Christmas In Coca

This feels weird again, writing. I realize I haven't been very been very communicative this month so here is my attempt to make it up. 

I am in Coca right now, sitting on the balcony of the place we are staying at. Its night, about 75 degrees F (24 C) and as humid as anywhere I have ever been. There is a massive river flowing slowly behind me and the lights of factories on the other side cast golden glimmers onto the dark surface. 

Coca is in the eastern part of Ecuador, the Amazon. My family are partners in a Hotel here and my host Dad's construction company is based here. This is sort of a second home for m family but it is the first time I have been here. 

We left Quito on the 23rd pretty late at night, I think we got to the bus terminal at about 10 PM. The bus terminal is a really weird place, it has the feel of an airport, in that time seems to stand still for all the people waiting and there is a very anxious feeling in the air. But then again its different too, you have to walk with one hand on your luggage and the other on your wallet as the place is renowned to be full of thieves. We caught our bus just in time and got ready for the 8 hour journey ahead. 

Normally the time would have passed quickly because I would have slept the whole way, but by some unfortunate roll of the cosmic dice I ended up next to a large woman. She seemed to have perfected the art of overflowing and made my leg room, her leg room, my arm rest, her arm rest and part of my seat, part of her seat. This resulted in my passing a restless 8 hours, constantly waking up to find myself a bit too close for comfort to my seat-mate. Not fun.

We arrived in Coca at about 5:30 in morning on the 24th. The hotel my family has here is really cool, it has a sort of main courtyard with an office and then buildings with rooms and other offices around the courtyard. There is a big dining room with a balcony that looks over the river too. When we got there everyone went to the rooms they always stay in, which left me in sort of a tricky spot. Obviously I am no regular here so I had no idea where to go, anyway my host Mom just said, "Oh you can stay in the suite". Sweet! Its nice, big bed (but not very long, my feet hang over the end, like in most beds here haha), huge windows and a fridge, sadly an empty fridge though. 

I put my stuff in the room and despite the fact that it was 5:30 in the morning and my body was about to shut down from lack of sleep, i decided that I had to explore. I found the river pretty quickly, being about 500 meters across, it was kind of hard to miss. The sun was rising, pink and gold light danced on the slow moving water. I decided that it would make a nice picture so i took out my camera and starting figuring out the shot. I took one which turned out badly because I forgot to turn of the flash, then when I went to take the next, I looked through the viewfinder and saw nothing but mist. I turned my camera around to find the entire lens covered in fog, then it dawned on me that it was the humidity. Yes, thats how humid it is, when the sun isn't out, glass literally fogs.  So I kept exploring, half asleep. A little while later I found myself on the hotel roof, which was unexpected but really cool. Finally I could take it no longer and went to bed. 

I woke up at about 1, walked out of my room and was hit by a wave of heat. The difference between my air conditioned "suite" and the temperature outside was crazy. I was forced to retreat back to my room, and reasses my clothing choices. 

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Ok I am back in Quito and am going to finish this Christmas Eve / Christmas Post.

So Christmas Eve was pretty relaxed. We rode around town doing some last minute gift shopping. I didn't need to buy anything but I came along for the ride to see the town.

Coca has a strange feel to it. Its sort of a big town / small city. It looks like it was literally built in a month and then has just kept expanding from there. All the streets are arrow straight and laid out in a perfect grid. Most of the buildings are made out of cinder blocks and look like they were never properly finished. There are very few buses and small cars, which was certainly strange to see after being in Quito for 4 months. The majority of the people have pickup trucks or dirk bikes. Its hard to describe the feel of the town, but all these things come together to give it a sort of rustic / frontier persona. The best comparison I think I can make is to St. Kitts in the West Indies. I can't think many people other than my family know St. Kitts, so I guess that part is just for them. 

After my Mom and sister did some shopping we stopped to eat a place on the side of the road cooking whole chickens inside a 55 gallon drum that had been cut in half. We actually hadn't planned to eat there but when we passed by the smell was so amazing we had to stop and try it. It was so good. The guy who owned the place was really nice too, he sat down with us for a while a chatted, asking me tons of questions about where I am from etc. He left to attend to some other customers that had stopped in and when he returned our conversation changed course a little. I instantly saw my sister had changed, she was smiling at this guy a lot, complimenting the food and little things like that which were so obvious to me but I think the owner was oblivious to the fact that he was being buttered up. Then she asked how many suppliers he had for chicken, he seemed a little confused but replied by telling us he had three. Then she tilted her head a little, smiled big fake smile and asked if she could be the fourth. I hadn't really seen where this was going and I was a bit surprised, for I had no idea where my sister was going to get several hundred chickens every month, but sure enough she knew someone with a farm and details were exchanged. This is how a lot of business is done here,  no one wants to be in the office so you make the office wherever you happen to be at that time. My sister and her boyfriend are full of strange money making schemes that seem hardly legal at times but all I can do is laugh and then write about it. 

Here in Ecuador Christmas is either a huge event, or not much of a celebration. My family tended to make it more of the latter, but I know friends here who are celebrating every last religious detail, making it more than a 2 week event. We had our big Christmas dinner on the 24th. Dinner was quite strange. A big table was set up in the dining room and all down one side were the hotel employees and all down the other were the family and friends. A few toasts were made and we started eating, in silence. I thought this was just due to the fact that we were all pretty keen to dig into the food, but the silence continued. It was truly peculiar, I don't know if they were all busily thinking of the baby Jesus or what, but all I could think of was, "well this is dull...". The silence was broken when my host Dad's phone rang, he answered, mumbled a few words, then got up and excused himself from the head of the table. He never came back. He is kind of a strange guy, nice, but strange. 

After dinner my Mom, brothers, sister and I went into the office to exchange gifts. I got a really nice sweatshirt from my Mom and a set of cards from my brother. It has been a really low-key Christmas this year, but being able to have the opportunity to be here is the most amazing gift of all. 

That covers pretty much all of the Christmas celebrations we had here. Obviously we did lots more things in Coca, so I will continue to write about them this week. 

I don't have any picture of Christmas Eve, so I will leave with at least something to look at, I took it on Christmas Day. I did edit it a bit on the computer which is why it looks, well, edited. Anyway enjoy!