Adventure Travel Ecuador: Teargas A New Experience!
February 6, 2001 Quito, Ecuador
Mad Max was very excited about a photo opportunity for me at the local university! Indigenous people from all over Ecuador were in the middle of an organized strike that had closed major highways country-wide. The headquarters and main focal point of the demonstrations was close by with a myriad of different tribes and cultures camping out on the campus.
An opportunity to photograph many different tribes in one place! And experience teargas firsthand! I didn’t get to see any actual cannisters launched until that night on the tv news, but I sure felt the residual effects.
We spent a couple of hours wandering among the various groups and camps. Although most sects had different styles of dress and their own language, they all seemed to speak at least some Spanish. Max was not shy about asking about their villages and lifestyles. He was recruiting interested villages in participating with his eco-tour foundation.
As we walked away from the campus we encountered a pick-up full of foodstuffs for the protesters that had been stopped by a police roadblock. Max intervened on behalf of the nuns driving the truck and said that there were plenty of people to carry the cargo into the camps. The police said, “No, you can’t do that either!” Finally the police gave in to Max’s insistence and let the truck pass through to the hungry protesters.
