Camp: Cuenca, Ecuador
Dateline: April / May 2001

I know a secret about South America.

In 1978 or thereabouts, the mighty Datsun motor company underwent restructuring, and was reborn as Nissan. What happened then was that there were a whole lot of Datsun cars that had been built, but were no longer marketable. So they were all shipped off to a huge facility somewhere in Ecuador, from whence they have been sold for the past 20 odd years. No, I’m not joking, it has to be something like that, because there are more Datsuns here than any other car, and what’s more, a lot of them look like they are new. I have never seen so many Datsuns in my life. It’s like a dream for me. I have to confess, that I was always a Datsun man. My first car was a Datsun 1200, and I stuck with them right up until I joined the devotees and “renounced” my 1979 Mark I 280ZX sports coupe. No 280ZX’s here, but plenty of 120Ys, 140Js and 160Js. While discussing our options in getting Lima, Vrajadhama and I tossed around the pros and cons of buying a Datsun and driving there. I think the main pro was the fact that I always wanted a 70’s two-door 120Y with mags, like many of the ones here. That was until we found out that one of those babies is worth a cool US$2K. The economy is warped here, such that it isn’t possible to draw comparisons between things. Some things are ridiculously cheap, others ridiculously expensive. Our guide book is a year old, and the bus fares and rents have doubled since then.

Vrajadhama and I joked about knocking over some Seguridad guys for their guns, hotwiring a Datsun, and going on a spree to Lima. We thought it would make a great premise for a hit comedy – two young Hare Krishna missionaries go to South America to preach, and end up going on a cross-country spree in stolen Datsuns. It would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase: “Hey prabhu, got any rounds left?” Then we realised that probably only 0.01% of the planet would get the irony of the whole thing, and it would be full of in-jokes. We are probably going to catch the bus to Lima, instead - a 21-hour ordeal. Everyone will be ripping us off along the way too. When you are carrying as much gear as we are (the mrdangas, our drums, double our load) you look like a pair of gringos who should be ripped off. We are not looking forward to the border crossing into Peru and the inevitable money exchange. Hopefully we don’t get robbed blind. I mean, we are going to be robbed, as we have been everywhere we go. We paid $6 for a taxi from the airport to the temple in Guayaquil. Do you know how much money $6 is here? You can eat for a week on that. But anyway, once we get to Lima we can store some of the gear. We brought everything that we thought we would need to live here and develop the mission over successive years, building it up. The staples of life here are quite cheap, but if you want to actually do anything, such as put on a festival, you’ll need either a whole lot of money, or you’ll need to bring your gear with you.