a note on lunch

lunch is generally 'the' meal of the day down here and there are more places serving the mid-day munchies that you can shake a stick at. most places do not stray very far from the tried and true local staples. that said you can always sate your hunger pangs with the following...

Ceviche

Sopa de Patas (Hoof soup)

Arroz y Menestra (Rice and Bean Stew) usually with a hunk of meat thrown on the side

Guatita (cow stomach in peanut sauce!)

and so on and so forth...

the protocal is as follows. each restaurant posts a menu of the almuerzo outside on the sidewalk... usually it goes something like: soup - lets say sopa de patas, along with rice, menestra and either pollo (chicken) or carne asado (bbq meat) or something like that. a juice is also included. this whole mess comes to about a buck twenty, give or take a quarter, and is basically served straight from the vats either behind or in front of the counter. all you do is order the almuerzo - it's what most people do, and sit down. the food follows in under a minute. i'm assuming volume is a big part of the economic strategy of these places.

and they pop up all over the place. there are a couple in the residential neighbourhood where i'm living. one is called café incognito - genius!

so, being of the vegetarian ilk you might think it'd be difficult for me to find good, cheap grub on a regular basis.

uh-uh.

why there's a wonderful veggie taiwanese place not ten minutes from my front door that offers up their own version of the almuerzo. and downtown i have the hare krishnas to thank for spooning out the culinary delights. both offer similar fare - a buck fifty gets you a drink (often lemonade, fresh juice, anise tea, or something similar), a soup (i've had veggie soup, broccoli, i forget what else...), a salad - usually cabbage with onions, beans and such, a pile of rice and one or two tofu or tvp dishes, often with an oriental flare. i had been jonesing (i hope i'm using that correctly, i'm not so hip with the lingo of the teens these days...) for some indian food but a couple days of hare krishna cooking put that to rest. weird hair, great food!

tipping is not a custom and i've become adept at scrutinizing change, as everyone else does.

something not connected at all but interesting is the way people put every bill but the 1 up to the light to see the band running through it. i hand over a five and they check it out - everyone it seems. i do it now too with all bill change i get.

santisteven

we returned to santisteven yesterday after our slightly neurotic journey to fertisa on the weekend.

fertisa is in a rough part of town and we were warned that although saturdays were the best time to go as most people are available, they are also the day of the week in which the men drink all morning and watch football all afternoon (kickball for all you people who think football is that boring american pasttime). not tem minutes into our visit we were approached by one friendly individual - must have been halftime - who introduced himself, gave us advice and breathed noxious fumes into our faces. he was eventually prodded away by some of his less inebriated friends.

so jane and i had a bunch of ideas, had sketched them out on large sheets of paper and were even ready to play a game involving a ball of wool. as has been the case however, we were less prepared for the collective will of the community and when we finally did get started, around an hour and a half after we were supposed to, the conversation turned to our next visit and what they hoped to learn. so... now we have a plan which might have been better than the string game anyway, and it involves some basic concepts that can be researched ahead of time. and we can split it up so that jane tackles recycling (a potential money maker) and i go after preventive health care - hygiene and the like. one thing i might look into is the use of ultraviolet light water purification. there is a lack of potable water in fertisa and this might be a wonderful opportunity, if done correctly, to provide many people with safe water. because of the international conference we're hosting this weekend we don't return to fertisa until december so we have a couple weeks to brainstorm and collect tidbits here and there.

saturday night was quiet. the germans who had spent friday night marooned at our place left during the day and were gone by the time i got back. julia was working early sunday so begged off going out at all. i decided to hit the hay early and did just that after a few dozen games of minesweeper.

sunday was a relaxing day, a planned visit to the botanical gardens did not go ahead as i'm not sure where it is and nancy bolted before i could ask her how to get there. i wandered downtown and just sort of made my way along the malecon, strolling without purpose. it's a beautiful area and the gardens section is incredibly layed out with pools and fountains, monuments and pathways dotted throughout the greenery.

so next up santisteven, the college that we're working at. this time around was actually interesting. jane suggested the trip to bahía, a pet project of hers, and they seemed intrigued. i bounced some ideas off of them and gave them homework - to talk to the people who work at the school and ask them about the processes they use to make the school ecological. this is the school with the recycling and composting programs that would make canadian schools jealous. they have their own garden lining one wall (they are plastered onto the side of a hill - the back of cerro santa ana and the garden stretches up the hill about 40 metres on a 30 degree angle) with compost pits and wonderful decorative shrubery (apparently iguanas are a problem and the gardener has to come up with new ways to prevent them from eating everything everyday). they have also implemented a water reduction scheme with timed taps in the washrooms so that water is turned off after 7 seconds, and installed a purification system so those kids that need it can fill up bottles of potable water to take home with them (instead of buying lots of plastic bottles).

so next week we're gonna have a demonstration over water and contamination - a suggestion they made. i'm going to bring in a homemade filter using a plastic bottle, some sand and such (we'll see how that works...) and perhaps build a few crafts using recycled material.

next up fertisa

tomorrow is our first "real" day in fertisa. the last time we met with the local community and introduced ourselves but that was about it. this time we actually have a plan and will be leading two hours of educational material concerning the environment.

or at least that's the way things are set up.

we would love to take the people who show up on a tour of the community and see just what opportunities await us. for example, there are a lot of dry, empty spaces which could be spruced up with a tree or community garden or landscaping. a quicker fix is a simple garbage / recycling clean-up. there is a returnable policy for things like paper and plastic - a company will process the stuff and give a small reward to those who bring it in - this is always trumpeted as a way to get people interested in cleaning up their community. everytime i mention a policy or plan i'm asked if there is a way to make money out of it, that the people will listen if they have money as a motivating factor. so jonathan, one of the members of the ONE sent an email to a friend of his who works for the recycling company and they are to get in touch with me about the process. should be interesting.

right now i'm waiting for the veterinarian to show up. the one dog has developed an open sore on the side of her face and the vet is supposed to be taking her away for examination and treatment. i was told that 'of course' the vet would be here before nighttime... it's pushing 7 and i haven't heard any doorbells. the cats have also not been fed today i don't think. with nancy and her husband away all week chores start to slide. since i'm usually the first non school aged person up in the morning (ana maria is out the door by quarter to 7) i usually feed the animals - but i don't usually buy the stuff.

the dogs are a little panicky tonight. for a few nights in a row there were fireworks in the area (not sure why) and the dogs ripped into the house at first opportunity. once inside they employ non-violent means of resistance, falling on the floor and going limp. you practically have to slide them across the floor to get them out. tonight they have been barking like mad, pacing the 15 feet of the front yard and letting loose on anyone who dares venture down our street.

snow angels in ashtrays

that's how i feel right about now. we went out last night, andy, his friend, julia (a german working with an architect in town and staying with nancy), and i. i was slipping out for a run at 9:15, the best time of day because it's less hot and often a wind is whipping up to cool you off, and ran into nancy who mentioned that we were going out at 10. well, 10 turned to 11 before andy showed up, and then we played guitar and chatted a bit before venturing out.

bars in guayaquil, those in the "safe" parts of town are very expensive. for most the cover is at least 10 bucks, and sometimes this includes a free drink or two, and sometimes it doesn't. as we were driving around last night we saw a few trendy places where you can't get in unless you fork over a whopping 30 bucks and this does not include imbibations. and the places are packed, loads of semi-dressed teens and twenty-somethings waiting in line, chatting on their cellphones and drowning themselves in second hand smoke. one of the trendiest places is this strip called kennedy mall - a handful of bars each with the requisite inflatable beer bottle facing the street (more of a pedestrian walkway, with cordoned areas to prevent cars from taking out dozens of drunken patrons), each with a crazy cover charge. we drove up to it, made an awkward u-turn amidst the throngs and then high-tailed it out of there.

the thing was, julia wanted to dance and while us gents were lukewarm on the idea we wished to appease her (you don't want to anger the germans...). so we drove the length of the (safe parts of the) city looking for a discoteca in which i would not have to sell my liver to afford the cover charge (and then have to stick to drinking orange juice).

earlier we had dropped by a party in a rich part of town to hang out with some friends of andy. the place was huge and beautiful, if a little too starkly white, but the pool and foosball tables were nice touches, the fireplace in the living room slightly out of place (a fireplace... in guayaquil?). but the patio was throbbing with people as the music churned out the slow-paced dance grooves that everyone seems to love here (salsa, merengue, cumbia...?, not the music of the kids here).

so we're driving, and finally julia concedes that finding a discoteca, both safe and cheap, is not in the cards. we end up hitting a pool joint overlooking a sideroad in urdesa. it's a nice place, very unassuming and reminiscent of anything back home. the tables are threadworn, the cues bent at oblique angles, but the beer is cold and cheap. we play for an hour and a half, down a jug of beer and the total is 6 bucks. the sucky part is that all three of them smoke, andy's friend like the world is ending in ten minutes. julia wasn't going to smoke because she has this wicked cough but was talked into it within, oh, about three minutes. the pool place was a cloud forest of marlboros. i had to swish my pool cue in front of me, breaking up the fog, to align my shot. a lot of people smoke here, especially amongst us ecoclubers. you would think that people interested in issues of ecology and health wouldn't smoke, but you would be sorely and utterly wrong.

posting and such

i've set up a dummy account for all of you who don't necessarily want to sign up but are just itching to add your 2 cents to whatever witty thing i might have said. if so... just log in as

canucknotes
password: ecuador

i might even add a post or two to that blog as well, and feel free to add one yourself.

enjoy!

dinner and some scary stories

meagan and her husband paul dropped by last night for dinner. they are working out in dos mangas, a tiny two road village near manglaralto on the coast. in town for a few days to unwind, get some research done and visit the internet cafés jane agreed to whip them up a dinner. i was out of the loop on the planning process but contributed a bottle of wine to the affair and all was forgiven.

things are not going quite so smoothly for the couple. not that they're having a bad time, far from it, it's just that the gods seem content to smite them with bad luck from time to time. they are without passports, for instance, a situation that has existed for over three weeks now. the government went on strike a day or two after they submitted the passports for registration and there is no sign of an agreement in sight (not that i would know however). so that kind of sucks. also on the negative is the fact that paul misplaced his bank card and meagan's bank card has decided to stop working. luckily they have a stash of traveller's cheques that, while incredibly inconvenient to cash, are at least worth money. luckily they are expending little money to begin with. their apartment, lacking much of the luxury of our guayaquil pad, is only 40 bucks a month and that includes sporadic meals from the family that lives downstairs. i say sporadic because apparently they drop off food of all sorts at almost any time of the day. paul says that he actually wishes that he could cook a bit more but facing the barrage of food that he faces it's difficult.

yesterday's meeting was almost cancelled. one person did show - diana, a 17 year old who will be helping us in santi esteban. we chatted for a while - andy ventured out 5 minutes before the meeting was to start and came back 40 minutes in which made for a bunch of wild stabs in spanish as to what the meeting was called for. i'm assuming things are on the right track but we really won't know until we're picking up the pieces on monday.

today we go to fertiza, the poorer part of our pilot project. as i might have mentioned we are supposed to work with three different ecoclubs in guayaquil, a college (santi esteban high school), a middle class neighbourhood (las acacias) and a poorer neighbourhood (fertiza).

ah... it's the time of day when our maid's daughter, who just turned one, decides to scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason. the "ignore the behaviour and it will go away" tactic employed by her mom has yet, after weeks of use, seemed to make a dent on the child's behaviour, but we'll see...

some pics to whet the appetite

ok, just a few pics, a little bit of background scenery to fill in the white space of my journal so far.

to begin, here´s a picture of jim morrison, he that watches over me as i sleep, and greets all who enter my room with a big old riders on the storm glare that reeks of pretension (ok, so i´m not a doors fan).

the boogeyman

and if you had been wondering who this jane / juanita girl was to whom i have been randomly referring, wonder no more. here is a mugged photo taken minutes ago.

juanita

oh, did i happen to mention that i made it in the paper? yep, it seems that the photographer from the peru trip just so happens to work for one of the sleaziest papers in south america and managed to get our trip sandwiched between a story of miss ecuador and another of the dismemberment of some poor man (complete with 4 pages of photos, yes, 4).

here´s the article...

full article

and here´s a closeup of me...

look at me taking out the trash!

good times.

well, after a rather laid back easy going saturday i think i´ll retire and hit the hay.

canada 2.0

here´s one person´s response to the election the other night. i quite like it.

yesterday jane and i went to las acacias, an area of town in which we´ll be working. the place is a big maze of condominiums although they´re really more like block housing units scattered across a large, mostly arid field alongside a busy throughway. there´s a lot of garbage around and few places to put it, a few areas where people have burned garbage, and a few unkept garden-like areas. the place is teeming with potential and a coat of paint (there are lots of concrete retaining walls) and a little clean-up would do wonders. it´s so dry here now so we´re not sure of potential planing options but i´m sure something tropical would do well. the soil is parched and tan in colour - it doesn´t look like it would be very productive.

here´s a site about las acacias, the pics look quite different from what we saw and are obviously taken from a different area.

after our tour of the area we decided to take in a movie at the supercines in mall san marino. we checked out collateral with tom cruise. a good flick, a little depressing at times but interesting. i´d like to know if what we saw is the same as the north american film cause the picture looked just a little too close up, as if it was blown up to fit the widescreen but was actually a square picture. anyway the theatre was wonderful, just like the odeon at home, only we had to fork over about 3 bucks canadian for the entertainment (this is the mall with the tommy hilfiger and pony and those types of stores... where a pair of jeans costs over 60 bucks american).

the dogs are restless

we have two dogs. they´re pretty big pups, one´s a mottled black and off-white while the other is more tan and brown. they live in the front yard/patio area and occasionally venture inside when they sneak in past someone with their hands full. the whole time i´ve been here no-one has taken them for a walk, although they stay pretty slim despite the seemingly endless supply of dogfood in their bowls.

anyway, they are guard dogs and that´s what they do - guard. i do not as much elicit an ear toss when i come up to the gate at the front of the house. other passerby however receive a deluge of barks that would peel paint and then make it cower in the corner. while this behaviour may be conducive to keeping undesirables out of the house, it also makes for the most unpleasant of sleeping conditions. the one dog (i don´t know his name... let´s call him sam) does the brunt of the patrols and lashes out with a barrage of barks at the slightest movement in the street. he continues the display until the offending individual is a good 100, 200 feet away, just for good measure. and, of course, he works shifts and therefore is just as likely to bellow in the middle of the night as the middle of the day.

there is another dog, a poodle, that lives across the street and whose owners have the strange and twisted habit of locking in the gated portion of their window ledge on the second floor. the dog doesn´t even have a turning radius of room and howls in a plaintive kind of wail for eons at a time until someone eventually rescues him. i haven´t met or seen these people but i hate them for doing such a thing to the poor dog.

i visited mall del sol today. decided that it´s only about a 20 minute walk away and in a very safe neighbourhood (read: rich) so i took off for a few hours. now, today was hot. very hot. a flashing sign along the road flashed 38 degrees as i passed and although that might be stretching it, it was still a scorcher. i passed a few interesting buildings along the way as well including the newly completed world trade center and the hilton colón.

World Trade Center

mall del sol is the biggest of the malls in the guayaquil area and one of the newest. it´s much like the average north american mall, but with a few more swanky stores thrown in. it also has a huge supermaxi that reminds me of hiper paiz in guatemala - like a walmart basically, one of the big ones with food and such. i walked around and stared at all the stuff that was there but didn´t buy anything. ecuador is not much of a bargain for most things. i had thought of a radio to plug into the wall so i wasn´t burning batteries all the time but nothing took my fancy.

that was about it though. i made my way back and have been relaxing for the better half of the day, enjoying the break before we get back to work tomorrow. oh yeah, in ecuador the second and third are holidays, and because monday was the first, they gave people that day off too.

it´s raining in kingston

just listening to tuan´s radio show at the moment and apparently the weather in kingston is not as agreeable as ecuador. ana maria took the computer speakers with her when she went to quito (along with the cable to her television) so i´m without much sound but have hooked up my headphones and if i crane my head enough i can stretch the cord out long enough to listen. she has previously offered her tv to me when she´s gone out and when i found the door to her room open i thought i was in luck. i was wrong. i guess i´ll be watching the election results from the computer screen, my head tilted to the side. i hope i don´t rip the headphones out of the cpu when they declare kerry the winner.

went for a walk today. went by parque bolivar...

woohoo! tuan played my song! i even got a little shout out across the miles. i´m quite pleased that the connection here is so good - my request - white paint morning by buffalo tom - is perfect. i´m a little sad that i missed the new sarah slean song, but them´s the breaks.

ok... back to the park. so parque bolivar is the iguana park. don´t know what an iguana looks like? here´s a peek...

isn´t he cute?

that´s actually the park as well - a very nice park with throngs of people oohing and aahing over the iguanas and being careful not to walk in the random piles of iguana crap all over the place. i´ve also been warned, numerous times, to not look up as they live in the trees and can aim.

anyway, i made my way over the malecon and walked about through the various gardens and areas they have, taking pics as i went. it was a cloudy day here, i thought the clouds would burn off but they didn´t, so it looks like i´ll have to return to take more pics. anyway, i did find the maac gallery open today after two unsuccessful visits, and let me tell you, i was not prepared for it. it´s gorgeous. it´s a little like the agnes etherington addition at queen´s, all new and shiny with vaulted ceilings and barren walls except for an added quotation or two. there is a gallery devoted to the artist tábara, an interesting guy - not one of my favourites - but it´s interesting that señora flor has a few of his works on display in her house.

the rest of the museum/gallery was devoted to more modern selections, some of which were very weird while a great number were quite bold and refreshing. i´ll have to go back with a paper and pen to record the names of the artists as repeating their names ten times just didn´t cut it.

expanding the running out of gas story

it´s been a hectic few days, what with heading to peru and all, so i´ll try to fill you in on what´s been going on.

first up, we were to have our meeting with james peters from rotary international on monday. we were to have the meeting but as things often end up, we were pushed back to tuesday. however, jane and i missed the phone call informing us of the delay because we were stranded on the interchange around the international airport. you see our scavenge of the office was in full swing monday, we had managed to extricate thirty years worth of legal files and family memorabilia (for those not in the know our office is the former law office of one of the ecoclub member´s father), and loaded them up in a flatbed truck. with said truck we headed across town to a dumpster smack dab in the middle of a bustling food market. we were a bonified success and as soon as we pulled up a number of people started pouring over our wares, scrambling into the back of the truck and pulling away broken fans, loose string, panelling and whatever suited their fancy. this started to disturb andy a bit who quickly returned to the truck and began to drive away - with people still inside. they decided that it wasn´t worth sorting through our junk to risk their lives and bailed. a few people were nicked by the truck as it left but i don´t think legal action will be taken.

leaving the dumpster we were heading along on of the main arteries around guayaquil when andy lost control of the wheel and brakes. the truck coasted to a stop, us flagging traffic to one side with frenetic waving of arms, near rocafuerte university. andy and friend (name escapes me) went off in search of petrol while aileen, jane and i sweated it out in the ecuadorian afternoon sun.

so... when they returned they had a one gallon jug in tow. a quick surgery on a half litre water bottle and we had a make-shift funnel to pour the stuff in. this done we took off, flying along the freeway and mocking the numerous gas stations we passed. until of course we ran out of gas again.

the second time was funnier because we couldn´t coast off the highway and just sort of pulled to one side, a full 100 yards or so from a gas station. again we went for gas and again we put a full gallon into the tank, and again we coasted by a number of gas stations. this time, however, we made it back to our home in kennedy.

it´s kinda anticlimactic now but we rushed and dressed and made it to james peters´hotel a full 40 minutes late. he came down and talked to us for a bit, apologized for cancelling and such. ok, so i just realized that i already wrote about the gas... hmmm... well i hope this time was more entertaining.

so peru. that was interesting. after realizing that we were leaving at 1 30 am and not pm i had andy pick me up and take me to his place to wait out the trip. the bus terminal is quite the place and after midnight it takes on an ethereal charm. not like the chaotic stretch of land that defined guatemalan transit, the terminal is a guide to organized travel.

terminal terrestre

here´s from my journal at the time...

it´s an immense building with different levels on which to catch your ride. we´re currently on the roof with a wonderful view of the city and entre ríos. it´s quiet here, the snack vendors are napping between customers and the few passengers are more interested in sharing a quiet moment looking out over the city. we´re inside the bus bickering about. all told there are about 12 of us - the ecoclub along with dale fundacion and a few straglers from estancilla and naranjal. it´s an amazing change from guatemala where chaos ruled and buses spewed forth from dusty waste heaps at the side of markets. here it´s order and bureaucracy. you walk through turnstiles with bilingual signs and pay 40 cents just to get in the parking lot (to prevent just anyone dropping by). and there are security guards too. and little stalls line the walls, each offering tickets to similar destinations every 5 to 50 minutes. this should be interesting.

we stopped off in a place along the way, met with the mayor and local ecoclub before hopping on another bus and hightailing it out of there. crossing the border was interesting, you walk through the busy market town of huaquillas with people yelling at you for transport, cross a small bridge with a huge welcome to peru banner strung across it and that´s about it. very little changes except the licence plates on the cars (a very uninspiring pe above black letters on white plates). a quick trip to the immigration office where a stamp is quickly added to my passport and we´re off again (this ain´t honduras, no fingerprinting this time!).

i´ll write more about tumbes, my wonderful living quarters and the rest of my weekend when i get the chance. now i gotta go and prepare my bush loses the election party. i hope i have enough party favours.