Not All is Lost

"They can't steal your smile," a young girl told me on the bus late last night just before arriving the dreaded Terminal Terestre here in Quito. Of course this forces a latent smile and as she gets off the bus a few stops before Old Quito, she yells to me, "open the window!" Running to the small snack stand on the island in the middle of the busy highway, she grabs a bottle of cold water and throws it up to me and blows me a kiss. Chau!

Kid looking out of the 'ranchera' or open bus heading up the coast between Canoa and Atacames.

Finally, after many years of fairly safe travel and several attempted robberies including knife point in Buenos Aires and gun point in Oakland, as well as two attempted pickpocketings here in Ecuador, I got robbed. Leaving the Quito bus station at 6:50AM last Monday, my camera bag safely at my feet on the nearly empty bus, we bounce along on a terrible road en route to Otavalo and the famed crafts market. Not even five minutes into our journey, four burly thirty-something men in black jackets with backpacks in front of them all depart the bus together. "Ladrones," says the bus assistant. "Watch your bag," he cautions, making that teardrop pull down with his index finger on one eye. "OJO!" I check my camera bag and pull it even closer to my feet, the strap around my foot. Safe. Chinese made moto-taxi in Atacames, Ecuador

Suddenly it's my stop, hurry, off the bus. Picking up the camera bag it feels much lighter than usual. I huriedly open it to find my beloved Canon 5D and telephoto lens GONE! I also open the top compartment where my flash lives and it too is gone. I also had $400US emergency money guarded with the flash, all gone. They also got the 50mm f/1.8 which is the only cheap thing to repalce. Incredulously I sit on the side of the road on a paint blistered blue wooden bench, stinging all over. Now what.
This past week has been extremely dificult. However, despite my best efforts at getting angry, upset, frustrated or down, I move forward, shooting with a tiny 14MP Lumix backup, getting the shots I need at a still frantic pace; from the Tulcán on the border of Colombia to nearly 14,000' at La Laguna Quilatoa out of Latacunga just yesterday. Now penniless back in Quito I prepare for my last few days in Ecuador and to the Amazon where I will make the shots happen like the pro that I am, still smiling all the while.

Indigneous Saraguro locals waiting for the bus in Saraguro, Ecuador

Somehow, I still manage to find myself very fortunate and even lucky to be able to ride around on dirty bouncing buses for a month, sleeping in less-than-luxurious accomodations in order to see and capture something new and different every single day. I will always remember Ecuador for its warm people, those lonely indiginous communities high up in the Andes, it's dramatically changing climates and terrain, polution and trash-ladden cities and highways and the bazing hot sun.
As Evo Morales said recently addressing the U.N., "We now must begin to realize that the Earth does not belong to us. It's the other way around. We belong to the Earth."La Pachamama, or mother earth, is Ecuador's greatest gift and only time will tell if she can be respected above all.