La Capilla del Hombre

After a stressful and confused Monday, during which time both Karla and I were having trouble acclimating to the rhythms and mysteries of this strange, not to mention the change of pace in our lives (no more work, no more daily schedule), we emerged today (Tuesday, April 6) renewed and reinvigorated.  It could have been because we spent the late afternoon through evening in our hotel room, reading, listening to music, trying to figure what we were doing here, after all.  It could have just been giving ourselves enough time to rest and reset.  Regardless, today was an incredibly beautiful and emotionally insightful day.

To start, we walked down the hill from La Floresta into the Mariscal Sucre, to find breakfast (we slept past the free continental breakfast offered by our hotel).  we ended up back at the Magic Bean, which is a somewhat trendy juice bar cum coffee shop cum cheap Ecuadorian-international fusion restaurant (attached to a hostal of the same name).

We had eaten here on Saturday (I had an excellent lunch of smoked trout) and, despite its somewhat touristy nature, Karla and I both decided we liked the ambience and the open air nature of the restaurant.  Today we ordered coffee and tea, and I (not feeling particularly adventurous for breakfast) request a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese, while Karla ordered the Ecuadorian home fry plate.

The food, as we expected from our previous venture here, was outstanding.  When they say cream cheese in Ecuador (at least at the Magic Bean), what they mean is a butter and cream cheese combination whipped with some unidentifable yet tasty herbs.  Karla's home fry plate was also an excellent, and extremely satisfying, choice - a plate heaping with potatoes fried with herbs and scrambled with other vegetables and eggs and cheese (nothing like traditional American home fries).  While eating (Karla and I shared), I also managed to write a draft of a poem about Quito, which was a welcome surge of creativity in a year that has been hitherto a poetic drought.

After breakfast, we walked over to Avenida 6 de Diciembre to catch the Ecovía northeast into the neighborhood of Bellavista.  As we are still getting the feel for the public transportation around here, we ended up getting off the bus two stops too early.  Getting our bearings, we realized we were only a few blocks from where we had originally intended to be anyway, so we hiked up the same street, following the bus (receding now into the humid diesel haze), until reaching a side street that went up a steep hill.  Did we mention that Quito was built in the valley between several volcanoes, so every neighborhood seems to be on a hill?

We had read that there were buses that could be caught to take us to our destination - la Capilla del Hombre - but we decided (I think I may have forced the issue) to walk.  There is something entirely satisfying about trekking up a mountainside to reach your destination, a miniature pilgramage of sorts.  So we began our ascent... and although we didn't have too far to go, mileage wise, it was quite an ascent.  We needed to stop several times to catch our breath.  At one point we found an overlook that stared off and around to the back side of the city, up toward the Hotel de Quito and down into the Guapulo neighborhood.  Further up the hill we made it to the Chapel of Man(kind).

La Capilla del Hombre is the culminating vision of the world-renowned Ecuadorian painter and artist Oswaldo Guayasamín.  A building dedicated to the suffering of all peoples who have been opressed, repressed, systematically converted or destroyed, and a testament to the hope for a brighter future - the Chapel of Mankind.  The works inside span the entirety of Guayasamín's career, covering such topics as the Spanish conquistadores destruction of the native Andean cultures, the slave trade into the new world from Africa, the Spanish civil War, World War II, and the general plight of the native Andean peoples.  And yet, despite the testimony and witness to the misery and destruction that humankind has inflicted upon itself for thousands of years, there is an underlying current of hope, that one day all people will overcome and realize that we are united and one.

We took a guided tour that happened to be all in Spanish.  I was amazed at how much I understood from our guide (who thankfully talked slow enough for me to be able to keep up) and found myself able to translate most of what he had said (at least the gist) to Karla.  Perhaps I'll be able to speak this language after all.

After the tour, we were allowed to wander throughout the chapel and could take pictures sans flash.  It was both awesome and humbling to be among these incredible works, which have a unique style that could be roughly identified as cubism meats tribalism (Guayasamín studied with Picasso and several other artists at one point - he also spent years studying the works of Leonardo Da Vinci in order to master the human form).  We couldn't help but be moved his paingtings, sculpture, and words, and I found myself tearing up at several pieces, including this short poem written by the artist that and attached to one wall in metal letters:

Yo llore porque
no tenía zapatos
hasta que vi un niño
que no tenía pies

And on the opposite wall, in counterpoint:

Mantengan
encendida una luz
que siempre
voy a volver

Translation (ours, poetically, not literally):

I wept because
I had no shoes
until I saw a boy
who had no feet

Opposite:

Keep
a torch burning
always
I will return

For more photos, visit our Flickr photostream and via by the tag "guayasamín".