For a guy who’s famous for blending in, he sure stands out here.
I’m standing at the centre of the world. Or at least, at the centre of Ecuador’s popular tourist attraction, the Mitad del Mundo, established as the equator line by the French during their Geodesic Mission between 1736-1744. In actuality, the more accurate location for the famous imaginary line is located several hundred feet away, confirmed as latitude 0:0:0 in the 1980s by GPS measurement. But, that hasn’t stopped the man in the candy cane red and white shirt with matching cap and thick black-rimmed glasses from mugging for the tourist cameras at the Mitad. Waldo. Not the original cartoon Where’s Waldo hiding in colourfully chaotic scenes, but his human doppelganger (played by an eccentric Montreal firefighter travelling the world in the Waldo get-up just for kicks).
The opportunity is too perfect to miss. I reach into my backpack and extricate a 6” bearded man clad in thick black boots, a puffy powder blue jacket, and crowned by his signature pointed red hat. The Travelocity Gnome. He was a gift from my travel agent before I departed with my nine-year-old daughter on this trip to Ecuador.
Moments later, we’re posing for pictures, clutching the gnome in one hand and resting the other in Waldo’s peculiarly muscular shoulders. Japanese tourists snap pictures of us — as if we’re a permanent feature of the attraction — as I picture in my head the conversation that would have brought these two fictional icons together in this very location.
“Been meaning to catch up with you over a spot of tea,” says the Gnome in a lilting British accent.
Waldo sighs and replies, “It’s just been soooo busy these days. Last week I was hiding in a railway yard in Nantucket and for Christmas, I’m doing a shoot in the North Pole concealed in a candy cane forest. Fancy a meeting in the middle?”
And so, here they are just outside of Quito, Ecuador, at the “centre of the world.”
Apart from being a convenient meeting spot for fantastical characters, Ecuador also makes a fine stop on the itinerary of real world travellers. Our few days before embarking on a Galapagos cruise had us tasting the sharp and complex flavours of Ecuadorian chocolate at Cacao & Cacao before enjoying an evening ramble along the cobblestone streets of Quito’s downtown colonial quarter. We marvel at the intricate gold leaf constructs of the ancient Incans at Quito’s national museum before sampling Quito’s current crop of artists at the open air market across the street. The next day, we are hunting down old familial haunts as we travel to Ambato to uncover memories of my father’s homeland before his immigration to Canada in 1960.
We arrive at the small town of Baños — gateway to the Amazon rainforest — and check in to our mountain cottage in the shadows of Tungurahua, an active smoldering volcano. I savour a bowl of ceviche — raw fish ‘cooked’ in a cold citrusy broth of juices and spices served in the traditional Ecuadorian style with plátano (plantain chips) and popcorn. I pass on the more adventurous selection of roasted cui — guinea pig on a stick — considered a delicacy and served at roadside spits all around the country. My daughter is horrified by the thought of eating an adorable fuzzy creature that she’d rather take home as a pet, satisfying her hunger instead by picking the chips and popcorn off my ceviche and washing them down with a glass of strawberry juice rimmed in sugar. I’m too tired to protest the nutritional value of her choice and The Crime Traveller’s wife is thousands of kilometres away back home in Toronto, so I’m confident that I won’t get immediately berated for my parental lapse.
The next morning we spend the day soaking in the mineral water fed pools of the incredible Luna Runtun resort. Clear blue water cascades off the invisible lip of the infinity pool as the town of Baños fits snugly into the valley floor hundreds of feet below us.
Jorge, our driver, takes us on a short jaunt down the highway through a series of tunnels and past half a dozen impressive waterfalls before we pull into a gravel lot marked by a thin path. The cracked wooden sign above the path reads “Pailón del Diablo” — The Devil’s Cauldron — and promises a waterfall of epic proportions. The path leads us deeper and deeper into the jungle as the faint hum of the waterfall grows in intensity, becoming a steady roar. We climb a set of slippery stone steps, rounding a corner, when suddenly the waterfall bursts out of the rock in front of us. It is enormous, cascading down from a crack in the grey stone that is partially concealed by huge floppy green ferns that dangle alongside. Our stone staircase has deposited us approximately two-thirds of the way up the falls. Glancing down over the soaked railing, the water churns and boils leaving no doubt as to how this waterfall earned its moniker.
I crane my neck to stare up through the mist to the source of the water and notice the path continuing into a small thigh-high tunnel carved into the rock. I look over at my daughter whose initial reaction is shyly demure, but she’s seen this sparkle in my eyes before and has learned it’s pointless to resist. A smile breaks out on her face and she bends down at the waist and starts to clamber through the tunnel. I have to get down on my hands and knees to follow her through. At several points, I’m boosting her up onto my shoulders to allow her to climb vertically through rises in the tunnel as I haul my considerable girth up behind her. The raging scream of the waterfall now makes it impossible for us to shout instructions to each other as we continue to push through the slime and muck of the tunnel higher and higher until, finally, the rock bursts open and we are standing directly behind the mouth of the falls. The water is pounding just inches from our faces. The spray is so powerful, we might as well be standing in a monsoon.
Half an hour later, after crossing a swaying rope bridge and making our way back along our original path, we squish embarrassingly into Jorge’s seats. He couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces with a squeegee.
Edward Prutschi is a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer. Follow Ed’s criminal law commentary (@prutschi) and The Crime Traveller’s adventures (@crimetraveller) on Twitter, read his Crime Traveller blog, or email ed@thecrimetraveller.com.