I was in before even trying it. I liked the idea of moving fast through the streets and towns of the normal world. Pushing with reckless havoc like some creature from the wilderness let loose, tearing through the villages. Every where you go, you go in as a stranger and pick what you want to reveal. What you want to take in and what you want to let go. For me, how I interact with the world is like those finger paintings preschoolers make, all smears and mixtures and blends and chaos. But then the kid says “It’s a cat!” and everyone squints to see it. Does that make any sense?

Jer (not his real name/ maybe his real name) and I were out in the night, on the streets of Riobamba, a modest sized town on the bright green shelves of the Chambo River Valley. Like the rushing river that parallels it, the town starts in the foothills of the Andes and follows gravity down. Curtains of mountain form the bowl of a giant geological amphitheater around us. Out beyond the town lights, in the darkness where the stars disappear and there’s only deep jagged black, is the Chimborazo Volcano. An ancient grandfather with glacial remains resting on it’s peak. Hasn’t erupted since 550 AD but still warms the surrounding hot springs that draw the tourists in to the area.

We’d dropped our bags and headed out into the night after arriving via the creaking old shocks of some reincarnated school bus. I can’t remember where we stayed that pass… We’d just eaten and were walking the main strip, where the shops, restaurants and internet cafes line the boulevard. Followed the flow downhill then back again. Like simple 8-bit video game characters we moved at right angles and slipped through cross streets into new neighborhoods until there were no more backpackers and the streetlights sat unlit. Residential streets and quiet corner shops, spilling bright light from high wattage bulbs onto the sidewalk.

I heard the clicks and the rattle of urethane and pressed maple and like your favorite dog took off into the night leaving Jer to watch. I saw three kids, riding down the street, swapping turns on an old sharktail. The kind of skateboard the cool teenagers in your neighborhood would ride as you stood, slack-jawed, straddling a huffy in the age of neon and spandex. The words escaping as they’d launch from a plywood jump ramp, torn converse sneakers landing on grey, dirty grey griptape. Swearing with a carefree comfort that you’d never heard adults possess. To this day you can still see the faces of the ones who were super cool to you and the ones who were dicks. It’s such a scene that it just totally sidetracked me.

So, soon there we were. Me, three Ecuadorian twelve year olds and ol Jer, skating on the rough asphalt beneath a hazy light fixed above us on a telephone pole. The trucks worn and creaky. The graphics faded into grains, the wood chipped and splintering around the edges. A battered artifact from the late eighties with quite a deal of road beneath it. I hadn’t brought a board with me despite being advised to because it had been all about slimming down the rucksack. Carrying small loads and doing with less, but since we’d arrived I’d regretted that decision.

Cuenca was a larger city in the Andean highlands. The streets in the old town still the squared cobble of a Spanish style with high granite curbs. The cathedrals and high walls that lined the blocks making it feel medieval. We’d wandered till the colonial borders bled into the newer developments. Eventually we stumbled on a sporting goods store which had one and only one. It had no brand, bad bearings, too-loose trucks and passable wheels, the real issue was the graphic. A bright image of Pauly Shore-eque aliens partying down in the icy darkness of deep space, which I know sounds cool as fuck in theory but really missed the mark in execution.

For some reason we didn’t seem to realize that spray paint was an easily obtainable thing to remedy this and instead used strips of duct tape to hide the interstellar “Wea-sels.” Ollieing and riding along the sunny lots that looped the plazas we randomly (mystically?) ran into a small gaggle of locals rolling off an old loading dock. Like a dowsing rod, after weeks of seeing no skateboarding (besides in Rio) we’d found a whole little scene a few hours after getting a board.

It was and always has been a strange totem, an identity interlaced into a pretty simple arbitrary thing. I can’t make it make sense it just is. Despite all the flaws with that skateboard, it felt good to see it strapped to my backpack, stacked on luggage piles on the roofs of moaning steel vans. Through the quiet green hills of the Loja province to the village of Vilcabamba, in the Valley of Longevity. Dubbed the “Valley of Longevity” because of numerous old tales of area residents enjoying unnaturally long lives (like 134 yrs long). Later debunked (everyone was mortal) it still remains an enclave for trippy little botanist, bird watching, hallucinogenic health-freaks. A word of mouth history that involves hiding cowboy outlaws and B-list cult leaders.

*Johnny Lovewisdom in the hills of Vilcabamaba -source unknown*

The local hallucinogen called aguacolla, made from mescaline extracted from several dozen species of cacti (in the genus Trichocereus ) grows naturally in the hills. Referred to locally as the San Pedro cactus, licensed Quechua shamans are allowed to harvest, prepare it and guide folks. Puke and see God.

*Dairy cattle herding comes natural to Vermonters throughout the globe*

We made our way up into the hills outside of the centre, to an eco-lodge where you could rent a hammock or tent space for a nominal fee. Tack on a little extra and you’d get a hearty vegetarian breakfast each morning. We spent the days hill bombing the long roads outside the lodge, walking the trails and rummaging the shelves of an old home that had been converted into a second hand bookstore/ art gallery by hippy expats (tre Vermont). Hiding in the shade when the heat reached its peak.

At night we’d walk down to Shanta’s cantina, in the woods off the road. They served pizza in the evening, along with beer and a homemade mezcal snake juice. The evenings spent laughing and story-swapping with random new friends. A golden-haired, Texas-surfer-runaway who’d gotten sidetracked on his way to surf the legendary break off the coast of Peru, or the perennially cute/funny Australian backpackers who seem to appear like mystical apparitions whenever you deviate from the beaten path in a random corner of the world.

Shanta’s at that time was real outlaw shit. Bamboo walls, hard wood bar, moonshine in large jars with dead snakes soaking mad scientist style at the bottom. Decorated with photos and relics of an honest to God life as a cowboy. Shanta himself a Sam Elliot character liberated from the film reel and hiding out in the mountains of a land where there’s little risk of extradition.

His Ecuadorian wife was the hostess and he was the presence. I honestly can’t remember if he said more than a few words to us but I remember cracking him up a few times. We’d all rock and lean across the old tables in the candle light. Smoking El Gallo cigarettes, wild on snake venom and strong sparkling poison, laughing and listening to stories about dodging truancy officers and sleeping on the beaches of Galveston and Hawaii. Swapping it all for something out in the ocean or further down the road.

Our final day in the valley (before crossing the border into Peru), we attracted the attention of some small kids from a nearby farm and spent the morning helping them ride the hill the way kids in New England sled in the winter. Pushing them up and helping to guard the shoulders and prevent injury while they plunged, laughing and screaming, sitting two at a time on the old Alien hoverboard. Their mom came out and invited us to the house for lunch. We sat in their living room, cooled off by a floral breeze threading through the open backdoor and out the front. Our little hosts still riding and giggling on the porch while their mom smiled shyly and moved about the kitchen.

*Jer, road rash from the tar grater and the duct taped deck.*

The goofy little board continued to attract kids, skaters, surfers and others well into Peru. Pushing around bright marble and granite plazas or down long empty roads. I remember making pisco sour-fueled attempts to ollie off a three set in front of a bar at the urging of the doorman and a crowd of onlookers in Cusco. Failing miserably but protected from pain by a rubber coating of booze. Eventually we gave it to the kids of the single mother who ran one of the boarding houses we were staying in. I bet it’s still going - creaky, splitting and chipping over cold Incan streets that were laid in place thousands of years ago. Before the creeping lights of information, exploitation and globalization focused their beams into all the hidden places. It’s ok to be romantic about this shit, it’s kind of the whole point.

Thankfully, we had no video options at the time, only one $25 dollar Cannon camera to record it, which leaves the door open for taking liberties in the future. For telling the stories in their flawed, natural state. Going back and reading about the area now on the internet, I’m increasingly disenchanted by the Yelp reviews with dry explanations and domesticated directions, fact checking and myth busting what was once wild and mythical. I think about the value of going into it a stranger with the notes and myths of those before you and those you meet. You sink your hands into the lore and the rumors and add your own.

In the end, the best stories are the ones told late at night, in the orange glow of candle wicks and lit cigarettes. The narratives that blend and smudge in the minds of the listeners and then disappear on the quiet (wavering) walks back home. The memories that leave the atmosphere and drift out into the stars where the alien parties never end.

Bombing the Valley of Longevity

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