music at the Tienda in the night and promised to play guitar. Each time someone new showed up we all spent another fifteen minutes shaking hands, patting each other on the back, telling each other how good of a friend the other was, and drinking more Trago.

There was a burst of thunder and then Jaime and Galo were drooped over their horses, heading out. Angel left too with his four-year-old daughter, Maria Fernanda, in tow, and the casa was quiet.

By the time we arrive at the Tienda, I had drunk half of Patul. I had drunk enough so that the Trago, out of its plastic water bottle with warm sugar water added, tasted like the best alcohol on Earth. And as the Spanish speaker of the group I'd drunk for everyone else, too. So the Tienda music is a blur of Cuy sounds, accordion and clarinet, Thomas playing his out-of-tune guitar backwards and Angel yelling out Flaco! Venga aqui, telling me in a thick slur that I am the best friend a man could ever have, and then falling to the floor, food being handed to us, some kind of sheep-cheese and corn, and more Trago, and more Trago.

The next morning, the Patulian watchers turned out early to watch our breakfast attempt. The people the outside world feared came by to shyly taste a bite of our strangely prepared eggs and lentils, to give suggestions on mule travel or vegetable peeling. A strange vegetable called Nabo was slipped into our stash. The day before Marco had traded Thomas a waterproof jacket for the promise of eight eggs, and when Thomas showed up he said, "I said eight eggs, but the hens only laid four." He chuckled, shrugged and handed over the eggs. You can't tell a hen how many eggs to lay.

Edison showed up with everyone under twelve in a twenty mile radius to wish us off and Laura and I decided to head home, back over the valleys and mountains separating Patul from the road, while Marco and Eva decided to go deeper into the wilderness, toilet paper or no. After our own thirty minutes of handshaking and hugs, Patulian style, we slogged seven hours through constant rain, this time losing the trail, scrambling up wet slopes, two feet of mud wresting boots from our feet and dousing our socks. I lost a foothold and split my pants open so that a one foot column of air and rain ventilated my crotch. We trudged exhausted, with no food and no stove and with darkness looming until finally we spotted the road. We jumped the bus back to the noisier, dirtier, more dangerous civilization of Cuenca with its universities and government buildings and military, with its electricity and cappuccinos and internet connections, and not five percent of the community and cheer of the thieving, smuggling, mule-stealing people of Patul.