Terremoto en Japon

I thought I’d take some time to write some about what its like to live, work, and play in a sleepy coastal town in Ecuador. The culture, the economy, the infrastructure and little snippets of how life rolls along down here. But mother nature had other plans...

I was awoken this morning by a rapping on my door. Not a knock, but a rap, something that makes one bolt upright and wonder what’s going on even before getting pants on. One of the other tenants of the hostel told me in a slow southern draw that there had been a massive earthquake in Japan and the coastlines of Ecuador were being evacuated. I went down stairs and talked to a few people – some of the locals were leaving, some weren’t, same with the gringos. I opted to stay noting that there was a big cliff behind us that I hoped I could climb if things got sketchy, and internet so I could check how the wave was progressing.

I booted up my computer and started doing research. Its incredibly hard to find information on tsunamis in Ecuador - Ecuador doesn’t even have its own wave buoy. I did find out that the president had issued a state of emergency and evacuated all of the coastline. We started seeing policia roll towards town in their pickup trucks and motorcycles. The cleaning lady showed up and dismissed the threat of a tsunami on seemingly no evidence. I woke up the last tenants and told them in broken Spanish that there was an earthquake in Japan and a possible tsunami. They dismissed it too with the same logic as the cleaning lady. I packed up all my stuff so it could be thrown in the truck in short notice, and then I moved other people’s valuables from the first floor to a locked room on the second. The water was the first danger, but we heard looting was close behind if we left the property.

I got back on the computer and started talking to friends in California and looking for signs of how big the wave would be. At this point I remembered that all of my belongings in California are packed into my car which is parked 6 blocks from the ocean at about 10 feet of elevation. I became less concerned for my immediate well being and more so for my stuff stashed in San Diego. The time for the wave to hit southern California came and went with no major news coverage, and then a friend told me it was a non-event, so I was relieved my stuff was safe.

I did some normal work around the hostel until about 5:00 when I went into town to find out if I was supposed to work at the restaurant. Instead of walking along the beach like usual I decided to take the most rickety, thrashed bike I have ever ridden along the road. Both wheels are severely bent, the derailleurs are rusted in place, the brakes are old style U-brakes that don’t work, and one of the pedals is completely broken, but when I pushed down on the pedals it was transferred to forward momentum so guess that counts as a bike. When I got to town it was completely deserted. There were some kids kicking a ball around in the street, and a couple groups of adults gathered around a few TV sets, but for the most part the town was abandoned. I was passed by a police pick up truck, and then two more on a motorcycle. The “passenger” on the motorcycle was carrying an automatic AK style gun in case looting started. I rode along the beach and all the businesses were closed. The only place that had any movement was Hotel Bambu. There were about 10 locals hanging out watching CNN in Spanish so I ordered a beer and joined them, picking up what I could from the conversations. When the police drove by one of the employees quickly took my beer from the table and put it on the bench next to me. Apparently all businesses were ordered to be closed and selling a beer could get them in a lot of trouble.

After about an hour I rode back to the hostel. No where else in the world had gotten a major tsunami and we were feeling pretty good. We started cooking some dinner just as we got a phone call that the Galapagos were expecting a 6 meter wave in about half an hour. 6 meters is huge, and we were suddenly questioning if we should be staying. There’s a shell of a hotel on the cliff overlooking the town and we heard that most of the expats in town were up there having a party. I moved everything from the second floor to the third, put a jug of water and a case of beer in the back of our 1970’s Land Cruiser, threw some backpacks and our dinner in, and we drove up the 4x4 road to join them.

It was totally dark by this point so there wasn’t much to be seen even if a tsunami did hit but at least we were safe. We ate our dinner of kinda spaghetti sauce / kinda chili and talked to some people who were walking around. One of the locals had set up a TV in the back of their van and we were watching a blurry CNN cover the events of the day. The more I watched it the more I felt we were probably fine. The hotel had electricity so lights were on, and different families and groups of friends had claimed different rooms making it almost seem as if it was a functioning business. When I looked closer though I saw that each room was basically a concrete square resembling more of a jail cell then a hotel. There were no doors or windows anywhere, just the holes where they were supposed to go, and there were raw ends of rebar sticking out of the concrete everywhere. One family even had a roaring fire in their “room” for a bit of extra light and to keep the mosquitoes away.

We decided we were probably safe and drove back. I was feeling fine until I had to go to the kitchen on the ground floor to make my dinner. Something about the darkness, the proximity to the ocean, and knowing that a wall of water was “supposed” to be on it way really freaked me out. I would walk down, stir the pasta, and immediately return to the second floor. Walk down, stir it again, and back to the second floor. The whole time I was listening intently for the sound of a big wave, but it was high tide and the hostel is 200 feet from the water so every wave sounds big. I went upstairs to eat and continued listening for signs that water was coming. Before a tsunami hits it draws all the water out so any time I didn’t hear a wave crash for a long time I thought maybe a wave was coming, and any time I heard a crash I thought maybe it was the big one. It was completely ridiculous and I was just freaking myself out but news in Ecuador is not like it is in California. There’s no warning systems, there’s minimal communication between towns, there’s no merchant ships w/ radios or helicopters to monitor the seas, there’s no building codes so no one knows if the house is safe or not – its hard to convey but the lack of information made for a very tense and stressful situation.

Our night guard didn’t show up either which makes sense but apparently natural disasters, or at least the threat of one, is a time of robbing and looting. I finally went to sleep but I was having night mares of getting robbed, and of a tsunami hitting, and even of ghosts which was really weird. I couldn’t believe how stressed out I was about the situation considering last time there was a tsunami warning in California I didn’t change my day’s plans at all. Part of it was being in somewhere foreign and part of it was how little of a warning system Ecuador has, but those two things together made for a very light night of sleep.

The next morning I walked down to the beach and saw that at least one wave had made it an extra 5-6 meters inland than any I’ve seen in the past two weeks, but that doesn’t count as much. And then I had one of my best surf sessions ever.