under a day

well, it looks like my ecuadorian odyssey has finally come to an end. after more than 190 days wrestling with the heat, the office confusion and politics, south american bureaucracy and sometimes overwhelming hospitality, i will be making my way back to canada in about 18 hours.

i get to spend a couple days in calgary, potentially running from health centre to health centre trying to get my rabies shots, but hopefully i'll be able to relax a bit and enjoy the mountain air. kim (kozak) - or classic - is taking me in and has promised to show me some sites, as well as expose me to some much needed culture in a concierto performance tomorrow night - sounds sweet.

after that it's a few days camping it out in the b.c. interior with the gang, purging ourselves of that guayaquil smell of sun, exhaust and decaying plastic - but also revelling in our 6 months abroad and combing over what made life here so interesting.

once that's taken care of it's another few days in kimberley b.c. back at the college of the rockies putting together final reports and giving presentations before i fly back to the hopefully warm but not too warm confines of ontario (the east as it's called in b.c. - i find that amusing...).

will probably not be able to write much until i reach kimberley (where we get the computers at the college) so this will probably be the last dispatch south of the equator. it's been a fun run and while parts of it are not as much fun as others (i'm thinking needles) overall it's been a blast.

here's a few pics till next time.



the promised restaurant in quito...


the scenery outside salinas de guaranda


the cathedral in quito - i climbed up to the top of the big clock tower... pretty scary!


the trole system in quito - very similar to the streetcars in toronto... with their own designated stops and such... super cool


me biking - just before the dog attacked!

ingapirca and a funky car ride

had an interesting day. got my fourth shot - the guy at the clinic was all - why didn't you get it yesterday, just seconds after i explained that i had tried to get it but failed... nice to know he was listening. also told me that no hospital (after i went to the two in riobamba) have the vaccine - only health centres, and riobamba's was only open between 8 and 10 yesterday... a.m....

so i got on the cuenca bus bound for el tambo where the turn off to incapirca is. when i got off i met this couple - ecuadorian - who were also going there so we shared a bus ride through the countryside - says it's only 8 clicks but it took 20 minutes to get there. then we arrive and they run off to get some food. i make my way to the ruins and let me tell you - wow. not that the ruins are very impressive, they've mostly been ferried off by the spanish and all that remains is a central square and a bunch of foundations. but, and this is the kicker, the whole community is sitting on the remains and that just shows you how little has really been unearthed... i mean, they still rely on the same irrigation systems as 500 years ago (the incas were only around for a little over a hundred years), and you can see it slithering about the fields there. and there is this path that takes you around to see some of the more interesting features such as this rock formation that looks like an indigenous man in profile... it's pretty cool. but the surroundings are surreal... it's a mountain valley with the requisite meandering river and waterfall, and people out tilling their fields... very cool. the paths that we follow are incan paths and the foundations of some of the houses in the area look incan as well... the whole place is a living testament to the architecture.

then... i walk back to the small town where i look for a bus back to the highway and the road to cuenca. i'm told in the restaurant where i stop for juice and a tostada (grilled cheese) that there are buses every 15 minutes or so. um, apparently not during semana santa cause i waited around at least a half hour before asking a few bus drivers what was the dealio... they told me that there were no more buses - it was too late and that there may be more on monday. i could, however, rent the services of one of the drivers for a mere 6 bucks to get back to tambo (normally it's a 40 cent trip). i declined and took to flagging down cars that were leaving ingapirca... luckily this one truck stopped and allowed me to jump in back. it was loaded down with a bunch of teenagers - twenty-somethings and they seemed to be having a grand old time. a native woman joined me as far as cañar, near the main road, and we chatted a bit about what i was doing here and all.

then we hit the highway and after a bit i get cold and it starts to rain... well, the kids ask me if i would like to squeeze in... i say ok and hop in back where i find out that they're a bunch of friends from guayaquil and quito meeting up in cuenca to have some fun. we keep driving and see this church at the top of this hill in the city of babilán... they decide it'd be cool to drive up, so we do... and let me tell you, it was pretty cool. it's at the top of the hill but built into the hill so the altar is actually half rock jutting out. it's very ornate with a cemetery built into the bottom two floors. cool.

anyway, it's raining cats and dogs here right now - perhaps it just stopped actually... hmm.... maybe i'll go grab a club café.

24 hours in salinas (de guaranda)

i arrived in salinas (de guaranda - to prevent it from getting confused with the other salinas, a coastal resort near guayaquil...) after a wonderful bus ride from baños to ambato and a rather frustrating one from ambato to guaranda.

the woman who sat down beside me on the bus grew a child about five minutes into the trip and he immediately started complaining that he wanted to look out the window. so the woman asked me if i could switch seats and let him have the window and i relented even though the drive was one of the reasons i was going in the first place - my book said it was killer. anywhoo... the kid opened the window, stuck his head out, then brought his head back in, shut the window and started watching tv. in order to watch he and his grandma (i'm assuming) had to lean toward me. on tv was a wonderful video showing the funny side of bull fighting, only this was ecuadorian bullfighting where, apparently and according to the video, anyone and everyone runs around inside the bullring trying to get the bull's attention, at which point they run away or wave a cape or stick or whatever at the bull. the video added madcap music and sound effects and revelled in speeding things up or slowing things down whenever the bull did something interesting. loads of fun.

so the kid just watched the video, not once looking out the window, and then promptly fell asleep afterwards. we arrived in guaranda after two hours with him having a good 30 seconds of window time.

not that i'm bitter.

after a scramble to make the salinas bus i was chauffered through some of the most bucolic scenery i've yet seen (it seems that each day is a one-up on the bucolic meter). and then appears salinas perched on the side of a white cliff. it's not much of a town, steep as all get out and rather tumble down looking, but the views are amazing and the salt mines - these pits in white rock facing the town from across the river - are very cool. i took a walk about town with hugo, a representative of the cooperative tourism board - the entire town is overrun with cooperatives, more than 30 of them running the gammet from chocolatiers to cheese making, mushroom factories to sweater weaving. there's even a website that i'll post when i remember what it is...

so now i'm back in riobamba where i thought i'd be able to replenish my dwindling funds and get my 4th shot (think again... long story but all clinics and hospitals are either closed or don't have the vaccine - i have to hope that tomorrow at 8am is ok and that i don't turn into a werewolf overnight...).

rain, another shot and laundry

not much to update today - and i can't reply to any of the comments people are leaving cause they aren't leaving any! sheesh... you tell people you might have contracted rabies and you'd think a little surprise, sympathy, something would be in order.

so yesterday after the dog bit me i realized that i had to either find out if the dog had been given innoculations or get myself to a doctor. i wasn't in a lot of pain - it was bleeding pretty bad but the swelling hadn't started up just yet and i could walk fine. i made my way back to the bucket ride thing and a woman there saw my leg and ran back to her house for some antiseptic and a bandage or two. i thought this was pretty cute so i snapped a pick of my "doctora" and got back in the cage to speed my way to the other side. well, when you have a bleeding gash on your leg (left one by the way, about 6 inches below the knee) you get a lot of stares and when you tell people you've been bit by a dog they start handing out advice as if you're related and about to marry your cousin (not speaking from experience). one woman kindly told me that i needed to find the hair of a dog - preferably the dog that bit me - and burn it over my wound - that this would extricate any problems that i had. i kindly thanked her and said i'd try that.

well... here i was only 4 km from the big part of the bike ride - the pailón del diablo, a honking big waterfall that's supposed to be pretty impressive. after conferring with the yankee girls (who were kinda dumbstruck by the situation and could only offer condolensces and suggest i go back to baños - except the one who said that if i wasn't foaming at the mouth within like 20 minutes i should be fine) i decided to continue on to the waterfall, take a couple quick pics and then skedaddle back to baños.

so i raced ahead on my bike and made it to the falls in little more than 10 minutes (only to be met with a km scramble on a wet downhill path). as i mentioned they were impressive, but i've seen better. then a scramble back up the path, pausing to say hi to the people who recognized me from the dog incident and who scolded me for not going to the hospital, or burning dog fur on my leg.

a quick bike ride to the road and the second bus that goes by picks me up and i head back to baños. being the good little boy i am i make a quick call to royal bank insurance and let them know what's going on (waste of time) and then go back to the hostel to park my bag. the hospital is only four blocks away and when i arrive the doctors are having a bit of a lunch break and look a little perplexed as who should deal with me. the fact that they weren't nervous or anything made me feel better.

oh, i also discovered that it's super fun if you've been bit by a dog to tell people that you feel kind of anxious and that you're starting to act irrationally. i even made a vampire motion at one guy whose friends broke out laughing in hysterics.

so it's wednesday and raining in baños and i'm just waiting for clearer skies so that i can do some hiking and take in the landscape a bit more.

day one of my rabies vaccination

i'll get to that in a minute.

i forgot to mention the other day in the museum (i really don't like the sound of german and there are always german people in the cybers chatting away) - every museum here has a religious art section - sometimes they're very neat and when i had a guide in the one in guayaquil she explained how you can chart the colonial progress through the little flourishes artists put in their works. well this one had a picture (another german just came in!) of jesus, bleeding at the last supper, but stomping on grapes inside a large barrel - a group of disciples were gathered about the bottom of the spigot and were drinking the wine that was been created - laced with jesus' blood. the oddest painting i have ever seen.

- this connection is horrible by the way - it seems that you pay more for bad connections because it's pretty much a standard 2 bucks the hour here (3 times what i pay in guayaquil), and it's like a 56 modem... it's taking forever to read my mail at the moment.

anyway, saw robots a couple of nights ago - a pretty funny movie and a hit with the ecuadorian crowd. the moment the one robot started doing britney spears i thought the foundation was going to cave in from the guffaws. the theatre was in a mall that's located at the edge of the largest public park i've seen in ecuador and quite possibly canada as well. it's a km and a half long, bounded by 10 story buildings and absolutely teeming with people. la carolina it's called and houses a museum, a series of futbol fields, a race track for go-karts and expanses of green grass that's much more similar to the grass back home than that you find in guayaquil.

what else...? arrived in baños yesterday in the afternoon - an incredibly beautiful spot if the town itself is not much to see... i went to about 10 different places looking for a room - they were all promising the same thing but with vastly differing prices. i chose a place with a greater ecuadorian feel to it (lack of gringos milling about) - turned down the expensive place where the american woman who showed me around reeked like alcohol.

oh! before i took off from quito i visited this (more germans!) lebanese place where i had some of the best falafel i've ever had and definitely the best tabouli.

another fun thing is that i found a skating rink in quito inside the mall... i had a lot of time to kill before the movie so i wandered about the mall and found this tiny rink overflowing with people doing awkward but energenic loops beneath banners from all the nhl teams. this is the closest i've been to hockey in almost a year.

oh yeah, the rabies.

so i rented this bike today and took off to do this trail that leads to río negro and passes by a bunch of waterfalls along the way. it's glorious - i went through one tunnel of about 100 meters in absolute darkness and though i was gonna soil myself (that's not the glorious part). the mountains are almost vertical expanses of green, trickles of waterfalls lining the banks ever few feet it seems. by this time i had met up with a group of women from the states who were visiting a friend of theirs working in quito. together we took this car acros the valley floor to the other side (i'll write more later). wow.

anyway, on the other side we walked down a bit to find this bridge but instead found a dog, and it bit me...

but i'm fine - been to the hospital, had it cleaned out and have been started on my 7 shots (not painful at all!).

my time's up!

quito v. 2

let's work backwards...

i just got back from this nepalese restaurant that now takes the coveted spot of best damn food i've had while in ecuador. i got the veggie lunch plate - came with some rice, a piece of bread (what do you call those flat breads? - they're very yummy) a veggie curry with huge chunks of ginger, and a pineapple juice. i was in heaven.

it's sunday - palm sunday to boot - so the city is mostly shut down, although this morning a journeyed into the historical centre to try and take in some of the sites and sounds. overall quito is a little like cuenca, a little like loja, and very little like guayaquil. it's not as characteristically colonial as cuenca and too big to really make over as a tourist image of what it must have looked once upon a time. it's very lived in, with narrow cobblestone streets and faded facades of buildings painting the landscape in shades of pink and yellow. it looks like they fixed everything up about 20 years ago or so and it's about time for a touch up, a coat of paint or two.

what they have been spending money on is the wonderful and awe inspiring series of buses and rapid transit trolleys. wow. they run in parallel lines across the city which is mostly aligned in a north south strip anyway, lining the valley bottom. designated bus lines are everywhere and the stations, gleaming glass and steel that would look at home in toronto or london (england). the trolleys are interesting, seeing the overhead lines and hearing the familiar faint buzz as they fly by.

so i took one of the buses, called ecovia (the ecological way!) into the historical centre and then proceeded to hike up the steep embankment to the churches and museums that awaited. this was after a good 12 hour sleep - making up for the 2 hours i had the night before, and an unpleasant introduction to my german roommates who failed to utter a word to me, even after i said hello, and then proceeded to ignore me and speak german whenever we passed in the hall or they happened to make eye contact in our room. i was happy to get out of cafecito (although the smell of fresh coffee that permeated the hostel was wonderful and it did look all happy and colourful, awash in oranges and taupes).

and i began my journey. i realized pretty early on that i had forgotten my guide book in the new hotel (a step up, with more comfortable mattress, cable tv, private bath and apparently (so they say although i haven't seen it yet) a small basketball court. but, with a good sense of direction i set out and walked about looking for the turrets of churches to help guide me to potential things to see. one of the first points of interest i stumbled upon was the museum of the city. set inside an old hospital i almost missed it because it's sign wasn't much more than a small banner stuck beside the door on a small sidestreet. i'm glad i did go in however as it is perhaps the best museum i've seen outside canada, and definitely the best bang for the buck and only 2 bucks admission.

the exhibits are nothing too special but the way they are arranged is impressive. to get from salon to salon you walk through a hanging wall of shiny streamers, guided by neon birds and music. you pass through some rooms with little more light than the occasional flash of artificial lightning and the diasporas, so often awkward and childlike in the museums i've been in, were engaging and beautiful. to cap it off the musuem is built about two patio areas with gardens and balconies to look down from the second level. overall a definite a+ but i would tell them to increase the signage and perhaps have more temporary exhibitions (four rooms - one exhibit).

i continued from there walking about and taking in the many processions and ceremonies that were being held to mark palm sunday. many carted about palm crosses or baskets and a myriad of people sold such things outside all of the many churches in the city centre.

the biggest church, the cathedral, stands head and shoulders above quito, visible from any corner of the city because of its height and sculptured towers. for another two bucks (being a foreigner bumps the price up quite a bit) i was able to take the stairs up the top of the clock towers and look out at the city. i thought the stairs and ladders would go on forever - even annoucing at one point to a tour guide i saw on the way - 'i finally made it' to which she replied - 'only two more ladders' (remember, quito is the second highest capital in the world and the thin air makes climbing a few stairs laborious). the view is very impressive, despite the overcast day, and the vertigo inspiring height did not deter me from snapping a few pics.

on the way back i passed through a couple of the biggest public parks in ecuador and even saw people playing on the grass (a definite no-no in guayaquil). i then went through the bank of ecuador's museum of ecuador which, in my mind, is somewhat overhyped although the ceramic exhibit is definitely worth the price of admission.

i will backtrack however and mention the museum just outside the middle of the world. it's incredible - a small but cleverly positioned smattering of exhibits toward the incans who worshiped the sun and gave prominence to the solstice and equinox (basically today). there are a few houses made to look as they did years ago that are pretty neat but the coolest were the demonstrations that they gave on the equator itself. for starters (and the coolest thing i saw) they poured water from a bucket into a basin that was straddling the equator. they then pulled the plug and allowed the water to drain, which it did, straight down. to better show this they threw in a few leaves which similarly went, straight down. they then did the same thing off to either side of the equator and demonstrated how the water drains in circles when away from the equator (corialis effect in the north). that was super cool. they also showed us how you're weaker at the equator because the pull of gravity is less (you're farther away from the earth's core) and your body is therefore not pushing back against gravity as much.

ok - enough chit chat - gonna go back to the hotel, check out this basketball thing, and they try out this other museum that's a bit of a trek away.

quito, the half of the world and cafecito

well, i made it to quito. quite the journey really. i was expecting a quiet ride on the bus from guayaquil, a midnight special with what i heard were seats that practically went all the back to horizontal. this, as most things are around here, was not to be.

earlier in the day we had our final presentation of sorts at ecotec, the politectic that is officially in charge of our internships. we had made up a little powerpoint ditty and went through the slides with our audience of three when andy and a few guys showed up from stancia. apparently andy was specifically not invited because the meeting was supposed to be an opportunity for us to speak our minds about the internship without fear of reprisal (like i've ever feared reprisal from andy, the pussycat of guayaquil). anyway andy showed up as we were making the transition from jane's part to mine and he seemed all right just listening and playing with his hair and had little to say until the questions part at the end when he launched into a big ol things went sour at times because of this and that and really it wasn't my fault and such.

you could feel the eyes of the gathered big wigs from ecotec boring into andy but he's somehow impervious to that and grinned and continued on with his vision for the future. paola galvez, the new big wig in charge of interns at ecotec seemed mostly interested in the work i'm trying to do with milagro and the schools in canada.

ok, so that out of the way i rushed home and then went to this place near san marino for a beer or two (two) with meagan and paul. we also used this opportunity to trade our books back.

after that it was just a matter of hitting the road. i headed over to the terminal and spent the next 15 minutes trying to find my bus and following the kind but misguided advice of people inside the terminal.

once on board i tried out the seat and although it did indeed go back a lot farther than most seats it was still an incline and my body, being as it is affected adversely by gravity (a little less today however when i was on the equator), still managed to slide downward every time i tried to go to sleep. i think the bus staff realized this and therefore decided to try and keep me awake as long as possible. to achieve this they decided to play the movie tears of the sun starring bruce willis. not only was the movie dubbed (the ominous voice that gave us "lágrimas del sol" was eerie) but the action was not conducive to good sleeping. about an hour in one of the passangers complained that he couldn't hear and so they pumped the volume up and the gunshots were that more spine shattering.

so i tried to sleep but really didn't succeed too well. i might have got a couple, maybe three hours all night and these were pretty unpleasant. i arrived in quito sleepy and in need of coffee.

tomorrow i'll fill you in on the mitad del mundo (wonderfully translated in some tourist literature as the half of the world) where i chatted about art history and watched in awe as leafs failed to swirl about in a tank as they drained but went straight to the bottom (a lot cooler than it sounds).

actually i'll start it now... i'm pretty sleepy but we'll see how far i get.

so after the bus arrived in quito i got out and made my way through the tourist quarters to this breakfast place and had a pleasant if unexciting meal before walking about 10 blocks to the corner where buses that go to the mitad del mundo monument pass by. this allowed me to walk by a few interesting stores, one of which was the tokio phone place that for some reason had a huge canadian flag in it's name, and the even bigger canuck banner in a bar-b-q place named after that famous bar-b-q bastion - toronto. yep, can't make that kind of stuff up. i will try and get a pic tomorrow.

so the bus shows up and i trudge on and for the next 45 minutes i am witness to about twenty random neighbourhoods of quito and the surrounding hillsides. the city is a series of hills and no one really bothered to level the land so houses are glued to slopes that must be pushing 60 degrees at times. finally we reach the monument which is really a bunch of buildings and small museums cluttered about with a series of souvenir stores and restaurants. the monument was erected where a french mission declared the equator but really they got it wrong and the whole thing is about 200 meters to the south of the real line (which was discovered just in the past 20 years or so using gps). no one was there when i arrived - just about 20 minutes after it opened, and i walked about and snapped a few pics but really nothing was all that interesting. then i remembered this other museum just outside the gates of the complex. that i will discuss later on.

50 tracks and a bite on the back

before we get to the story today here's a last ditch attempt to alert people that the cbc is choosing their next pick to be a part of the essential songs for the past 15 years (usually it's a decade but they lumped in 2000-05). the nominees this week are...

'Angel' by Sarah McLachlan
'Basement Apartment' by Sarah Harmer
'I Will Give You Everything' by Skydiggers
'Spastik' by Plastikman

i've never heard of the last one and the first one is probably gonna win (because posession was knocked out last week by courage by the hip) i'm more than partial to the two middle songs. i have to admit though that my heart lies with the skydiggers and one of my absolute favourites with i will give you everything. therefore i'm asking that you visit the following website and make your pick - http://www.cbc.ca/50tracks/vote/index.html

voting only continues until tuesday (tomorrow when i'm writing) at midnight and they annouce the winner on thursday.

ok... now, on with today's story.

today we went to puerto hondo to lead a clean up of the area around the environmental centre. the leader of the kids - gladys - couldn't make it so it was just jane, nora the german (she's started volunteering as well) and me leading about 25 rabid little jackels. from the get go they were excitable - barely keeping the audible level below 7 and often ramping it up to a ear-shattering 12 - tugging at arms and flinging themselves around us (mostly me) as if we were trees to be scaled. things started out ok, we took them outside and played a little game although those who lost refused to really quit the game but that wasn't a problem. then we handed out the plastic bags (gotta make trash to get rid of trash is what i always say) and divided them into teams. they then spread out in a semi-organized way snaking across the landscape and dropping item after item into their bags. for a while they would take the liberty to point out every piece of garbage to us before adding it to the pile, and a few had trouble differentiating what was garbage and what was organic matter. filling the bags with coconut husk and leaves would have meant a very quick end to our game as we would have run out of bags. bringing out the camera also slowed things down a bit. we're starting to put together our year-end reports and have been told that the more pictures of us actually doing work the better. however the kids see cameras as a spectral force beyond their control and gather like lemmings whenever i set up a shot. a million chubby hands asking to take the picture quickly becomes tedious but i did allow a few to make some snaps, as long as i was in the frame. this went on for a good hour and a quarter and the mosquitoes must have been in heaven cause my arms and legs were riddled with bites. after a quick wash up we went inside for snacks.

jane prepared the snacks - tuna fish sandwiches (the word tuna reminds me of the time i did the promo spot for tuan's radio show - the "big tuna" - that's classic...) and this weird glop of chocolate and gummi worms that didn't set right and ended up resembling an unapetizing soup but tasted chocolately so the kids didn't complain at all. i skipped the sandwich (you think?) but had a smidgen of the chocolate thing, just to prove to one of the kids that it was indeed edible, and made a quick trip to the store to buy some pop when we ran out of lemonade.

about this time one of the younger girls decided to try and get a piggyback ride. this had happened a few times and each time i simply walked backwards into a wall, not hard but enough to make them make a silly oomph noise and then i would tickle them and they'd let go. this one girl thought, however, that it'd be the bomb to dig her fingernails into my shoulders and get a good hunk of my back in her mouth and bite down. how she managed to do this i don't know but while she wasn't out for blood she did leave a mark and made me totally reconsider ever having children or speaking with them ever again.

entre copas

so i saw the second of the nominated pics for best oscar - sideways - tonight. in spanish it's the wonderfully named entre copas or between cups (of wine). kind of like a sedated woody allen flick it takes a long time to get moving, and when it does it's distressingly awkward. the acting is ok although the lead is overbearingly boorish and his buddy, the guy about to get married, is vapid. to say that these are the good guys is a stretch considering what they end up bringing about, but the movie never really passes judgement and considering the ending with its cosmic symetry and "can you believe that we got away with this and everything's gonna be ok?" moralistic is both strangely appealing and frustrating.

anyway, the most interesting part of the movie came during the previews. the new russell crow flick, cinderella man, was highlighted (along with the life aquatic which was here for a bit and apparently is coming back, and some scary movie this is utterly forgettable). anyway, the cinderella man movie, a ron howard production, is about a boxer during the depression, lots of heart and overcoming of obstacles, a crowd pleaser and tear jerker. but the weird thing is that russell crowe kind of looks like my dad throughout the preview. could just be the messy hair and the pronounced forehead but at times i got chills.

something else i found funny... there was an article in the whig online about how the costs to makeover market square in kingston has skyrocketed. in explaining the costs the city says that estimates are from 6 years ago and the prices have gone up with inflation. they note the continued necesity for the makeover and point to the success of "feb fest" - where a hockey game before thousands was played just a few weeks ago. they even interviewed one guy who said that he lives in the west end (suburbia) and that that was the first time in years that he had gone downtown.

first time in years? that's crazy. how do you live in a city and never go downtown? it's not like kingston is toronto either - we're only 100 and some odd thousand people... the quote was left as it was - i would have challenged the guy on it - asked for receipts or something. that's just plain looney.

oh, so i come out of the movie and the streets are flooded - two feet piled up in front of the house! i mention this cause i can hear the cars trying to plough through outside - they sound like waves crashing against the rocks at peggy's cove. but the rain seems to have brought the power back to our little corner of guayaquil so that's something to be happy about.

headlines

sitting in front of a computer all day i'm often tempted to surf off in different directions and get multiple feeds on all the local and international news. i read a story tonight that kind of got my back up because it wasn't the first time i've seen this "editorial" tact used in relation to the subject and it always makes me grate my teeth when i see it.

here's the article

what gets me is the tone in which it's reported. a line like the following - "The gaffe by Marlene Jennings came exactly two weeks after Canada's Liberal government irritated Washington by refusing to join the U.S. missile defense system." insinuates the following - that the remark made was a mistake, wrong, and that canada refused to join the missile defense system. to begin, refuse is a strong word, especially for something that doesn't exist yet (and therefore not actually a system) - if they had used declined, for instance, it would have given the story a different tone.

another way of looking at the sentence would be " the remarks by jennings came two weeks after canada's liberal government declined to participate in the american missile defense program."

her words were inflamatory although within the confines of the parliamentary committee and in relation to what she was saying i don't think they were out of line. countries do that all the time - the states, canada (probably ecuador). bush did it just a couple months ago after promising not to bring up missile defense and then publically stumping for it at a press conference with martin. to be caught and in her position though does warrant recourse.

although it's the missile defense part of the story that really irks me.

there's even the argument put forward by the christian science monitor "don't blame canada for missile defense snub" that discusses in detail why canada was justified in saying they don't want to dance. the term snub is grating but it's the line later on where michael o'hanlon states that the defense is inherently a good thing, but so far what we have is flawed and simply not tenable. his gall is palpible in the following - "For now, Canada doesn't want to support the US further on missile defense. That's fine, because there's nothing more the US needs to ask Ottawa to do at the moment." - where to begin? as if canada is a fickle child whose taste buds haven't fully matured but in time will appreciate the american position. there's also the insinuation that because canada does not support this version of defense we are not supportive of defense per se. this is simply false and implies that the american plan is the only viable option. while this may be the case (as the states can push through many plans until they take hold), it gives credibility to the american position and automatically weakens the canadian one. the next sentence - that's fine - makes the inverse statement that if canada had objected under different circumstances it wouldn't have been fine and that it is only given the weakness of the american position that saves canada from regretting its "snub".

and this is a positive editorial!

anyway it reminds me of a conversation i had a couple nights ago with a friend of jane's. he and his girlfriend are travelling through ecuador after a whirlwind tour of northern peru and stopped by to visit with jane and take in a day or two of guayaquil. they actually left yesterday for the coast to bahía (wouldn't be on my list of things to do but...). anyway, jane's friend jose asked me why we still had the queen on our money and stamps. as a known anti-monarchist (sorry mom) i launched into how hopefully canada will one day become a republic. i then turn to the other canadians for their opinions, totally forgetting that they might hold beliefs that differ from mine. well, the guy (don't remember his name but we can call his steve) tries to defend the queen and all she stands for and his girlfriend (hmm... judy) decides to stand by the "we need historical figures" argument "because we're a young country still".

i was speechless. the argument was basically downhill from there, going from slightly comical musings about the lack of canadian heroes or people that we could put on our money, to mere smuggishness (?) in asserting that the royals give us something to talk about - what would be talk about if they were gone?

three weeks and counting

passed the three week mark today. only a week now to go before i'm officially on holidays. everyone gets a portion of semana santa off - usually between an extra two to five days, and we're gonna be getting the latter. this might make travel plans difficult as places might fill up quickly although with my luck and experiences in the sierra during carnaval i might find places totally devoid of people. we'll see. so far though i have a trip to baños planned. it's a resort type place in the northern highlands, near enough to quito, riobamba and the orient (amazon). once there i can either soak in the hot springs (the name baños means baths), take a mountain bike out for a spin, do some repelling down a cliff or two, or something similar. the place is supposed to be the most visited tourist draw within the country (as i have read in a tourist magazine). it's also dotted with international restaurants, hosts a bevy of foreigners and even sports a handful of spanish schools.

right now i'm not feeling so hot. woke up with a rather urgent need to use the facilities and later felt the twinges of a headache so i decided to down some pills and get my internet time in before heading back to sleep. i think something's going around - jane is pretty sick and has been to the clinic a couple times this week. andy's father is a doctor and met with her and now she has a prescription for at least four different medicines and an ineligible note that we think asks for more tests. the weather has been increasingly rainy and humid - this might account for some problems as our bodies adjust - let's hope anyway. it'll be a shock for a day or two to return to the relative (it'll be april) ice-box conditions of canada.

sundays

guayaquil basically takes a 24 hour nap each time sunday rolls around. most stores board up tight and lonely security officers hold vigil outside leering at anyone who happens to walk by.

i was bored - it rained all night and most of the morning and i just wasn't feeling up to trekking it to the terminal to go to the meeting in milagro. so i stuck around the house working on the computer and downloading music and the like. well, nancy and her daughter got back from their trip north so that made for a bit of background noise anyway. but i was still bored out of my skull and needed to get out of the house. i decided to head on over to urdesa and kill some time before it was late enough to make phonecalls back to canada.

i took the bus over there and got off at erica estrada, the main drag. urdesa is the upscale part of town, a stretch of estrada looks like it was stolen from a semi-trendy part of l.a. or something. the roads are paving stones with decorative patterns delineating parking spaces and turning lanes. the median is landscaped with rocks and flowers and sits a good two feet off the road. the sidewalks are wide and tiled with shiny new floodlights hanging overhead. the stores in urdesa, or at least this 4 block span, are eclectic and utterly hedonistic. upscale furniture stores compete for space with gyms, spas, restaurants and cafés. a couple of banks, one of which resembles a smaller version of the white house, complete the picture. the whole scene is dreamlike, especially when compared to the utter poverty that defines the south and north ends of the city.

anyway i began walking up the street, peering in stores and shops, avoiding the gaze of guards and cleaning staff. the whole place was eerily vacant of people. a few places were busy - like baskin robbins - but this was only on the inside, it appeared that no one was either leaving or entering, only milling about within the air conditioned confines. sundays are like that - people are starved for something to do and end up either milling about the parks or making their way to an ice cream place. i've spent a couple of sundays in the malecon salado but really it's just an awkward experience as the only places to sit are park benches without proper shading and the sun can be relentless, regardless of the day. reminds me of xela in guatemala - sundays were lost days, when the streets emptied and people spent the day recovering from the night before.

cola a diez

i was on the bus today - quelle surprise - and i got thinking that it's the bus vendors that i'll miss the most when i come back to canada. not that i'll get teary eyed making my way across town in public transit only to have a craving for caramels and remember that no one will be plowing down the aisle any time soon to satisfy my sweet tooth. it's more the fact that they're always there, a part of the landscape that is inseparable, an indelible mark on the fabric of guayaquil.

i'll try and start with an overall image of the practice. you see, the buses in guayaquil have turnstiles at the front that record the number of people who get on and off. this is interesting because if you're 60 or older, a student or disabled you get to ride for half price but i never see the driver marking this down so i don't really know how reliable the turnstile is as an indicator of who has paid. children don't pay, as long as they're small enough to squeeze under or through the gate, and there is always a seat just to the side of the driver before the gate and obviously the people who sit there are not counted. the seat also says disabled across the back but this rarely deters the beefiest of jocks or swankiest of college co-eds from sitting down. lately there have been calls for the removal of the turnstiles - people of girth and people dependent on canes and other walking devices find it hard if downright impossible to get on board and have taken their plight to city council. the city agreed and demanded that the buses remove the turnstiles starting soon - or something similarly vague. this led to quiet for all of a few seconds and then small groups of angry passangers started sprouting up all over the city, accosting buses and ripping out the turnstiles by force. luckily i managed to avoid this but the pictures in the paper were quite interesting to see.

this led to a 48 hour strike that lasted all of a day (the paper said 48 hours but it barely made it through one day...). of course the entrepreneurial spirit being what it is for a day the city was overtaken by vans, flat beds, school buses and rickshaws (ok, maybe not rickshaws), all trying to pick up the slack and make a buck or two along the way. it was fun to see flatbed trucks oozing with people, small make-shift signs declaring the destination, or simply listing the bus route.

anyway, every time you take the bus you are guaranteed to face at least one if not a handful of vendors, hawking their wares. these people do not pay the quarter to ride the bus and have to fenagle themselves over the turnstile to get to the paying public. some will mount the first few steps of the bus and shout out what they're trying to sell to see if there's enough interest beforehand. others come in teams and vault the gates in a single bound. it's a regular smorgasborg of items as well, and nothing is predictable. along with the hordes selling a variety of carbonated beverages for ten cents the cup there are streams of candy sellers - although they promise, in memorized blurbs they spout out beforehand, that they are not selling the items for any price, it's merely how much they wish to give them to you for. they usually hand out the candy beforehand and then make a swoop to see who wishes to keep their stash.

there are also people roped into selling puzzles, agendas, leather satchels, jewelery, hair scrunchies, pens, along with the variety of fruits by the bagfull and slices of watermelon or kebobs of chicken or beef. some sell bags of corn with something rather unapetizing stuck on top, while others sell mammoth panes de yuca (yuca bread). of course there is the ubiquitous bottled water sellers, sometimes three or four of them will come on at a time, sift through the aisles and all come away empty handed.

more pics coming at ya

ok, well it seems that people are keeping their silence after the debacle of the oscars - i was expecting kudos, perhaps a congrats or two but really, do i deserve such silence?

sigh, and all i do is provide the masses with wonderful pics and witty stories - but i'll let it go, here are some more pics and hopefully these will elicit a response.



here we're making the switch at the bottom of the nariz - the people on top are scurrying down the ladder and we're patiently waiting our turn to take to the roof.



here's a blurry pic of me (arm's length...) just before we took off.



looking back as we go...



is that russia? nope... just another wacky building in loja's public park (complete with slides!... what would the czar think!?