A week back I was talking with the secretary of my organization and she mentioned that she was going to participate in this year’s “Reina del Cisne” walk. I posed some interest and she, along with the help of my counterpart convinced me to participate.
The story of the Reina del Cisne or Queen of the Swan originates with a woman who showed up one year unexpectedly to Southern Loja, which was in the midst of a serious drought, causing many of the locals to eat dog and burro to survive (giving Lojanos a bad reputation that still exists today). Apparently this unknown woman came into town and was deemed as a prophet when immediately the rains started to come and the health of the community began to improve. As the story goes the woman then mysteriously disappeared leaving no trace that she had been there or where she had gone. Fittingly the people had a small doll made in her remembrance and now they pray to that every year.
The significance of the walk is that about a hundred years ago, Ecuadorians would walk from Loja to a small religious town named Cisne (Swan) which was about 80 km away (approx 50 miles), making a pit stop about halfway in a town called Catamayo. The tradition states (or at least what I could understand in what was explained to me) that family members of sick individuals, expecting mothers (which I find it crazy a pregnant woman would do this walk), and many others with their given reasons would hike across the Ecuadorian countryside to pray to the Reina del Cisne statue for good health. Only nowadays they bring the doll from its home in Cisne through Catamayo to Loja and the followers walk with it. Each year, approximately 500,000 people come from all over the country to participate in this journey and many of the local residents join in to make the trip from Catamayo to Loja but there are still a few die hard's that do the entire 50 miles in two days.
My Experience on the “Reina del Cisne” walk:
Needless to say I decided to get in touch with my Catholic roots (I am not Catholic at all) and walk the 25 miles from Catamayo to Loja with some members of my community. Why this took only minor convincing and not much forethought on my part I have no idea, but it wasn’t until about an hour into our two hour bus ride that I realized what I had actually signed up for. I was getting ready to go a night without sleeping, walk uphill for about 7 hrs and downhill for 3, all the while accompanied by 500,000 of my best Ecuadorian friends who I could barely communicate with.
We arrived in Catamayo at 10:30 at night I was a little surprised at what I saw. First off the streets were full of people and rather than this being some kind of religious event it looked more like the county fair. There were kids walking around with their hands full of cheap stuffed animals, ice cream and cotton candy. The Ferris wheel and fireworks lit up the sky while novios (boyfriends) won cheap key chains for their novias at the pellet shooting games. Our group walked around for a while, went to the church where the statue was on display and then headed towards the highway to find a place to rest for a couple of hours. It was here that, for the first time in my life, I slept on the island of a highway with about 10,000 other people, I felt like I was camping out for a Grateful Dead concert. Anyway the fact that I was about to walk for 25 miles running on about 20 minutes of sleep was slowly starting to sink in as my eyes slowly came to rest using a rock as a pillow. Then I woke up and it was 2:45 and my group was getting ready for our 3 o’clock departure. We packed up our water and sunscreen, snapped one photo for a “before” picture and embarked on our journey up the mountain.
As we slowly scaled this mountain seemingly inch by inch, I will say that it was very cool to walk for about three hours in the early morning with only the moon’s rays to guide us. Then to see the sun coming up over the mountains made the first part of the journey pretty spectacular. As we progressed we started to see more and more people on the side of the road taking breaks for a cat nap. It was pretty amusing to see how the people would curl up in the gutter, snuggling with their loved ones as if they were at home in their nice warm bed.
We continued walking through the morning stopping at one of the many street vendors along the way for a typical Ecuadorian breakfast, chicken and rice. And after about 5 more hours of walking uphill we finally came to the crest of the mountain where it had seemed the county fair from Catamayo had moved. There were dozens of small restaurant operations set up to serve the thousands of people as well as street vendors selling everything from cotton candy to visors and coats for your dog (cause what better place to buy clothes for your dog???).
At about 2’oclock in the afternoon we slowly made our way into Loja only to find another fair going on with music, games and churches preparing for the arrival of the Reina that was about 3 hours behind us. As you might imagine we were not too excited about partaking in the festivities and just wanted to catch the first bus back to our small little town for some well earned rest. I think I was asleep before I sat down in the bus for our hour long bus ride home and don’t think I really fully woke up when I got off the bus and dragged myself the 300 yards to my house and into my bed, where I slept the entire night.
The next day…
The following morning was an event that will only happen once in my life, my 30th birthday. As I lay there in my bed getting motivated to head to work I couldn’t help but reflect on my past 30 years, how I was getting older and the depressing fact that most of my peers in the Peace Corps were between the ages of 22-26. But when I finally did persuade myself to rise from my comfortable bed, my body would not function. My legs felt like two stiff 2x4’s, my hips would only rotate about 10% of their normal distance and my feet were sore with blisters. So not only was my demeanor a little depressed because my 30th birthday had finally arrived but my body was also fulfilling its role in reminding me that I was turning into an old man.
So, in conclusion, the moral of this story is that when you are coming up on an event or birthday that is a milestone for you getting older, do yourself a favor and take it easy the day before so at least your body won’t reinforce that fact!
