Water

Water is the foundation of life. It bubbles and gurgles and provides a habitat for countless different species. And it is perhaps the most powerful natural force on earth. Ask the Grand Canyon. It turns out that our little adventure in the mud a couple of weeks was only the beginning.

This is what happened to yet another main road into Quito this week. For a truly spectacular look at this same "hueco" (hole) check out this website and flip through the pictures:
http://www.ultimasnoticias.ec/noticiaUN.asp?id_noticia=26010&id_seccion=2

The thing about water is you can't ignore it. Those pretty waterfalls alongside the road will go somewhere. If they aren't channeled securely under the road, they will wash out what's underneath the road. And if you see a lot of water going over the top of the road, that's a bad sign.

The crazy thing is we hear from time to time that the authorities are letting "30 cars at a time" drive over these trouble spots, or "only light traffic" is allowed to travel on the road. Now I ask you, who wants to volunteer to be one of the 30, or part of the light traffic? When there's a 100-foot deep hole in the road and the other side looks like Niagara Falls, who do they think they're kidding?

Quito is high--about 9350 feet high. And it rains a lot here. It doesn't much bother us because water runs downhill; it doesn't stay here. For example, it rained all last night and it stopped this morning. The roads aren't flooded--well, at least not here in Quito. So all of that pitter-patter of rain starts moving downhill and joins together to make a streamlet and then a creek, and then a waterfall, and then a river. In fact, have you seen the size of the Amazon River? It's one of those you-can-see-it-from-Space-sized rivers. Here's a picture I pulled off the internet that kind of sort of gives you an idea of the size.


So while I'm up here in the mountains as it's raining cats and dogs, thinking "Well, that big river down there has to get its water from somewhere," there's a whole lot of people in between up here and down there that are being affected by all that water.


The repairs on these king-sized huecos will not be rapid--or at least they shouldn't be. For now, we are down to one road from the coast into Quito. Two intrepid missionaries who came in from the coast to renew the government ID card of one of them traveled for 13 hours on a bus. The trip usually takes 7. And can you imagine what the traffic is like? I am so hoping that President Sloan lets us fly to the coastal zone conferences the next round or two.