Vagabond Tales: Bodysurfing A Hawaiian Bombing Range

by Kyle Ellison on

If there were ever a Hawaiian island which had nothing to do with mai tais and beachfront massages it’s the island of Kaho’olawe. A low-lying mound, which rises to an unassuming height of 1,477 feet, Kaho’olawe – for most visitors to Hawaii – is shrouded in total mystery.

For one thing, there are no five-star hotels, nightly luaus, or horrendous timeshare kiosks on Kaho’olawe. You will find no discount activity companies, no parasailing, no surf schools and no paid parking lots making their money off of tourists who don’t know any better. You won’t even find any residents.

This is because Kaho’olawe has a history unlike any other island in the Hawaiian chain. This island marks a historic outpost of exile and aggression, which progressed down a different path. When the rest of Hawaii was falling into the hands of sugar barons and Western businessmen, Kaho’olawe existed mostly as an afterthought.

Sparsely inhabited during Ancient Hawaiian times, the minimal amount of fresh water on the island was ultimately an inhibiting factor for growth. Later on, during the mid-1800s, the island of Kaho’olawe was used as a penal colony for 23 years as a place where prisoners were sent to fend for themselves. Dry and barren and with few natural resources, some of those exiled would eventually starve.

Though sporadic ranching ventures over the next century proved to be mediocre in their success, when the Japanese Imperial Army launched a surprise attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, the future of Kaho’olawe would take a turn down a violent and destructive road.
With the events of the Pearl Harbor placing the entire territory of Hawaii under martial law, the island of Kaho’olawe was designated by the U.S. military as a practice bombing range and training ground for young American soldiers heading to the islands of the Western Pacific.

Even after the war was won, Kaho’olawe continued to be used as a target isle throughout the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold wars, with all bombing officially coming to a halt nearly 50 years after it began in 1990. Though no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons were ever detonated on Kaho’olawe, fire bombs such as napalm scorched across the already dry island, and a blast in 1965 dubbed “Operation Sailor Hat” detonated 500 tons of TNT as a means of testing the blast resistance of U.S. warships. The resulting craters have strangely enough created a marine ecosystem for two endemic species of shrimp.

Once the bombing raids finally stopped, however, the island was given back to the state of Hawaii and placed under the stewardship of the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission, a group who, to quote their mission statement, pledges “to provide meaningful, safe use for the island of Kaho’olawe for the purposes of the traditional and cultural practices of the native Hawaiian people, and to undertake the restoration of the island and its waters”.

Working in an area, which will never have any commercial use and will never be developed, the KIRC operates with limited funding and relies heavily on volunteers to enact projects such as replanting native plant species and creating footpaths.

One of the more authentic experiences a visitor to Hawaii can schedule for their trip is to place their name on a volunteer sign up sheet and spend four days volunteering on Kaho’olawe during a trip to the isles.

Granted, the waiting list is about two years long, but the cultural experience gained from visiting a Hawaiian island most will never set foot on is without question an experience well worth the wait.

After having laid waste to it for so many years, the U.S. Navy joined forces with KIRC and undertook a massive cleanup effort geared at removing much of the unexploded ordnance, which still lay scattered around the island. Although nearly three-quarters of the land was cleared of ordnance, only a small percentage was done so to a sufficient depth of four feet, and there are still sections of the island where no ordnance removal has ever taken place at all.

Given the explosive capabilities of the land, the general rule of thumb for those volunteering on Kaho’olawe is “if you didn’t drop it, don’t pick it up.” There are even still bombs in the ocean.

This is why it was such a thrill to bodysurf there.

Wait. What? You literally just said there were bombs in the water and that nobody lives there. Why would you bodysurf on Kaho’olawe?

Unbeknownst to virtually every surfer who doesn’t live in Maui County, the island of Kaho’olawe gets some of the best surf in the Hawaiian Islands during the summer months on waves sent up from storms east of New Zealand. Although there are no official docking facilities on Kaho’olawe, the southern-facing Honokanaia Bay features a long sandy cove where landing craft pull right up on to the shore and offload volunteers.

Seeing as this is the sole point of aquatic entry and exit from the island, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Honokanaia is sufficiently free of bombs. I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s just a hunch I’ve got.

It also just so happens that Honokanaia Bay features one of the nicest left-breaking points in all of the Hawaiian Islands, and the handful of old-timers I know who illegally surfed there in the 1970s and ’80s call it the “Kaho’olawe Pipeline.” Others who have surfed it refer to it as “Smuggler’s Cove.”

Although I didn’t have an actual board with me, as part of the transport crew shuttling volunteers to Kaho’olawe I was nevertheless able to spend 30 minutes catching sandy barrels in the shore break of the former bombing range.

Would I so casually jump into the water on other parts of Kaho’olawe not as expertly scouted? Probably not. But for this one moment, this one fleeting situation where beautiful waves were rolling through one of the last undeveloped white sand beaches in the entire state of Hawaii, bodysurfing the bombing range was a novelty I couldn’t dream of passing up.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” here

[Cover photo credit: Justin Ornellas on Flickr]

Vagabond Tales: An Introduction To Possum Punting

by Kyle Ellison on

If you want to anger a New Zealand local ask them if their accent is from somewhere in Australia. While this is sure to elicit a stern yet polite correction, if you REALLY want to enrage a New Zealand local ask them what they think about possums. Strangely enough, the two annoyances are intertwined as New Zealand actually places the blame for the possums firmly on Australia.

Why? Because the non-native possums are Australian, not Kiwi, and many New Zealanders would simply prefer to see them exist solely in the country from whence they came.

Officially known as the Australian Brushtail Possum, the noxious pest was introduced to New Zealand in 1837 in an effort to kick-start the fur industry. All this managed to do, however, was allow the possums to populate with reckless abandon and quickly spread to over 95 percent of the country. Whereas in Australia the possum has a litany of natural predators to keep their numbers in check, New Zealand lacks any form of land predator to naturally stem the flow of hyper-population. Flower gardens, native birds and farmers’ crops have never been the same ever since.

Even the cows in New Zealand are at odds with the possums, thanks to the possum’s innate ability to spread bovine tuberculosis and cripple New Zealand’s lucrative dairy industry.

So how much do the Kiwis actually hate the possums? Enough that a local school recently held a possum-throwing contest, which unsurprisingly sparked outrage amongst the nation’s animal rights activists. Shooting possums is a right of passage for children growing up in rural New Zealand, and I’ve personally witnessed drivers swerve cars towards possums in an effort to strike them as they attempt to cross a road.

I simply cannot make this statement in any plainer terms: people in New Zealand simply hate the possums.Given this unified level of hatred there really are few limits on what’s considered unacceptable in terms of their general treatment. The degree of discontent never really sank in, however, until an evening spent camping along the remote shores of Abel Tasman National Park.

Having sea-kayaked for most of the day past a string of postcard-perfect sandy coves, two mates and myself pulled into the welcomingly-named Mosquito Bay to pitch our tents just prior to dusk. With no rain clouds to be found anywhere on the red and orange horizon, the team opted to pitch the tents sans rain fly to provide maximum star viewing and feel the ocean breeze. A few beers and few shots of whiskey later, our haggard troupe of semi-drunk paddlers retired for the evening into our three-man tent amazed that we had the sliver of sub-tropical perfection all to ourselves – or so we thought.

Somewhere between the hours of 1-4 a.m., I awoke to the sound of my city-bred college roommate Ted repeatedly making a sound I can classify only as “shooshing.” Ted was obviously attempting to “shoosh” away some unforeseen creature, yet given the depth of the darkness his passive efforts were simply lost in the coastal night. Chalking his antics up to the cheap brand of whiskey, I attempted to roll over beneath my Patagonia sleeping-bag liner and drift back into a blissful outdoor sleep.

That was, of course, until I felt the evil red eyes staring straight into my soul. If you’ve never experienced a face-to-face encounter with a possum while in the throes of a whiskey haze, the furry rodents, which appear as cute marsupials by daytime, change by night into real life Chuck E. Cheese rats seemingly possessed by Satan.

Amazed that at one point I had failed to see our evening visitor, I now sat within a claw’s reach of the foraging rodent – the thin fabric of the tent a laughably meager form of protection.

Then, just when it seemed that the red eyes and scavenging claws of the nighttime lurker were going to tear their way through the tent walls, a rogue human leg appeared out of the darkness and laid a swift and powerful kick right into the gut of the mischievous prowler.

Not even knowing that there were other people camping in the confines of Mosquito Bay, at some point during our booze-induced slumber a native Kiwi couple had arrived late and pitched their tent right next to ours.

As the possum was apparently disrupting their slumber as well, the largest rugby-playing, Haka-dancing Kiwi of man you have ever seen had emerged from his tent wearing nothing except boxer shorts and a single hiking boot, no sock.

As Ted was “shooshing” and I was entranced by the red pupils of evil, the mostly-nude Kiwi bushman was instead preparing for a possum punt of dramatic proportions that nobody saw coming in the darkness. With a single drop step and a rotation of his right leg – which could nail a field-goal from 50 yards out – the possum-hating forest dweller laid the top of his right foot into the underbelly of the possum with such ferocity that it sent the shrieking marsupial on an aerial departure from which it never returned.

“Just gotta lay a firm foot into ’em mate!” exclaimed the freelance rodent destroyer. “Let the little bahstards know who’s in charge. Nothing like a good possum punt!”

With the tips of his boxer shorts waving in the evening breeze, the mysterious possum punter single-stomped his way back to his nylon fortress – his work here was dramatically through.

I was stunned by what had actually just occurred and the fact that the man’s tent was completely gone by morning only added to his mystique.

So here’s to you, Mr. Possum Punting vigilante. I want to thank you for your swift and thorough cleansing of our campsite and your public display of where you stand on New Zealand’s possums. Your nationalistic pride shines like a beacon through the night, and you have served your country well.

Looking back, I’m just glad I never called him Australian.

[Image courtesy of turtlemom4bacon on Flickr]

Vagabond Tales: How To Pay Off The Police While Traveling

by Kyle Ellison on

Let’s face it: things happen while you’re traveling. Although many travels go off without a hitch, occasionally there are unforeseen hurdles, which simply need to be navigated. Sometimes this can be as minor as your bag ending up in Hamburg when it’s supposed to be in Berlin, as unlucky as contracting swine flu in Mexico, or as downright scary as ending up in a knife fight in a back alley in Spain (more on those stories another time).

Of all the travel inconveniences I’ve experienced over years of vagabonding, however, the one which happens with undoubtedly the most frequency is being cornered into paying off the police. Sometimes this is my fault, sometimes it’s someone else’s fault, and other times it’s nothing more than rampant corruption. Either way, I’ve paid off the police enough times while traveling to warrant mentioning it with some authority.

One thing I want to set straight, however, is that I have never intentionally bribed the police, because that, I believe, is illegal. In every situation where money has exchanged hands between myself and an officer of the law the idea was proposed to me without my offering it first. I don’t by any means condone corruption because it’s one of the largest social cancers plaguing much of the developing world. Nevertheless, when staring down the barrel of a sticky situation there is often too little time for letting your morals get the better of you.

It’s worthy of mentioning that all of these situations occurred while driving vehicles in Latin America. If the idea of confrontations with police officers doesn’t rank high on your list of travel plans, perhaps my number one rule of advice would be avoid operating vehicles in Latin America.

If your bucket list includes a surf safari across Central America or driving the length of Highway 1, however, I offer this mini-survival guide for navigating an awkward situation in places where the lines of justice and extortion are frequently blurred.Rule #1: Anticipate the scenario.

Just like you shouldn’t travel with any item you don’t fully expect to get stolen or lost, you should never drive in a foreign country and expect everything is going to be ok. One solution is to take a pre-determined amount of money, usually around $20-$40, and stick it in the glove box as a precautionary measure. In Mexico, this is officially known as “la mordida,” (the bite), and on about 50 percent of trips to Mexico I have found myself needing to pay off the police with the money stashed aside for just that reason. If you expect that you’re going to be hassled and plan accordingly you already have the upper hand.

Rule #2: Let them do the talking.

In situations like these, the issue of who is right and who is wrong is completely null and void. Arguing will get you nowhere except into a deeper hole.

Usually, what will happen is the police will lay out a long, difficult series of events, which need to take place in order for you to right your horrendous wrong. This often involves talk of following them to the police station, the arrangement of court dates, the confiscation of your passport, or your inability to leave the country now that you are a roadside criminal. Often times fear tactics are also employed in that they will most likely mention you are going to be arrested and potentially spend some time in jail.

Regardless of how scary the situation gets, however, just keep letting them talk because usually it’s building up to them offering you the easy way out.

Having been pulled over for “speeding” in a rural town in Costa Rica, the policeman even launched into a long-winded dialogue about how proceeds from traffic violations were now going to underprivileged Costa Rican children and how my wife and I would need to drive to the capital of San Jose immediately to pay our $240 fine at a specifically named bank. Then, as expected, the offer was laid out before us.

“Or, we could always just take care of it right here.”

One $20 bill and five minutes later, we were headed towards Playa Samara completely free and clear.

Rule #3: Only leave a small amount of cash in your wallet and hide the rest elsewhere.

In Uruguay, there is a law which mandates headlights must be turned on regardless of whether it’s day or night. Having just made a bathroom stop my wife and I had forgotten to turn the lights back on, and in the twelve seconds it took me to realize the mistake, police at a roadside checkpoint had already seized upon the opportunity.

I again endured the long-winded diatribe about how our passports would be seized, we’d miss our flight, have to appear in court in three weeks in Montevideo, etc. and so on. I was then made to step out of the car and follow the policeman towards the back of his vehicle.

Opening the passenger side door so as to block the line of sight for oncoming traffic, he threw me the much-anticipated olive branch.

“You want to make your flight right?”

“Yes sir.”

“You don’t want your wife to see you go to jail do you?”

“No sir.”

“2,000 Uruguayos.”

The equivalent of $100, I explained that I simply didn’t have that much on me. This, of course, was the truth, because I had only left $40 in my wallet for precisely this reason. The rest was in my backpack sitting safely in the backseat.

“It’s everything I have,” I explained, being sure to dramatically open my wallet and show its empty recesses.

Placing the green and red Uruguayo notes beneath a piece of paper on his clipboard I was allowed to swiftly return to my car and drive away.

Rule #4: Follow directions and you will be fine.

Of all the times I’ve been forced to pay the police, things really were looking pretty dire in Tijuana, Mexico. Having spotted empty beer cans in the front of our truck, a bicycle cop concluded that our sun-bleached pack of surf friends must have been drinking and driving. Though the cans were left over from our lunch in Ensenada, this was a point we had little way of proving. According to the policeman there was nothing we could do and we were all going to jail.

Seeing as the official judicial policy of Mexico is essentially “guilty until proven innocent,” the idea of spending the night in a Tijuana prison was beginning to appear more and more likely.

Then, as quickly as we had been pulled over, we just as quickly were told to leave. Before nervously pulling back into the border line, however, we received some very curious and detailed instructions.

“The cross. It costs $80. You will buy it under the bridge.”

In no mood to ask questions we resumed our spot in the border line more than a little shaken. Though we were back and moving and on the road, however, we couldn’t lose the feeling that this encounter wasn’t over.

Sure enough, a quarter mile up the road, while stopped in gridlock border traffic, a street vendor approached us with a faux-wood crucifix of Jesus. As had been prophesied by the policeman, he approached us while underneath a bridge. Knowing full well what to do, we handed the vendor the aforementioned $80. As a final slap in the face we weren’t even allowed to keep the cross.

I would later find out that in an effort to crack down on police corruption, cameras had been installed to monitor the shady dealings of roadside police. The cameras, as it would happen, are not able to see beneath the bridges.

So does the fact that you can get away with paying your way out of traffic violations mean I recommend reckless irresponsibility while abroad? Of course not. Preying on tourists who have laughably little rights may be a devious way to earn a buck, but unfortunately, with the depressed level of foreign wages and low government pay, it’s a twisted means towards making ends meet.

There are many whom will cry foul and claim that succumbing to “la mordida” is simply like feeding the bears in the woods – if you encourage bad habits they will cease to go away. Whether you choose to do so is ultimately up to you, but should you find yourself in a situation like those described above, may this long-winded log of my own personal bad decisions serve as an illicit road map for procuring your much-deserved freedom.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” here.

[Images courtesy of: blmurch, danielmvier.com, and tiffa130 on Flickr]

Vagabond Tales: How To Survive A Coup On Your Honeymoon: Part 2

by Kyle Ellison on

The following is a continuation from last week’s “Vagabond Tales” column, a rundown of events leading up to Kyle finding himself in the middle of a political coup in Quito, Ecuador.


–

There are few sensations more terrifying than running away from gunfire – particularly on your honeymoon.

As intermittent pops echoed against the hillsides of Quito, I found myself entrenched in a confused and chaotic mob of civilians all running in a footrace of self-preservation.

“Heather,” I thought. “My God where is Heather?”

Knowing my new bride didn’t speak Spanish and our having no cell phones to reach each other, this would really be an unfortunate time to find ourselves split up.

Instantly, however, I spotted my wife amidst a nebula of panic, with her blonde hair and tall frame fortuitously standing out above the dark-haired, somewhat shorter crowd surrounding us.

“What are we going to do?” she frantically clamored as we met in a momentary embrace.

“I’m not sure, just keep moving with everyone”.

Then, in a strange twist of irony, the same bus we had ridden directly into the center of the coup had made a U-turn on the highway and was now loading fleeing civilians in an impromptu evacuation effort.”Quick, get on the bus!” was all I could blurt out. My decision-making skills were struggling to keep up with the rapidly shifting environment outside.

“But it’s going the wrong way.”

Always perceptive, my wife noticed that the bus was, in fact, driving slowly into oncoming traffic. Granted, the amount of vehicles was at a minimum due to the turn of events, yet the bus, nevertheless, was engaged in a bit of a vehicular bob and weave.

Now finding ourselves crammed into the public bus and staring down oncoming traffic, the bus driver finally did what any self-respecting bus driver in the same situation would do: He jumped the curb, drove down an embankment and emerged cleanly on the proper side of the highway.

The pedestrian crowd soon subsided after we’d driven a mile from the shooting. The bus driver opted to offload all of the escapees onto the somewhat peaceful street corner, essentially leaving us to our own devices.

Though the initial adrenaline of being amongst the coup had subsided, I still needed to deal with the reality of being lost on a Quito street corner amid a lawless local populace. With the police on strike and literally waging their own battles, rampant looting and widespread chaos were beginning to grip the city. Toppled cars had been set alight in the streets and the whir of helicopters thumped overhead. In a frightful moment of realization, it was becoming apparent that nowhere was safe.

That’s when, in recognizing the plight of two hapless tourists in a position of legitimate danger, a local man named Octavio waved me over from my spot on the street corner.

“No estás seguro aquí. Ven conmigo.” You aren’t safe here. Come with me.

Trapped in the chaos himself, Octavio had called his brother who was on his way with their personal car. He had room for two more people, and those two spots were going to us.

Stepping inside the faded green sedan I still didn’t feel safe, not because of Octavio, but because I was still on the streets of Quito, and not in my hostel with the towering barbed wire fence. Getting there was going to be a problem, however, as there were burning stacks of tires blocking the road to where I was staying.

Suddenly, it dawned on me, that when a burning stack of tires blocks your hostel and you’ve just ridden in a public bus going against traffic in an effort to escape live gunfire, you might want to consider going to the US Embassy.

I mean I’m an American citizen. I can always find refuge at the US Embassy, right?

Wrong.

Convincing Octavio to take a side route so that we could swing by the embassy my hopes were high that we could at least park ourselves there to wait out the confusion. Up until this point in life my only vision of US Embassies abroad has been Cambodians and foreign journalists seeking refuge in the Embassy in Phnom Penh as seen in “The Killing Fields.”

With my apologies (and perhaps questions) to Gadling’s resident diplomat, Dave Seminara, apparently that sort of patriotic benevolence is only seen in the movies.

Frantically approaching the Embassy gates, American passport in hand, I was immediately met by the Ecuadorian security force. Explaining that we had just been at the center of the coup they expressed remarkably little sympathy. Nevertheless, after some pleading, I managed for one of them to arrange a phone call inside.

After an awkwardly long absence during which time Octavio and ourselves languished in the driveway the guard finally returned with an answer which will forever be emblazoned in my memory.

“It is almost 5. You must go. This isn’t a hotel.”

Are you kidding me? This isn’t a hotel?

Yeah, I noticed it’s not a hotel. I have a hotel; it’s the one down there in that cloud of smoke. This is the US Embassy and I am an American in the middle of a coup where there are people shooting in the streets and looting at will, and you won’t let me inside!

Feeling wholly unpatriotic my dumbfounded wife and I crawled dejected back into the faded green sedan. Whether or not the guards actually spoke to someone inside I’ll never know, but nevertheless it was a poor introduction to Embassies while abroad.

Sensing that the exact street where our hostel was located might just be alright, Octavio took a back route which we hadn’t navigated before in an effort to skirt the violence. We passed another burning stack of tires.

Finally, after a twisting journey of one-lane side streets and high-speed glances over our shoulder we arrived in front of our hostel, safe for the time being, but the atmosphere was by no means stable. Thanking Octavio profusely and offering him $20 for his efforts my wife and I sought refuge behind the barbed wire walls of our downtown compound.

Breathing a sigh of relief to finally be back inside of the hostel our optimism was short lived by the pessimistic ramblings of a fellow hostel guest named Donny.

An ex-U.S. military veteran who bounces around the globe on his social security pension, Donny had been staying at the hostel for what he claimed was just over a year.

“I’ve seen this before,” he mused in an unimpressed, monotone utterance as all of us hostel guests were glued to the TV in the common area.

“This is going to last for days. We’ll be alright with food, but our biggest problem is going to be running out of water. The supply will last for four days I’d say. After that we’ll have to fend for ourselves.” With a limp cigarette dangling from his morbid lips, Donny was really starting to freak everyone out.

“Well at least I feel safer behind these barbed wire enforced walls,” I countered, attempting to look on the uncomfortable bright side.

With the type of single-breath chuckle that rates closer to a scoff, Donny, in a voice reminiscent of trying to not be eaten by velociraptors in the kitchen of “Jurassic Park,” countered with one of the creepiest things I’ve heard to date:

“Oh, that won’t stop them. Trust me. I know.”

With a long pull on his cigarette, his eyes glazed over into a flashback I had no desire to be a part of.

As it turns out, we would only be hostage in the hostel for a single night as Correa was eventually freed from the hospital in a daring raid by the military. In a raucous speech to a chanting crowd, Correa vowed to bring justice for those responsible for the atrocities. By the morning, everyday life had returned to normal in Quito, and merchants opened their doors on the streets, which just 15 hours prior had seen unbridled chaos and violence.

In the end, after all the dust had settled, the violence had left eight people dead and more than 270 wounded. The airport had been re-opened, the borders were unsealed and life seemed to return to normal in the briefly ravaged capital city of Ecuador.

Though September 30, 2010, will always hold a somber significance for those who lost loved ones in the violence, for this vagabond it will remain as an extreme honeymoon reminder of being thankful for every day we are alive and able to spend with those we love.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” here.

For more photos of the September 30, 2010, coup, check out this photo album from the BBC.

Vagabond Tales: How to Survive a Coup On Your Honeymoon, Part 1

by Kyle Ellison on

With the radio crackling from the speakers of his rusty old cargo van, Juan’s furrowed brow indicated a greater focus on the newscast than on shuttling us to Pululahua Crater.

My wife and I being the only two passengers on his 11am tour, Juan had begun to speak to us as friends, not customers.

“I am very scared for Ecuador” he confessed. “I am sorry you must be here for this.”

Through a combination of the semi-blown speakers and my once-fluent Spanish not at it’s sharpest, I wasn’t able to pick up from the radio broadcast what had suddenly made Juan so sullen and concerned.

I imagined, however, that the crowd of chanting people we had seen when leaving Quito earlier that morning must have had something to do with it.

The second indicator that things were amiss was the way in which all of the taxi drivers once we had returned from Pululahua Crater were refusing to give us rides back into Quito.

“Está demasiado peligroso” they all would claim. “It’s too dangerous.”

In talking with Juan I had learned that President Rafael Correa had announced a plan to cut the bonuses awarded to the National Police. This, as you might imagine, did not sit well with the National Police. In response to the removal of their bonuses the National Police opted to walk off of their job and instead engage in a raucous strike. Due to this collective decision, for the entire day of September 30, 2010, there were no policemen in the entire country of Ecuador.

Having only arrived in the country the evening before, this was, as fate would have it, the first day of our honeymoon.Having spent the morning straddling the Equator at “La Mitad del Mundo“, a have-to-do-it type of tourist trap just north of the capital city, we were now apparently stuck in the outskirts of Quito with no one willing to drive us back into town.

“You can try and take that bus over there”, offered one of the timid taxi-drivers. “It’s leaving in ten minutes and going downtown.”

Going into this trip I was aware that Ecuador had gone through seven Presidents in the preceding 13 years, a statistic indicative of its political volatility. Revolts and strikes are common in Ecuador, I thought, so why should this one be any different?

Little did I know that our afternoon bus was about to drive straight into the heart of the uprising.

Apparently, while my wife and I were taking obligatory pictures of the Equator and hanging with Juan in mists of Pululahua, thousands of protestors had meanwhile gathered in the streets of downtown Quito. In response to the absence of a police force and in an effort to stem looting, Correa had activated the military to be helicoptered in from jungle outposts in order to patrol the streets and keep order.

The police, it seemed, were now in a stand off with the military, which might just rank as the most heavily armed intra-government squabble possible. Military helicopters circled overhead, tens of thousands of people chanted in the streets, and chaos was brewing and percolating fast.

The international airport had been taken over by the military, the border crossings were completely sealed off, and the entire country was suddenly put on lockdown. Trapped inside of Ecuador, I still had little idea of what was about to happen.

Making an appearance outside of a downtown police hospital, President Correa addressed the rowdy crowd of rioters with a speech which can be classified as anything but diplomatic. Though I wasn’t quite close enough to hear the words in person, here is a verbatim quotation of what Correa decided to say:

“I’m not taking one step back! Gentleman, if you want to kill the president, here he is, kill him if you have the guts.”

Taking Correa up on his offer, police responded by firing tear gas canisters at Correa’s chest, attempted to rip off his gas mask, and then proceeded to hold him hostage inside of the hospital by blockading all of the entries and exists. A coup d’etat, it appeared, was slowly beginning to take place.

Guarded by loyal security forces yet trapped nonetheless, President Correa issued a national state of emergency. The situation, it would appear, was not going the way he had planned.

In a bold rescue mission staged by the Ecuadorian military, however, elite special forces soon engaged the police in a firefight which would ultimately whisk Correa away to safety.

Meanwhile, in a poorly timed sequence of events, not five minutes earlier my wife and I had been forced to depart from the bus due to a massive road closure. Essentially stopping in the middle of the freeway, the driver impatiently opened both sets of doors and mandated that this was far as he could take us. Not knowing where we were or which direction our hostel was located, we instinctively began to follow the crowds.

Strolling down the streets of Quito with my new bride by my side, rumors continued to circulate as to what exactly was happening in the city.

“What’s everyone saying?” asked my wife with a tremble in her voice, her level of Spanish not quite having reached “eavesdrop on an uprising” level.

“Umm, they’re talking about a big crowd, and they are saying there are men with rockets.”

“Rockets?”

“Yeah, well, tear gas. There are men firing rockets of tear gas. And something happened to the President.”

“The President! Where is this all happenning?” she quickly asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far.”

Like cattle in a herd we followed the crowd. My plan was to hail a taxi and somehow find our way to our hostel across town. Amidst the road closures and the level of uncertainty, however, no taxis were anywhere to be found.

Then, like firecrackers popping on New Year’s Eve the sound of gunfire began to slowly pepper the sky. Apparently, completely unbenkownst to us we had walked to within a couple hundred yards of the same hospital where Correa was taken hostage.

Guns clammered and reverberated against the hillside. The whir of helicopters thumped overhead. All around us the stench of burning tires wafted malodorously on the breeze. Women screamed and the crowd began to rush towards us. Shocked that it had actually come to this, it was starting to become apparent that people were going to die…

Does Kyle live to survive the coup? Find out in the next installment of Vagabond Tales…

For more photos of the September 30, 2010 coup, check out this photo album from the BBC.