pics and a coldsore

woke up this morning with a cold sore - first one in about a year... apparently this lack of sleep phase i'm currently going through is catching up with me. i've been giving it a healthy dose of medicated cream all day long so we'll see how that works out.

got my film back today. here are a few pics of my great adventures in loja and riobamba...



here is one of those crazy displays in the park in loja i was talking about...



this is the gate to the city - quite an interesting piece of architecture considering the surroundings - it houses a café and a couple of small art galleries.



here is the train for the nariz de diablo (devil's nose) train ride - notice that it's actually a bus on train chassis (there is an actual train but during the off season it's mostly hit or miss on that count).



a shot of the tracks on the way up the nariz - you sit on top behind this bar that keeps you in.



this church survied the great fire of 1779 and was moved, brick by brick to riobamba's current location.

show me the love...

ahem... after tabulating the ballots it appears that there is a clearcut winner, and that person is none other then myself (yea!). by the narrowest of margins i pulled in a tidy 12 correct, barely eeking out the victory over tuan and karen with 11 apiece. ray strolls in with an even 10, heather (christine's roomie) clocks a 9 while christine and my mom (who had a soft spot for the passion) pull up the rear with 7 and 6 respectively.

and no, i did not count my change of heart from aviator to million dollar baby. i did miss a lot of the broadcast though - our local abc station was blocked out because it was showing on tele amazonia - with simultaneous translation which is hilarious when you hear a dead panned delivery of robin williams about the orientation of sponge bob in spanish. luckily a banner on the screen alerted us (nicola and i - she being the other german (apart from julia who has left) who is living here) to the existance of a radio station that was broadcasting the direct feed. so i missed the beginning (flipping channels).

thanks for playing - i'll be looking forward to the fame and wealth that comes with this honour (ie - beer).

a plug

a psuedo-friend of mine has started keeping a blog as well. well, she has been keeping it for a while but recently sent me a link to it. she's a pseudo-friend cause really i've only crossed her path a couple of times although we keep making plans to visit vegetarian restaurants via email (the making plans part) that keep falling apart in the guayaquil sun.

so... let me introduce dana hill. she's a go-getter, a daughter of the world so to speak, born and raised in florida but really the sunshine state couldn't hold on to her. i googled her before we sat down to talk and found out that she's a volunteering machine, and also that her hair style has radically changed - for the good. anyway, she is experiencing a side of guayaquil and ecuador that i rarely glimpse and provides a wonderful counter point to my upper-class witticisms. she's working in the south of the city, the place where i have been told to watch myself and never venture after dark (or really anytime if i'm alone). there is no policentro at her doorstep, nor high speed internet downstairs.

to get a more nuanced feel for life here, in all its manifestations, check out her ruminations,

Gringa in Guayaquil

an intriguing busride home

nothing really out of the ordinary - point a to point b without a hitch although a suspicious "thump" noise and the sight of oodles of people pointing at our front wheel and shaking their heads with ominous foreboding wasn't all that much comforting. however, thump and all i made it back a-ok and even found a nice city bus from the terminal that dropped me off at the policentro after a pleasant 20 minute tour of alborada (usually i have to take two buses to make the trip, or shell out 2.50 for a cab).

it was market day in riobamba but unlike the market days in guatemala this one didn't start at the crack of dawn. when i was strolling through at 8:30 there were many gaps in the crowd of vendors and few people were fully settled. the artisans section was not all that different from any other, a little tamer than cuenca's, but there was a line of people at sewing machines that i thought was pretty interesting. about 10 of them, lined up facing the cathedral, sheltered in their little tarpalins, old singer sewing machines in front of them and a big bin of fabrics and threads to the side.

it also sucks to be travelling during the off season. restaurants that are supposed to be open at a certain time are not, and often don't open until way into the later stages of the afternoon. i wandered around for a long time today looking for lunch options. the veggie restaurant doesn't do weekends, the english cafe place was out of veggie sandwich toppings, and the rain forest cafe with a suptious looking menu and a huge open sign plastered to the door wasn't going to open until 4 in the pm (my pointing out the sign did little to sway the guy inside who was startled by my knocking and asking questions). i did find a pizza place that was unlocked and didn't seem to mind my wanting lunch at close to 1. called "los sabores de italia" - the flavours of italy - they had a relatively mamoth selection of za and i settled on the popeye (which he phonetically voiced out when i mistakenly thought they had anglicized it - so popeye became poe-peh-yeh) - a spinach, onion and garlic concoction. boy was it good. i'm gonna have to get in touch with the lonely planet people and let them in on this place cause it rocked.

i walked the kilometre to the bus station, a nice stroll down the main drag, and got there right in time to take the 1:40 to guayaquil.

like i said, uneventful but interesting. after the thump noise the ayudante (helper) got out to take a look at the undercarriage. he gave a helpful shrug and climbed back in and we went back to launching ourselves at the speed bumps. we rolled into one town with a huge icon just off to the side of the road. these things are pretty popular and this one was a beaut. usually it's a statue enclosed behind glass and all done up with paintings and carvings decorating the enclosure. this one was named the "virgen lourdes" and the ayudante bolted from the bus, approached the statue and dipped his fingers in a small dish at the front of the icon, made the sign of the cross and hurried back to the bus. i did not find this as comforting as i believe he did.

then when we crossed the border to the province of guayas we stopped to let people on and quite a few pointed and furled their brows at our front axle.

well, we did make it though, and none the worse for wear. i'm off to milagro tomorrow early and will update y'all on how i make out there.

oscars and riobamba update

don't forget that tomorrow all the poop hits the fan and one of the teeming, um, 4 people will walk away with a "premium pint", "ecuador secret super prize pack", a "way upped ante" prize pack and perhaps something from cheapskate tuan if he so decides to grant us the honour of offering something tangible.

there is still time to get in on the action - just scroll down the page to the oscars ballot image and add your selections to the comments section by clicking on comments - don't need a login or really any sense of what will happen tomorrow night - i haven't a clue and i even didn't like my pick for best pic. feel free to add to the growing list of prizes too!

well, just relaxing on my last morning here in riobamba. i'm gonna check out a place for lunch (supposed to have the best pizzas in town) and then skedaddle back to guayaquil for the afternoon (it's a 4 hour plus bus ride and apparently they leave on the hour). everything has gone pretty smoothly so far although breakfast options were limited and so i dipped into my multigrain bread stash and peanut butter - the bread is wonderful, fresh from yesterday and very yummy.

nariz del diablo and mike schimdt

yep, i had a wonderful day, if a poor evening. i didn't sleep but a wink at the second rate hotel i was stuck with last night. good thing it was only 3 bucks - the other places were booked solid... anyway i woke up, went to the train station at 6:10 and was told that i'd have to go to alausi in a bus and meet the train there, that there were too many people already on board. ok, so i get on this bus and head off to alausi which is a really nice little town in the middle of rolling hills and mountains - and it has the requisite religious statue overlooking the town and smiting anyone who goes astray. on the way i meet this guy - mike schmidt - a yank who's travelling by himself. we get to chatting and such and things are ok. so we get on the bus / train (it wasn't the real bus like in the pictures but a smaller bus attached to a train chassis...). the scenery is pretty wonderful. we had to ride inside on the way down the nariz but got the upstairs on the way back. it's impressive, steep descents with switchbacks that send you down the sides of the mountains. and the valley floor, with the requisite river etching it's way along is impressive. i snapped a tonne of pics - on the way down you're basically facing the luck of the draw as one of the sides faces rockface and the other blissful valley splendor. it changes about 10 minutes in and in our favour (as we were rockfacing it for the first bit) and reveals the wonder and beauty of a million shades of green. on the ride up, feet dangling over the side it's more of the same although that much more touristy goodness as you dangle over the edge and snap pic after pic without wrestling with the frames of the window. it was a good day - mostly sunny - and quite warm. i've heard that the first part is pretty frigid but we were amply dressed in long shirts and pants.

and riobamba is a very nice, cuenca-ish place, with regal churches and cobblestone streets in abundance. mike shmidt and i walked about took in the scenery along the way. he's a retired special ed teacher who's addicted to travelling. he's already pegged 40 countries under his belt, collecting passport stamps like baseball cards. we chatted about bush for a bit - he hates him too, and he's from ohio and therefore winced when i reminded him of the importance ohio played in the election. he's also collected quite the number of books about people named mike schmidt that aren't him - i brought up the baseball player.

one night in riobamba

so i'm sitting in an internet café in riobamba, sultan of the andes (self proclaimed - there was no grudge match), and writing an email to christine... to be witty i decide to subject the email "saludos desde riobamba" - basically "hello from...". i type in the "s" and immediately my message pops up. figures.

the bus ride here was quite harrowing, as far as my bus rides have gone so far anyway. you know those stories of the busload of people plunging x number of metres from a slippery mountain road as they attempt to pass a lumbering bottle truck? um, well i almost became a part of one of those. we were snaking our way through the andes amidst a wonderfully exhuberant rainfall (wow, i'm drunk on adjectives this evening) when the bus jolts, slides to the right (the void and x-number of meters to the valley below) a good 30 feet or so. it wasn't until i looked out the window that i realized how close we were to the side and if such a thing had happened on a narrower section of road the consulate would be getting in touch with my family right now.

but, as it happened it was a relatively wide section of road and given the ordeal we still had a few feet of sliding room so all's good and i get to live to ride on the roof of a train down the side of a mountain tomorrow.

yeah, you heard me.

the devil's nose is the engineering triumph that once helped link guayaquil to quito and provide an alternative route to crossing the andes. it was basically destroyed in the earthquake of 98 but this one section has been rebuilt as a great tourist experience wherein hundreds of gringos clambor atop the train and gawk at the pretty scenery as the train makes a series of cut back maneuvers through the clouds.

so... i'll fill you in on how that goes. as for now i have to get back to my lovely 3 dollar a night hotel and try to summon the courage to use the bathroom.

aviator

well, saw the aviator last night (it took a couple days to post this, given the rush to use the computer and the fact that blogger was acting up yesterday...). the theatre was about 70 percent full, the regular crowd with a larger percentage of gringos (about 5) than usual. anyway i won't get into details but it's pretty much an overwrought ballyhooed mess of a film that never should have been considered for so many awards.

not that it's all bad, and i can certainly see why some people might like it - but never once did i really care for anyone, i felt detached the entire time and spent a good part of the second half checking my watch to see when i could go. a big part of the let down was the choice of music. scorsese decided to forego the usual sweeping violins and such for more period musical selections, but rarely did they fit the tone or message. they seemed lumped on afterwards, haphazardly.

and you should have heard the collective sigh by the audience at the end. there was a palpable sense of disillusionment - a two beat before everyone in the theatre rose at the same time and headed orderly but quickly for the doors. and really, howard hughes was a weird and interesting guy but, despite all the info and insight offered by the film, i feel they only scratched the surface. watching the reaction of howard's entourage to his increasingly erratic behaviour was like watching a pavlovian experiment, they were innoculated to his strangeness and barely raised an eyebrow or anything.

there were times too, little moments like throwaway quotes and such that were disappointing. thinking back i think martin would've been helped by watching ed wood and the performance by johnny depp to see how to inject some sort of enthusiasm or energy into the film.

some parts were cool though - one part in particular, where they are piloting the hercules across the san francisco bay trying to get it airborne, left me with goosebumps. you could actually feel the roar of the motors as it swept from right to left, and that was cool.

oscars anyone?

so usually i am involved in an oscars contest of some sort. that might be difficult given the fact that i'm a different hemisphere, but i've decided to include my picks anyway and if you're interested include yours too and we'll see just whose cuisine reigns supreme! (chomp!)

the following is the official oscars print ballot - i'm not about to create an html version so i'll just write down my picks below...

here's a link to the image in full...

and my picks are... (going across in rows)

foxx
million dollar baby
aviator
morgan freeman
story of the weeping camel
lorenzo
hillary swank
autism is a world
two cars, one night
cate blanchett
collateral
the incredibles
the incredibles
the sea inside
the aviator
finding neverland
the sea inside
harry potter...
the aviator
finding neverland
sideways
finding neverland
accidentally in love
eternal sunshine...

anyone, anyone?

the kids of porto hondo

for a minute we didn't think anyone was going to show up. that's been the way it has gone the last two months and after waiting around in the rain for 20 minutes and coming up with blank stares from the people we asked on the street we were about to cut our losses and catch the next bus out of there. but after a quick call to nelson, the guy we sat down with the other day, everything seemed to be put back on track and wouldn't you know it but a tidy string of children were at that moment making their way to the environmental centre with gladys, the woman we were supposed to meet, leading the way.

gladys is nice, small and quiet but with a certain air of confidence. she never seemed unnerved by the kids and their constant chatting or jumping around. there were about 15 kids but they floated in and out of the room at will, or drifted to the back of the room to play with a few educational displays that had been set up. one of these had a series of questions with buttons and corresponding answers with similar buttons. if you held down the correct match the display made a horrible buzzing noise. the children stabbed randomly at the answers, often selecting a fish as the answer to a question that asked what activities existed in the mangroves (when a picture of a tour boat was one of the options). another display was a mock up of the area done to match the local topography. very impressive - with lights that displayed where places were when you pressed a certain button (they sure love their buttons!). the centre itself is new, a project that came to light because of funds from local groups and a canadian organization whose name escapes me. it's very slick for porto hondo and is meant to serve the establishment of a eco-tourism emphasis for the community that serves the preservation of the mangroves. we've made plans for coming back next week which should be fun.

about that meeting with the director of ecotec a couple days back... interesting if somewhat anti-climatic. we went in expecting fireworks or at least some sort of opposition but instead we got lots of apologies and happy faces about the potential for the future. amy will be working with us, of course, but she'll also be working there - and they will talk to andy and straighten out any misunderstandings there have been. in theory we're to have a meeting shortly about all the problems and such but she was supposed to phone andy that evening and he said he had not received any call so who really knows.

awkward, awkward, awkward

how best to describe the day i've been through? um, let's go with the word awkward.

it started out fairly simply, i got up and headed off to the revamped office - fresh with internet and network systems. rafael was there, spinning tunes and singing along, if softly (but the music was blaring). i slipped in a hip cd and donned the headphones so as to drown out the syrupy tripe (although better than the other day) coming out of the speakers. i'm working on a pretty slick publication for the foundation (what they are now). using adobe indesign and taking my time on it cause i'm just starting to learn how to use it. apparently the group was handed some money by the pan-american health foundation for such a purpose and so are trying to go as high-brow as possible. fine by me but they keep changing the specs and so i'm left trying to get everything to fit and look pretty in the process. anyway andy shows up and then jane and we're a happy family as we share our vantage points of the making of the book and try to figure out just how to make the images all one colour (it's cheaper only using two inks - and it adds a certain interesting scheme to the publication). anyway, andy (after rafael has left) calls us over to talk to us and begins by saying that he's appreciated the work we've been doing lately and apologizes for the problems of the office and the like, and then says that he's just received an email from our boss (paula, who we have yet to meet but now have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow) that says that he's been mistreating us and that the new intern will not be working with the foundation at all. this is a huge blow because she's got the background to really put the one on track (with organization and communication skills). the mistreating statement stems from our paying 20 bucks a month for internet and the office - a fee that we felt should have come from the 750 dollars that organizations receive from the college of the rockies. well, andy didn't know anything about the money - ecotec (the university that officially is our sponsor down here) hasn't said anything and the only thing our one and only meeting with them accomplished was us writing up a one page summary of our backgrounds that didn't elicit a response (in two months anyway...).

well, andy was literally in tears. he said he feels embarrassed and since he's a student at ecotec and knows the people there well (the foundation used to be the local ecoclub at ecotec) he can't now show his face on campus.

so... we go into damage control, telling andy that we'll spin this as best as we can, make some phonecalls and the like and get on the horn for his cause. this we do, talking to sonja who appeared stunned at the email andy got and his response, although she did sympathize and say that she was not liking where this was going. a meeting on thursday was pulled up to tomorrow at ecotec and we'll try to smooth things over there in the afternoon.

ok, so that out of the way we head on over to a meeting at the mall with a nelson (last name unknown) who manages the ecoclubes and eco-tourism projects out at porto hondo (where i went on the tour through the mangroves) and cerro blanco. a very nice guy (and very understandable as well), he filled us in on the goings on in porto hondo, the kids and their hopes for the club in the near future (basically they're looking for guides to take people on tours). we're gonna drop in on friday to see them in action and see where exactly we can help out.

whew... so i might have more interesting things to say tomorrow after the meeting (4 pm) ...

milagro and the establishment of the penpal cooperative

milagro is a city about the size of kingston about 40 minutes from guayaquil, located right in the middle of a flood plain. it's hot, steamy and cramped - um, like guayaquil in miniature.

i had been invited by carola, a friend of nancy who is the facilitator at an ecoclub there, to talk to the kids in her group about organizing a recycling program in the community. they're new, only had a couple months together and a couple of meetings, but they seem like good kids (12-16 in age) and interested in cleaning up the river that runs through the town. we chatted about what they needed to get accomplished before they set out such as talking to the recycling corporation in town (canadian by the way) about potential pick up days and the availability of a truck. we also talked about them potentially getting involved with the group in mississauga as penpals. i originally had wanted to do a big internet based thing but that sorta fell through as they were already settled into the penpal idea. anyway they seemed interested, said it was a good opportunity to practice their english and such so i sent the word north and am currently waiting on word back from them.

anyway it was a fun little day and they even sprung for lunch at a vegentarian restaurant which was nice if a little pedestrian (i'm way too used to the gourmet like selections at the taiwanese place near the house). we're tentatively hooked up for next saturday at 3 but that's kind of dependent on my options for the weekend.

i'm also a little sick at the moment - my nose and eyes are almost constantly running and i sneeze a lot. it's like i have allergies all of a sudden, but that's just it, it's all of a sudden, like the last few days or so. hmm.... my throat is almost 100% which is nice although i've lost that sexy raspy edge to my voice that was driving the women wild.

settling back in

well i arrived back to the heat and congestion of guayaquil yesterday. quite a slap in the face actually - the sweater i had been wearing was ditched a couple hours outside the city and the windows (which were thick with cloud dew) were shut for the ceremonial turning on of the air conditioning. after talking with nicola and julia i realized that i had the short end of the holiday stick - they went to national park sanguay and the orient respectively and had a blast. nicola especially, after less than a week ago saying she was not interested in going to see laguna amarilla did in fact treck up to laguna amarilla on horseback (ok, that part does not interest me) and said it was pretty cool. i tried to remind her of her intense loathing of such a proposition not 200 hours previously but she begged ignorance. she also got to ambato where all the action took place, and rounded up her vacation with a visit to riobamba (but thankfully did not ride the nariz del diablo train ride or i would have been distraught at the thought that someone else had the perfect carnaval). julia had a good time too, playing in waterfalls in the orient (rainforest). not sure if she did anything else but the pics sure were nice.

another kitten died while i was away. that leaves three. we're trying to help the survivors eat by mixing up interesting concoctions (the mom can't support that many). i'm gonna pick up some wet cat food today and hopefully that'll help them out. they're over a month now and the internet (wonderful perveyor of information that it is) says that they should be making the switch around three to four weeks (gradually mind you, and that's basically what we're doing). they chomp down on my finger all the time which is cute, but will probably become less cute as their incisors develop. the kitten with the back paws facing the wrong way (not really but she walks with them dragging behind her - but that has almost been remedied, she now walks ok with the one and half walks-drags the other) is doing pretty well and has put on a little weight. the biggest one, named bonsai (the only one with a name so far), is holding its own and regularly engages in big cat activities like scratching its ear with its back paws, the action of which inevitably knocks the cat over because it loses precious balance in the process.

if it were not for chifa restaurants i might be dead

perhaps that is a little drastic - this keyboard is configured weird and i cannot find the punctuation keys... can-t is spelled this way for instance... just bear with me - but really, if i had not found a place to eat pretty soon i might have given in to temptation and bashed in my neighbour s head to feast on the delicious goo inside. what is chifa you ask? why that is what they call chinese food here. a little odd yes but who am i to interject. cuenca in a move vaguely similar to loja, decided to basically close shop today and hand the city over to roving gangs of kids with water balloons and fake ak-47s. yes during carnaval the entire sierra - except for ambato which i saw on tv yesterday and is festooned with parades and throngs of people, and probably vilcabamba because of all the signs in loja saying how much stuff was happening there - shuts down so people can taunt the two or three gringos who did not get the message and roam the streets looking for a place to sit down to a bite to eat. and, as mentioned earlier, during carnaval there is this silly tradition wherein gangs of water toting crazy-people try to get each other and whoever else comes within 50 feet soaking wet. they also sell this foam that is ingeniously called carnaval foam - i think i mentioned this already...

so everything is closed. the women at the desk in the hotel where i am staying, a very beautiful but cheap place that is so quiet i could hear the reverberating echo of thoughts lost in george bush s brain. she warned me that most things are closed and that, ironically enough during a celebration to mark the beginning of the lead up to easter, even the churches are closed. so i wandered the streets for a while, dodging the hoodlums with their balloons, although at times not dodging them enough, looking for anyplace that might be selling something that resembles food. this was hard to do. after coming across hundreds of wonderful looking cafes and restaurants with bars firmly locked across their doors and windows i found a bakery and picked up some nice bread. but, then on the way back to the hostel i saw it, the chifa place, and intrigued because it appeared open, i decided to try it out.

and it was open, and there was already a gringo seated in the front window eating. that is another story. there are about 20 or so older gringos wandering the streets, like me mouths agape at the lack of life cept for those banditos. half way through dinner i heard some drums and trumpets and so paid my bill and headed outside where there were a bunch of guys gathered around one of the churches - there are about a 100 in cuenca it seems - and this one was open with people, many of them middle aged and gringo ish wandering in and out. the band was very nice and i stayed for about a half hour bopping to the music.

so tomorrow i head back to guayaquil and the oppressive heat. sigh.

loja in the afternoon

it's still raining by the way. a steady if somewhat light sprinkle that has yet to let up since i got here yesterday. it's kinda interesting because during carnaval there is the wonderful habit of tossing water on people - or spraying them with the official "carnaval spray foam" (espuma de carnaval!) - and this just doesn't have the same impact when you're already soggy. i got hit by one teen today but most just look at me, see i'm a foreigner and leave me alone.

so the park... yeah, very crazy stuff. and an explanation - the title of the last blog "la un dry" should really be read the following way

la
un
dry

which is the name of one of the laundry places in cuenca... i don't think i'd take my clothes there though, i like my clothes dry.

and yeah, the guy from scotland - ian - who was sitting on the bus with me, starts to talk. apparently he's a landscaper and is travelling around ecuador for 5 weeks. he was stopping off in loja on the way south to vilcabamba where he thinks he'll stay for a week or so before hopping back home. weird guy if nice enough - he has this really soft laugh that sounds almost like air escaping a balloon and i have to make sure he's not deflating but actually laughing.

so we get to loja and decide to check out a few places together. although we chose different places we plan to meet up for a bite to eat and head on over to this place called Café Azul. i peruse the menu and see very few options (scratch that, one option) for me and then he goes and says that he's a veg (and 40 by the way, and before anyone smirks and says anything scandelous he's basically married) and winds up ordering mushroom crepes (ick). i get the "greek" salad which wasn't really all that bad - but the kicker is that we had beer on tap - apparently almost a given here in loja. interesting anyway. after that we head out and check out a few bars and just chat about ecuador and such.

this morning i get up (oh, yesterday my key broke in the lock so they gave me a new room for the night after using a hammer to pry the lock off the door so i could get my stuff (i feel very safe after seeing that)) and decide to find breakfast and so head over to the vegetarian restaurant. there's this guy there and he asks where i'm from and when i say canada he begins to talk in english and we wind up discussing a bunch of stuff about american politics (he was born in seattle), south african politics (interesting) and canadian and american foreign policy. an interesting guy if a little confused at times (i disagreed with a few of his observations), but we ended up talking for over an hour and a half. afterwards i headed on up to the park with the crazy replicas and such. now i'm just chilling for a bit before grabbing a late lunch early dinner. this has to be the slowest internet connection i've dealt with in ecuador as well - despite the optomistic sign on the window promising the quickest of connections.

la un dry

sitting in a surreal theme-park / ecological playground in loja, an internet cafe not takes up what used to be a rail car. very odd. the park is sprawling, sitting on the northern edge of town and counts within its confines a retractable roof swimming pool (pretty cool no?), a miniature russian czar palace (with slides) an ostrich zoo and a fake lagoon for paddle boats.

so yesterday i left cuenca, made my way to the bus terminal where i was told that there was a two hour wait cause the 11 o'clock was "full". not a problem, i sat in the waiting area and watched random snippets of movies that were being shown before i found a tv broadcasting english premier league football.

so i find my seat and settled back for the 5 hour ride and after a while a guy sits down next to me (he was actually sitting in the wrong chair and was moved over). he's obviously not from around cuenca so it's funny that they sat us together for the trip. anyway we're not talking at all - i fell asleep a few kilometers outside cuenca and woke up an hour or so later. the scenery was amazing. the road is narrow and often treacherous, filled with potholes which our driver slolomed around deftly. we went through this steep walled valley and out the window all i could see was a sheer cliff face of light coloured soil with huge boulders sticking out of them and poised just inches away from the bus. but away from the gourge it was amazing verdant scenery that makes the lord of the rings look like an urban wasteland. some of the valleys stretched on forever with bucolic scenes of terraced fields and millions of shades of green.

apparently they are closing... didn't know this.

a cuenca pit-stop

i made it back to cuenca today. splitting the trip to loja up in to more easily digestable chunks seemed a better option that dealing with the whole 8 hours at once. it's still an amazingly beautiful city - the narrow cobblestone streets, the multitude of artesania stores and cafes (where are all the cafes in guayaquil?) - the parks especially with the ornate, slightly crubling in that oh-so-romantic way. i arrived at about 1:30, dropped my stuff at the cafecito - a place that julia has told me about and is pretty cheap (5 bucks). it's very basic and i'm sharing a room with two others.

so i've got the munchies and decide to hit the veggie place where christine and i came over x-mas. it's still there and still 1.20 for a heaping plate of food, large soup and juice. i barely made a dent in the rice before my stomache was begging for me to stop. on the way back to the hostel i catch a glimpse of a gringa walking along wearing a toquilla hat. well, there's only one gringa i know who does that - julia (the original german). i call out her name and we chat it up a bit. she's battling an illness and was gonna hang out in cuenca for a bit and then go to ambato for carnaval (this weekend, hence the vacation). however she doesn't have a room booked there and therefore might tag along with me to loja. small world.

anyway we decide to head over to the bank of ecuador museum and check out the exhibits. she's only interested in seeing the section with the shrunken heads (a shuar practice of old) but other parts are interesting (and the shrunken heads are pretty cool - very hairy). out back is a ruin that we're allowed to walk about but there's really nothing much there. below the ruin is an interpretive nature center that might have been cooler if it wasn't 10 minutes to closing and they weren't draping things in sheets. we did see some exhibits to birds that were very impressive, if a little depressing at times (seeing an eagle in a cage is not all that much fun). one of the parrots kept saying hi and so long - that was cute.

by the way one of the kittens died yesterday. it was on the smaller side and i thought something was up with the mom because she was meowing a lot more than usual - she sounded concerned. anyway i went in to change their water and such and saw it lying there, rigid as a rock. very sad. i had to put it in a couple of plastic bags (bugs get into everything down here) and put it aside for the guy who comes to look after the house.

ok, will write more from loja.

on the way to loja

so it's carnaval here... apparently it's every year at the beginning of advent. all i know is that it gives us a few extra days of vacations and leaves me with the opportunity to take off and see a bit more of the country. so... going against the grain i've decided to venture back into the sierra. i've heard that the glut of traffic streaming toward the coast is impressive but really beaches and such don't float my boat and that small dose of montañita will last me till at least march.

so i'm gonna try my luck with the southern sierra - a place called loja, 8 hours away from guayaquil and 4 hours from cuenca. it's supposed to be a pretty laid back, safe and trendsetting part of ecuador. they were, as the brochures note, the first community to have electricity in the country. and apparently they are also pretty happy with being isolated and tend to do things their own way anyway. this has led to quite positive results, including a wonderful (as i've been told) recycling system. they also have a number of parks, one of which includes rather interesting smaller versions of famous buildings from around the world. i'll see if i can find some pics and put them up. i'm also interested because it's not the world of the average tourist here (although vilcabamba, the city of eternal youth, is such a place and sits 40 clicks away to the south... i don't think i'll get there though...).

met the new intern today - she seems nice enough and had ready answers to the questions i asked about the job and her expectations... she's iffy on the whole magazine idea as well but comes with an open mind about the office and andy... we've warned her in advance. also went to the office and had a somewhat run in with rafael. he's always there using the internet to update his blog that he keeps. so he oscilates between the blog and messenger (notice the lack of official office work) and continues to do so for up to 4 hours after anyone requests use of the computer with internet. this is annoying. i asked today if he could tell me when he was gonna be finished using the net and he said, almost backing away from the computer with elastic arms that he was just finishing. a half hour later and he's laughing away at stuff that's popping up on the messenger screen. he did stop but only after someone else who had arrived asked him if when he would be done. then he just left the office (a good day's work i guess). he lives an hour away so i can understand the interest in getting some use of the computer but really, i've got work to do. i've decided to start reading his blog - perhaps he's writing about me in a similarly sarcastic fashion.

he's also a poet - did i mention that? a professional one, got a book published and everything. i find him very annoying. doesn't often look at you when you're talking to him - only talks when he needs something from you... that sort of thing.

mangas part III

so we take off on this hike - it's a scorchingly hot day as we set out (i had almost gotten accustomed to the cool breezes of dos mangas and had even been cold overnight!). our guide is a friend of meagan and paul and is basically the head of an organization in town that tries to look after the use of natural resources in the area. they tax any wood that is taken out of dos mangas and the money goes to support him and programs that focus on sustainability. part of the big plan is giving tours to tourists, a venture that so far is more talk than action (dos mangas is not on the tourist map of ecuador - it's not on many maps of ecuador at all), but they're hoping for big things. he's a character - short and wiry, a machete at the hip and a walkie-talkie seemingly glued to his mouth. the latter was a gift of an international organization that is trying to help the people of dos mangas out. it's meant as a means of keeping in touch with the base headquarters while out on hikes, to relay in important information and inform others if there are tourist who need a guide. it's used to allow the guides to joke back and forth and entertain themselves as they share the minutae of their lives. for instance, when we finally made it to the pools on our hike and i asked our guide if i could snap a photo of him he beemed and took a macho position abreast the small waterfall leading down to the pool. after the picture was taken he immediately radioed in to basecamp to tell them that i had taken a picture. another time he radioed in to say that we had seen a snake (a poisonous one - the X), that we had made a hat of toquilla, that we found some wild papaya (not very tasty), and so on and so forth. very cute.

after returning we prepped for the return trip to guayaquil - the people downstairs brought us more food (the night before they cooked up rice and chicken - we ended up feeding most of it to the chickens and pigs), and we made our goodbyes before climbing back into the truck that would whisk us away to manglaralto and the main road. this time the truck was filled to the rim with drunken men celebrating sunday and passing a shotglass with rum in it. while i wasn't offered some the neighbours of meagan and paul did give me a couple glasses of beer before we left (they offered me a second and i took it much to the almost shock of the people there - i mean, they offered it to me...). the night before too they gave paul and i shots of this cane sugar alchohol which wasn't all that strong but they watched like hawks as we drank it down and then chirped when we showed any signs of puckering. people are like that here...

dos mangas version 2.0

after shouting at the house for a minute or two it occurs to me that just maybe meagan and paul are not at home... this is confirmed by the children who emerge from the house to see why the gringo is yelling. after a long pause we invite ourselves into their house, promising that we're friends, and begin to make ourselves comfy.

they occupy the second story of a relatively long house on the main strip in dos mangas... as noted it's blue from the waist down but white on top. downstairs is a workshop where a local group makes bags and bracelets and hats from taquilla (a fibrous plant). meagan and paul's pad is nice, very airy (is missing an entire wall in their kitchen), and pleasantly cool after baking in guayaquil for the past month. i settle down to read "the forth hand" by john irving while jane makes use of the hammock (i've read three books in the amount of time it's taken her to get through half the da vinci code) to read her book. we eventually switched positions as some point, probably a couple hours after we got there, and definitely after we had returned from a visit to the local watering hole (someone's front porch) for a cold drink of pilsener. i was sound asleep when the kids showed up sometime around 10.

on saturday we headed out to mantañita, a weird tourist mecca on the coast, 2 kilometres up the beach from manglaralto. lots of bikinis and tanned bodies frolicking about and surfboards tucked under many an arm as people make their way (strut) across the expanse of sand. we set up shop under an umbrella on the beach and almost stumbled across julia (the german) who was vacationing there as well. she came over to join us and, in turn, we all went swimming.

i'm not a salt water fan so swimming in the ocean is not really my cup of tea but the waves are glorious. i managed to catch a few (no board - just my rock hard abs) waves that flung me ever closer to shore.

we stopped for lunch at this mexican restaurant off the main drag which was better than expected and only a few doors down from a place with a huge sign out front promising a huge canadian breakfast (closer inspection revealed mostly french toast, eggs, pancakes, bacon, stuff like that...). mantañita is a fav of the cool kids working in the office - and the tourists flock there, but mostly they're tourists from this side of the equator. i did see a place or two selling veggie burgers which is always a sign of a foreign invasion. it reminded me of panajachel in guatemala - a little too done up, with smart restaurants and kids wearing baggy pants in vogue.

sunday we woke early and went of a hike through the forests near town. (part iii...)

the wonder of inter-city travel

a couple days before the trip to porto hondo meagan and paul came to town for a visit. they're the married couple from whitehorse living in dos mangas near manglaralto on the coast. a nice couple - both involved in environmental projects back in the yukon with experience overseas in mexico, guatemala and honduras (they've spent some time in xela where i was living when i was there - we've chatted a few times about the sights and sounds of guatemala's second city). they come into guayaquil quite a lot to buy things and unwind - dos mangas is about fifty scattered families or so a 10 minute jaunt by dilapitated truck from the manglaralto crossroads and because of its relative remoteness the people there make everyone else's business their own.

so paul and meagan dropped by and we managed to get out a couple times. the first time was a trip to the malecon and cerro santa ana where we stopped half way up and went into a restaurant for a snack. what followed happens relatively frequently - we asked if they were selling food and they called for a woman who had obviously been sleeping, to come out from the back room. she emerged and asked what we'd like. we asked for options and she basically threw a bunch of typical suggestions at us and the others (i wasn't hungry) made their picks. the woman wrote it down, turned on her heel and left the building only to return a few minutes late with a bag of food with which she then disappeared into the back room. that's life pretty much, make it up as you go along.

the second time we went out was when i met the group at a bowling alley (i told them i wasn't about to go bowling, given my intense loathing of the sport) and then we'd head out. the bowling alley was pretty intense - exactly like any back home, minus the electric scorecard hanging over the lanes. they tallied their scores (pretty sad i tell ya) and then we took off for frutabar in urdesa. this place is pretty smooth - all decked out in surf boards and weird paintings with wild colours, topped off by miscellaneous brick-a-brac hanging from the rafters. it looks like it would be a gringo heaven although such people are few and far between here. the smoothies are wonderful though - slushy concoctions 3/4 of a litre tall of such mouthwatering combinations like (my personal fav) blackberry and soursop (mora and guyabana).

anyway i told these guys that i would be making a trek out to see them - they were kind of bored on the coast and nobody had bothered to visit so i decided to see how the other half lived. jane decided to come along (long story but she had paul's bankcard) and so we decided to meet at the terminal to catch the direct bus to manglaralto at 1. after a nasty case of the runs i was late and didn't arrive till 5 to 1 (15 minutes after our settled meet time) but no sign of jane. after scurrying about she showed up as well and we settled on tickets to la libertad (where we transfer).

the bus ride itself was fine although the bodyguard (kevin costner...) was blasting out most of the way (even worse in spanish). we were hanging a left going through santa elena and saw one the buses heading north along the coast so skedaddled off the bus and managed to catch a ride to manglaralto quite easily. the drive along the coast is impressive - lots of huge complex like houses with white stucco condos spilling over the sea it looks like. swimming pools and landscaped grounds are all the rage, along with long stretches of white sand beaches broken up by random ceviche stands with huge pilsener banners.

so we arrive in manglaralto and find the road to dos mangas after asking a few people and there is a truck already waiting for us (so it seems). dos mangas? the man asks as if all the gringos who pass by were going to this isolated burg. yep, we reply and climb aboard. after picking up a few more people with bananas and a bed (sans mattress) we're off, driving through ranch type land for about 10 minutes. we arrive in dos mangas and i begin asking people if they know where meagan lives - of course everyone does but the directions - the celeste house, throw me. i'm thinking that celeste is some person and that there is another meagan, a lesbian, living in the town with her lover celeste. um, no. it seems that celeste is a nice shade of blue and the house in which they're living is blue from the waist down. silly me.

part 2 later today.

it's been awhile

well, i really don't like switching back and forth all the time - where's the sense of consistency? but given the state of affairs on the other site i have little recourse. so i'll be back at this place for the foreseeable future - the statement posted on the ebloggy site - that "we'll be back online by tomorrow, the day after at the least" is pleasantly optomistic but was posted more than 5 days ago.

not that i've been super busy. i have managed to go to a few places - over a week ago i headed over to the porto hondo mangroves (not intending to really, i was going to the cerro blanco reserve about a kilometre closer to guayaquil but the bus driver forgot and drove me past). it's nice. a woman named jackie (i was told to write her name on the receipt and asked how and she replied "you know, like jackie" which obviously wasn't the case because she made an "err" noise when i did write it, as it is in english, and said that it didn't matter) took me out on an hour's tour of the extensive mangrove forests they have in porto hondo (deep harbour). we paddled around in a canoe, skirting the banks and watching out for birds and marine life. saw some iguanas too, leaning out over the water from their branch perches which prompted her to saw that at times they stressed small tree-limbs too much and plummeted to their death on the water below with a great smack as they struck the surface. a lot of crabs scurried about climbing the labyrinth mangrove roots, scurrying away from us. the birds were pretty pedestrian but nice just the same although the real star are the mangroves. the roots are wonderful, a nest of dreadlocks spilling from the trees or seemingly being born by the water and clawing skyward. jackie showed me some of the seeds of one of the varieties - it's shaped like an elongated drop of water, about 6 inches long by only 1 in width. this allows it to pierce the water and drop like a stone till it lodges itself in the murk below.

i snapped a pic of jackie before i left so i'll have that up soon. she's only about 5 foot 2 - didn't realize until she finally stepped out of the canoe and i immediately felt stupid for my earlier suggestion that the oars were really heavy (which they were...) given that her reply was the curt question "they are?"

that was the one adventure. short, sweet, no problems although waiting for a bus back into town was another story. i waited along the side of the road for half an hour waving at bus after bus as it hurtled into the city. one guy honked his horn at me, i got excited thinking he was gonna stop for me, then laughed as he put the thing in gear and accelerated past (i waved back in a less gentlemanly manner).

i'll fill ya in on the other adventure - our trip to dos mangas - a little later.

life at work continues although slowly. our visits to santistevan have come to a halt. the kids had settled into a funk - it's the middle of vacations for them and even the president was acting scarce during our visits. the last three times we managed to go we were met with 1, 3, and 0 students respectively. the time with the three we were promised that it would be different the next time (the time when 0 came), that everyone would be there. phone calls would be made, people who had missed earlier meetings because they were sick would be jostled from their illness, the earth and sky would move to make sure we were met with a full house.

um, no.

so we've compiled a bunch of activities and talks for no one in particular, but are adding the material to our big-book-o-internship-stuff (and taking publication offers). apart from that work remains locked on logos and websites which have changed, although just slightly...

here are the two logos now...

http://ca.geocities.com/ecuadordave/website/inicio.html

later kids