lock the doors and roll up the windows

those were the instructions nancy gave as we made our way through the more seedy parts of guayaquil on the way to drive home a volunteer from one of the organizations nancy is a part of. while a great chunck of guayaquil has been reborn under the watch of the past two mayorships, the rest of the sprawling metropolis has beem mostly left to its own devices. and it´s somewhat disorienting driving through streets with little to differentiate themselves from their neighbours. on the main roads you can see where the city is trying to make their mark, fixing up basketball parks, planting trees in the medians and such, but it´s slow going.

speaking of sports, one of the most popular is volley, an abbreviated form of volleyball using three people and most of the rules of regular volleyball (except some wicked lifts), but without the actual ball. in its place is usually a soccer or basketball which makes for some interesting kill shot bounces. often it´s played on sand as there is tonnes of sand to go around, although i have yet to see women play the sport and therefore i doubt the ratings would be all that high if they put it on television.

also popular is footie (i don´t have a clue how they spell it, it would make sense to spell it the spanish way of futi but here they like using english words, like ticket and full, so they might spell it the way i wrote above). again, very similar to futbol or soccer, only with a smaller ball and usually on a concrete field that´s the size of a basketball court. the games are pretty hectic and rarely produce much artistic displays of passing, but it is fun to watch.

ok. the past few days have been a blur. on monday we did get to meet with james peters from rotary international, although our official meeting and dinner had been cancelled and we just didn´t know it. we were running late as it was, thanks to andy running out of gas on the interchange in midtown guayaquil. thankfully we had enough momentum to maneuver our way to a sidestreet but we were a good 15 minute walk to the nearest gas station. off andy went, with a guy whose name escapes me, and returned half an hour later with one gallon in tow. after sawing a plastic water bottle in half to act as a siphon, we were on the go - for all of like 10 minutes. this time we ran out of gas 100 yards short of a gas station. another gallon in and we´re off, past three gas stations to arrive at our home. i´m not sure if they tried to make it all the way to where they were going on one gallon or not but good on em.

yesterday we met with james (jim) peters at resaca, a trendy gringo bar restarant on the malecón.

Resaca Bar

the prices are pretty steep but the peters picked up the tab so i had a club café to start (a surprisingly nice beer, very clean with little aftertaste) and went with the menestra and rice (surprise surprise). i also had a glass of wine, a nice chilean white that jim picked out. very nice dinner indeed.

until i write again here is a link to another ecuador site with some wonderful pics of guayaquil.
Ecuador365

i´m off to peru tonight for the international ecoclubes meeting. we have a date with a bus at 1:30 am... ouch. not sure when i get back cause apparently the kids (who told me this today) want to extend our stay and head to the beach for a couple days. i´m glad i have this much advance notice (read 10 hours)... i´ll try to write more either in peru or as soon as i get back.

happy halloween!

throwing up is not fun

a saturday afternoon, just got in from a weekend in Estancilla, a little community about an hour from Bahía. We left thursday pretty early, around 9 am and arrived around 2 where we met up with our host families. the ride there was horrible. i was crammed in the back of an suv, a third row pull-down seat out of the reach of air conditioning, but in full view of the sun which seemed to follow us the whole way there. i am also not sure what kind of shocks the thing had because the whole ride was an unpleasant aggitation, a queasy mess of an experience that was not helped by me having the onset of the flu. so i careened around the car, bopping my head on the roof of the suv a half dozen times, trying to squeeze into the one inch square through which i found the relief of ac.

we took a small tour of a school that had received funding from the humanitarian arm of the dole corporation, dale (a rough spanish translation would be {give him or her}), with the dale representative leading the way in her dale shirt and dale button. it is the dry season here and so the changes did not look as great as they potentially could be. everywhere we see construction it looks like it has just finished because the mounds of dirt and dust simply do not go away without rain. as was the case in the school. after our little tour of the school we headed over to check out the new polytecnic university nearby. wow. the place was an oasis in the middle of shrubland, a small school but obviously well-planned with esthetics a guiding principle. it was meant to look good, the few classrooms were nice but it was the accoutrements that were the real meat and potatoes. the auditorium was beautiful, seating about 150 in splendour, with a small but stately stage. a couple of cultivated gardens surrounded the area, with landscaped pools and rock gardens around them. that evening andy led a charla or talk on recycling to a group of ecoclubs from estancilla and naranjal. it was a spirited affair and pretty basic, but it is obvious that andy has crafted his presentation over all of his 20 ( !) years. we were given the opportunity to present a short talk as well but passed on the idea as the talk was already going long and i was feeling ill. i begged away from the festivities to my host family for dinner, a plate of rice, some soup, patacones with cheese... some other stuff i am sure but do not really remember (this keyboard does not do apostrophes and that is why i am not using them...). anyway, i did not manage to finish much before my stomach decided it had had enough. i slumped back to my room, complete with mosquito net, to see if i could survive the night.

so... around 2 am i woke up with horrible pains in my stomach. i made my way to the bathroom, and without getting into details, i lost my lunch. first time in like 5 years or something... afterward it felt like a fever broke and i started sweating profusely (earlier i had felt a little chilly, despite the hot tropical air). i slept a little better afterward and woke up to hear that we were taking a little bus trip.

the bus trip ended up being a promotional tour of a local engineering firm and their project to supply the province with irrigation canals. they were diverting a number of rivers to ensure that water reached the regions farmers. Carrizal Chone it was called, a project by odebrecht, hidalgo e hidalgo s.a. they had built a wonderful visitor centre and testing farm to showcase the potential positive impacts of the undertaking, and led us through a video, question and answer period and tour of the grounds. it really was impressive the size and extent of the project, and the effort to which the corporation was going to to win the support of the local population. the experimental farm was organic (although the land was non-virgen and had not been organic for at least three years...) and they had areas where they demonstrated how to create and use compost and organic pesticides. some of the fruits being grown included honey dew melons, fine grade cocoa, and export quality lemons. there was little mention of domestic oriented production, most of the plants under cultivation were meant for export.

after our trip we headed back to estancilla and decided to head to the river for a dip because our trip to bahía had fallen through. i was still reeling from the heat and stomach aches and decided not to go in the water, much to the chagrin of the kids who were plodding in fully clothed.

i tried to have a nap after that and woke up just in time to help jane lead a presentation to the groups on ecology. what a disaster. the kids showed up 15 minutes late and contined to come in well after we had begun. the talking was incessant and loud and brought the ire of the dale woman more than 7 times. we broke them into groups and gave them paper telling them to draw the perfect ecological world. it was a good experience for us because we had to speak spanish the entire time, and for me because i speak more spanish than jane so i was in command. that was kinda neat, going around to different groups and telling them what to do, answering questions and understanding what i was saying... for a bit i felt pretty damn good about myself. it was also the most comfortable i have felt in ecuador. weird cause of the circumstances but it felt good to actually be doing something productive. i also enjoyed making the kids feel comfortable, at home and that their voice was being heard. giving a crayon to a kid and telling them to draw whatever they feel is missing is great. one girls face lit up and she immediately began drawing birds, little arcs of blue in the sky.

after the presentation we went to this party one of the kids was putting on at his house, a few blocks away. the music was slow and undulating, not the quick footed salsas and cumbias that jane and i were expecting. and the kids, oh my god, 11 and 12 year olds sliding up to each other in mimicked sexual innuendo. it was somewhat awkward to see, but no one seemed to take notice and besides, everyone else was already dancing that way.

once again i slipped out early to catch some zzzs and hopefully give my tummy a rest.

jim morrison is looking down on me right this minute

i´ve added a computer to my room. it´s a relic, a beaut from the old days that looks like it has passed through the colon of a very sick giant. i love old computers that actually have turbo buttons on the front. as well, a huge on off switch that looks like it belongs in chernobyl.

but nancy very generously offered to lug this antiquity to my room so that i could work on word based documents and play minesweeper whenever the other computer is indisposed. hey, an our lady peace song on the radio. that´s kind of interesting.

a few things that i´d like to mention. one of which is that the american dollar coin is very common down here. i went a long time without seeing one back home but here they´re almost thrown about like loonies. also, the room that i´m living in right now is one of nancy´s sons and is adorned to his liking. that said, he has an obvious hankering for the doors - there is a 9 foot painting of jim morrison covering an entire wall of my room. it´s actually a very nice painting, simplistic and stylized, but obviously jim, and given my distaste for anything doors-related it fails to elecit the kudos that another might want to give it. the rest of the room is taken up by a small homage / shrine to the virgen mary, a scattering of photos of friends and relatives, a hodge podge of exercise equipment (an exercise bike and cross country skiing machine, an ironic touch given the temperature here in guayaquil, as well as an abdominizer and a single dumbell), a bed in which i try to sleep, and this colossal mound of a computer. a door to jim´s left leads to the bathroom which has, to my great delight, a bidet. yep. a bidet. apparently they´re pretty big around here, a holdover from the colonial days. i have yet to try it out but it is pretty tempting...

back in post-election guayaquil

so the elections were last night. the entire country has been under a dry law since friday at noon which ends today at the same time. it´s funny because señora flor remarked that with all the free alcohol flowing at the political rallies to sway favour, you´d think that they´d let the good times roll. didn´t stop me from enjoying a cold pilsener on saturday night. i felt a little giddy in knowing that i had broken some rule, or aided in the breaking of the rule (it was illegal to sell alcohol... i don´t think consumption was on the table). either way it was tasty, and the pizza that came with it - a tropical one with peaches, bananas and pineapple, with a healthy dousing of chili flakes - was a taste-tingling concoction that hit the spot indeed.

no changes for mayor in guayaquil, jaime nebot got the nod. this might speed relations up between the government and ecotec, but i wouldn´t count on it.

also visited the museum in bahía on friday. i wonderful mosh of exhibitions running from religious art (about 30 paintings of the virgen mary with christchild... almost interchangeable given their similarities), historical artefacts that included some interesting and anatomically correct ceramic offerings, as well as children´s and modern art. the prize of the tour was a trip to the roof offered by the guide from which i could see all of bahía and much of san vicente across the river. the city of bahía is very interesting, with 10 story buildings crowded around the downtown core, all of which are virtually empty and so at night they are barely visible because no lights are turned on.

saturday took us to a farm in the hills north of san vicente. juan carlos´friend owns the place and trains champion horses there for competitions. it was an interesting place, with more pigs than you can shake a stick at, a bunch of curious ostriches, a parrot, a bric-a-brac of cats and dogs, and of course the numerous horses. we took a ride into the hillside and found a small pool in the middle of a stream fed by a very small waterfall of just a foot or so. the water was wonderfully refreshing but since then we´ve all found little critters crawling around making us itch. i forget what jc called them but they´re none too pleasant. we scrubbed hard to get them off and occasionally still find one or two, but apparently we´ll survive.

a brief hello from bahía

hello from bahía de caráquez... where the internet is slow and i can´t log in to my canada.com account...

we are just hanging out for the moment, trying to get in touch with the powers that be before we make our daily journey in search of lunch. eating out is a wonderful practice here, a sojourn of sorts that begins and ends at the local cevicheria. um, that being raw (or slightly cooked) fish swimming in a broth of onions, cilantro and lemon juice. a nice helping of clifles (thinly sliced and fried plantains) on the side and you are set... all for a dollar (with juice!). okay, so i do not indulge in such a tradition and instead opt for the menestra de lentejas... or lentil stew with rice. very tasty indeed but it draws the looks of waitresses who try to prod me into adding a hunk of chicken or beef.

bahía is a nice place, if slightly less than awe inspiring. it´s basically a rich resort town with gleeming empty towers just waiting for citizens of quito to drop by for a weekend or two a year. the streets are mostly empty in the downtown core, except for the occasional bicycle taxi (part of the ecocity image). went swimming yesterday and really it wasn´t so bad, apart from the salt part which was unpleasant. lauren managed to get entangled in a jellyfish which they call ´mala agua´here, basically ´bad water´.... funny stuff. now she has this mark all the way around her leg that looks like she was flogged or something.

the bar is at step number 279

well, i´m finally here.

after a whirlwind tour of houston, the panama airport and a couple of 737s i have arrived in guayaquil. houston is but a blur. in vancouver it was kind of cool cause at one point i saw rick hanson, he of the man in motion fame, wheeling about on flury st. i also got to enjoy a few slices of 93 cent pizza. very tasty stuff indeed. houston has less charm, but that only included the five minute shuttle ride from the airport to our hotel room. of course the walk from the terminal to the baggage claim area entailed actually leaving the airport and travelling through the parking garage for a good 100 metres... they´re doing some work on the 8th busiest airport in the states (according to the signs). and really i was disappointed, i saw a tonne more cowboy hats in calgary than i ever did in my brief sojourn in texas. i also picked up an ocho card to call home... a texas phone card entirely in spanish that had a picture of mexico on it. i asked the guy for the cheapest card in which to call canada and he brought me the ocho. it ended up being a pretty good deal, and what more a somewhat funny / ironic twist of fate because the movie on the way to panama was dodgeball in which the espn broadcast is over the ocho.

good times

so i arrived in ecuador. first up, the customs area in the airport is kind of funny. getting off the plane meagan remarked how it was funny that one of the stewardesses was reading the same book as me... i thought it funny too and decided to check my bag. lo and behold i had left my book behind. i quickly filed back up the tunnel and found the woman and asked for my book back. wedged inside were pics of christine and me in newfoundland. she asked where the pics were taken and when i answered she kind of shrugged and said that it looked like chile.

today saw the malecon... it´s really a beautiful place and very amazing for a city the size and history of guayaquil. will, the canadian doing the defait internship said that of all the cities in south america he´s visited (in brazil, argentina and peru), guaya is the most beautiful and advanced. the downtown is definitely on the right track... cerro santa ana is beautiful, marking over 500 steps up to a vista overlooking the city. the malecon is studded with restaurants and parks and monuments and contains more police per square foot than anywhere else i´ve ever been.

it is hot though... you sweat just standing around. nights are nice cause it dips down to a pleasant temperature and you can lounge about without worrying about making sure you´re getting enough water.

btw, here´s a pic of me at nancy´s computer...

hostelling in vancouver

we finally made our way to vancouver.

all it took was a 6 1/2 hour drive from kimberley to kelowna and a 6 hour jaunt by bus to van city. we got in at 5:15 am and zonked out at jane's parent's place. this afternoon i took the bus into town (2 bucks on weekends, even from richmond) and decided to roam about the place, exploring as i went. it's a nice city, very dramatic with the mountain vistas rising from behind the steel and glass towers that dominate the waterfront. gastown reminds me of so many trendy parts of toronto, or even a more glorified and extensive rendering of the hydrostone market in halifax. yaletown is as young as ray's fascination with the yankees, and cranes battle each other in the sky for rental rate domination. there was a game at b.c. place stadium tonight but i decided to keep on walking and found myself amidst a great concrete zoo around gm place. it's a somewhat depressing arena, all greyish brown with mildew staining the facade. it is almost entirely enveloped in roads as well with a construction zone brushing up against it's one side.

the rest of the city is almost a toronto in miniature, replete with indoor malls and fountains that mimic but don't quite mirror the t.dot. not that vancouver is toronto's ugly sister, it's probably the reverse, but it seems like that's what it really wants to be. of course i've been here for all of 12 hours so what do i know?