When I heard that the Latin American Travel Writer's Book Fair would be held in Ecuador this year, I just had to go. This is a first for La Republica del Ecuador, and comes just months from the publication of my first novel. My good friend, Jaime Huerta, a renowned Latin American author, was the co-chair for this year's gathering, so this made the trip doubly important for me. Jaime's first novel, Amigo del Pueblo, a book about the struggle to maintain democracy in the Third World, won the Bolivar Book Award for political non-fiction in 2006. Since then, the name of Huerta has been required reading in almost every Andean country, including his native Colombia.
As an aspiring travel author, the timing couldn't be better, coming over the U.S. Labor Day weekend. Also, the locale was Babahoyo, the capital of Ecuador's Los Rios Province, just north of the seacoast city of Guayaquil. With direct service from Newark Airport, I was able to arrive in Guayaquil early on Saturday morning and meet Jaime at Simon Bolivar Airport. It was good to see my old friend, and we immediately headed to Babahoyo, directly up the Guayas River, on his small pleasure craft. Jaime owns a restaurant in Babahoyo, the Chifa China, which specializes in both Asian and Ecuadorian cuisine. Upon arrival at his home, Jaime's first request was for me to make a platter of lasagna, which was my specialty at Señor Queso, a restaurant I previously owned in Cuenca, a city high up in the Andes. The signature entree was a lasagna dish I created in honor of a past president of Ecuador by the name of Velasco Ibarra, who had the nickname "El Flaquito" (The skinny one) because he was as thin as a rail. See my blog, On the Road to El Dorado for the recipe.
We ate a hearty lunch of the lasagna, along with a pitcher of Pilsener, the premier Ecuadorian beer. The Book Fair didn't start until 8 pm, so Jaime and I went to the Babahoyo Library, where he signed copies of his book for admiring children. This was probably the last comfortable weekend in Babahoyo, which, being on the coast of Ecuador, enjoys moderate temperatures from May through August. Starting in September, the rainy season begins, with high temps and unbearable humidity. The 76-degrees of this afternoon proved ideal, and the walk from Jaime's house to the library was delightful.
The Book Fair was held under a tent along the banks of Rio Babahoyo, with a lush buffet of tipical Ecuadorian cuisine and other Andean specialites. Since Jaime lived for a time in Peru, there was a never-ending flow of Pisco Sours distributed prior to the opening. Also, since the major ingredient is the juice of the Key Lime, it was also a tribute to Ernest Hemingway, the famous American author who had a home in Key West, Florida. In fact, I consider the meeting of travel writers to be akin to the gathering depicted in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. When you get a group of writers together, anything can, and does, happen. It was great meeting fellow writers and exchanging ideas for travel books. I also needed the support of fellow scribes in gathering a head of steam for the final stages of my own book. Sometimes, the ending of a project is more difficult than the beginning!
I met authors from as far away as Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the season will soon change to summer. As a traveler, it's important to realize that there can be such a thing as the "Endless Summer." Returning back home to my garret on the New Jersey Palisades, I await the start of Autumn, and once again picking up quill and dipping it into luxurious black ink.
