Ecuador, Cuenca - The Hands of Cuenca

Cuenca´s hands and people

The night Water started to fall from the ceiling through an improvised shower. Waves of pleasure electrified the crowd that danced frenetic to the sounds of the beat.
The music - the gathering link.
The night - the time for freedom.
It always surprises me to realise how music unites people. Three hours before, that was just a dark space with Art Pop, Manga paintings on the walls and holes on the wooden floor. The pure enjoyment of music was the reason why people went there and that was just another night were people went to share their joy of music. Pop is a place that toasts to life, friendships, music, dance, and there, an unlike group of people gathered to dance and above all to share the newly formed friendships communicating in a language that we all understood - the language of dance and music!

Roy, a man with an eternal smile and the spirit of the modern renaissance, his passion for languages, culture, human beings,travels, Latin America, his country Ecuador, and the city where he lives - Cuenca. I enjoyed his fantastic sense of humour, his stories,his friendship and his company during the 4 days that became 3 weeks, and on that night, I also enjoyed his energy and Latin sense ofrhythm. If our dream becomes true we´ll meet again in 2009 to cycle inTibet!

Cláudia, my long and dark haired friend with eyes that shone like twosuns. Our walks , our conversations, our laughter and that night wherewe danced together with soaking clothes, proving that the Latin feelof the two continents is expressed in the same way: passion for music and dance. Her dreams to travel in Europe this summer will certainly come true, and I hope we meet again in British lands. One day this woman will be fixing the Ecuadorean people´s teeth, but in the next few months she will have to study hard to keep the promess to her dad to pass all her exams to get her air ticket to the Old Continent!

Gael a ciclotourist who with his travel buddy Yves, cycled South America during two years doing an exchange of french games for children with south American games, visiting schools and orphanages. His Robson's Crusoe´s hair style and the unshaven beard are distinct marks of the male tribe of ciclonauts. That night his muscles moved to the sound of the music. Gael has now returned toFrance and I try to imagine how his is life now that he has to adapt himself to his old reality and adjust to the fact that he no longer wakes up in the Andean Mountains?

Geoff, an unlikely traveller, shy and reserved, 24 years old. It is hard to imagine that he is traveling South America on his motorbike spending the savings that he had to open a business and going against his parents disapproval, who were quite worried about him specially after he disappeared in his crossing between Colombia and Panama. But he left out his inhibitions that night and danced surrounded by the crowd and sharing his smile.

Magda, a Colombian student, was visiting Ecuador and the neighbouring countries, was heading to Machu Pichu in Peru. She opted to become a vegetarian in defense of the animals rights. She is from the capital of salsa - Cali, but there, in Pop, she danced regardless of music styles, spreading her happiness and sharing her travel experiences.

Jeff, a Canadian cyclist, also traveling the American continent by bicycle, is a heavy metal fan who also joined the group and danced shaking the dust from the many kilometres of the roads already cycled and is now our travel buddy. When we left Pop, our clothes were soaking and our chests full of happiness. Some of us will never see each other again, but that night had been such a special moment that it will be marked in our memories like a mural standing the passage of time and making us understand that the real reason to travel is for friendship and unique encounter slike this one.

The wait

After cycling the mountains inside what it felt like a constant cloud and not being able to see anything around us or to enjoy the rewards of the hard climbs, we arrived in Cuenca. Cuenca the city that reflected the sun in its colourful walls of past coloniality. The city is a world heritage site by UNESCO and it is an "oasis" of urbanity in the middle of the Andean mountains. It is a very touristic place, full of gringos (what we tourists are called by the locals). Many are just visiting, but fall in love with the city charms and end upstaying forever. Cuenca was marked in our travel map as a place to recover strenghts,wait for my bank cards, and to plan the next moves towards Peru, but my three weeks in Cuenca became days where I ended up getting so involved with the city and its people that when was time to leave I felt an invisible string anchoring me to that land of crossing rivers. My bank cards never arrived and Nuno, who had been cycling for over a week in the jungle, had arrived in Loja a city 200 kilometers south ofCuenca and was waiting for me.

Encounters

Life can be amazingly surprising when we let things happen: on the first days that I was in Cuenca alone I felt bored and was wondering what I was going to do with all that time of wait until one day when I decided to leave the door to my room in the hostel where I was staying, opened, that act, although symbolic, initiated a process where I started to meet all sorts of different people. That afternoon was spent eating cherries with Tomoki, a very beautiful and eccentric Japanese guy. On a sunny end of afternoon we shared our travel experiences, our lives lived in London, our photos, he had an amazing eye to see the bizarre in ordinary things. Later that night we went out to POP with Kaido, a traveller from Estonia, a tall strong men with piercing blue eyes, also a great photographer, he wrote traveling articles for a women´s magazine in his country. We had a great time dancing on a empty dance floor. When one travels one has the feelingthat each moment is unique, that there is no space for inibithions. We knew that we would not see each other maybe ever again and in that brief encounter we made the most of it and enjoyed the moment. Tomoki went south to Peru to meet his sister and Kaido went to the coast of Ecuador the following days.

Like the pieces of a domino that I place in line closely behind each other to observe them as they fall to the touch of my finger, the fact that I left Cuenca reveal itself allowed strangers to become friends and a series of events took place in a way or another and I could reveal the human side of Cuenca, the side that surpasses any otherside of any city.

The hands of Cuenca

When I saw those small leather boots in the middle of the disorganised workshop I felt an irresistible urge to know the story behind the hands who had shaped those two pieces of leather and transforming them in beautiful tiny boots, that reminded me of past times, times where things were made to measure, times where objects had an extended life beyond the first fault. I returned to the cobbler the following day with the wish to meet the hands who had brought to life the used shoes of Cuenca. In Cuenca the objects have an extended life because the city still lives of the resurrection of things more than of the blind consumerism that we experience in the western world. And this process enables several workshops to be kept alive recovering and bringing new life to old and used objects. An old leather jacket could be easily recovered, dresses could be done and redone, a blouse could be embroidered with unique patterns, a guitar could be made and fixed to the wishes of the musician, a hat could be shaped from the more traditional to the more eccentric shapes. It is a real pleasure to find things to fix and watch as they come to life through the skillful hands of these artisans.

Mr Luiz David Billa spent the last two years of his life in a dark and untidy room with shelves full of repaired and old shoes. That room opens to the street and to the noisy sounds of the cars, footsteps and voices of people walking outside. Sometimes there are costumers comingin or neighbours who pop in to say hello. Mr Luiz learned to repair shoes when he was 10 years old but he also tried his luck doing other jobs in the hope of earning more money. He worked as a bricklayer but he gave up after he fell from the scaffolding breaking his hipbone. He then tried his luck in the sugarcane plantations but he used to cut himself frequently and gaveup. He married, had two children, got divorced. Just one of hischildren is alive. He doesn´t keep any contact with his family, he lives on his own. His life is sad. His life is dark. Seated there next to him I started to realise his difficulty to repair the trainers tha the had on his hands. He has cataracts and his small economies will be used in the hope that an operation will bring more light to his life or at least enough light to allow him to see better so he can providefor himself. It maybe that not much light is getting through his eyes, but his smile is full of it! I felt that he was very glad to have someone there to keep him company and to listen to his stories. He showed me the typical shoes that he does with leather and the small leather boots that fascinated me the day before. They were for a little girl who had a disability and she needed the boots to be made to measure to fit her. Later, one of his few friends joined us, hehelps Mr Luis on the more complicated jobs. After 4 hours talking with Mr Luiz, I left. I felt sad because we can also feel the loneliness that others feel.

So many people pass through our life but in reality only a little of their life passes through us. On another of my wanderings through Cuenca I found other hands, the hands of a very friendly lady who embroidered dresses and blouses with the traditional embroidery from Cuenca.

Beatriz Peralta had a littleworkshop on a colonial building where the municipality created a space for artisans to display and create their work. They only pay a very small rent, as the rents on the high streets would be too expensive. Its central location attracts many visitors thus keeping possible the preservation of the traditions the arts and crafts of the region. Beatriz is single and lives with three more women: hers sister and her nieces. Her sister designs the patterns that are later embroidered on the beautiful dresses, blouses, ponchos and waistcoats. There are not many people buying this type of work and specially since the cheapChinese shops invaded the country. People seem to prefer to buy globalized fashion to handmade and bespoke. One day there wont be anyone to do these works. Things will just be trown in the bin as soon as they present the first fault and we will all dress the same clothes presented to us by global companies.

Cuenca has half million inhabitants but after three weeks one can feel the village atmosphere felt in most of the neighbourhoods. We start greeting the familiar faces, start going to same places for food, the owner of the hostel gets worried if you get late home. Strangers star to be known people and you start to get habits and create a sort of routine. Everyone is asking if my parcel has arrived and congratulating me that it hasn't because that way I stay longer inCuenca. I start to feel the same.

And in my search for Cuenca's hands I found the hands of Felipe who works on the Internet cafe during the day and is the DJ in POP at night. He is an engineering student and his life is lived intensely, between the Internet cafe, his school and his work at night, he seems to enjoy that pace. His 22 years of life are full of hope, full of dreams and his latinity is expressed not only in the way he DJ's but also in the way he flirts with the opposite sex. He hopes to travel one day to the old continent when he finishes his degree, but until then he will just cheer the peoples of Cuenca with his electro Latin music!

Rafael, an art student, who told me about his project for his graduation where he intends to recover the corpses that are not reclaimed in the morgue and search for its histories and tattoo them on their lifeles sbodies. This way he wishes to give voice to a life that would pass without being noticed as if in reality it had never happened. Through these silence voices Rafael intends to show how much we ignore those that surround us, mostly those that live on the margins of society.With death, the history of a person is gone, mostly if that person was never acknowledged or died alone. Its not an easy project for many reasons, but most of all because it deals with taboos such as death, bodie and society all in one. I suppose that since art is now more than a collection of strict rules and canones, its important that we question things. In a society growing more and more indifferent to others and more prone to sensationalism maybe that is an effective way to get the message across. We wait for the results.

Stay or leave

The parcel wasn't giving any signs that was going to arrive soon and Nuno was waiting for me for over a week, I had to decide: moving towards south and keep my bike adventure or stay in Cuenca and embrace a new project. I decided to go south, the call was stronger. I didn't say goodbye to many of my new friends because I hate goodbyes and because I wait that one day I will return to Cuenca. On the following days I returned to the Andean Mountains. My adventures heading to Peru will follow!

PS - Sorry I could not put better fotos on my website, my camera got lost and those were some of my fotos from Cuenca that I managed to recover.