Ecuador

A Memorable Place In Ecuador, the view from the bus By Adam Kelley SPECIAL TO THE SUN It's funny how hindsight can turn the worst parts of a vacation into the best memories. During a recent trip to Ecuador, my friend Jennifer and I climbed a volcano, fished for piranhas in a tributary of the Amazon and ate lemon-flavored ants straight from the nest. But now that we're back in Maryland, there's just one thing that really stands out in our minds: the bus ride from hell. We were on our way to the nation's capital, Quito, from the city of Riobamba, and the bus was pretty much our only travel option.

Looking back, I'm not sure why I was worried about climbing the highest mountain in the world, even though the hardest thing I ever climbed was a flight of stairs. Maybe I just got psyched out. In every group there's always one person you point to as you say to yourself, "If he can do it, so can I." As I waited in a pub in Quito, Ecuador, for the dozen others who would join me on this Andean expedition to Mount Chimborazo, I kept expecting that guy to appear. When we took our seats at the table, I looked around at all the well-conditioned mountaineers full of swaggering tales about traversing knife-edge ridges in howling winds, and the light began to dawn.

Manuel Jaramillo, the consul of Ecuador in Baltimore, died Wednesday of complications from pneumonia at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 80 and lived in Charles Village. For the past 21 years, he had assisted Ecuadoreans here while representing the business and maritime interests of his country. Remembered for his immaculate attire, exuberant hospitality and social graces, he often entertained visitors from South America and introduced them to Baltimoreans in the home he restored in the 2900 block of N. Charles St. "He was a gourmet cook who found great excitement and enjoyment in food," said Fran Hershfield, a friend who lives in Sparks.

John G. Macas, president and owner of a hat company that has kept Baltimoreans in fedoras, tweed caps and cream-colored Panamas for nearly 70 years, died Tuesday of heart failure. He was 72. Mr. Macas grew up in and worked his entire life at Ecuador Hat Co., the business that was founded by his father, Roberto Macas, in the early 1930s. Born in New York City, he was raised on Mulberry Street and attended Baltimore public schools. The elder Mr. Macas was born and raised in Ecuador and moved in 1925 to New York to work in a straw hat factory.

WASHINGTON - Throughout two decades of revolt, murder and drug production along the Andean spine, Ecuador has remained a surprising haven of peace and relative order. Its indigenous tribes are as poor and disenfranchised as those of its neighbors. Its high yunga valleys are just as friendly to the coca shrub that produces cocaine. Its government is as precarious and prone to corruption. But somehow Ecuador has avoided the coups, insurgencies and extensive cocaine production that have racked Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.

U.S. will find truth about Pinochet, bomb, says envoy to Chile SANTIAGO, Chile -- The U.S. Justice Department is determined to uncover the truth in its criminal investigation into whether Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, ordered a 1976 car bombing in Washington, the U.S. ambassador to Chile said yesterday. John O'Leary said the investigation into the worst case of international terrorism in the U.S. capital -- which killed exiled Chilean socialist Orlando Letelier and his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt -- would end only when all those implicated were put on trial.

SOUTH America's evolution from military juntas to electoral democracy began 21 years ago in Ecuador, when the army declared free elections. Few people want to see the trend reversed there. It is too soon to tell whether that has happened. Events last week, following authoritarian tendencies in the elected presidents of Peru and Venezuela, cause grave concern. It was revolution in the mathematical sense: drastic change, moving in a complete circle, ending where it began. Despite oil and banana exports, Ecuador, a country of 12.4 million, has been in the grip of depression, inflation and bank failure, its GNP shrinking and its people getting poorer.

Digging along border of Mexico-U.S. ends after 9 bodies found MEXICO CITY -- Mexican and U.S. officials have ended excavations of mass grave sites along the countries' border after turning up nine bodies, Mexican prosecutors announced yesterday. Officials began digging at four ranches near Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, this fall. At the time, one official cited an informant as saying drug smugglers might have buried as many as 100 bodies at the ranches. 9 Russian diplomats ejected from Poland for spying WARSAW, Poland -- Poland ordered nine Russian diplomats out of the country for spying yesterday, a blow to already uneasy relations between countries that once were Cold War allies.

Five stowaways on a merchant ship, who spent two weeks inside a steel container lashed to the deck, were captured yesterday at the South Locust Point Marine Terminal, where they emerged thinking they had arrived in New York City.One of the stowaways broke a leg and suffered internal injuries when he jumped off a stack of cargo containers. He was listed in critical condition at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.All five stowaways were from Ecuador, where they climbed inside the empty 40-foot steel box on a pier at the port of Guayaquil sometime in early June, federal officials said.

Oswaldo Guayasamin, 79, considered Ecuador's top painter this century, died of a heart attack yesterday at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, leaving unfinished his grand masterpiece, the Chapel of Man.Mr. Guayasamin, a leftist and close friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, had traveled to Baltimore for treatment of his eyes. "I paint the times I have been fated to live: the wars, privations and anguish of people unjustly relegated," he told reporters before his death.In 1996, he began building in Quito, Ecuador, what he called his masterpiece: a brick and copper cathedral-shaped building with murals telling the story of "man in the Americas."