Esmeraldas

It’s long overdue, but here’s a summary (mostly in pictures) of our brief 3-day trip to the Afro-Ecuadorian community of Playa de Oro (from the weekend of Nov. 10-12):

We took a red-eye bus ride Wednesday night and arrived 9 hours later on Thursday morning at the coastal community, a bit bleary-eyed and sweating up a storm from the heat and humidity. It all seemed very reminiscent of the Amazon, as we took a similar canoe ride down to the village where we were staying. When we got there, were greeted by some of the community members with traditional music, an enthusiastic welcome, and a huge, delicious lunch of fried fish and rice (we ate lots of wonderful fresh seafood throughout the weekend!)

Needless to say we were all pretty exhausted, so the rest of the day was spent chatting about history and traditions. Basically, the ancestors of this particular community were brought sometime in the late 1700s from Africa and enslaved with the purpose of extracting gold from the river basin. Oral history, poetry, and music is also important to the community, so we heard from a local man about their way of documenting history through a type of poem called a décima, and listened to a bit of traditional Marimba music.

On Friday we took a hike through the jungle (which included an exciting spotting by one of our guides of a tiger footprint – luckily they’re nocturnal!), and went swimming in a beautiful laguna next to a little waterfall. On our way back, we stopped at one of the rocky beaches and learned (very basically) how to pan for gold. We also had a lesson back at the community of how to make sugar from sugar cane – an extremely physically strenuous process!

          

That night we had a big fiesta with members of the community, complete with traditional music (both their upbeat Marimba music as well as a rather pathetic rendition of some “traditional American music” from us..) and Marimba dance.

The next morning we left the community and ate lunch at the house of Papa Roncón, a legendary marimba-player and story-teller of the Esmeraldas region. The marimba music and dance is a beautiful example and symbol of the many ways in which the Afro community is dedicated to preserving their roots and traditions. Papa Roncón was very charismatic and welcoming, and after another seafood-filled lunch and an hour of music-making with Papa, we started the long journey back to Quito.

...and coming up next weekend: GALÁPAGOS!