A Canadian in Guayaquil

more closure

2005-04-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

so now i'm back in kingston, my birth city, looking for jobs and opportunities and basically trying to fill my days with interesting, fulfilling activities.

it's a tough haul at times. there are a few jobs out there, but fewer than a year ago when i was last looking and managed to stumble across the ecuador internship. back then i had things lined up, a few jobs seemed tailor made, like they were plucking qualifications from my resume, but now doesn't appear to be the same case. jobs are more scarce, although right now there are a flurry of internships being thrown about and so the jobs might come later. one such opportunity that i have my fingers crossed for is out of ottawa and involves organizing education campaigns and advocacy around mining and certain mining corporations. we'll see... the deadline for applications is the 30th so i'll be sitting on my thumbs till then (got mine in over a week ago).

apart from that i'm fine - a little sick of the election talk going on and don't really see any palatable way out of this mess that doesn't lead to one disaster (the conservatives) or another (the liberals). precious little has come out of the green party, although the media has a tendency to look past them at the best of times anyway. i have been impressed with jack layton over the past couple weeks. an article in the paper today echoed my feeling that he's toned down his smugness a notch or two and really worked on sounding dignified. i never did like him much but he's actually making some progress in my books. not that i'm gonna jump out and paint my lawn orange, but at least he's growing as a politician while martin shrivels and harper blimps up from his now self righteousness.

back in k-town

2005-04-25T10:52:00.000-05:00

to anyone concerned about the lack of posting i'll try and fill you in on the past few weeks...

i did indeed make it back to canada safe and sound. i dropped in on classic kim from dal in calgary and we had a fun couple of days although i was pretty pooped after an 8 hour all-night bus ride and 9 hours of plans... calgary is an interesting city, very spread out and the train service is wonderful (although upon my return to calgary a week later the trains were down in the city centre which was a huge disappointment) but the lack of trees is very disorienting. and the bow river is only like 2 inches deep! that was pretty out of the blue. but kim showed me around and i was able to have thai and indian food for the first time in a long while (like 7 months) so i was pretty happy.

then i flew back to cranbrook for a week of debriefing with the rest of the interns. the little jaunt from calgary to cranbrook is neat - a 12 seater that barely made it high enough to get over the mountains. they made a call out that we were making our approach into cranbrook and would be on the ground in 6 minutes... that was kinda funny.

tracey met me on the ground, a few minutes late because she had forgotten about the time change (good thing i hadn't), and whisked me away to kimberley and the good ol home hostel... the place was as comfy as ever and the other interns (except for alec who came a bit later) were still sleeping, but woke up when i announced my arrival.

anyway... skipping ahead we took off for this cabin in the woods that was really quite beautiful but far from pretty much everything and required a 20 minute drive to get to the nearest phone. we did some hiking, some reading, some game playing and such, but mostly we just relaxed and did not much of anything.

i will say as well that i don't have rabies... that must come as a relief to all who were worried... i got back to calgary and phoned the people there who had not replied to my email (to the health hotline thing on their website) and they were busy so i had to wait a couple of hours to get a response which basically said that i would have to wait till monday to start treatment - that nothing was available on the weekend. they also said that i should take responsibility for my situation as rabies was life threatening, and cancel my trip to cranbrook. i told them that they had a lot of nerve telling me to wait three days and then criticizing me... the coup de grace was when they asked me to fax over the form that i had from the hospital in guayaquil that listed what vaccine i had been given down there... when i said that i didn't have a fax but could scan the slip and email it to them they put me on hold... then said that they couldn't accept that... i said ok, how about i put it on the internet and let you take it off of there... they were mystified by that, but said ok (after again putting me on hold and then having someone phone me back later on). they never did get back in touch with me.

in kimberley things were fine and i got the first of the shots i needed (because the ecuadorian shots are not recognized by canada health or the world health organization - one person, in response to an email about what i had been given, reported that i had been given vaccine that had been cultured in the brain of a lactating rat, and then put an exclamation point beside it... nice). the very first shot is the worst because they inject it into the wound site... and they have to put in a lot of stuff based upon your weight... luckily i'm not all that heavy but they still had to inject 8.2ml into my lower leg. this wasn't exactly fun, and the main incisor mark that wasn't fully healed was jabbed, and then the doctor slowly moved the needle around in a circle to inject as much as possible without taking the needle out. after that was done (they could only fit 6.2 mls in my leg - 2 had to go in my tush) i got a shot in my arm, the same shot that i've been given three more times in kingston.

ok... more news later.

under a day

2005-03-31T07:39:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-26T21:13:00.000-05:00

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)

2005-03-25T17:07:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-23T11:15:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-22T15:17:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-20T15:09:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-19T18:22:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-12T21:03:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-11T06:03:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-06T22:50:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

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

2005-03-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

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!?

pics and a coldsore

2005-02-28T23:02:00.000-05:00

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...

2005-02-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-26T23:32:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-26T20:12:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-26T10:07:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-25T18:50:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-24T21:29:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-24T07:19:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-02-18T21:25:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-18T18:39:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-15T21:52:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-09T07:35:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-06T16:21:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-04T18:36:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-03T19:24:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-02T14:02:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-02T06:31:00.000-05:00

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

2005-02-01T07:07:00.000-05:00

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

the big move

2004-12-09T19:51:00.000-05:00

i've started posting to the new site...

yep - i might still put stuff up here if it becomes easier to do so but for now you can find my adventures at the following...

http://ecuadordave.ebloggy.com

enjoy! also you can post comments there without having to sign up... pretty spiffy huh?

a few notes - a possible move

2004-12-08T19:03:00.000-05:00

i'm getting a little sick of the service here at blogger... i've lost a posting, suffered innumerous problems in posting, and generally i have the patience of, um, someone with little patience.

so i'm gonna try posting to another site, perhaps keep both going for a bit until i see if one is less problematic than the other.

however, i will go ahead and post what i had written and saved after losing the first one to a crash in the blogger soupworks.

as you will figure out i thought this story deserved a second go-around.

there’s this park around the corner - a wonderfully organized place with two baseball diamonds, a basketball court, a volleyball court, a paved over soccer area, aerobics spot, a place for fencing (i kid you not, saw a couple of people at it yesterday), skatepark (although pretty tame) play area, a monument to some guy that people generally use to stretch on, and running around the whole kit and caboodle a couple of concrete tracks for runners and cyclists. the outside track is the most popular and winds around the entire complex for what i would guess is close to 600 metres or so. i’ve been going there for almost a month, running laps and catching a few minutes of the various games going on. it’s about the safest place you can wander in guayaquil as well with guards patrolling the grounds making sure that no one walks on the 10 square feet of grass or decides to stretch one of the more intimate muscles on the statue.

the tracks are very popular and hordes of people make their way around the park at varying speeds that range from glacial to trot. i am one of the fastest runners and have developed a kind of weave that i use to dart in and out of the congealed masses as i make my way around. it’s odd but there are more than a few people who like to meander, lazily following the arc of the track as if it actually led somewhere, like to a deli counter or bank teller. and the outfits on the people are wild. evening can be blustery but really the wind is absolutely wonderful as it blows away the bulk of the humidity and suffocation of the heat, but it is never breezy enough to warrent a jacket or sweatsuit. albeit a few of the jackets have belonged to ecuadorian olympians (or at least jacket bearers), which, while ecuador failed to notch a medal in athens, is still pretty impressive.

so two nights ago i’m bobbing and weaving, circling the track and feeling the burn. i managed 7 laps which is right on target given the heat and humidity. at around three laps i start to feel my shirt cling and by 6 laps i’m practially drowning in my sweat. so i ease up on my stride as i round the boys playing soccer and decide to do some stretches over by the baseball field. a game of softball is underway between two teams although i don’t spot much difference between them except for the colour of their jerseys.

this guy comes up to - about my age i guess, perhaps a few years more, very clean cut and dressed in a business casual button down shirt and khakis. he starts in by asking something about directions - i get this a lot for some reason, as if the gringo will know where to go. he’s asking how to get somewhere and i tell him i’m new myself and don’t know the area very well. so then he begins the ol, so where you from routine. again, very normal, i get it once a week at least although when i tell people canada the usual response i get is that they have a cousin in new york. so yeah, he pursues the canada angle by asking - and i’ll admit it sounds more obvious in english than spanish and naive me i didn’t put two and two together (remember, i’m a pile of sweat and red as a beet after a run) - what the relations are like in canada “between men”. i asked him to repeat it like three times cause i just wasn’t understanding the reference.

at this point he changes directions, perhaps trying to back out, or perhaps just because he actually needs the change but he asks me for twenty cents. when running i only ever take keys with me and so do not have any change. so as not to appear rude or that i’m lying i turn my pockets inside out to show that i have nothing. i’ve done this twice now, once with a guy on the way back to the house - he very politely asked for a quarter and i showed him my pockets, explained that i had been running and he nodded and ambled on his way.

striking out with the money he recovers his earlier foray, trying a new tact - the ol do you have a wife routine. i answer no, a girlfriend back in canada to which the standard “but no one here ?” quickly follows. this is interesting to me, everyone asks that - if i’m interested in finding someone here, for the time being. a rental.

so then comes the kicker - realizing that i’m not clueing in to the whole situation be asks, and i sort of forget the exact wording because the key word kind of threw me and i lost my train of thought - he asks me what the relations are like between homosexuals in canada.

yeah... i furrow my brow, catching on, and reply that i don’t know, not being one. the whole time he used the word homosexual, instead of gay or marecón which are the typical slang words here. so he says that he “is one” and wants to know if i’d like to head on over to the bathrooms with him for a bit.

now normally in a situation like that i’d start laughing cause it’s such a crazy, out of place experience and in times like that i have the tendency to break into guffaws. i have actually been asked before going into movie theatres not to react in such a way at moments that are not designed to be funny, as if i can tell the difference (they say it’s distracting when i’m the only one laughing). luckily i did no such thing and politely excused myself from the conversation telling the guy that i had to go, and wishing him a good evening. i almost said good luck but bit my tongue at the last second.

it’s interesting cause, as i said, the park is packed and there were enough security on hand to ward off a drunken ralph klein. for this guy to approach me like he did baffles me. he was very nice about my speedy departure, saying he was sorry for disturbing ( !) me and that i should be careful (not in a vindictive sense). i ran home a little faster than usual and made sure he didn’t see me go down my street or enter the house.

so my question is : has anyone else had a random meeting like this, where someone approaches you and starts talking about something so completely out there that you scurry away as quick as possible, watching over your shoulder the make sure they aren’t following ? how about your favourite door to door visitor and their tactics for getting you to listen about their cause or religious pursuasion... ?

cause i'm easy, easy like sunday morning

2004-12-05T12:40:00.000-05:00

ah sunday, the day when everything just sorta slows to a crawl and even the cockroaches can be seen relaxing by the pool, sipping a couple margaritas.

ok, so no pool and the cockroaches are still milling about although i sure as heck can't see them (they are there, trust me). apparently we've also got mice but they're more shy than the ones i had in guatemala - those puppies basically darted back and forth right in front of me, these ones only leave small turds in the drawers.

the termites, or some wood eating bug, loves this house. there is a small pile of termite poop - mostly wood fibres in small chewed up form - at the entrance to my bathroom. it's kinda weird, but you see it everywhere - they love using wood for framing - doors and windows, and the termites love to eat the wood. the circle of life, without the disney tie in.

anyway, yesterday was fertisa day (number 3). we were expecting to go with gisel, the secretary of the group - a staid 27 year old, friendly but all business - but instead, at the last minute andy decided to join us instead. i think he felt it was penance for our meetings this week that brought a lot of problems and concerns to the fore.

the reasoning behind the chaperone is that the area where we are working is kind of dangerous, especially if it looks like we are lost or carrying valuables. we don't get that impression at all - sure the place is poor but we've received nothing but warmth and good wishes from the people so far. but really it's the buses... they can be a wild card because, while rare, there have been holdups on the bus routes. but fertisa, while poor, is not as poor as other areas and people go about their daily lives without incident.

we've decided that the problem is really that of the people we're working with. they are generally the upper crust of guayaquil society (or the kids of the upper crust) and therefore have a biased view of the other half. safety is a huge concern, and while we're always careful - especially since we stick out like sore thumbs at times - they're somewhat neurotic.

so, anyway... fertisa. this week was going to be an introduction to certain basic health themes and a workshop on recycling. we had asked them to bring garbage - plastic bottles and such - for this week and prepare to make artesanía for x-mas (crafts). well... i did some tooling about and came up with some ideas on how to use plastic bottles, and i also got an idea for an origami project - cause paper waste is always a concern. it's interesting cause those two things are also the potentially recyclable items. a canadian compamy - repac - recycles a certain percentage of the garbage in guayaquil, dependent on demand. they give money to people for large supplies, and therefore if we were able to get the people of fertisa to collect all their paper and plastic they could make a few bucks.

so, anyway, i made a crab out of a plastic bottle as an example of what could potentially be made with garbage - an alternative to throwing the stuff in the street which, at the moment, is a very popular option. it's very cute and i tried to take a picture but it does it no justice and is very blurry so i won't post it but let's just say that the people there thought it was better than the sequel to star wars - the adults were dragging the kids over to play with it - and if you tapped it's back (which was also a lid to hide goodies in) it would dance and people would smile and life was good.

jane brought back recycled cards and paper from bahía and the kids were busy playing with those and although they were supposed to be learning about the importance of finding alternatives to throwing things away i think they just liked playing with the toys.

a note on lunch

2004-11-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

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

Ceviche

Sopa de Patas (Hoof soup)

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

Guatita (cow stomach in peanut sauce!)

and so on and so forth...

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

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

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

uh-uh.

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

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

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

santisteven

2004-11-23T07:51:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

next up fertisa

2004-11-19T18:35:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

snow angels in ashtrays

2004-11-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

posting and such

2004-11-10T08:56:00.000-05:00

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

canucknotes
password: ecuador

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

enjoy!

dinner and some scary stories

2004-11-10T08:23:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

some pics to whet the appetite

2004-11-06T23:41:00.000-05:00

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

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

the boogeyman

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

juanita

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

here´s the article...

full article

and here´s a closeup of me...

look at me taking out the trash!

good times.

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

canada 2.0

2004-11-05T19:10:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

the dogs are restless

2004-11-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

World Trade Center

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

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

it´s raining in kingston

2004-11-02T16:54:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

isn´t he cute?

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

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

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

expanding the running out of gas story

2004-11-01T18:44:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

terminal terrestre

here´s from my journal at the time...

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

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

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

lock the doors and roll up the windows

2004-10-28T16:46:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

Resaca Bar

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

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

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

happy halloween!

throwing up is not fun

2004-10-23T20:48:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

jim morrison is looking down on me right this minute

2004-10-23T20:47:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

back in post-election guayaquil

2004-10-18T08:53:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

a brief hello from bahía

2004-10-14T12:19:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

the bar is at step number 279

2004-10-09T00:29:00.000-05:00

well, i´m finally here.

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

good times

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

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

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

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

hostelling in vancouver

2004-10-02T20:21:00.000-05:00

we finally made our way to vancouver.

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

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

the weather can't be perfect all the time

2004-09-29T17:06:00.000-05:00

the clouds rolled in while we were getting out of the cars at the college. ominous clouds, big and black and angry looking. it hasn't rained since we got here and the clouds seemed disturbed by that. it could also be that even the weather hates cranbrook. blaine, the guy who runs the hostel, said that the lonely planet is always ragging on cranbrook, that it's the ugliest city in the world and such, that buddhist monks find it tedious and boring. i've been here all of a couple hours, the vast majority of that spent inside ruminating on the ominisity (?) of the clouds, but it does seem to lack a certain sense of charm.

cranbrook is pretty small, about 20 thou according to the brochures, and it doesn't really have much of a historical downtown or majestic gardens or waterfront to point to. instead it extolls itself as a gateway to the kooteneys (not, as i had originally feared) a disease, but rather a region of b.c. in which kimberley lies. kind of the okanagan's ugly sister, only it's not ugly at all. ok, bad analogy. anyway, i have yet to hear a nice world said about cranbrook, perhaps beyond the fact that it's nestled in the mountains and the views heading out of town seem extra special.

mila, our spanish teacher, lives here and runs a restaurant by the name of 'cancun'. of course this makes perfect sense because she's from el salvador. we're heading there for dinner in a bit and are now just killing time on the net.

a day of spanish

2004-09-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

just wrapped up a day of spanish... most of it was spent lounging over lunch and postres at a cafe in the platzl in town. found this cute little 360 degree view of the tourist district online... check it out. they've revamped it a bit since the page was put up but you get the jist of it. the spanish went well, only a few times did my mind wander to other exploits.

also thought it might be fun to post a few pics of the city in which i'll be living... guayaquil. the main tourist site for the city is visitaguyaquil.com and is loaded with pics and info on the main tourist draws. the biggie - the malacon is pretty impressive. i'll post some pics later tonight after i load them on the web. gonna play a little bit o basketball and perhaps try and phone mom tonight...

waiting on the lasagna

2004-09-27T21:15:00.000-05:00

it seems that evenings around here just fly by. there's no tv - one of the supposed perks of the hostel, and therefore i can't fall into my usual boob tube stupor by 8pm and just coast all the way through the local news.

the ropes course was a blast - it's held at this place along the road to st. mary's lake where we've been doing the rock climbing. a couple of guys - cam and dave - set us up and led us through the 'ropes' as it were, a series of obstacle courses where we were to learn various aspects of team spirit and the like. it's all good. one of the set-ups involved crossing a tight-rope perched a mere two feet off the ground but strung between two trees about twenty-five feet apart. a rope was affixed to each tree and met in the middle of the tight-rope forming a kind of tee-pee in the middle. anyway, we had to cross the entire tight-rope without falling, and maneuver our way around the middle part - not an easily accomplished task. after teetering back and forth for a while i did manage to make my way across but my knees were jelly.

anyone else have interesting training exercise activities they'd like to share?

well, the coup de gras of the ropes course was the blindfolded obstacle course. we all went up in order, hitched into a climbing harness and belayed to terra firma, in total blindness. perched about ten feet above the world we made our way across a series of tight-ropes. first there was the single line... then the double, and finally the long single without guide rope but a series of rope loops hanging in the ether above our heads. i took a header on the final stretch - bobbed for a minute and then righted myself and finished the course. apparently there are pics so i'll be posting them when available.

One week down

2004-09-27T08:30:00.000-05:00

one week in to the training process. today we're apparently going on a 'ropes' course... what this is i can only guess but i've been given some heads up that this probably means a team building obstacle course of sorts with net climbing, balance beam walking... that sort of thing. it's a half past seven and the sun is just making it's way over the eastern mountains. that's the thing about living in a bowl like kimberley - the sky lightens for a long time before it actually fills with sunlight.

the College of the Rockies is pretty funny at times. all around the kimberley campus (the pint-sized building at the bottom of the hill) there are posters of people snowboarding, camping, kayaking... all extoling the virtues of a COTR education. gotta love it. here's one of the ads without the copy on it...

oh, and here's a shot of happy hans...

ok, off to breakfast.

Prepping in Kimberley

2004-09-26T16:14:00.000-05:00

It's sunday, a gorgeous B.C. end to the weekend. I'm looking out the window of the hostel right now, watching the leaves drift about, catching a breeze as they fall. About 14 degrees out, in the sun of course, and nary a cloud in the sky.

Been here a week now, soaking in the B.C. air and such, partaking in the various 'training' assignments on offer from the College of the Rockies. It's a tiny building at the bottom of the hill, about a two minute scamper from the hostel.

So far the training has consisted of a half day of spanish mixed in with meeting with previous interns and going over the mountain of paperwork that's required for this thing. the spanish is coming along, if slowly, and the teacher is pretty relaxed and fun to be around. she has this fixation with beans, always using her childhood in El Salvador and her love of beans as examples of various past tenses. fun stuff - good times as lauren would say.

yeah, the other interns are a motley bunch, mostly from out west here, and pretty hyped about the opportunity to travel once again. the aforementioned lauren is from, um, well not really sure although i think she calls b.c. home (ominous start eh?). jane is from vancouver and will be working with me at the ecoclubs office in guayaquil. meagan is originally from somewhere else but now calls whitehorse home. that's pretty cool. sasha and alec will be headed to mozambique and are from oakville (the outskirts of the t.dot) and kelowna (?) respectively. anyway, they're all pretty gung ho about the opportunity, travelers all who have already traversed much of the planet.

went rock climbing on the weekend (friday and sat). first time doing that and didn't freak out from the height which was a welcome relief (had thought that i wasn't afraid of heights but wasn't positive...). it was particularly cool to hang free from the rock ledge and just sort of hang there, overlook the valley and such. we were already about thirty metres up the hill when we started so the views were impressive.

if i remember i'll write a bit about kimberley - the bavarian city of the rockies (i'm not making that up!) and happy hanz the beer chugging coo-coo clock guardian.