OUT OF THE WOODS IN QUITO
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, Wednesday, 20 June 2007
If anything is likely to put me off cruising and boating in general it will be another overnight trip to Quito!
I arrived back in Bahia last night with a colossal headache. Leaving here on the 0900 “Ejecutivo” bus from the Reina del Camino bus line, I travelled in the luxurious vehicle as far as Santa Domingo de los Colorados. This translates directly as “Saint Sunday of the Colours Red”, but the red is in reference to the Colorado indigenous people and Saint Domingo to the guy who converted them, I think. The native people paint their faces and hair red. Not that you are likely to see any red-skins (in the cosmetic sense) in the town. I got off the bus and jumped into a taxi. Rafaelo, a young driver, whisked me around to various lumber yards and other outlets on the search for “pino”.
The object of my journey was to find “pino” to repair my mast. It doesn’t exist on the coast and every carpentero and every lumber merchant said to go to Sta. Domingo or Quito and I would find it. I don’t remember seeing that much timber on the bare hills around Quito, but you never know. And although Sta. Domingo is much higher than Bahia on the coast, how high is it really?
And, you would think “pino” means “pine” in Spanish. And maybe it does. But you have to be very careful about this word. For most people here it seems to mean anything from real knotty pitch-pine to spruce or fir or cypress or whatever conifer you have in mind. “Pino”, in fact seems to be a synonym for “conifer”. Not maybe with carpenters and knowledgeable people. But you have to know who you are dealing with.
In the whole trip, the only actual “pine” I found was at Ace Hardware at the big El Paseo shopping centre in Sta. Domingo d. l. Colorado! Go figure! But, although it looked very clean. There were knots in the wood (approx. 5 x 20 x 2500 cm) but we could probably get enough cut out to suit our purposes. The problem was that the grain was exceptionally wide by comparison with the current mast wood. The clerk said it was from Brazil and therefore tropical. He did have some pitchy pine in smaller sizes and tighter grains. You can kind get an idea if the wood is really pine if the seller refuses to cut it because the resin will gum up his saw. This was the case for this smaller, more yellow lumber. I decided to keep going to Quito where I had seen lots of lumber yards on the way into town.
This bus rated as a semi-local bus. The driver was aggressive going up the mountain pass, risking all on blind curves (from where I sat). People were throwing up into the plastic bags the conductor had ready to hand, and babies were crying from the nopise and the rocking nad the change in air pressure. We climbed through the clouds to over 3,500, where we came into the exceptionally clear Andean mountain air. In most directions we could clearly see the glaciers on mountains including Chimborazo down near Riobamba and a few of the Hausberg volcanoes nearer Quito.
Sure enough, there were plenty of yards lining the highway into Quitumba, a barrio (suburb) twenty minutes short of the Terminal Terrestre (Central Bus Station downtown). I decided to jump out at the traffic circle near the big plywood plant (Plywood Ecuadorianos), found a cab as the dusk was rapidly descending and had him take me to a small and clean hotel. I arranged for him to pick me up the next morning at 0830 and, after depositing my stuff headed out to find a meal.
The next morning there is Patricio, a displaced fifty-year-old from Loja in the south. He has been in Quito for 28 years and knows his way around. A good choice. We check into about four yards only to hear the same plaint that we had heard in Bahia and Manta, “¿Pino? No hay! No existá aquí!” Or words to that effect. Finally we were directed to one lumber yard along the main road with a huge sign outside saying “PINO”. Now, this is promising!
Inside it turns out to be basically a recycling centre for all the wooden pallets and metal used to pack machinery or transport other products. Most of the materials come from Japan, says Frederico, the indigenous boss, who comes originally from near Otavalo and has grown up in the forestry business. This business is the closest thing to a modern enterprise I have witnessed in Ecuador: all the men wear safety helmets, goggles, gloves and kidney belts as well as heavy shoes. Most of the work, however, is still “handwerk”, i.e. pulling pallets apart using crowbars, driving the nails out with hammers, stacking the wood by hand and fabricating new pallets and other items for sale locally.
Frederico listened with native impassivity to my tale of a need for pino to repair the mast of my valero (sailboat). My SPanish seems tobe getting better, I thinkm until, without a word, Frederico walks out of his office and off around a corner into the interior of the plant. Patricio and I stand looking at each other. Frederico returns seconds later and beckons us impatiently to follow him. Off we toddle off in his wake. We come to a corner where two indigenas are pulling pallets and other constructions apart with crowbars, working from the top of the pile down and throwing the individual pieces into a pile near them. This second pile is now higher than the pile they are standing on. Frederico marches up the loose pile of 2 x 2 wood staves and starts turning them over in his hands. Then he starts throwing pieces down at us. I gather he is selecting good straight and tight-grained pieces with few knotholes in them for inspection.
After twenty minutes I reckon we have enough for an initial selection and tell him to stop. He leaves without comment and Patricio and I start examining. Sure enough, this stuff is fairly close-grained and straight. There are a few knotholes but they can be cut out. True, the pieces are not in the exact widths we need. But we can laminate to get what we want and by varying the grains in the lay-up, we can actually gain strength.
The big problem is that this wood is not “pine”. White pine was the classic wood for masts until the settlers reached the West Coast. There they also used fir and spruce. Since beginning this saga, I was able to make contact with Joe May in Alaska, the previous owner of Vilisar and the builder of this particular mast. He told me that Vilisar’s mast was made from original growth Douglas Fir that had been air-dried (i.e., not in a drying furnace). Virtually any wood with similar grain and similar hard or softness would do to make a “Dutchman”, i.e., a repair.
For $10 and a $2 contribution to the plant’s coffee fund, we walk out of there with two bundles of staves, more than enough, I hope, to make to repairs.
By noon I am back on a bus to Santa Domingo. No luxury bus this time; another long-distance local bus. It takes four hours to get to its destination and then I wait an hour on the station paltform withmy bundles of wood for the next Chicken Bus to Bahia leaving at 1400. The bus is hot and packed with families and schoolboys and girls from the countryside when we pull out of the station. The brakes are running hot and we are over the engine. My seat is also right over the axle of the Hino buss. Hino is basically a Chinese truck chassis cum engine with a locally fabricated bus body bolted on. Unlike the Ejecutivo, it is sprung like a truck and Ecuador’s roads are for the most part very bad. The country has been financially broke for years despite its oil millions. The road through the passes from Quito was a toll road so has its own source of financing. It is therefore in good shape. The rest of the country, however, lives with very curvy, frequently very neglected “highways”. The bus shakes and rattles and rolls for six hours to Chone and on to Bahia. I started the day with a bit of a headache and nausea from the high altitude in Quito. By the time we hit Chone I have a splitting headache am was ready to throw up and throw up boating with the contents of my stomach. Fortunately, I find my aspirin and swill down a few bottles of water. By the time we are back in Bahia I am feeling pretty grotty but at least most of the headache is gone and I am looking forward to a good nights sleep aboard Vilisar.
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, Wednesday, 20 June 2007
If anything is likely to put me off cruising and boating in general it will be another overnight trip to Quito!
I arrived back in Bahia last night with a colossal headache. Leaving here on the 0900 “Ejecutivo” bus from the Reina del Camino bus line, I travelled in the luxurious vehicle as far as Santa Domingo de los Colorados. This translates directly as “Saint Sunday of the Colours Red”, but the red is in reference to the Colorado indigenous people and Saint Domingo to the guy who converted them, I think. The native people paint their faces and hair red. Not that you are likely to see any red-skins (in the cosmetic sense) in the town. I got off the bus and jumped into a taxi. Rafaelo, a young driver, whisked me around to various lumber yards and other outlets on the search for “pino”.
The object of my journey was to find “pino” to repair my mast. It doesn’t exist on the coast and every carpentero and every lumber merchant said to go to Sta. Domingo or Quito and I would find it. I don’t remember seeing that much timber on the bare hills around Quito, but you never know. And although Sta. Domingo is much higher than Bahia on the coast, how high is it really?
And, you would think “pino” means “pine” in Spanish. And maybe it does. But you have to be very careful about this word. For most people here it seems to mean anything from real knotty pitch-pine to spruce or fir or cypress or whatever conifer you have in mind. “Pino”, in fact seems to be a synonym for “conifer”. Not maybe with carpenters and knowledgeable people. But you have to know who you are dealing with.
In the whole trip, the only actual “pine” I found was at Ace Hardware at the big El Paseo shopping centre in Sta. Domingo d. l. Colorado! Go figure! But, although it looked very clean. There were knots in the wood (approx. 5 x 20 x 2500 cm) but we could probably get enough cut out to suit our purposes. The problem was that the grain was exceptionally wide by comparison with the current mast wood. The clerk said it was from Brazil and therefore tropical. He did have some pitchy pine in smaller sizes and tighter grains. You can kind get an idea if the wood is really pine if the seller refuses to cut it because the resin will gum up his saw. This was the case for this smaller, more yellow lumber. I decided to keep going to Quito where I had seen lots of lumber yards on the way into town.
This bus rated as a semi-local bus. The driver was aggressive going up the mountain pass, risking all on blind curves (from where I sat). People were throwing up into the plastic bags the conductor had ready to hand, and babies were crying from the nopise and the rocking nad the change in air pressure. We climbed through the clouds to over 3,500, where we came into the exceptionally clear Andean mountain air. In most directions we could clearly see the glaciers on mountains including Chimborazo down near Riobamba and a few of the Hausberg volcanoes nearer Quito.
Sure enough, there were plenty of yards lining the highway into Quitumba, a barrio (suburb) twenty minutes short of the Terminal Terrestre (Central Bus Station downtown). I decided to jump out at the traffic circle near the big plywood plant (Plywood Ecuadorianos), found a cab as the dusk was rapidly descending and had him take me to a small and clean hotel. I arranged for him to pick me up the next morning at 0830 and, after depositing my stuff headed out to find a meal.
The next morning there is Patricio, a displaced fifty-year-old from Loja in the south. He has been in Quito for 28 years and knows his way around. A good choice. We check into about four yards only to hear the same plaint that we had heard in Bahia and Manta, “¿Pino? No hay! No existá aquí!” Or words to that effect. Finally we were directed to one lumber yard along the main road with a huge sign outside saying “PINO”. Now, this is promising!
Inside it turns out to be basically a recycling centre for all the wooden pallets and metal used to pack machinery or transport other products. Most of the materials come from Japan, says Frederico, the indigenous boss, who comes originally from near Otavalo and has grown up in the forestry business. This business is the closest thing to a modern enterprise I have witnessed in Ecuador: all the men wear safety helmets, goggles, gloves and kidney belts as well as heavy shoes. Most of the work, however, is still “handwerk”, i.e. pulling pallets apart using crowbars, driving the nails out with hammers, stacking the wood by hand and fabricating new pallets and other items for sale locally.
Frederico listened with native impassivity to my tale of a need for pino to repair the mast of my valero (sailboat). My SPanish seems tobe getting better, I thinkm until, without a word, Frederico walks out of his office and off around a corner into the interior of the plant. Patricio and I stand looking at each other. Frederico returns seconds later and beckons us impatiently to follow him. Off we toddle off in his wake. We come to a corner where two indigenas are pulling pallets and other constructions apart with crowbars, working from the top of the pile down and throwing the individual pieces into a pile near them. This second pile is now higher than the pile they are standing on. Frederico marches up the loose pile of 2 x 2 wood staves and starts turning them over in his hands. Then he starts throwing pieces down at us. I gather he is selecting good straight and tight-grained pieces with few knotholes in them for inspection.
After twenty minutes I reckon we have enough for an initial selection and tell him to stop. He leaves without comment and Patricio and I start examining. Sure enough, this stuff is fairly close-grained and straight. There are a few knotholes but they can be cut out. True, the pieces are not in the exact widths we need. But we can laminate to get what we want and by varying the grains in the lay-up, we can actually gain strength.
The big problem is that this wood is not “pine”. White pine was the classic wood for masts until the settlers reached the West Coast. There they also used fir and spruce. Since beginning this saga, I was able to make contact with Joe May in Alaska, the previous owner of Vilisar and the builder of this particular mast. He told me that Vilisar’s mast was made from original growth Douglas Fir that had been air-dried (i.e., not in a drying furnace). Virtually any wood with similar grain and similar hard or softness would do to make a “Dutchman”, i.e., a repair.
For $10 and a $2 contribution to the plant’s coffee fund, we walk out of there with two bundles of staves, more than enough, I hope, to make to repairs.
By noon I am back on a bus to Santa Domingo. No luxury bus this time; another long-distance local bus. It takes four hours to get to its destination and then I wait an hour on the station paltform withmy bundles of wood for the next Chicken Bus to Bahia leaving at 1400. The bus is hot and packed with families and schoolboys and girls from the countryside when we pull out of the station. The brakes are running hot and we are over the engine. My seat is also right over the axle of the Hino buss. Hino is basically a Chinese truck chassis cum engine with a locally fabricated bus body bolted on. Unlike the Ejecutivo, it is sprung like a truck and Ecuador’s roads are for the most part very bad. The country has been financially broke for years despite its oil millions. The road through the passes from Quito was a toll road so has its own source of financing. It is therefore in good shape. The rest of the country, however, lives with very curvy, frequently very neglected “highways”. The bus shakes and rattles and rolls for six hours to Chone and on to Bahia. I started the day with a bit of a headache and nausea from the high altitude in Quito. By the time we hit Chone I have a splitting headache am was ready to throw up and throw up boating with the contents of my stomach. Fortunately, I find my aspirin and swill down a few bottles of water. By the time we are back in Bahia I am feeling pretty grotty but at least most of the headache is gone and I am looking forward to a good nights sleep aboard Vilisar.
posted by rjb @ Wednesday, June 20, 2007
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