I spent my summer too close to the sun. At nearly 10,000 ft. above sea level, Quito, the capital of Ecuador and my temporary home abroad, lies in a valley at the feet of the cloud-grazing Andes. My Ecuadorian mother explained to me that a majority of the population develops skin cancer; she was fond of scolding me every time I came down from the roof, toting my unread Spanish books and a bold sprinkling of freckles.
From my perch I would watch planes fly so close overhead they caused the building to quiver beneath me. I was fascinated by the sight of a streamlined passenger jet approaching the runway, framed by the verdant mountains behind it. Against the Andes, it looked like a poorly executed special effect, a child’s cardboard cutout of an airplane.
I come from a small town in the rural no-man’s-land that is the California-Oregon border. I am not accustomed to the noisy squalor of the city and the relatively sedate streets of Georgetown did little to prepare me for Quito’s metropolitan life. On my walk to the Estadio Olímpico each morning, I breathed in the fumes from the violent tangle of traffic and walked by police cars filled with officers too busy cat-calling to notice the dirty children and elderly poor crawling barefoot through the screaming lines of cars to knock on dusty windows and mumble quiet pleas.
At times, the cloying scent of pollution and the cacophony of street vendors and car horns felt like mental asphyxiation to this girl from the country. I would direct my gaze skywards to the familiar sight of sun-gilded peaks. Clusters of color encroached on the foothills, the very worst of the city’s dwellings, reminiscent of Brazilian favela. It is profoundly striking to stand in the middle of such man-made destitution and see it surrounded by an ancient testament to natural beauty. Man versus nature fought over from my own rooftop. As I allowed my thoughts to ferment in the equatorial sun, I collected freckles in successively stranger places: knees, lips, toes.
I’d never left the country before coming to Ecuador, despite my many efforts to convince my parents a week in Tijuana would be the ideal family vacation. I grew up in the shade of evergreen forests, and my stubbornly alabaster complexion has always belied my lack of worldliness. My quirky array of freckles is a more tangible type of passport stamp.
I came home one day after school to find a strange car parked in front of our gates. A man stepped out, introduced himself as José Vitari, and told me that my host brother had asked him to take me to the top of the city that night. After my brother Adrián assured me that he had in fact asked one of his single friends to take his naive American sister on a midnight tour of the city, I did what any sensible young girl would do and hopped into the decrepit Volkswagen bug.
We amused ourselves by discussing the cultural phenomenon that is McDonald’s. He, like most young, hip Ecuadorians, thought it was an ideal place to take a first date. I didn’t have the heart to disillusion him.
At some point, I noticed that the highest point in the city was located in one of the poorest districts. This district fans out around a 134-foot statue, La Virgen del Panecillo whom, legend dictates, guards Quito from evil spirits at night. José stopped the car abruptly, running around to my side to drag me out and towards the edge of the cliff.
“This,” he told me, gesturing to the labyrinthine of lights below, “is the real Quito.”
And from where I was standing, under a giant Madonna on a cliff in the Andes, I did indeed see a different city. When the natural world is dyed navy and purple and black by night’s brush, the lights of civilization are breathtaking.
