El Panecillo
The brushed aluminum doors open, revealing the black, pockmarked granite floor of the atrium. I saunter past a weathered Ecuadorian man who is busily fidgeting with the safety on his assault rifle. I give the man a deferential nod in the way someone does to acknowledge a man holding an M-16. As I get closer to him, he reaches his arm for the cylindrical brass door handles that will let me into the hotel’s dining room. I enter hoping there are still some chorizo left in the steam tables.
The room is quiet except for a group of middle aged, American men, all of whom appear to have recently stopped shaving. Between the Rolexes, platinum wedding rings, brand name clothing, and unnaturally youthful appearances, each of these guys must have looked like a lottery ticket with legs. I had just spent two days in the care of a cab driver that proudly toured me through Quito. Despite the beauty and rich culture of this city, one thing I didn’t see was wealth. Well, at least not before walking into the dining room.
I try to restrain my judgments of the group of men I have yet to introduce myself to, but I can’t help recognize the familiar look of hubris amongst the loudest at the table. I am about to walk into a big fish story. I imagine that these are people that can describe every country they’ve visited by degrees of comparison to the US, as if they’re all a derivative. People tend to squint when they’re confused, and these men all look like they’re staring at the sun. I can’t help but wonder if they’re searching for subtitles. I look around the table, and it seems that most of them have passed on the chorizo. I take an open seat next to a man that resembles the villain from No Country For Old Men. He goes by the name “Big Sexy”. He’s friendly, though I can’t help but notice the irony of his nickname. After a brief introduction my attention goes back to the sausages. The conversation continues while I quietly observe, feeling nostalgic about my previous days Ecuador.
On one afternoon, I saw what is arguably, the most conspicuous structure in Quito. Located in the center of the city, it’s a 149-foot-tall, unpainted, aluminum statue of the Woman of The Apocalypse (from The Book of Revelations). Winged, haloed, and standing on a gigantic snake, she protrudes like a lightning rod from a hill names El Panecillo. At the base of the hill resides the old, colonial district, which is the most popular tourist attraction in the city. When I visited the area I had a bit of wanderlust, and I had intended to take in both sights on foot. The road to the top is a long, meandering traverse that circles around the hill. It first takes you through a densely populated residential area before it becomes cradled in steep embankments of grass and eucalyptus trees. It sounded like a great walk. Thankfully, I spoke enough Spanish to understand that the Quiteños insisted that I take a car instead. Looking out the window of the taxi, I quickly understood why. The perceptible wealth of the colonial district ends abruptly at the warning signs that delineate its border. The narrow roads that lay past it are lined with dilapidated buildings, many of which are thoroughly ventilated with bullet holes. El Panecillo is one of the most dangerous slums in the city.
In the hotel’s dining room, three men that ignored that warning are recounting the story of how they were mugged along the way. Will, a trained economist and port contractor, is fit, athletic, and well manicured. Imitaz, tall and overweight, is a trauma surgeon who has the distinction of the being the only American to treat a Black Mamba’s bite. Despite his Iranian heritage, he refuses to listen to anything except country music. Dan, enigmatic and forgettable, is a reservoir of nervous energy. His eyes suggest that he’s over-stimulated, yet, ironically, he seems like he could fall unconscious at any moment. Despite their personalities, in the United States these men are unremarkable in appearance. On El Panecillo, though, it’s obvious that their combined wealth surpasses the lifetime earnings of every person on the hill.
They had been touring the old colonial district, ajacent to El Panecillo, when they decided to visit La Virgen. The journey started with a leisurely stroll through an exceptionally dangerous, third world slum. Miraculously, this part of their journey passed without incident. Eventually they reached the steeper inclines of the hill, and began the long walk that circles around the hill to La Virgen. The road was delightfully picturesque and disarming, as a panoramic cityscape was visible beyond the steep, grassy slopes on the perimeter of the road. They were unaware that this area was, ironically, the most dangerous for tourists. As the road spiraled around the summit, they passed through several sharp bends that were blind for an uncomfortably long distance on both sides.
They walked in typical, American, every-man-is-an-island fashion. The longer they walked, the further they drifted apart. Will was in front, followed by Dan, and Imitaz was in the rear. Eventually they created enough distance between each other that they would disappear from view at bends in the road. As they neared the top, a pick-up truck drove past them, with several people leering out the windows and yelling in Spanish. They thought nothing of it. Will was the first to walk out of sight of the others. He turned the corner and saw that the truck had parked along the road, next to a van. One of the passengers was walking towards him. With his left arm outstretched, and the right held behind his back, Will assumed this poor, brown man was begging for money. A native of California, Will attempted to dismiss him with, “No dinero”. This was when he noticed that people were unloading from both vehicles, all with their eyes fixed on him.
“The guy was hiding a stick behind his back. A sharpened, fucking stick.” Will’s tilts his head to the ceiling in introspection. “ I felt like I was in some kind of movie. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen in real life”. I notice that this story is being told with pride that is completely untainted with the humility of embarrassment. How men, who are nearly twice my age, managed to miss such foreboding details can only be explained by ignorance, naivety, or, worst of all, arrogance. I suppose it could be misinterpreting confidence. None of them have so much as a scratch, so maybe they all have black belts in something. I take a bite of my pan de yuca, and quietly anticipate the rest of the story.
The Ecuadorian man finally reached Will, uppercutting his chest with the sharpened stick he was hiding. Fortunately, the whittled spike glanced off the thick shell of his mountaineering jacket. The fight escalated for a moment, with neither of them able to inflict any damage. Will saw that the attacker’s associates were getting much closer, and that they all had sharpened sticks of their own. Drastically outnumbered, he retreated; running down the hill, screaming.
“So, I’m tearing ass, as fast as I can, and I’m looking over my shoulder, and I’m yelling, “No ahora! No ahora!” Not today, motherfucker”. I’m reminded of the subtle power of language. I don’t have the heart to tell him that his taunt means “not now”. I try to imagine what it would be like to mug some hapless gringo who started screaming “not now”? Those words would have sounded like an attempt at misdirection, or a plea for mercy; the last, desperate whimper before they get the biggest splinter of their life. Will continues.
He was being chased down the road by a man, who was being followed by a mob, who were all armed with sharpened sticks. He continued his sprint around the corner, and finally came within view of Dan. Dan paused to catch his breath, trying to understand the situation that was about to be thrust upon him. With a look of frightened confusion, he stood motionless as Will and his pursuer disinterestedly ran past him. The rapidly approaching group of stick wielding mad men caught his attention. He realized he had only one direction to escape, and took off down the hill. In what must have been an incredibly bizarre scene to witness, Dan was running only a few feet behind the man chasing Will.
A tour bus was quickly approaching them from the bottom of the hill, and Will attempted to stop it by running into the road. The bus driver, finding two white men being chased by a dozen thieves, swerved to avoid hitting him before continuing to climb up El Panecillo. Not having a whole lot of options, Will kept running. Serendipitously, another vehicle was coming up the hill. There were three passengers inside a late 90s, blue, Honda Civic. Two adults were in the front while a baby was strapped to a booster seat in the back. Will repeat his previous strategy of running in front of the car, but this time it was successful. He ran along the side of the car, opened the back door, and jumped, head first, onto the seat with the baby.
“I screamed “GO, GO GO!” and they took off with me in the back. They were probably thinking, “Who is this crazy gringo?”, but they drove me up to the top of the hill without saying a word. I got out, and then used my satellite phone to call my wife.” Will leans back into his chair, going silent with an obvious sense of satisfaction and relief. His part of the story is over. The table becomes a mosaic of expletives to describe disbelief. Will smiles and rubs the spot where he was hit in the chest.
“Man, you must have been pretty scared?”, asks Big Sexy, his sly smirk framed in the margins of his beige bowlcut. I sense that his comment is more of an accusation than a question. His eyes turn to Dan, “So what happened to you guys?” Dan’s eyes open like they’re trying to escape the sockets. “I kept running.” We spend the next couple of seconds anticipating a response that never arrives. I don’t think he found this experience as life affirming as Will did.
All eyes turn to at Imitaz. He is a large, bearded man that speaks with a gentle, reassuring voice cultivated over 20 years in emergency rooms. Despite his bedside manner, he speaks without making eye contact with anyone, his gaze alternating between the table or the spaces between people sitting at it. He appears to be taking the incident better than Dan is, but it doesn’t seem that this was a positive experience for him either. He says, “I was standing on the sidewalk, trying to catch my breath after climbing up that hill. The other guys were way ahead of me, so I didn’t know about any of these things that had happened. I couldn’t see anything”, the octave of his voice increases with each sentence, the way some people do when they want to avoid complicity. “I was just standing there when I looked up the road, and saw Dan come out of nowhere. He kept coming, and then he ran right past me. When I saw all the people behind him, I put two and two together, but, I’m a big guy, I knew there was no way that I was going to outrun them. They took my wallet, my cash, my passport, and my Rolex. I was totally fine, though. I didn’t bother to resist. They took what they wanted, and left right afterwards.” He turns to Will, squinting. “I can’t imagine what you could have done to piss that guy off so badly”. All attention shifts back to Will, whose shoulders and eyebrows raise in unison. He then lifts up his shirt to exposing a plate sized bruise, while saying, “Check this out”.
Imitaz reaches into his jacket pocket, revealing a small, glass bottle of black truffle oil. He offers it to the table, to which I happily oblige. I put a dozen drops of the rich, amber coloured liquid onto my eggs. Aromas of earth and musk overwhelm my palate, dampening the sound of a dozen men in amazement of the destructive power of a stick.
