Alicia's wanderings

Dia numero cuatro...

2009-06-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

If I had to write a review of what's best about the accommodations in the Espiritu Sanu Monestary in the pueblo of Carrión de Cones, I´d be hard pressed to choose between the affordable 7€/night rate, and the smiley, scrappy 4'6" nun who greeted us at the entrance with a navy blue shiner adorning her left eye (accompanied by a gnarly three inch scar across her left temple) that perfectly matched the shade of her snug habit. Perhaps she recently took up boxing. The order of nuns at our third stop along the Camino de Santiago indeed seemed to be a sporty bunch.

"This is where we play," another sister explained to Meredith and me in Spanish as she led us across the basketball courts in the back of the monastery."And you, do you like the basketball? We have almost enough pilgrims here today for a team!" The tour continued through the spacious upstairs dormitory room crammed full with thirteen tidily made twin beds. Next, she took us to the common area at the end of the hall. "This one is the free internet to God," she said, gesturing to a gargantuan bible sitting open on a small desk. "And this, one, well, that internet is one Euro per hour," she said, pointing to the nearby computer.

Today is the fourth day for us along the Camino de Santiago, and already we are starting to settle comfortably into the rhythm of the pilgrims. 5:00 now feels like morning, and by 5:45 we are comfortably on the road, plodding steadily along in the crisp darkness of the early morning until the lazy Spanish dawn greets and warms us. We are happy to get some of our daily 18 mile regiment under way before the intense Castillian sun starts to beat its rays on our heavily laden shoulders. Our days have passed relatively quickly, however, as we wind our way westward along the brilliant green wheat fields that slither in the mid-day wind like snakes. The hillsides are splattered with swaths of wild red poppies, and to the distant north, we can see the dark blue Cordillera Mountain Range separating us from the sea. The Camino is well marked by yellow arrows which point weary pilgrims in the direction of Santiago de Compostella. When we stepped out of our first hostel in Burgos and onto the trail, we were greeted with our virgin yellow arrow sighting. I filled us with a child-like morning-of-Christmas glee.

The path is also marked by "conchas"--scallop shell decorations which represent the Camino. The legend of the shell has many origins, but the most prevalent is that when the raft carrying St. James' remains to Spain washed ashore, it interrupted a pagan wedding. The horse carrying the bride and groom, was understandably spooked by the arrival of a mysterious raft of holy remains, and ran into the sea, drowning the happy couple. Luckily, St. James was there to work his first miracle, and the horse later returned to land, bride and groom in tact, followed by a train of seaweed and scallop shells. Today, every pilgrim on the trail affixes a palm-sized concha to their backpack providing a comforting metronomic clink as he or she treads along.

Generally, we arrive to our alburge destinations for the night by mid-afternoon. There, the owner greets us, and check our credentials--a small Camino passport of sorts that is stamped in each town. The lazy afternoons pass quickly. Pilgrims who have been traveling for weeks reunite, comparing horror stories of blisters and injuries, and swap remedy theories with the intensity and frequency of a Wall Street day trader. Many pilgrims started in St. Jean Pier de Port--a small village in France just north of the France/Spain border. Due to time constraints, Meredith and I began our trip in Burgos--a small town just west of Pamplona--thus cutting the trip essentially in half, and reducing our trail to a mere 300-some miles. Luckily we have not encountered much scorn or resentment for our weakness. Not even from Christina, the gracious German who began her trek in Geneva.

Burgos, our starting point, was a wonderful hamlet, and our brief afternoon there before provided much entertainment. Stumbling into the wedding proceedings of a local well-to-do couple in the central cathedral, we were impressed to see the elegant finery of the Burgos elite. They seemed somewhat less impressed with our hiking boots. The crowd waited in the plaza outside the cathedral, crowded around a shiny black Mercedes which awaited the couple. The car was festooned in neon colored post-it notes sending them messages of well-wishes, and an inflated condom affixed to the hood ornament sending them well wishes of another breed.

Later, as we wandered through the town center in search of dinner, we were confronted with a troop of African dancers dressed in uniform baggy pants and tunics of bright orange and green. The five men were beating drums and gesticulating enthusiastically, as a small crowd began to follow them through the streets. Never ones to poo poo a good Pied Piper opportunity, we followed behind, until the impromptu parade ended at the town cultural center--an advertisement for an upcoming show. Glancing up, I noticed a discrete plaque which noted this was the site of the old cathedral in which the Spanish kings received Christopher Columbus upon his second return from the new World on April 23, 1497. Now, about 500 years later, in the same spot, a pair of American girls are admiring the hip thrusting bongo beats of South Africans. Coincidence?...

***

As Meredith and I have progressed along the Camino, we´ve been using a handy, and lengthy titled guide book called, A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago: the Way of St. James: The Ancient pilgrim path also known as Camino Frances: A Practical and Mystical Manual for the Modern Day Pilgrim. Author John Brierly's masterpiece indeed contains valuable maps, alburgue reviews, and other useful tips. His "mystical musings" however, at times fail to hit their intended target. Each stage of the journey is introduced with a quote that more often than not includes one of the following words: "discovery," "enlightenment" or "wings." At the end of each stage's information come two even more troubling entries: "The Mystical Path," and "Personal Reflections" sections. The latter are my favorite and consist of out-of-context excerpts from his personal diary. Entries are always bookmarked with ellipses and paint a dramatic daily picture of heart break and spiritual awakening. Shepherds are often involved. An author photo of Mr. Brierly´s face, frozen in a snarling attempt at a smile, adorns the inside jacket cover of the book. Picturing his wild tufting caterpillar salt and pepper eyebrows, and paisley patterned silk scarf, Meredith and I take turns reading these passages aloud to one another daily. A recent dramatic entry:

"...I met them in the Park. their welcome was ecstatic. Ramón was in much pain and was making arrangements to go home. The hospital had diagnosed a stress fracture. His disappointment and sense of failure was palpable. Above all, he didn´t want to leave the friends he had made along the way. We all have to leave the Camino at some stage, but our friendships don't have to end. He looked reassured as I took my leave. I can still see his tears and his hand waving as I passed out of sight--but not out of mind, Ramón; not out of mind..."

We are moved to tears on a daily basis.

Perhaps just as moving, is the dedication on the inside of the Patricia Cornwell mystery book, Point of Origin, which Meredith found for the long plane ride from New York. What Ms. Cornwell may lack in terms of high brow literary cred', she more than makes up for with her succinct introduction:

"With Love To Barbara Bush (for the difference you make)."

When feet are sore, or shoulders are tired along the Camino, Meredith and I have found surprising untapped sources of strength by pausing to look skyward, and think, what would Patricia Cornwell say? "This one's for you, Barbara. This one's for you..."

(pictures to come before too long)

Hasta pronto, España

2009-05-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

The idea started as most inspired ones do—with a drunken Spanish art history teacher during the early years of the first W. Bush administration. It was nine o’clock at night—the halls of the Universidad de Oviedo all but abandoned save for an eleven member cohort of fellow foreign exchange student classmates. The cause for our dedication? A Tuesday evening session of Intermediate Level History of Iberian Peninsula Art. Profesora Laura (pronounced “Low-rah”) took a long drag off her cigarette before launching into her impromptu lecture on the changing styles of Crucifixion depictions throughout the ages. As I struggled to take notes in Spanish, (“the Jesus… his head with the looking up yesterday, then today neck to side. Skirt be shorter…”) the focus of Laura’s ramblings shifted slightly to examples of the different artistic renderings along a route through northern Spain called the Camino de Santiago—the Way of Saint James.

“Basically,” she explained in Spanish, “in 814, the remains of St. James the Moore Killer washed up on the shores of Spain above Portugal—in Santiago de Compostella—and this hermit guy found them. They came from Jerusalem on a raft. It was a pretty big deal. Word got out, and lots of people wanted to come see, ya’ know? So, right up there with Rome and Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostella became a major pilgrimage destination with roads leading in from all over Europe. One of the routes goes through our town here—you can almost see it out the window. Pilgrims flock there even today. You’ll see ‘em pretty regularly in summer—with their boots and sticks with shells on them. Now… who wants to cut class early and go get a drink?”

My interest was perked. Admittedly, this had more to do with: A.) confusion as to whether Laura was propositioning us all, and B.) my abysmal Spanish comprehension. The latter had lead to my confusing the Spanish word “peregrino” (pilgrim) with “pingüino” (penguin). Imagining flocks of penguins waddling across northern Spain in deference to St. James was intriguing to say the least. When I later reviewed my notes with the help of a dictionary and realized my translation error, I was at first a bit disappointed. Still though, I was curious. A Moore-killing saint’s bones on a raft, a thousand year old trail cutting through campus, a possible arctic bird convention and cryptic sea shells? Like a virulent strand of Taenia solium, the parasitic brain tapeworm, the idea of the Camino settled somewhere deep into the recesses of my brain and began to grow.

Since that evening class with Professora Laura, the Camino de Santiago has become something of a Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon for me. This incredibly useful German coined term is the word for when one learns about an obscure new topic or proper noun—say, the tragic death of Madeleine Sophie Blanchart, official aeronaut of the Napoleon Empire, or rapper Lil Wayne’s insatiable love for cough syrup—and then suddenly, that same nugget of information seems to pop up everywhere in day-to-day life.

Indeed, several weeks after learning about the existence of the Camino de Santiago, the program director of my study abroad program in Oviedo announced we would be taking a weekend group excursion to Santiago de Compostella—the final destination of the pilgrimage route. Back in the States, a friend informed me that she and her grandparents had plans to hike the trail the following summer. Later, one of my favorite non-fiction authors, Jack Hitt, came out with a brilliant book—a combination historical treatise of Midevil Spain/Chaucerian travel log of his trip down the Camino called: Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain. All these factors combined eventually thrust “walk the Camino” right up there along side: own a motorcycle with a sidecar; win a backgammon tournament; join a Klezmer Jazz band, and get Andy Griffith’s autograph on my top five “to do” list in life.

Thus, engaged in a discussion last summer with my dear friend Meredith about how to properly celebrate her impending graduation from an arduous PhD program, I suggested the Camino de Santiago. After a brief pause of mental deliberation, Meredith concurred. “Um, yes,” she said simply, with a solid nod of her head. The deal, tentatively, was sealed.

Fast forward nine months… it’s a girl! (No no.. sorry, I was contractually obligated to follow-up with that following the cliche phrase “fast forward nine months”). No, instead I’m in New York, hours away from take off after a blissful week of long over-due reunions with old friends. If variety is the spice of life, the past seven days have been a liberally seasoned Masala cuisine. I went hobnobbing with a crew of champagne sipping gynecologists in Manhattan (one of whom is a dear friend from high school), tried on capes at the Brooklyn Super Hero Supply Store, feigned Finish heritage in Riverside Heights, and bonded in Long Island with a friend I’ve had so long, we used to regularly soil ourselves in one another’s company. Being as how we were in diapers at the time, there was considerably less judgment passed then compared to when it happens now.

Back in Brooklyn, it’s time to tie up the last minute loose ends, and then set about a soggy walk to the subway/JFK. In an attempt to summarize my ambitions and dreams for the upcoming trip to a friend recently, I turned to a page from the aforementioned Jack Hitt book:

"The road had an Old World sense of discipline that I liked. A pilgrimage is a form of travel alien to the American temperament. We colonists like to think of ourselves as explorers, path blazers, frontiersmen always on the lam and living off the cuff. Our history is an uncharted odyssey, a haphazard trip down the Mississippi, of unscheduled stops along the blue highways. When Americans are on the road, we don't really want to know just where we are going. We're lighting out for the territories. But a pilgrimage doesn't put up with that kind of breezy liberty. It is a marked route with a known destination. The pilgrim must find his surprises elsewhere. I hadn't the slightest idea what this would eventually mean, but liked the idea of searching out adventure in the unlikely place of a well-trod road.

I don't hold myself out as much of a pilgrim, what with my cloudy motives and facile past. But even as I sat reading at my desk in New York, my failings became encouragement. Among the ancient documents that survive are reports that during the Middle Ages many "others" walked the road, including Moors, then the very stamp of libidinal mustachioed infidel. A twelfth-century document form the pilgrims' shelter in Roncesvalles declares: "Its doors are open to all, well and ill, not only to Catholics, but to pagans, Jews and heretics, the idler and the vagabond, and, to put it shortly, the good and the wicked." I believe I can find myself in that list somewhere."

Well said, Señor Hitt. Hasta pronto, España.

Un beso, Bolivia...

2008-07-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

It is the dinosaur footprints and affectionate monkeys, and not the torturous three day bus journey from La Paz back to Cuenca, that I will try to keep in my heart when I look back at the end of my days in Bolivia. Glass half full, as they say.

Indeed, my final two destinations in Bolivia, offered many entertaining sites and adventures, and were well worth the continued travels. The quaint white washed town of Sucre, for example, was also home to the world’s most extensive exhibit of natural fossilized dinosaur footprints, which appealed to the child-like fascination of the multi-national cast of eager visitors, regardless of age.

Cochabamba too, my last stop in Bolivia, was a beautiful town east of the imposing Andes Mountain range. Its lower elevation made for welcoming bone-thawing temperatures, and its perennially sunny skies have earned it the nickname “city of eternal spring.” Just three hours further east of the city proper was the rugged dramatic jungle—home to the growingly famous Inti Wara Yassi Nature reserve. The views on the drive to the park alone, though at times death-defying on the curving, dubiously constructed roads, were worth the pilgrimage. Exiting the arid sunny environs of Cochabamba, the landscape turned abruptly verdantly green—with flourishing ferns and blossoming begonias bordering the snaky low-lying misty rivers below the mountain perched highway.

The area is prime territory for the cultivation of coca plants, and each Bolivian family is legally allowed to grow a couple hectares. Outside of every humble home along the highway lay expansive sheets covered in delicate green leaves which were drying in the harsh mid-day sun. The coca leaves are used from everything from traditional medicine, to tea, to candies, to even garlic bread (the latter of which was a bit green and hard for my liking… two fine adjectives to describe evergreen trees, or leprechaun boots, but not, in my opinion, carbohydrate appetizers).

Popular T-shirts sold in La Paz proudly proclaim “¡La hoja no es una droga!” (“The leaf isn’t a drug!”) And indeed, Bolivian president Evo Morales, himself an ex-coca leaf farmer, agrees. The United States government, however, does not. And USAID development money has been contingent upon strict, controversial stipulations of total coca plant eradication. Thus, the coca farmers unions in the region have recently, respectfully, simply asked USAID to leave. “Villa Tunari--USAID free territory!" proclaimed a proud billboard outside the Inti Wara Yassi park entrance. Well done! Some one had spray painted below in congratulations to the farmers union’s efforts.

The Inti Wara Yassi Reserve itself was a kind of rehabilitation center of sorts for wild animals that had been captured from the jungle to serve as pets, or sideshow attractions until their owners lost interest and stopped caring for them. Earnest volunteers come from all over the world to stay at the park for month long stints, helping to tend to the monkeys, walk the pumas, and feed the bears, among other duties. The spider monkeys were especially affectionate with the care takers they’d grown to love, and would unexpectedly leap on their backs in unabashed pleas for affection and hugs.

Due to the apes’ gregarious, uninhibited temperament, coupled with their mischievous curiosity, however, tourists must guard their possessions carefully. Visitors are warned not to carry any extraneous objects, and to keep a close hold on their cameras. One girl learned this lesson the hard way when a thirsty monkey swung down from a nearby branch and snatched her loosely held water bottle from her hand. After a brief bout of frustration, he quickly mastered the pop-top drinking nozzle, and drained the bottle of its contents.

As an animal lover, and ex-militant vegetarian, the spirit of the park appealed to me. Attractions such as Sucre’s dino fossils and Inti Wara Yassi leave me feeling perplexed and conflicted about resource allocation in developing countries where the human need is so profound as well. Bolivia has the dubious distinction of being South America’s poorest country, and the increased levels of poverty and lack of infrastructure were startling apparent, even in comparison to nearby Peru and Ecuador.

To preserve the dinosaur footprints in Sucre for example, there is a proposed plan underway which would cost 190 million dollars, involving an elaborate re-fortification of the hillside to prevent erosion, and an eventual silicon covering of the fossilized imprints. The Bolivian government obviously lacks the funds to pay for such an undertaking out right. Luckily, there are many foreign parties interested in pitching into the effort. Apparently “preserving the world’s most extensive site of evidence of dinosaur life” has a sexier grant application title than “general alleviation of peasant hunger and destitution”—a Bolivian cause which could also use an extra 190 million.

Maintaining cultural and historical gems, unique in the world, has obvious value. By properly caring for these sites of interest, not only will future generations be able to enjoy and learn from them, but international visitors will continue to visit and thus stimulate the local economy. So long term, I understand. But as always, the allocation of limited funds, especially when need is so great, is a delicate and morally thorny process. It is hard to walk the streets of Bolivia’s many poverty stricken barrios, void of schools and hospitals, but full of starving children, and concretely decide which effort needs the most immediate attention.

Bus Stop, Baby

2008-07-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Having bid a fond farewell to my temporary travel companion of the last several weeks, I headed solo north to Sucre, Bolivia. Generally I traveled on night buses to minimize wasted days of travel, and such was the case leaving Tupiza.

Just two hours into the ten hour journey, however, the bus stopped unexpectedly somewhere on the side of the highway at a dimly lit shack for a snack break. I’d already taken my mandatory sleeping pills (a necessity on par with clothing, water, and other basic supplies if one is to survive the grueling evening journeys on highways not blessed with pavement). So I stumbled groggily from the bus along with the rest of my fellow passengers and stood idly around waiting for people to finish their rice and mystery meat dinner specials.

A pint sized four-year-old, who should have been in bed, was playing by himself on the floor of the restaurant. He was fidgety in his sullied denim shirt and tiny flip-flop shoes. He was using his over sized red sweatpants to slide around on the smooth concrete floor—spinning in circles like a puppy chasing his tail. Eventually bored with his twirling, he ran dizzily over to his grandmother who was seated solidly on a small green plastic stool outside the restaurant, selling fresh squeezed orange juice. He wrapped his arms around her in a sloppy hug—only partially encircling the brilliantly colored neon striped shall draped around her imposing build. He patted her face aimlessly and she shrugged him off, annoyed. She brandished the small serrated knife she’d been using to slice the oranges in his direction. “I’ll cut your feet off,” she said menacingly, glaring.

He shuffled off, unfazed, and an older child, maybe six, gave him a plastic bag. The younger boy stretched it across his mouth like a face mask.

“Put it over your head,” the older child suggested. “Like a bonnet.”

The bus horn blared, signaling it was time to continue the night’s journey. A group of four foreigners—traveling with a local guide to a volunteer work site in Sucre—looked around panicked for a garbage can to deposit the peels of their recently consumed bananas.

People eating dinner hastily shoveled in the last of their rice laden plates, and we all slowly boarded as the bus engine roared reluctantly back to life. We were off.

Tupiza

2008-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

There are some landscapes that just make you want to rob a stage coach. Such was the case with the wild imposing swaths of fiery desert, and mountainous crags of Tupiza, in southern Bolivia. Unfortunately for my inner outlaw, stage coaches are hard to come by in this day and age since the internal combustion engine reared its ugly head, and decrepit rusted out buses puttered into town taking over public transport. Nonetheless, the rebellious impulses the wild west scenery of Tupiza inspired gave me an increased level of sympathy for the illegal antics of America’s most famous turn-of-the-century outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who met their demise in the town’s outskirts.

The two rebels originally fled the United States—where they were wanted for stealing over 25 million dollars—to Argentina in 1901. There, they tried to reinvent themselves as peaceful ranchers. I envision their new Brokeback Mountain-esk existence in their resettled South American residence—starting fresh in a little country homestead where Sundance would pick out the material for their new kitchen curtains, and Butch would rise early to milk the cows so the two could have fresh cream in their morning coffee. Alas, their peaceful existence was doomed when another warrant in 1905 was issued for their arrest in Argentina, and the pair fled north to Bolivia. It was outside of Tupiza, three years later, when the two finally died in a dramatic double suicide as authorities stood posed outside their hotel room about to launch a raid.

Much mythology thus centers around the outlaws’ legacy in the area, and tourists flock to the sites of their death and their grave in popular day long excursions. My friend Vina and I, however, opted for an alternative “triathlon” tour of Tupiza’s outskirts—a combination mountain biking, horse riding, and 4x4 method of exploration of the striking surroundings. Sadly, I confess my best event was Jeep. Still though, I particularly enjoyed the horse riding since it allowed Vina and I to venture off road (though the state of our gravely horse paths differed little in quality from the “highway” proper), meandering slowly through the canyons and jagged geological formations like true caballeras (cowgirls). Wild crests of blood red rock rose from the surrounding hillsides like Mohawks on a punk guitarist’s skull. And lone, sheer cliffs stood mysterious and solitary amidst otherwise flat cactus-dotted planes, christened with theatrical names such as “La Puerta del Diablo” (the Devil’s door).

Vina, an avid rock climber, was as much enamored with the possibilities for cliff scrambling as with the scenery as a whole. “Oooh baby! Did you check out that last one?” She asked me, ogling a passing hillside as if she were a sexist jock cruising for sorority girls. “Let’s come back tomorrow and do it!” I gently had to remind her that, with the entirety of my rock climbing experience consisting of one solitary adventure several weeks previous, I was perhaps not yet ready for rope/harness-less “free climbing” up imposingly vertical precipices. But yes, I conceded, it was “smokin.’”

Luckily Tupiza afforded many opportunities for stunning day hikes, and other adventures in the area. Thus, we had an excuse to stay several days in our wonderful Hotelera Mitru which offered free swimming facilities, complimentary breakfasts, and, most importantly, what were undoubtedly the best showers in all of South America. The latter may seem like a trifling attraction in comparison to Bolivia’s many majestic natural wonders. But honestly, we were both as, if not more, impressed with the consistently high water pressure and blissfully blistering hot temperature of the showers as we’d been by the mountains of La Paz, Uyuni’s Salt Flats, or Tupiza’s canyons.

“And you turn it on, and it’s hot right away, and it stays hot, and you have time to use soap and shampoo and everything!” Vina gushed eagerly to me when she returned from her welcomed cleansing rite down the hall. I listened, wide-eyed and eager, but not quite believing her—as if I was hearing an account of a wild adventure’s recent successful mission to the lost city of Atlantis.
“No!” I said, incredulously. “Impossible.”
“It’s true!” she protested, and lifted my hand to pet her still damply warm hair as evidence.

Thus, we stayed longer than anticipated in Tupiza—ostensibly to rest and enjoy the natural beauty around us, but truth be told, the unique bathing pleasures were what really kept us put. Normal travel days in foreign countries usually involve a fair amount of “ok, let’s see… what should we do today?” conversations, followed by extensive guide book perusal. In Tupiza, however, we never suffered such indecision. Spare time? Pause in the conversation? I know! Let’s go back to the hostel and take the day’s third shower!

I hope to maintain such eager appreciation for life’s simple pleasures when I soon migrate back north of the equator.

Solar de Uyuni

2008-07-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it was a bad sign when our jeep pulled up with an empty glass rum bottle supporting the luggage rack. This was to be the chariot for the impending three day tour of the world’s largest salt flats—an expansive area covering south western Bolivia, and known for its spooky, desolate, other-worldly scenery.

Undeterred by the perhaps shabby nature of the vehicle, my friend Vina and I boarded the jeep and set off on the first day for our ride through the moon-like landscape of the Uyuni Salt Flats. The salt flats are over 6,500 square miles wide, and range from 9-65 feet thick. The vast, flat white landscape stretches endlessly before you, suggesting you’re the only remaining survivor after a recent apocalypse.

The area is also famous for the strange perspective-distorting photo opportunities it affords. Vina and I took full advantage of the scenery--posing our trip mascot, a mummified llama fetus, in various compromising and amorous positions while the proverbial camera flash bulbs burned. It was while in the midst of this serious paparazzi effort that we were introduced to the remaining four members of our group who had joined us from another car at the appointed lunch time rendezvous point. Henrique, Gustavo, Samuel, and Rafael, were all Brazilian art students, on a 6 week trip during “winter” vacation. They spoke little Spanish, and even littler English, but somehow, with my Spanish, Vina’s Spanglish, and the boys’ Spang-ese (Spanish-Portuguese), we managed to communicate.

Huddled together in the salt-block constructed hostel that night, we used our collective linguistic mush to conduct a lesson in Brazilian folklore. Vina and I learned about some of the many traditional characters of Brazilian popular legend, including Saci Perere—a one legged, pipe smoking midget who wears a red gnome-hat and hops through the jungle creating mischief, and Curlepira—a green naked jungle God with backwards facing feet.

“Are all your characters of folk in the Brazil... deformed?” I asked, less than subtly.

“Ha ha!” laughed Henrique who, using his considerable artistic talents, had just illustrated the two characters for Vina and I. “Not all... just most.”

Vina gave a reciprocal lesson to the group—this time a primer in her native Filipino tongue of Tagalog.

“Mabaho ang puet mo,” she said slowly, so we all could repeat. “Mahal kita,” she continued.

“¿Qué significa?” (What does that mean?) asked Gustavo.

“It means: ‘Your butt stinks’ and ‘I love you,’ Vina explained. “Those are both very important to know when you first visit.”

We spent the next two days cruising through some of the most dramatic mountain and canyon filled landscape I’ve ever seen—fuming volcanoes, steaming mud geysers, brilliant rose-colored flamingo studded lagoons—our ability to absorb visual beauty quickly became saturated nearly to capacity.

The evenings out on the salt flats—some of our accommodations were at 15,000 ft. or higher—were bone chillingly cold, so the last day’s stop over at a small complex of steaming thermal pools was a welcome respite. I had to summon all my willpower to change into a bathing suit at 16,00ft when already I couldn’t feel my toes or fingers due to cold. But the cozily warm hot springs were the perfect way to de-thaw. We sat there contentedly admiring the dramatic surrounding peaks whenever the steam momentarily cleared and allowed for a vista.

We had to be quick re-dressing when we left though. In the two minutes it took me to change back into my clothes, ice crystals had already formed in my hair. When I finished wrestling the tangles out of my hair, my brush looked as if I’d been either: grooming a snow man, or had developed a debilitating case of dandruff.

We had a five hour drive back to the town of Uyuni on the last day—a trip which afforded us plenty of time to mock the insidious all “reggaetone” soundtrack our guide Marco had selected for the day. This inspired an animated conversation about superior musical options (i.e.- soundtracks of cat’s being tortured etc.).

Rafael was an ardent fan of the Philly based hip hop group The Roots, so I wrote down some other groups of similar genres that I thought he might enjoy.

“But no solo the hippy-hop!” He clarified in asking for recommendations. “All kinds!”

The guys assembled a page long list of Brazilian musicians all worth investigating for Vina and I, and promises of international mix tapes were made.

The journey back to civilization took a bit longer than expected as our regularly scheduled hourly breakdowns began to increase in frequency. Every 20 minutes or so we were forced to pull to the side of the “road” such as it was, while Marco and his assistant Carlos fumbled with the tires and suspension—returning from each mechanical repair effort with a different piece of tubing or metal working, all of which looked suspiciously crucial.

We finally arrived to Uyuni three hours late, in the dark and freezing cold. Back at the tour agency, Vina and I were informed that the train tickets we’d previously purchased for that evening weren’t actually valid (“that just meant I’d try to find you a seat, but I couldn’t. So you can’t leave until tomorrow, OK?” explained the less than helpful desk worker) Thus, we were forced to wander the darkened ghost town in search of an overpriced hostel. Our gem of a dwelling did not feature running water (“The pipes are frozen! This happens every night!”) but compensated with mice, and one matrimonial bed for Vina and I to spoon in. The latter came in handy since there was no heat.

Thus, no love was lost when we left in the pre-dawn darkness of 5:30 AM to catch the next bus out of town. Seated freezing in my front row seat trying to recall the last time I’d had feeling in my extremities, as progressively more layers of dirty mattresses and corn feed were stacked upon me, my mind was flooded with bitter thoughts about the dubious wisdom of calling this “a vacation.” Just then, an elderly man boarded the bus, a stack of 10 skinned goats bound together with blue twine, in tow. These too he leaned against my leg as he settled down on the floor for the impending journey. I sighed, and turned to look out the window, upon which was a sticker which said in Spanish: “Be nice. Don’t have a nervous breakdown. Smile.” A sign, if ever I needed one.

Huayna Potosí

2008-07-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

"I can't. I'm going to throw up." These were the less than encouraging words of my supposed fellow mountain climbing partner that greeted me the morning of our departure to the 19,970 ft. tall Huayna Potosi. The other tourist who’d signed up for the trip had fallen ill the night before, and delivered his regrets pale and woozy in the tourist office.

"Ok, then!" Said the agency owner, Aldolfo, turning to me with an optimistic smile,
"I guess it's just you going then!" Thus, I set off on my climbing adventure in just the company of my soft spoken guide, Andrés. The unexpectedly small size of the group turned out to be a blessing, however, because it afforded me plenty of individual instruction time on how exactly to use the variety of novel equipment before me.
(ex: Andrés: "No! the pointy side of the ice ax into the MOUNTAIN ! NOT into your head!")

At the refugio (base camp) where we stayed the first night, there was a fairly large contingent of folks also beginning their summit attempts, so dinner conversation was lively. There were two young Israeli guys, Omer and Yuval, an Australian couple, a Spanish couple from the Basque Country, and two more young Australian guys.

The latter had just come from Iraq where they had been working for a British military contracting company providing security to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

"Wow! That must have been so stressful!" Marveled the Australian, Jen.
"Ah, it wasn't so bad," Matt responded casually. "After a while, it's just a job, isn't it?" His only real complaint about the work was that his colleagues were almost all British, and thus "too uptight." Yeah, mate... it's just Iraq! Take a mellow out!

The second day, after breakfast we hiked up to High Camp (16,700ft.) where we all spent the day lounging in the sun and drinking copious amounts of coca leave tea (supposedly to alleviate the effects of the altitude). In the evening, we all made signs to photograph on the summit assuming, God willing, we reached it. Mine was a fairly mundane—a banal “Happy 4th of July” wish to my fellow countrymen.

Omer and Yuval, however, were a bit more creative. Their summit message was inspired by the movie “Beaufort” about the hellish conditions of life inside an Israeli outpost in the months leading up to the pullout from Lebanon. The daily threat of bombardment and attack there made for a maddening daily existence for the soldiers who knew their mission was futile and drawing to a close. And yet the camp’s physical location was apparently in one of the most beautiful geographical spots in the Middle East. Thus Omer and Yuval translated the famous quote from the film from Hebrew to English, (and then to Spanish): “If there’s a heaven, it looks like this. If there’s a hell, it feels like this.”

With the caveat that I always thought the latter might be a bit warmer, it seemed an apt sentiment.

We awoke at 12:30 AM the following day to start our summit—clumsily putting on enough layers to invoke apt comparisons to the heavily clothed younger brother Randy, in movie “The Christmas Story” (“I can’t put my arms down!”)

As I began the dark six hour uphill trudge, I felt like a work horse with thick blinders. Sporting a buttercup yellow fleece baklava and a tightly fastened hood from my ski jacket, only my eyes were exposed to the elements. This confined, peripheral visionless vista was perhaps a blessing however, because the neck craning views of the route ahead induced a starry, daunting sense of vertigo. The Australian couple had set out just before me, and I could just make out their faint glowing headlamps in the distance. The route was so steep, they appeared to be floating spookily directly above me.

To accommodate the unmerciful grade of the path, I often wound up walking grapevine style, my feet perpendicular to the slope, using my ice ax like a crutch. My steps were so deliberate and methodically slow, however, that no one single action seemed overly daunting. The climb thus became more of an exercise in Zen like mental endurance—channeling my thoughts into positive, motivating simplistic ideas (i.e.- “Breath in! Breath out!... no, wait! Don’t stop! Keep doing that!”). I also attempted to purge from my brain the less than motivating looping Tegan and Sarah song lyrics from their hit song “The Con” (chorus: “Encircle me/ I need to be/ taken down!”).

I finally reached the summit with Andrés around 6:30 AM. It was still dark, but soon the horizon became illuminated in peachy glows as the sun began its slow, warming ascent. The Cordillera Blanca Mountain range stretched as far as the eye could see north and south of me, and the soft pastels of sunrise bathed their white snow capped peaks. I could see La Paz in the distance, cast in the infinite eastwards stretching triangular shadow of Huayna Potosi. Mercifully, the summit was windless, so although lack of circulation in my extremities nonetheless soon set in, it was not nearly as cold as it could have been. Everyone made it to the summit, and we all lingered there a bit longer than usual. My 20 minutes there were probably the most profoundly simultaneously humbling and empowering of my life.

On the one hand, the view of nature’s extreme majesty made me feel incredibly small—content to be insignificant in comparison to the grandeur before me. And yet, perched atop what seemed to be the top of the world, I felt like some Goddess of Gortex, surveying my crop of mountainous subjects before me. The view brought to mind a Mark Twain description of the Sierra Nevadas that I’d read a while back:

“Toward dawn we got under way again, enjoying our early morning smoke and contemplating the first splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as if the invisible creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with a smile.”

“Wow. I can really see how people get addicted to this,” I sighed to my fellow climbers admiring the view.

“Bah! Not me!” grumbled Jen. “Let’s get the hell down and get this over with!” So much for serenity.

The descent took only about an hour and a half, and provided astounding views of the terrain which had been obscured to me in darkness to of the climb up. Towering bulbous snow fields, jagged glacial walls, and snaking precipitous ridges unfolded before me as I bounced along the steep descent. At times, I felt like a clumsy ballerina attempting to dance on point, my crampons were so vertically aimed downward.

We finally reached the base came, shed a half dozen layers of superfluous gear, changed into regular hiking boots, and continued with the hour long hike down to the first camp. There, our transportation back to La Paz, in the form of a dilapidated station wagon, was waiting. I shared the ride back to the city with another Israeli, Ziv, who’d also just summited, and was ambitiously was contemplating his plans for the rest of the day.

“I don’t know... maybe I’ll go see the Valle de Luna rock formations south of the city, we’ll see! There’s a whole afternoon before us!” he said.

I admired his stamina, but when I arrived back to my hostel, I decided to celebrate in my own manner—curling into a fetal position and wishing I was dead. My body had been extremely placating and cooperative with the previous 48 hours of strain. But now, my brain, stomach and intestines collectively rose up in protest—beating the war drums of discontent and demanding explanation and regress for the brutality to which I’d subjected them. I grabbed blindly in the dark for my rainbow colored array of “in case of emergency” pill stash, pulled the blankets up over my head, and didn’t get out of bed until 9:00 AM the next morning.

I was feeling refreshingly less suicidal the next day, and thus went along to breakfast with Omer and Yuval. They’d previously scoped out the town’s best deal—an all you can eat buffet for $2.50 in a nearby plush hotel restaurant. When we arrived, the staff looked at our ragged attire and correctly surmised we weren’t actual guests. “Nope!” we conceded happily, and proceeded to empty their ample stash of fresh fruits, yogurt, pancakes, and French toast.

I intended to spend the rest of the day tending to mundane tasks like preparing for the evening’s night bus journey to the Solar de Uyuni—the famous salt flats of Southern Bolivia. I was due to meet up with Vina there the following day to start a three day 4x4 Jeep tour of the area. Unfortunately, practicalities such as laundry and long overdue emails fell by the wayside when I got distracted and ended up spending the majority of the afternoon perusing the nearby Witches’ Market. The “Mercado de Hechicería” as it’s known, was conveniently located a mere two blocks away from my hostel, so it was an easy walk back with my heavily loaded shopping bag full of potions, amulets, and most importantly, mummified llama fetuses.

The latter are supposedly good luck to bury in your yard when you move houses. I have a lot of friends who have changed residences since I left the States last September, so I will have to stock up on those. I’m planning on making an indignant stink if questioned by U.S. customs officials when I return. (i.e.- “ Well let’s just see what constitutes an “illegal agricultural import” then, shall we? Show me where it explicitly says “no Bolivian mummified llama fetuses,” bucko! This is blatant anti-Scandinavian descent/ anti-alpaca discrimination, and I don’t have to take it! Where’s your supervisor?!?”)

Fingers crossed this tactic works....

Bolivia

2008-07-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

As a general rule, I think it’s a good thing to wake up to views of flamingos. Thus, my initial impressions of Bolivia, as my night bus sped along side the flamingo-studded shores of Lake Titicaca, approaching the Peru-Bolivian border, were positive.

“OK! We don’t have any Americans on board today, right?” Barked the 4´5” tall shawl clad indigenous woman, in charge of ushering us through customs. Everyone else shook their heads as I tentatively raised my arm. She whipped a stern glare in my direction.

“You!” She shouted accusatorily. “You have to pay 100 dollars, then!” The rest of the passengers broke into laughter upon hearing the exorbitant extent of my “fascist American penalty fee” and I nodded my head shyly saying that “yes, this I is knowing alreadys.” In light of stricter American visa fees levied against the rest of the world following September 11th, the Cosby sweater wearing populist Bolivian president, Evo Morales, retaliated with his own tourist tax especially for American passport holders. Though a hero to many as the first indigenous “cocaero” (Coca plant grower) president, Morales drops the loveable paternal façade when it comes to dealing with the dreaded Yanks. Luckily, I was able to negotiate the “recently changed” visa fee at the border from 135$ down to $105 and passed through without incident. The border official blatantly placed the extra five dollars in the drawer of his desk, gave me a wink, and wished me happy travels in Bolivia.

I spent the first night in Bolivia on the Isla del Sol in the midst of Lake Titicaca. It’s the birthplace of the sun according to Incan legend, and the spell bounding sunsets and sunrises my humble hostel room afforded confirmed this rumor. The views were reminiscent of photos I’ve seen of the Greek Isles, only here, one had the added benefit of the Cordillera Real Mountain range flanking the horizon, and the subtle reminder of the frigid evening cold, that this particular vista was at 12,500 feet instead of sea level.

I shared a boat ride over to the island with two North Dakota red headed sisters who, true to their home state stereotypes, were polite, reserved, and intensely attracted to the abundance of free range piglets inhabiting the island. I clicked more with their guide, a lanky La Paz native, Aldolfo, who was one of the few pro American Bolivians in country.

“I love the USA!” He gushed eagerly in flawless English when I told him I was from Oregon. He proceeded to regale me with his tales of his years spent vagabondizing across the States in the 70s—first in San Francisco where he partied with Santana, then to Pitsburg, then New Orleans (“for the jazz!”), then finally to Key West, Florida before heading home. “A friend was supposed to send me all my things in Florida before I came back,” he explained, “but something happened, and it all got lost. So when I came home I had nothing! Just short pants, and no money!” This, he explained, was a shock to the family who expected him to return a wealthy Don, not in shorts in La Paz, knocking on the door asking to borrow money to pay for his cab.

Despite Aldolfo’s hippy roots, everyone in his family is a big Bush supporter because his Aunt Muria was the housekeeper to Barbara Bush back in the day. “They loved her like she was family!” Aldolfo told me. “They thought she made the best Mexican food.”

“Why would she cook Mexican food if she was from Bolivia?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but that’s what they always said anyways,” shrugged Aldofo. “She died suddenly from a heart attack one day, and the family paid for a bunch of our relatives to come up for the funeral. Everyone was crying so hard, not because Tía Muria was dead really, but because the ceremony was so beautiful! The Bushes really went all out!”

Aldolfo has come a long way since his days of penniless “short pant” living, and now owns a successful trekking and tourism company in La Paz. He invited me to stop by to say hi when I got into town, and hear about adventuring opportunities.

My first evening in La Paz, I got together with Vina, a Californian I’d met trekking in Peru. We arranged to meet for dinner at Yussef’s, a Lebonese restaurant in town. Vina arrived with two friends she’d recently met in her hostel, one of whom, Brendon, was a recent Harvard Kennedy school of Government graduate. This fact managed to repeatedly work its way into conversation. Example:

Brendon: “This hummus is OK, but it’s nothing like the hummus I ate when I met with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, on our Kennedy School field trip to Lebanon last spring.”

I sympathized with his tale of perilous school outings, sighting an elementary excursion to the Salem Mission Mill in which a cantankerous guide made all of us in Mrs. Wurgler’s third grade class stand outside in the January cold because we failed to pay respectful enough attention to a discourse on the intricacies of pioneer woven blanket patterns. For some reason, Brendon seemed unimpressed.

Despite the underwhelming impression I must have made, Brendon and his girlfriend agreed to meet Vina and I the following morning to visit the nearby Coca museum. The Coca Museum is a humble, yet edifying hole in the wall establishment which informs visitors about the controversial plant’s rich and pivotal role in Bolivian history. Initially, following Spanish conquest, the plant was banned for having “anti-Christian” effects on the populace. When the Spanish discovered that one of these effects, however, was an increased tolerance for backbreaking manual labor in the country’s many ore-rich mines, they back tracked deciding that perhaps it wasn’t so blasphemous a substance after all, and even took to paying workers in coca leaves instead of traditional currency.

Not all of the coca plant’s uses have been put to such positive productive endeavors as increased slave output, however. The museum did acknowledge the potential for abuse of refined cocaine in a display entitled “chemical orgasm.” The central feature of the display was a dummy of a sweaty investment banker, slouched in a corner, barefoot, with a mysterious gothic looking rotary phone made from a skull by his side. The plaque read:

“Similar to the fact that an orgasm from masturbation is never sufficient and quickly loses its intended feeling, the chemical orgasm realized by using cocaine serves only to create more desire for the drug. At the same time, the addicted individual feels isolated and deprived when they “awake” from their feeling of artificial pleasure.

For this reason, the need to submerge oneself into a state of artificial “paradise” grows more and more urgent, and the doses of cocaine must become stronger. This continues until the cocaine paralyzes the cardiopulmonary system or leaved the addict to die from lack of nutrition and hygiene.”

Lack of hygiene, indeed. I’d always imagined that as more of a marijuana drug user’s cause of death, but apparently it afflicts coke addicts as well.

Later in the day, I stopped by Aldolfo’s tour office to say hi. It was thus that I found myself signing up for a three day excursion to climb the nearby Mt. Huyana Potosi. At 6,088m (19,970 ft.) it is supposedly one of the world’s easiest 6,000m summits. “So no problemo!” Aldolfo assured me. “Lots of people do it with no experience. You’re strong! You can do it!” His credence in my strength apparently derived from my ability to stroll leisurely along the Isla del Sol with him and the North Dakota girls for an hour. “Hey, and it’s perfect!” He continued, “You’ll be up on the mountain on the 4th of July! Nice way to celebrate your country’s birthday!”

I had to admit, that there was a certain poetic aptness to the timing. What better way to celebrate the essence of America than by embarking on an endeavour requiring a near insane level of over-optimism and hubris? I agreed to leave the following day.

Peru

2008-06-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, Perú. Land of outdoor trekking, earring-sporting llamas, and radioactive Inca Cola!

My first stop in country was Trujillo, a mercifully sea level town on the coast some 300 miles north of Lima. The journey there from Cuenca was the first in a succession of 18 hour-plus bus trips that have given me ample time to hone my Helen Keller impersonation skills. Generally I try to be affable and distantly pleasant to my chicken in a sack carrying seat mates, but when the conversation turns to the subject of marriage....

(ie: Me: "You just says this for to get a green card!"
Chicken carrying suitor: "Ha ha! Yes, you are correct. So, what do you think?")

....That's when I generally find it best to immediately commence my performance as a deaf, blind mute. The credibility of my impersonation tends to be somewhat undermined by my second two favorite bus journey activities (listening to music, and looking out the window), but a well placed blanket/human fort usually helps disguise these inconsistencies somewhat.

Trujillo was a jem. There are a series of famous ruins outside the city--the Chan Chan maze-like complex built in the 1300s by the Chimu people, and the Huaca del Sol and Huaca del Luna. The latter are two enormous temples--the largest pre-Colombian structures in Peru. The Huaca del Luna was an enormous maze-like complex of religious chambers which we wove our way around with our small tour group. A Swedish and Peruvian couple were part of our small band and had their 6 month old baby in cuddle-pack tow. Lacking the linguistic sophistication to appreciate the guide's compelling and graphic description of human sacrifices once performed on the grounds, the baby began to whimper in bored, chilly frustration. His mother bounced him gently and whispered in Spanish in his ear: "There there, my little child. Shut up!" which, I thought, sent confusing mixed messages.

My favorite artifact on display was a collection of adobe bricks donated by individual Moche families in the 500s to assist in the effort needed for the the temple's 140 million brick massive construction. Families were "encouraged" to donate (with threats of person violence if they refused) and each carved a seal into the brick to mark their donation. Birds, geometric patterns, and simple stick figures were all utilized as family crests, by my personal favorite in passive-aggressive editorializing was the disgruntled frowny face brick. You could almost here its creator grumbling "fine, you jack ass Moche emperor... I'll make you a brick, but I'm not happy about it."

My next stop in Peru was the mountain perched city of Huaraz, located in the shadows of the glorious Cordillera Blanca mountain range. It's the highest in the world after the Himalayas, and boast 22 peaks over 6000 meters high (19 690 ft). I'd only planned to stay there for 2 or 3 days, but, in my sleepless weary post night-bus state, and wooed by the sight of looming mountains so close I could fairly walk in their shadow, I found myself signing up for the four day Santa Cruz trek leaving the following day. I must say, it was one of my wiser delirium induced decisions, because the scenery and company were both astounding.

There were 5 of us trekkers in the 30 and under bracket--two guys from Holland, a British girl, and a fellow American. We all quickly bonded over shared interest in travel, inappropriate humor, and boxed wine which is surprisingly easy to pack when donkeys are carrying the heavy bags. Our merry group of 5 was joined by a mid 30s Swiss couple, and a retired husband-wife duo from Poland. I feared the former at first. With their high tech polypropylene gear, intimidating physiques, and hometown proximity to peaks of comparable size, they seemed sure to leave the rest of us in their dust/and or eat us if the going got too rough. In fact, however, it was the Polish couple that proved to be the powerhouses, consistently leading the pack as they plugged determinedly and doggedly along the increasingly high altitude path. They never once complained of fatigue, nor of cold, even when an unseasonable blizzard set in on our second day, forcing us to cross the 15,600 ft. pass in uncomfortably brisk conditions. Their unyielding determination seemed to suggest that, in comparison to decades of communism and the endless winters of Polish life, this was a mai tai served fresh on a tropical beach. The rest of us however, were not quite so hearty.

"In Holland, our highest mountain is 100 meters tall," Steve noted, as we stood shivering in the cold, awaiting the perpetually tardy arrival of the Swiss couple (they ironically proved to be the team's weakest link).

"Yeah," said Rob, the other Dutchman, as he surveyed the snowy mountain tops and tried fruitlessly to light a cigarette with his now frozen hands, "I'm more of a beach man, myself."

"Can you please ask him if we can keep going?" Vina, the American said, asking me to act as translator to the Spanish-only speaking assistant guide. "I'm so cold, and at least if we start walking, I'll warm up a little!" Vina's request woke me from my daydreaming in which, having long since lost feeling in my feet, I was contemplating my toe-less future with only goat-like hooves to carry me, clomping, from place to place. Eager to avoid a future as a satyr, I politely inquired to Alejandro:

"Um, excuse me, please, señor? could we keep with the moving, for to stop of the ice bodies, please?"
"Ha!" he laughed sheepishly shrugging his shoulders, "well, I'd say OK, but I don't know the way either! It's my first time on this trek too!"

Thus we stood huddled together awaiting our lead guide, Rony, who'd gone back to fetch the Swiss. W had plenty of time to plot their demise, holding them responsible for our impending hypothermia induced death.

Despite the brisk temperatures, the trek overall was a phenomenal experience. The breaks in foul weather afforded magnificent, awe-inspiring views of the surrounding peaks, and the trail was peppered with lazy llamas who we soon grew to think of as friends.

The day we returned to civilization in Huaraz, we'd been planning to set aside for strictly horizontal activities such as sleeping, watching movies, and perhaps, if we were feeling ambitious, reading books. However, Vina spearheaded a last minute somewhat more vertically inclined day of adventuring--rock climbing. Vina was an experienced expert, but Steve and I, who innocently decided to join in, were both novices. Thus, I expected the first portion of the day to be devoted to basic activities, like figuring out how exactly to fasten oneself into the adult rope diaper of a harness, and going over other essential safety requirements, like how to say "get me down!" in Spanish. Hence, I was a bit bewildered to see the intimidating stature of the "beginners route" we were first presented with. Vina scaled the multiple story, sheer rock cliff with stunning ease and agility, making me wonder if she had arachnid ancestry in her family tree. I was a bit slower however, and often found myself, several hundred feet in the air, cursing my lack of ability to spontaneously spew superglue from my palms.

"Suba! Suba!" ("go up! go up!") my Peruvian belayer shouted up to me, somewhat less than helpfully.
"This is the thing for which I TRYING!" I shouted back down.

Due to my unfortunate lack of what is technically termed "biceps, and/or any semblance of upper body strength" my arms felt like jello for the next several days. Still, I'm determined to start lifting heavy objects in my spare time (pencils, wine glasses etc.) with the hopes of improving my arm physique, and doing more climbing in the future. The singular, zen-like intensity of focus and concentration required when desperately searching out the next 2cm ledge that will, God willing, support the entirety of one's body weight, is a sensation not easily replicated elsewhere. Adrenaline and serenity are unlikely bedfellows, and yet are both found in abundance in this sport.

I celebrated not falling to my death in the evening by boarding a Cuzco bound bus--a festively lengthy 22 hour journey. Despite my reluctance to miss the evening's cinematic line up: Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle and The Return of Jafar, I indulged in some much needed over-the-counter sleeping pills, which made the journey considerably less arduous. Macchu Picchu, here I come....

Mad Cow/ Hasta Luego, Ecuador

2008-06-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Mad Cow has never been so fun. Not the brain atrophying disease caused by consuming contaminated cannibal bovine flesh—no, I’m sure that’s still fairly unpleasant. But mad cow, (or, “vaca loca” as its known in Cuenca) Ecuadorian style, which boasts the winning combination of life-size livestock replicas, explosives, and the town drunkard, is entertainment at its best. I first heard tell of this enigmatic “vaca loca” tradition—a staple to the end of Corpus Cristi festivities—from one of my English students, Diego, who highly recommended I go see it for myself.

“It is so funny, teacher!” he told me enthusiastically. “With the cow on the person, and the…how do you say, with the fire going out very pretty?”
“Fireworks?” I offered.
“Yes this! Coming from the cow, the fireworks, and the man SO drunk, and the chasing and, and…” his smile grew as big as a watermelon slice, words failing him as he grappled to convey the grandeur of this ceremony.

I was imagining either an actual cow, lit on fire, being carried on the shoulders of one of Cuenca’s most notorious park-dwelling boozers, or else some kind of ‘Chinese Dragon meets old Bessy’ kind of arrangement, either of which seemed equally plausible, so my curiosity was perked.

The truth lay somewhere in the middle of these two imagined scenarios. The “vaca loca” in fact was a life-sized, wooden cow, rigged up with a multitude of fireworks. This explosive bovine was mounted, like an incredibly awkward sandwich board, on the shoulders of a severely intoxicated old man. Despite the urban setting of the festivities, the old man wore knee high mud boots, and a hat rigged with fishing lures. His unshaven stubble was covered with another layer of mysterious, crustified goo, which may well have been vomit. A team of men assisted him in lifting the large cow on to his shoulders, causing him to wobble considerably as he steadied himself under the considerable additional weight. The cow was then lit, and showers of fireworks began to spew with abandoned from the horns, mouth, and flanks of the creature. The band struck up a festive cymbal crashing number, and the old man set to work, running playfully and shakily in figure eight formations through the crowd. Innocent bystanders squealed with delight as they ran to escape the streams of flames behind them. I shared Diego’s awe-struck appreciation of this tradition, and marveled at the breadth of creative license for celebrations one is given in a country where the threat of a lawsuit doesn’t hang ominously in the air.

There was additional entertainment in the park that evening as well. One hippy fellow was twirling fire poi (kerosene soaked lighters fastened to the end of chains which people spin rapidly around themselves). This New Zealand originated art form was extremely popular in Thailand last year, and thus it gave me warm (literally) fuzzy feelings of nostalgia to watch this young man repeatedly nearly set his nest of dreadlocks ablaze. His partner in circus-like crime was working the assembled crowd with a large puppet, harassing people and then requesting pay for the privilege. The puppet had small, squarish glasses, and a tight black mane of curls. It was waving its hands about wildly as if delivering an incendiary oratory and reminded me of a Jim Henson representation of Malcom X.

The puppet tried to get fresh with both me, and my roommate, but was rejected on both accounts. When one playfully puckered gringo man leaned forward to return its kissing attempts, the puppet recoiled in disgust. It wiped its mouth off with its floppy hands, shaking its head back and forth and raising a menacing fist in the direction of its male admirer. Even puppets are stricken with the insidious plague of machismo and homophobia here, I guess.

***

Classes ended this past week for me, and luckily all my students passed. True fluency, perhaps, still eludes some of my very beginners, however. One of my 101 students, for example, in response to the prompt: “I am a vegetarian, so I don’t eat _________” answered “wife.” I’m glad to hear he has such a healthy, non-cannibalistic marital relationship.

The very last day of class usually entails handing back final exams, giving out grades, and then going out to celebrate. In one of my morning classes, I had only two students, however, and just one of them, (the aforementioned) Diego, came to get his results. He is always eager to practice speaking because his wife is American, and he will most likely be moving to the United States within the year. So he was still up for a coffee in the park, and some lively English banter.

The majority of our conversation consisted of Diego regaling me with stories of his year spent living on a fundamentalist religious compound, on a farm in the outskirts of Los Angeles. The group sounded vaguely Amish in its simplistic focus on spirituality, and communal farming, but, unlike the Amish, Diego assured me they were permitted to use zippers. The group apparently attracted a wide cross section of followers including, an Ecuadorian backpacker (Diego), a Japanese movie executive, and a Canadian drug runner. The latter had spent a lucrative decade shuffling cocaine across the US-Mexico border in a converted school bus which he packed full of goats. I thought that this was a questionable strategy from someone who presumably would not want to draw attention to himself, but Diego assured me it was a clever business move.

“You see, with all the goats, they make a lot of… how you say? Crap? And then the police, they don’t wants to be looking close in the bus because of how the smell, and the dogs, they is going crazy with all the goats. He very smart man! Very smart! He makes with a lot of the money! Very nice life with the goats. But then, he gives his life to the God.” I wonder what he did with all the goats?

Diego is in the midst of applying for a US visa to reunite with his wife, who is currently in Wisconsin working on his papers. Navigating the endless maze of bureaucracy necessary to obtain a US visa for Ecuadorians is a horrific process that can take up to seven years. Given this considerable hurdle, the temptation to travel to the US illegally to work is high.

My friend Kathleen and her husband are working with a Cuenca non-profit organization that supports families separated by immigration. This is a high demand population given that 80 percent of high school students in the nearby city of Cañar have one, or both parents living abroad. On a recent visit to Cañar, Kathleen met a young woman who was, at the most, 20 years old. Her two year old son toddled at her feet as she asked Kathleen curiously why, as an American, she’d chosen to come south to Ecuador when the general flow of migration is in the opposite direction. Kathleen told the young woman about her and her Cuban husband’s decision to move to a neutral country, and the job opportunities they’d found in Cuenca that made it an appealing choice. The young woman still seemed puzzled as she heaved a heavy, wistful sigh.

“I tried to go the United States once,” she offered.
“Tried?” Kathleen asked. The woman explained how she’d paid a coyote $12,000—leveraging all her family’s meager assets and going into considerable debt for the opportunity to reach America. She was caught at the border, however, and deported back to Ecuador. Now, she still owes $10,000, and will once again have to try her chances with another coyote to get to the States. There is no way she could ever repay the money working for Ecuadorian wages, so a job in America is her only chance to clear her debts. Her son will be left with her parents, because coyotes are generally unwilling to risk the liability of such a young child on the arduous and dangerous journey north. After factoring in living expenses and money sent home, on average, Ecuadorians have to work seven years in the States to pay off the cost of their travel there. Because this woman will once again have to pay a smuggler the $12,000 fee, her son will be 16 by the time she can return.

There have been times I’ll admit, (especially in the past half decade) when looking at my navy blue American passport, with its intimidating gold adorned eagle cover, has not filled my heart with surging patriotic pride. But when I hear such stories of palpable desperation for the benefits this small document inherently affords me, I feel an appreciative humility for the arbitrary privilege I’m granted by the simple virtue of my place of birth.

***

Today is my last day in Ecuador. I came to west to Guayaquil (Ecuador’ largest city) last night, and tonight am leaving for Peru. Guayaquil has a very negative reputation in the eyes of most Cuencanas who view their beach dwelling compatriots as lazy, and unsophisticated. A Cuencana friend, upon hearing my plans, asked me why I was going to the town of “los monos” (the monkeys). The optimist in me wanted to think this primate nickname derived from the Guayaquil citizens’ reputation as lively and energetic people, but realistically I’ve been told it’s a not-so-subtle racial slur in reference to the more ethnically diverse population.

The downtown at least, does leave a bit to be desired in the aesthetics department. Large gray, architecturally uninspiring buildings plastered with advertisements and billboards loom over the weary drunkards and toothless tricksters on the streets below. And when I arrived from the bus station last night, I was more welcoming than questioning of the armed guard outside the front of my humble hostel.

Today however, I experienced a bit of Guayaquil’s sunnier side. In the morning, I wandered along the beautiful “Malecon” ocean front walkway, and this afternoon I visited the Parque Bolivar. The latter is often referred to as “the iguana park,” due to the abundance of three foot long lizards which wander lazily throughout the grounds with the mundane prolific presence of pigeons. Bored children play with the iguanas’ tails as they munch greenery, and old men nonchalantly shake their feet and continue reading the sports section when errant reptiles crawl onto their shoes. At one point, as I passed by the park’s central pond, I noticed a group of locals pointing excitedly up at the tree branches. These eager onlookers were ignoring the trio of brilliantly colored green and yellow iguanas resting casually by their feet, but were hurriedly reaching for their camera phones to snap pictures of the oh-so exotic squirrel above them. One of many illustrative examples of the culturally determined distinction between ‘the foreign’ and ‘the familiar,’ I suppose.

Return to Cuenca...

2008-05-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

Back in Ecuador, and I’m happy to report, the Cuenca women’s prison is in high spirits! My apartment is conveniently located just two blocks away from a female incarceration facility, so when they had a mysterious mariachi band party on the premises last week, I was treated to a free concert. My roommate, roused from her sleep by the sounds of errant brass players, shuffled wearily from her room around 11:30 to ask me: “is that a trumpet in the street?” I looked up from my book and shrugged my shoulders, but a quick glance from our balcony confirmed there was indeed a party going on. I like to think that Johnny Cash rose from the dead for a reprise of his famous Folsum Prison concert, Ecua-style this time, but due to barbed wire concerns, I could neither confirm, nor deny these suspicions.

Late night prison concerts are just one of the many joys of Cuenca life that have greeted me upon my pleasantly ransomless return from Colombia. My first weekend back, I had a visitor come stay for a couple days—a friend-in-law traveler I’d met in Quito who, due to a series of unfortunate mugging incidents in one 24 hour period, had a somewhat unfavorable impression of Ecuador in general. I lobbied that Ecuador had an abundance of lovely attractions, many of which did not involve having your kidneys forcibly removed in darkened alleyways. A couple day stop-over in Cuenca in route to Peru luckily confirmed my theory, and I played eager hostess showing off the best this fair hamlet has to offer (ie- two story high statues of God-like revered race walking sports heroes; the edifying Skeleton Museum, my friend’s Che Gavera mural adorned attic-like apartment etc). I think he left a convert.

I’m living with two new roommates now (though in the same dwelling), Ruth and Scotty (both female), both of whom enjoy entertaining. We had a wonderful dinner party last week with a scrumptious, though perhaps incongruous, menu of lasagna, beans and rice, chocolate chip cookies, “torta de tres leches” (3 milk cake—so much better than it sounds!!!), and plenty of the Cuenca favorite, “Clos” brand box wine. Entertainment for the evening was provided by our two friends Liz and Brian, both amazing guitarists and singers. Liz is a New Mexico native and has an encyclopedic knowledge of heart-breakingly beautiful, mournful Mexican immigrant songs. The melodies were so gorgeous, one could almost forget the wrist-slitting implications of the Spanish lyrics (ie-“My life has no meaning/everything is dark and sad/ how I long for my Pueblo, Oaxaca.”) The duo played several traditional Ecuadorian folk songs with the help of our Cuencana guests as well.

Still, the biggest musical crowd pleaser, cross-culturally, was their smash rendition of the Beatles’ hit “Yellow Submarine.” Kathleen’s husband, Francisco, a Cuba native, chimed in enthusiastically at the chorus of this one because apparently it’s played often on Cuban National Television as a “teach yourself English” tune. The practice with colors, and repetition, I suppose, would make it a fairly decent language-learning tool. Liz closed with a request from a song I’d found listed in her “Rise Up Singing!” lyrics book. “A Hobo’s Lullaby” was an apt bookend for the evening’s festivities. (Lyrics follow):

“A Hobo’s Lullaby”
Go to sleep you weary hobo
Let the towns drift slowly by
Can’t you hear those steel rails hummin’?
That’s the hobo’s lullaby.

Don’t you worry ‘bout tomorrow
Let tomorrow come and go
Tonight you’re in a nice warm boxcar
Safe from all that wind and snow

I know your clothes are torn and tattered
And your hair is turning gray
Rest you head in weary slumber (lift your head and smile at trouble)
You’ll find peace and rest someday

I know the police give you trouble
They cause trouble everywhere
When you die you’ll go to heaven
They’ll be no policemen there.

“Rock-a-by Baby,” with all it’s morbid child-crushing imagery, has nothing on that bedtime ballad, if you ask me.

This weekend has been busy with the manic celebratory festivities for Corpus Christi. I was unclear, since it’s not anywhere nearly as big an ordeal in the United States, what the exact origins of the holiday were. I tried to ask my Spanish tutor during one of our lessons this past week, and still, the explanation was a bit fuzzy.

“Well, it’s a holiday where we eat a lot of sweets, and light fireworks!” Júlia told me enthusiastically. “It’s a lot of fun!”

“Yes, yes, I sees these sweets for the sale in the road,” I agreed, referencing the overflowing abundance of colorful sugary goods being sold around town in the recent days—the abundance and selection of which would turn even Willy Wonka green with envy. “But what is we partying for exactly? I means with the history?”

“Um…” she said, hesitantly, “well, it has to do with the ascension of Christ to heaven?”

“But I thinks that be with the Easter?” I said puzzled, shaky with my Biblical knowledge.

“Easter’s when he rose from the dead,” she clarified. “But I think this is to mark his entrance to heaven.”

“But Easter in the March time?” I said, still confused. “Jesus waits for the couple months before he say goodbye to the people and go up, then?”

Júlia recommended we move on to our lesson on the past subjunctive tense, and I reluctantly agreed. A subsequent Wikipedia search said that Corpus Christi was a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and a commemoration of the Last Supper. Given that my devout Catholic Spanish instructor had a bit of a dubious understanding of its origins, for all practical purposes, her original explanation of the holiday was probably accurate enough.

I celebrated Corpus Christi on Friday in a somewhat non-traditional manner—by going to the military hospital for a Yellow Fever vaccination. Along with my $100 “I’m an American and I’m paying for it, literally” special entrance fee, proof of Yellow Fever vaccination is a necessity to visit Bolivia. Thus, I thought I’d take care of it here, to avoid a dubious recycled syringe delivered mandatory vaccination when I got to the border. Vaccines are ridiculously cheap here as well—just $10 instead of the triple digit cost an injection in the States would be, so I plan to devote some time to obscure medical text books in the coming weeks, scouring them for more rare tropical diseases I could protect myself against, just for the bargain.

I crowded into a small room with a handful of locals when I got there, and as we awaited our shot, the doctor delivered his rapid “explanatory” talk.

“You and you!” he barked, pointing to me and the 4’8” traditionally clad indigenous woman seated beside me.

“Any chance you’re pregnant?” We shook our heads no. “Good! Ok, the most important thing is that you Can’t. Drink. For Eight Days. After. This. Shot. Understand?” he said, enunciating each word slowly for emphasis. Groans of displeasure, and dismissive laughter erupted from the assembled crowd.

“No! I’m serious!” the doctor continued. “That means NO. GETTING. DRUNK!” The woman seated beside me raised her hand for clarification.

“Does beer count?” she asked. It apparently did. I looked on the CDC website for more information about the real side effects of the shot, and strangely, it mentioned nothing about alcohol. It did, however, warn people with egg allergies never to get the vaccine since it’s prepared in an egg-based culture. The doctor forgot to mention this, but luckily my immune system has no objections to baby chicken encasings.

Last night, for some more traditional Corpus Cristi festivities, Scotty and I went down to Parque Calderón, the plaza in front of the central cathedral. Hordes of eager onlookers milled about, gorging themselves on sweets, and admiring the fireworks. “Dodging” might actually be the more accurate verb, since at least on one occasion, an errantly lit explosive shot sideways into the crowd, sending skittish nuns scurrying for cover. Luckily it was one of the delayed reaction models, so people had time to run away before it went off.

A team of diligent workers was also in the process of setting off a steady stream of brilliantly colored “globos”—tissue paper mini hot-air balloons. They peppered the night sky like swollen stars moseying slowly heaven-ward on an orbit of their own choosing.

The majesty of both the fireworks and globos was eclipsed however, by the climactic “castillos” pyrotechnics demonstration. The castillos (castles) were mobile three story scaffolding-like tower shrines rigged with ten minutes worth of spinning, spouting, and rocketing fireworks. Pinwheels, Ecuadorian flags, and enormous decorative head pieces proclaiming “Glory to the Saints!” all contributed to the razzle-dazzle of the incendiary structures. We clapped appreciatively and dodged spouting firework remnants along with the rest of the crowd as it erupted volcanically before us. For post-castillo entertainment, we huddled around a crowded, hip-hop music blaring gazebo and admired the break-dancing prowess of some truly talented head spinners. It was, all in all, quite an eclectic evening of entertainment.

Such nights give me melancholy tinged feelings of wistfulness when I think of my impending departure from Cuenca. I have just two more weeks of teaching here before I’ll be migrating south to resume the nomadic lifestyle--the melodies of “A Hobo’s Lullaby” playing in my ears at night. I recently finalized the return date of round trip ticket to the States however, August 4th (gadzooks! Plans!), so whoever is haunting the lands of the Northwest come end of summer, brace yourselves now for a scruffy visitor in the future.

¡Ah, café!

2008-05-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

Good news for childhood fans of Mr.Rogers! It turns out he's not dead--just reincarnated in the form of a 70 year old Colombian coffee farmer! This, at least, was my initial impression upon meeting Don Elenso, the endearing elderly patriarch of an organic "fince de café"" (coffee farm) in the rolling green mountains of Solento. With his cozy grandfatherly aura, and kind twinkling eyes, he seemed poised to swap his mud boots for sneakers, his work shirt for a cardigan, and break out into a Spanish cover of "Won't you be my Vecino?" (neighbor) before we headed off for a tour of his grounds. I had to settle instead for the preparatory ritual of donning our coffee picking baskets. These we tied with a belt around our waists, like large woven loin cloths, in order to leave our hands free for picking. Don Elenso's grandson, Andrés, joined us on the harvesting adventure. At just five years old, he was already a much more efficient worker than I was, and plucked the ripe blood red Arábica beans, and the sunshine yellow Colombiana variety, with expert skill.

We wound our way through the Jumanji-like grounds of the hillside farm--beneath the shade of looming banana and orange trees, and amidst the stray pineapple and sugar cane plants that spontaneously cohabited the fertile ground. After filling our baskets, we went back to the house to continue preparing the beans. Don Elenso fed them through an archaic looking hand operated machine that removed the beans' colorful casings and deposited the remainders, which looked like slimy chickpeas, into a smallish bathtub below. At this stage, the beans were taken to a nearby green house tepee where they would sit for one to four weeks (depending on the weather) drying beneath a protective plastic roofing above. Once dry, the beans would be sold to a local cooperative of organic coffee farmers, who in turn sell the beans abroad.

Luckily, Don Elenso keeps a small portion of his harvest for personal use. Plucking a handful of freshly roasted jet black beans from a nearby wood fire, he fed them through another hand-cranked grinder that, I suspect, had seen its hay day back when flapper dresses were all the rage. An elderly woman came and collected the freshly ground powder which I was rudely in the process of attempting to inhale. Don Elenso an I sat on a wooden bench while she brewed, and watched Andrés feed an eagerly awaiting flock of chickens.

"Gracias, mi amor," Don Elenso said fondly when his wife shuffled out to us with our cups of steaming hot coffee perched atop delicate saucers. I savored what was, undoubtedly, the best caffeinated beverage of my life, and cursed my lack of sophisticated Spanish vocabulary--the only barrier preventing me from proposing he adopt me as an extra grandchild/ chicken tender.

My meeting with Don Elenso would have been reason enough to visit Solento, but the next day provided the opportunity for a very different kind of uniquely Colombian experience. In the company of seven other youngsters who were also temporarily calling "The Plantation House" hostel home, I took a backside punishing jumpy jeep journey to a nearby town for a day hike through a misty cloud forest of three story high wax palm trees. It had rained the day before, and thus the trek was comically muddy, but none the less enjoyable.

"We take care of our bridges!" A Spanish warning sign boasted enthusiastically in front of a "bridge" that looked like it had been pieced together from dilapidated toothpicks. "Cross one at a time for the bridge's safety, and yours!" We made it to the top of an imposing ridge that would have provided stunning views if it hadn't have been for the pea soup thick fog encasing us. The fog lifted gradually as we descended, however, in time for us to snap some winning pictures with the scenery, and the surprise impromptu base of Colombian soldiers we came across camped along the palm-dotted ridge line.

From Solento, I continued south for a brief one night stop over in the white-washed town of Popayán. The main attraction of Popayán is its uniformly albino colored architecture which apparently makes for brilliantly resplendent grounds to explore on sunny days. It was, unfortunately, cloudy and raining when I got into town, and thus sheltered entertainment was more in order. Indoor fun and taxidermy displays have always been synonymous in my book, and luckily the Popayán Museum of Natural History had a handsome collection ready and waiting for my viewing pleasure. Perhaps because I'm considering being stuffed myself when my time comes, I've always been fascinated by taxidermy displays--especially ones that depict creatures in ferocious predatory poses. Thus, the kitten-sized toad with a mouse clutched firmly in its jaws; the 30 foot boa squeezing the life out of a wild bore; and the condor with the hapless screaming monkey, its hands held up in protest like Janet Leigh in the famous Psycho shower scene, were all favorites of mine.

I also liked the oddly positioned black bear, with both its arms extended zombie style, as if dancing the robot, or awaiting a handshake. I obliged the latter, pretending I was a campaigning politician, and the bear was a crusty factory worker who I didn't really want to touch, but who I needed to woo in order to snag the coveted "blue collar" vote. "Well it's been swell touring your ball bearing factory, Norm," I told him, sandwiching his paw in a two palmed handshake to convey my sincerity. "I hope you'll do your best to convince Local 38 to get on board," I continued, suddenly grave, "I'm counting on your vote come November." Norm bore his teeth determinedly in reply which I took as a sign of support.

A quick Pit Stop

2008-04-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Beauty is, apparently, in the eyes of the beholder. So perhaps if I was Helen Keller, I would have found downtown Medellín more charming.

After another festive night bus journey from Cartagena, in which delays due to fires were once again involved, I arrived to my hostel, appropriately named "The Pit Stop" since I quickly decided to stay only one night. The place came highly recommended by a fellow traveler whose judgment was thus immediately called in to question.

The majority of the rooms had cheesy titles, taken from the movie "Scarface." The Tony Montana room, obviously the most ornate, featured a bathroom styled after 80s drug lord tastes with an over abundance of mirrors, a Jacuzzi, his and her sinks, and a steam room. The only bed left when I arrived, however, was in the "Da' Funk" dorm. Still, I suppose it was better than being stuck in the "Pussy Pink" room. I didn't even want to see that one.

Additional "amenities" at the hostel included a pool, and enormous entertainment room equipped with satellite TV and over 200 DVDs, and a staff of scantily clad miniskirt wearers. I was suspicious I'd inadvertently signed up to spend the night in a frat house, and was thus relieved, while waiting in the entertainment room to use the internet, to find at least one fellow resident possessed with conversational skills more advanced than grunting.

"So where are you from?" I asked, unsure of the origins of his accent.
"LA!" he responded enthusiastically. "Hey! Did you know there, that it's really trendy these days to have a girlfriend who's bi-sexual?" So much for comradeship.

The one advantage of the Pit Stop was that it was located in an upscale, peaceful residential area, far south of the hustle bustle of the city center. Normally, I prefer to stay in hostels closer to the down town, and thus in striking distance of restaurants and the city's cultural attractions. That all depends on the city, however.

I took the metro to downtown Medellin in the afternoon to visit the acclaimed Museo de Antioquia--full of works by the famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero. Botero's iconic paintings and statues all feature enormously rotund figures who seem to be afflicted by particularly unwieldy thyroid conditions. His art is playful, and full of subtle detail, so it was a treat to see a whole museum dedicated to his work.

Afterwards, I though I´d make the most of the considerable journey into town, and explore the surrounding area. There was supposedly a large brick cathedral of architectural note nearby, so I set off in that general direction. Within just a few blocks, however, I was struck by a powerful disquieting urge to quote The Wizard of Oz. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Totto," I whispered to my invisible canine companion as I suddenly realized everyone on the busy street surround me was either: a prostitute, wearing a neck brace, rooting through the trash, or picking with a child-like curiosity at their open wounds.

I was momentarily tempted to stop to take a picture of the ironically positioned leggy transvestites who'd propped themselves against the doorway outside the entrance to the "Centro de Ayuda Spirituál" (Center for Spiritual Help), but I thought the better of it, and instead did an abrupt about face and headed back towards the metro. I've never seen such unabashed aggressive self-marketing by prostitutes, especially at 2:00pm. Each corner had a small gaggle of impatient working "women" looking eagerly around for their next customer.

They were all doing their best to uphold Medellín's reputation as the second "Silicon Valley" as well (and no, the nickname has nothing to do with the high tech industry). Several people have told me that in Medellín, it's not uncommon for girls to receive "enhancement" surgeries from their parents to celebrate their seminal 15th Quinciñera birthdays. The idealist in me wants to think such reports are, pardon the adjective, inflated, and that parents aren't actively contributing to a "pimp my daughter" phenomenon. (God, I hope that never becomes an actual MTV reality show).

I was on the first bus south the next morning, destination Solento, in the heart of the country's green, mountainous "Zona de Café" (Coffee Zone). A better personality match, me thinks.

Getting Dirty

2008-04-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Under normal circumstances, if someone invited me to bath in a volcano, I´d take it personally. In this case however, the volcano in question was filled with mud, not lava, so I tried not to take offense.

"El Volcán de Lodo" (The Mud Volcano) is a peculiar geological phenomenon located 50 km north of Cartagena, situated picturesquely along the banks of the Ciénaga (Lagoon) del Totumo. The volcano, at first glance, is somewhat underwhelming. It´s only 45 feet tall, and when as we approached it, we joked that it appeared to be a fourth grade science project on a slightly grander scale. I braced myself for the impending baking soda and vinegar eruption.

There were five of us on the trip from our shared hostel in Cartagena--Anit, an Israeli; Thomas, a German journalist; Alexia, a Parisian photographer; and Jen, a Canadian archaeologist. We all stripped down to our swim suits when we arrived and descended the ladder into the gray, pudding like consistency of the mud bath below. It was truly a unique and, at first, slightly disconcerting sensation. The mud was viscous, but so thick that I couldn't really sink despite the considerable depth of the crater. Nor could I move myself around self-propelled. Instead, I had to rely on helpful Good Samaritans willing to grab my foot or ear and yank me in my desired direction.

There were three Colombian guys already in the silty paste when we arrived--coated thoroughly in a gray film of mud which had partially hardened under the strong Colombian sun like river bank dwelling hippos. Only their eyes peeked out from this otherwise monotone exterior coating. Their job was to give massages, blindly rubbing visitors extremities below the surface with the mineral rich, supposedly therapeutic glop. Along with careers as deodorant sniffers or human cannonballs, this has to be one of the world's strangest professions. "All right honey, I'm off to wallow in mud and rub random foreigners' bodies for the day... Again! I'll be home in time for dinner!"

Eager to commence their work, the mud-caked masseuses reached out for us each like lurching, hungry swamp things as we descended into the crater. The massage was actually incredibly relaxing though. Especially after the mud filled my ears, temporarily deafening me to the piggish squeals of the overly hyper, mud flicking Brits who were finishing their bath as we arrived.

After they left, the mood was much more mellow, and our group could more thoroughly enjoy the child-like glee that inevitably comes from being entirely coated in goo. We played tic tac toe on the surface of the mud, and then more creative games of our own invention, such as "guess whose limb?" in which we submerged ourselves up to our necks, and took terns slowly lifting anonymous extremities.

We emerged looking like dripping gray aliens, and walked down to the nearby lagoon where women from the village awaited, coconut shell bowls in hand, to help us clans ourselves back to humanity.

"That was soooo refreshing!" gushed Jen on the ride back to Cartagena. "I could have stayed in there all day!"

"No kidding!" Seconded Anit. "It was really the bomb to the eyebrow!"

"The what?" I asked.

"The bomb to the eyebrow," he repeated. "Well, it sounds better in Hebrew, but it basically means, like, really good!"

Colloquial phrases can be quite revaluing about cultures and life experiences. I, for one, would not immediately think to equate a bomb coming in contact with any region of my face with a stellar experience. To an ex-soldier, however, just out of three years of mandatory military service, during which time surprise attacks were a daily possibility, I suppose a bomb to the eyebrow beats a bomb to the eyeball any day.

A Tale of Two Cities

2008-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

They say that Cartagena is a fairytale city, and they're half right. The Old Town is indeed a magical, near surreal specimen of architectural grandeur. Impossibly quaint, Skittle colored buildings line the tidy narrow streets--each with white iron balconies which groan beneath the weight of overflowing fuchsia flowers. At night, the church-bordered plazas fill with café tables, and the cosmopolitan elite crowd around them enjoying freshly caught fish, and the lazy breeze which drifts off the nearby Caribbean Sea. Twinkling lines of Christmas lights adorn nearby palms, and trios of elderly guitar and accordion playing men take turns providing the live soundtrack.

This was picturesque scene I enjoyed as I spent my last evening in the city--my last evening too in the company of my traveling companion Jessica, who had to return to the States. The fairytale image of Cartagena was thus my last impression of the city, but it was not my first.

When I first arrived to Cartagena by plane, I had to go immediately to the bus station so that I could leave for Santa Marta to start the Lost City trek the following day. The airport and bus terminal are on completely opposite sides of town, however. The half hour taxi journey connecting them provided an illustrative introduction to the parallel societies in existence in the city.

The start of the ride went through a beautiful sector of the new town, filled with brightly colored homes and shops. Stumpy palm trees and flowering bushes sprung out of the front yards, and families, dressed in flip flops and tank tops, lounged lazily around plastic tables in the shade of their front stoops, seeking shelter from the already scorching 10 AM sun.

Gradually we drove out of these quaint, colorful environs, however, and into a very different sector of town. To the left of the narrow highway we sped along was the glistening Caribbean Sea, but to the right, miles and miles of endless shanty towns. As far as the eye could see stretched neighborhoods of dilapidated shacks, pieced together from stray scraps of lumber, sheets of black plastic, and sometimes, if the owner was lucky, a bit of corrugated tin for the roof. Garbage and waste littered the dirt alleyways dividing the dwellings, and emaciated dogs rooted hopefully through the rubbish looking for discarded scraps. Fetid, stagnant pools coated in layers of disturbingly non-natural lime green scum rose up around the shacks, as if threatening to engulf them. Naked children toddled unsupervised through the wastelands, curiously examining tin cans, or colorful bits of plastic. All the inhabitants were Afro-Colombian.

"These are some of the poorest neighborhoods in Colombia," the taxi driver, Alejandro, explained. "They're full of mostly refuges of the war. The violence comes to their villages, so they run away and come here. There are people in these neighborhoods from all over the country."

"The contrast is incredible a lot," I said, looking into the distance at the looming, brilliant white, ocean-view high rise condos. They stood mockingly on the horizon above the squalor in the foreground like arrogant kings lording over their tortured subjects.

"Yeah," Alejandro agreed. "There's the tourist Cartagena, and then there's this." He shook his head wearily and sighed. "It looks like Somalia." Neither of us really knew what to say after that, so he turned the music up slightly. The mournful wail of Charlie Parker's saxophone made for an apt soundtrack.

The Lost City

2008-04-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

The trip was billed in the guide book under the "off the beaten track" section as "a week long Indiana Jones-style trek to the remains of an ancient culture hidden deep in the jungle." Hmmm... OK, sold. Thus, my friend Jessica and I last Tuesday embarked on our six day trek through the wilderness north east of Cartagena in search of the "Ciudád Pérdida" or "Lost City." So named because after the Spanish slaughter of the ruins' original inhabitants, the Tayrona peoples, the city was engulfed by the jungles' encroaching tentacles and not discovered again until the 1970s. "There were lots of Marijuana farmers in the area," our guide, Enrique, told us, "but then, in the 70s, the government started spraying campaigns to eradicate the fields, and so the people started looking for other forms of income." One of these sources happened to be pre-Colombian ruins grave robbing. Thus, the discovery of this 11th century gem in 1975--perhaps the only inadvertant positive outgrowth of the endless "war on drugs."

By chance, it happened that Jessica and I were the only members of our trek. Thus we, along with our guide Enrique, took a tail bone grueling two hour truck ride from the town of Santa Marta, to the isolated pueblo of "Machete"-- the ominously named set off point for our journey. A crowd of bored, camo-clad soldiers stood guard at the entrance to Machete to search our bags. They held their machine guns lazily, and generally appeared unenthusiastic about their assignment. One knew a bit of English, however, and decided to show off as he rooted through our underwear searching for the atomic bomb we no doubt had stashed somewhere in our hiking boots. "So! Is that your brother?" he asked to Jessica, motioning to me. I glared witheringly in response to his vocabulary error, but, eyeing his massive weapon, held my tongue. The first day's hiking was gruelingly steep, but mercifully only a few hours long.

At the apex of our assent, we paused to admire the 360 degree view of endless rolling green mountains surrounding us.

"This all used to be cocoa plants," Enrique informed us casually as we surveyed the vista. "It's only since December that they've been destroyed."

"Wow!" I remarked. "This is much much land for to be saying goodbye to the cocoa. And the government comes with the planes full of the make sick, and put on the ground from the air?"

"No no," Enrique said. "No, they did it by ground."

"And hows about the farmers?" I asked. "Whats they uses now for to make of the money?"

"Uhhh... " Enrique said, pausing as he though. "I think... nothing? The government doesn't come with the subsidies, so the people eat less. OK, enough rest! Let's go!"

We got into "camp" around four, and were eager to partake of the nearby crispy fresh river bed which also served as a shower. Our accommodations for the evening consisted of an open air roof, which stood over our waiting mosquito net adorned hammock beds. While we waited for our dinner to boil, a couple of curious locals approached us to converse. Apparently, an idealistic New Zealander had fallen in love with the area while on the trek, and had decided to move permanently into the community (thus, increasing the overall population by about 25%), and offer English lessons to students in the humble local school, and to aspiring guides.

"Will you quiz me?" A friendly 19 year old asked in Spanish, shoving his small notebook towards me. The book was full of simple begining exercises distinguishing the singular from the plural (ie- "I want a woman" vs. "I want some women") and conjugating basic verbs (ie- "We have no money" vs. "He has guns"). The older man had a thin, paperback "teach yourself English" book which was full of useful phrases. Each phrase was written in Spanish, English, and then followed by helpful pronunciation guides. The guides, though phonetically correct based on Spanish pronunciations, appeared at first glance to be a rare German dialect. For example:

Help = "¡jelp!"
-I'm being chased! = "¡Áim bin chéist!"
-Get the hell out of here! = "¡Guet de jel áut ov jier!"
-My denture is broken = "Mái déncher is bróuken"
-I´m caughing a lot = "Aim cófin e lot"
-I have cut myself = "Ái jav cat maisélf"
-Bunch of crooks! = "¡Bonch of crucks!"
-I've got to protect myself= "Áiv got tu potéct maisélf"

We had another hilly day of hiking the following day--passing periodic camps of soldiers stationed along the trail as we walked. Their headquarters consisted of basic camo-decored tarps draped over saplings. Not surprisingly, they seemed deprived of stimulation, and thus greeted us with frenzied, caged-primate-like salutations of enthusiasm as we passed. Though our group was small, there was little opportunity for true silent appreciation of the jungle around us due to a combination of Enrique's incesant whistling disorder, and my constant nose blowing--the result of a recently and ironically (given the stiffling hot climate) incurred cold.
The 19 year old pupil from the night before had helpfully diagnosed me after one of my particularly aggressive bouts of sneezing.

"Dengue!" he'd told me, knowingly. "Yup! You have Dengue fever!"
"Don't be saying this," I'd chided him, seriously.
"No, it's Dengue!" he'd insisted. "There's a lot of it in the area. First there's the cold, then the fever, then the sweats, then...." he waved his hand dismissively and ran a finger across his throat. "Poof," he finished ominously. I crossed my fingers that he hadn't been Harvard Medical School trained, and thus his diagnostic powers might be lacking.

As we hiked along the second day, we passed several indigenous Kogui communities, whose humble, archaic looking villages suggested a marked dissociation from the reaching tentacles of modernity. Their homes were small, circular thatched huts, fortified along the walls with dried mud. The men wore plain, calf length long sleeve tunics that, though once white, had long since been stained the hue of cream-heavy coffee. Beneath their tunics were long similarly colored pants. The women wore long, white toga-style wraps, and the children whatever random scraps of clothing were left over, if anything. Passing one of these villages, we came across two knee-high girls carrying back a ten foot long tree branch to their waiting, machete-wielding parent. The two children looked like twins--no older than three. They smiled shyly at us, and Enrique engaged in a series of affectionate maocking bird calls with them that served as a kind of coded jungle salutation.

As we continued on our walk, Jessica and I marveled at the spectacle of toddlers engatged in hard manual labor, and the strk contrast such an ubringing presented to a coddled American childhood. A friend of mine worked as a counselor at a "Safety Town" day camp in highschool, and most parents wouldn't even enroll their offspring at age three for fear they were far too fragile and inmature. There must be a middle ground...We finally arrived to the famed "Ciudád Pérdida" on our third day, after a hilly trek and eight river crossings. An easy to miss bank of stairs led steeply up to the hidden ruins from the river, and without Enrique there to spot it, I probably would have missed the entrance. We climbed the moss covered stairs for half and hour before reaching the first level of terraced ruins--circular stone mounds that once were the foundations of homes.

We continued to wind our way through the many levels of jungle ensconced neighborhoods before finally reaching the upper most level. Here, the jungle opened up, and two grass covered Olympic swimming pool sized circular terraces stood treeless, affording magnificent views of the surrounding jungle, which stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. The ruins are patrolled by several platoons of soldiers, who ostensibly are there to protect the site from further grave robbers, and/or secure tourists' safety. There haven't been any conflicts in the area in the past two decades or so though. Thus, the soldiers have little to do but sit around, polish their guns, and play checkers. The scene, with its abundance of aimless troops with little concrete sense of their mission, surrounded by jungle, was eerily reminiscent of images from Vietnam. Minus the Spanish, of course.

Due to their bordem, the troops often filter in to the tourist area at night, seeking entertainment. It's amazing what an olive branch a deck of cards can be. Jessica and I started rousing games of "Cuarenta" ("40"), a popular South American card game, and thus made fast friends. Antonio, a 26-year old commander who looked about 19, was my partner, and was fast to catch on. He flashed his winning braces-adorned smile (with green brackets to match his camouflage's fatigues) when ever he scored us points. His machine gun stood propped against our picnic table, and Jessica, forgetting the word for it in Spanish, asked him:

"Can you move your... uh, how do you call that again in Spanish?"
"Oh, 'my toy'?" Antonio asked, gesturing towards his weapon.
"No! It's not a toy!" I insisted, "she means, what's it's name?"
"Oh, I see!" He said, the mystery clear now. "I call it 'my girlfriend'!"

We decided to change the topic.

As the night wore on, we grew more and more comfortable with our card playing friends, and started using the informal "tú" form.

"Gimmie that!" Jessica demanded to Antonio, when he misdealt the cards, and she had to recollect them, ripping them from his hands.

"Geez," he said, sighing. "You handle me like a doll."

When Wilston, the perpetually cheating soldier seated beside me looked at my hand one too many times, I punched him, chidingly on the shoulder.
"Stops that, yous!" I demanded.
"Ouch! Don't hit me!" he wined. Baby.

Indeed, most of the friends we made there did not fit the stereotypical macho image of a Colombian soldier, and seemed actually quite delicate. When the topic of favorite sports arose, Antonio's eyes lit up when Jessica mentioned yoga. "Me too!" he said enthusiastically, and demonstrated his flexibility by touching his nose to his knee. When I said soccer, he stared at me blankly. "I never played that," he said, unenthused. "All that kicking... I don't get it!" Go figure.

Later, as I was trying to concentrate on my Cuarenta strategy, Jayan, the soldier seated to my right, kept handing me the headphones to his minature MP3 player to play me a selection of his favorite songs. I nodded unenthusiastically and gave feigned thumbs up signs to most of his Latino music selection, but one song made me do a double take.

"What?" I said turning towards him suddenly. "Is this Enya?!?"
"Yes!" he said, pleased I'd recognized it. "She is one of my favorites! Very peaceful, no?"
She must have the biggest cross-over appeal of any working musician if she is counted a favorite amongst the ranks of granola-crunching New age Zen masters, Tolken worshiping Lord of the Rings fanatics, and M-16 toating Colombian early 20s males.

We had a full day to hang out and explore the ruins the following day. The other tour group that had been there the night before left in the morning, so we basically had the whole place to ourselves. Enrique walked us around through the maze of jungle covered stone pathways, explaining a bit more about the history of the site. Of greater interest to me, however, were his casual tales of his previous carreer before becoming a naturalist guide, as a workerbee in an illegal cocaine processing warehouse. What a natural carreer progression.

"It was a really good job!" he said enthusiastically in Spanish. "Of course, we had to work by night, but we were all good friends there. There were twenty of us that worked inside the factory, and fifteen that worked outside as guards. And, it was a little dangerous, I suppose." I asked for elaboration. "Well, for example, two days before I started my job there, a group of FARC guerillas raided it by night and shot seven people. Young people too--like 17 or 18. My friend was working there at the time. He had to run into the jungle and hide to avoid being shot. After that, he was a little traumatized." Understandably. I naively asked him why, given that this tragedy happened just before he started work there, he took the job. He looked at me with condesending pity and enunciated slowly, as if talking to a mentally impared recent stroke victim: "Di-ner-o." Each worker was paid 2,000 pesos per kilo of coke they processed each night, and on efficient nights, they could process over 100 kilos. That translates to 200,000 pesos, (about $117 dollars) for one night's work. Not bad, especially by Colombian wage standards.

He said he quit not because of the risk, but because the boss of the warehouse was killed in a car crash in Venezuela and after that, the whole opperation fell apart.
"Did you not know who was above your boss then?" I asked.
"Bah," he said dismissively, with a wave of his hand. "Some guy in Medallín. Who knows."

As we continued walking along the path, we saw a small cocoa plant growing wild in the shade of a nearby banana tree. It had delicate little green leaves, and seemed such an innocuous specimen of vegetation to be the cause of so much ruckus.

We completed the trek out back to Machete in two days--there was more down hill on the return, so the going was a bit easier. We finally got back into Machette on the sixth day--exhausted, parched, and ready for the (by contrast) insane luxury of the hostel that awaited us back in Taganga. It was thus an unwelcome suprise at first to learn that the tour company had deemed our group too small to warrent the cost of a jeep coming to pick us up, and so instead, we would be making the long, bumpy ride back to civilization on the back of motorbikes. Resigned, Jessica and I donned more sunscreen and our shades, securely fastened our boots to our backpacks, and hopped on our awaiting charriots. Once I found a grip that alleviated my fear of being bucked off the back, I actually found the ride quite pleasant, and the stunning greenery of the surrounding hillsides--dotted intermitantly by large, pink flowering disiduous trees--a treat indeed.

Back in Taganga, we showered, enjoying a scrumpteous dinner, and moseyed back to our hostel where we found a small group of people in the common lounge area watching The Godfather, one of my all time favorite movies. Sometimes, life is perfect. Of course the town suffered another of its frequent evening blackouts before we could finish the film, but it was about 8:30 by that point anyhow, so it was high time for bed. Ah, Colombia.

Bienvenidos a Bogotá

2008-04-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

Upon entering the Bogota airport, at least one stereotype of Colombia was immediately confirmed: there was an exponential increase in the prevalence of aviator glasses amongst the male populace. Others, however, proved to by myths. For example, there were far less cavity searches than I was expecting as we snaked our way through the customs line—not even for the pair of whispering, conspiratorial nuns, who, despite their drab gray habits, looked pretty suspicious to me. Bogota was the only airport I´d ever visited though, where I had to put my backpack through an ex-ray after collecting it from baggage claim.

I took a taxi to my hostel, the enigmatically named “Platypus Inn” in the city center. Despite its somewhat basic amenities, it quickly endeared itself to me with its limitless supply of free, piping hot coffee. My loyalties are, at times, easily bought.

I went out to wander the old town, and was immediately struck by a two major difference about Colombia in comparison to Ecuador. First, it turns out Colombians use pesos instead of the familiar US dollar currency down south. Thus, I struggled with the mental math gymnastics of dividing all listed prices by 1,680 in my head, before inevitably giving up, and inadvertently probably forking over the equivalent of $14 for a tamale. Also taxing my limited cognitive capacities was the task of figuring out what street I was on. Though all roads seem to be clearly listed on maps as either “small street 6” if they run east-west, or “big street 2” if they run north-south, on the ground all roads have assumed sneaky, long winded aliases that bear little resemblance to their simple numerical Christian names. Thus, I was left to wonder, as I meandered down “Street of Divorce” whether I was really on small street number 10, or 11.

Despite this confusion, I somehow found my way eventually to the central Plaza de Bolivar—a majestic open area surrounded by breathtakingly beautiful cathedrals and colonial style buildings which today house various governmental offices. The plaza was my first encounter with evidence of the protracted internal armed struggle plaguing the country over the past decades. A demonstration had been staged there, with thousands of cinder blocks laid out in rows—each with the biographical information of a victim of the dirty war. A heartbreaking banner draped across the southern side of the plaza pleaded: “Enough! We can’t fit more pain in our hearts.” Welcome to Bogotá.

This moving exhibit had been removed, however, when I returned the following day on my way to the National Police Museum. Though normally I wouldn’t label myself an ardent fan of law enforcement history, I was eager to tour this establishment. After my guide, Jeffery Hernandez, led me and a small group of Colombians through the cursory “law enforcement through the ages” exhibit (ie-gory black and white drawings of pre-Colombian indigenous tribesmen gorging out the eyeballs of thieves and liars), we descended to the basement, where the real highlight of the museum was housed: a bizarrely fascinating history of the hunt for notorious drug king-pin, Pablo Escobar.

Escobar was the ruthless leader of the infamous Medallín drug cartel throughout the 1980s. His alias was “the doctor,” (a title given to politicians in Colombia) since Escobar was in fact elected to Congress in the early 1980s.

The exhibit included such illustrative artifacts as Pablo’s confiscated personal arms collection (“not even the military had such sophisticated weapons at the time!” explained Jeffrey), a $100,000 silver-decaled Harley Davidson motorbike he’d given his cousin, and an odd, glass-encased model of his dead body when it was finally gunned down by police in 1993. Escobar famously escaped from prison while awaiting extradition in the early 90s, prompting an obsessive 500 day man hunt on the part of the “bloque de búsqueda” (searching block)—an elite 1500 member force of Colombian special agents, CIA, and Interpol forces. Pablo finally met his end after a dramatic rooftop chase in his hometown, Medallín.

“Here,” Jeffrey said, pointing to an encased adobe shingle, “is a piece of the roof on which he was shot! As you can see, it is stained here from his blood. And this,” he added, motioning to a drab, olive parka, “is the jacket he was wearing when he was killed. Obviously, he was a very fat man. But even though he was the 7^th richest person in the world, he dressed very plainly. Like a bum. So he blended in well in Colombia, and was hard to find.”

Given his hotly hunted status in Colombia, I asked Jeffrey why he hadn’t just fled the country. “Or maybe he couldn’t for to leave?” I asked.

“Oh no—he left the country many times!” Jeffrey countered. “In fact there is a very famous photo of him at your house!”
“My house?” I asked confused.
“Yes, in your country! In your house that is white! With the Bush!”

Indeed, a Google search later proved that Escobar did indeed visit our nation’s capital—a family vacation apparently, as in the photo, he and his son pose smiling in front of the White House. Apparently Tony Soprano isn’t the only one who can bridge the mobster-family values gap.

As I left the exhibit with a satisfied feeling of edification I rarely experience after museum visits, I noticed an inspirational phrase stenciled in cursive above the main entrance: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. If you want to be happy forever, become a police officer.” Chicken soup for the Colombian law enforcement soul.

I spent my last day in Bogotá today visiting the famous salt cathedral in the town of Zipaquirá—50 km to the north. The cathedral is an ex-salt mine, converted into an eerie, underground house of worship. There are 12 chambers, some as big as indoor football stadiums, and all illuminated with a spooky iridescent neon blue light. As I wandered past the numerous shrines, faint Gothic choral music played in the background. I suspected the setting was what the Catholics had in mind with the whole purgatory concept—a disorienting venue which, though it suggests the possibility of grandeur and majestic beauty—is definitely not somewhere you’d want to hang out forever. The hazy smell of sulfur emanating from the depths of the mine threatened the alternative.

Tomorrow I bid adios to this urban jungle in favor of the genuine article. My roommate from Ecuador, Jessica, and I are going to meet up north of Cartagena to commence the six day “Ciudad Pérdida” (Lost City) trek. We will keep our eyes peeled in the hopes it soon will be found.

Intercontinental Reunions

2008-04-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

Even though we both call the Northwest home, it took a meeting in Thailand, and wedding in Ecuador to bring my friend Megan and I together again. Thus, Ms. Jepson, (a fellow teacher at the school where I worked last year in Chiang Mai) and I found ourselves rendezvousing in Quito this past week. One of Megan’s best friends from college, Kathleen, was marrying her Cuban fiancée, Fran, in Cuenca, and I was on my way north to Colombia, so Quito was the logical crossing-paths point.

It had been over a year since we’d last seen each other, so once Megan arrived, we wasted no time heading out to a nearby café for some afternoon cocktails, and adventure re-counting. The stories flowed like wine as we downed screwdrivers which, in a bold culinary statement on the part of the bartender, had been made with Tang instead of the traditional orange juice. After that, we weren’t really up for any of the traditional, taxing tourist endeavors, so instead we roamed the neighborhood, poking our heads in to expensive souvenir shops and fondling insanely soft and insanely expensive goods made out of baby alpaca fur.

“Feel this one!” I commanded to Megan, sticking her face into a $100 poncho. Sales ladies with withering glares were quickly dispatched to put an end to our fun.

“Wow, and it’s really made out of baby alpacas?” Megan asked one store owner as she hugged a three foot tall teddy bear, pretending to contemplate a purchase. “Do you eat those things? I bet you do…” she continued. I was less than subtle about disguising my laughter.

Later in the evening, back at the hostel, we found the normally bustling common areas of our hostel, the Backpacker’s Inn, nearly disserted. “Where did everyone go?” I asked the sole remaining occupant, a Wisconsin native named Beth.

“Bah,” she said dismissively, “they’re all at the Bryan Adams concert. Can you believe it?” Ecuador is apparently becoming the next Japan in terms of hot spots for washed-up pop stars. Quito was plastered with posters advertising an upcoming Doors reunion tour when we were there too.

“Tickets are only twenty dollars! Can you believe it?! What a deal! I mean it’s Brian. Adams!” one over-eager Dutch girl had gushed. Just because something seems cheap, however, does not mean you should buy it. I’d be surprised if I could get a syringe full of Ebola at the corner pharmacy for 20 cents as well, but that does not necessarily mean that purchasing it would be a good idea.

Thus, the confirmed party poopers, Megan, Beth and I hung out in the hostel kitchen getting acquainted. We were soon joined by Beth’s friend, a Quito native, Inayat—a tri-lingual orchid scientist/salsa teacher. I enjoy meeting people with seemingly contradictory personality traits, so his presence was a welcome addition to our merry trio.

Later in the evening, on the short two block walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner, Megan got an unpleasant introduction to a staple of Quito culture when a she was unexpectedly squirted with mustard. Coating unsuspecting tourists in condiments (mustard, mayo, jelly etc.) is a common thieving technique in Quito. Trio of crooks work together—one applying the unwelcome seasoning in a malicious liquid drive by of sorts, another playing the roll of the Good Samaritan who kindly offers a Kleenex to help remove the mess, and another who, in the confusion, runs by and snatches the bag. Both Beth and I had experience with this scheme, and thus quickly encircled our bewildered friend like protective mother elephants around a baby calf, ushering her quickly away from the would-be thief. We were all understandably a bit on edge after the near miss, and the experience convinced Megan and I to flee the crime infested environs of Quito in favor of the jungly goodness of nearby Mindo the following day. When it comes to choosing between the “fight or flight” strategies in the face of conflict, I have always been an unabashed proponent of the latter.

I had recently been to Mindo with my Mom, and was eager to return for its tranquil, yet adventure-conducive environs. Megan and I went on a deliciously muddy hike to a gorgeous waterfall on our first day there—running into a bonafide wild Toucan on our way. Our excitement at seeing the exotic avian was tempered only slightly by the fact that he lacked the traditional accompanying bowl of Fruit Loops. We spent a relaxing morning lollygagging in our hammocks the next day before leaving. We walked through the quaint town plaza on our way to the bus station admiring its tidily tended grounds. Mindo, apparently, prides itself on its cleanliness and there were a number of signs posted in the plaza to that effect. “Who’s going to pick up your trash if not you?!?” one asked. “Poverty is not an excuse to be dirty!” another reprimanded.

Back in Quito, Megan and I met up, as planned, with Inayat for a farewell night of Salsa dancing. The doorman at the club where we went also works during the days at the Backpacker’s Inn, so it was nice to see a familiar face. A 6´4” Afro-Ecuadorian who looks convincingly like he was plucked from a Calvin Klein fashions billboard campaign, “Stalin” tends to stand out. He apparently adopted the nick-name “Brian” when he moved to Quito a year ago, and really, I can’t blame him.

Megan and I had a fun-filled night of dancing, and did our best not to inadvertently wound our patient partners. When the evening finally wrapped up around 4am, we both vowed, with clenched fists, as if we were vengeful soap opera actors: “I will improve at Latin dancing! Mark my word!” I’ve been saying this earnestly for the past seven months now, but somehow I still believe.

Megan and I both had early flights the following morning—she to Cuenca, and me to Bogotá—which was a bit of a rude shock to our reluctant-to-rise carcasses. We bid each other fond farewells in the airport with promises not to let another year pass before such a pleasant debauchery filled reunion next occurred. Megan is planning on riding motorcycles from her home-base, Seattle, down to her future home, Argentina, with her future husband, Marshall, next year. I think it is a mark of good character when someone registers for motorcycle break pads instead of the traditional China saucers for their big day. I am so lucky to have somehow tricked such an admirable, adventurous soul into friendship.

Más viajes con La Madre...

2008-04-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

Back on dry land after a week at sea, my Mom and I headed up to Mindo, a sleepy little jungle town northeast of Quito to kill some time before her friend Lynn was due to arrive. On the bus to Mindo, we coincidentally met a fellow Oregonian, Brian, who noticed my Mom’s "Oregon Public Broadcasting" tote bag (a recent pledge break donation coup) and excitedly shared his Portland roots. "I’m a member too!" he exclaimed eagerly. A mutual appreciation for reporter Christian Fodenventzel’s Enlgish accent was more than enough of a basis for a friendship, and the three of us explored Mindo’s many adventurous hiking opportunities over the next two days.

We returned to Quito to meet up with Lynn on Thursday, and had a gleeful evening reunion over empeñadas, and my Mom regaled her with tales of her Ecua-adventures thus far and her harrowing, near miss encounters with sea lions. My mom and Lynn have been friends for decades now, and the two have a kind of Laurel and Hardy give and take together which infused the ensuing week with a potent dose of comedic positive energy.

This attitude was extremely helpful in the face of the string of minor setbacks we faced in the following day’s travel. First, on the bus ride south from Quito, a malicious thief of Houdini-like prowess somehow managed to, undetected, extract my Mom’s camera from a zipped camera case, which was safely inside her Velcro-fastened OPB bag, which was in turn wrapped around her leg on the window seat of the bus. She was not asleep and/or drugged at the time. Second, for some reason, I deemed it a good idea to take Lynn, on her first full day in country, fresh from the sea-level environs of Salem, Oregon, immediately to the 12,000 ft. Andes Mountain nestled Quilatoa Lagoon. Lynn was a remarkable trooper, and in fact had a wonderful time on our afternoon hike down to the lagoon, and the ensuing donkey ride back up atop her gassy burro. But in the evening, altitude sickness reared its ugly head, forcing her to spend the majority of the evening curled in the fetal position of our freezing cabin quarters, setting speed records with each ensuing bathroom sprint. As I surveyed my guests that evening-one in a near death like state from lack of electrolytes, the other trying to keep up a brave face after the loss of her most prized possession-I considered the possibility that, as a tour guide, I may lack promise.

When we finally arrived to Cuenca the following evening, after a grueling ten hour day of travel on buses known for their high quantity of both live-poultry passengers, and pungent ponchos, Mom and Lynn nearly kissed the ground, so happy to have arrived at their destination. They looked at me, their torturer, with pitiful, grateful eyes, praying this was the end of their gauntlet of torment. I felt like the seemingly sadistic, but purposeful kung-fu master with my young protégés before me. "Ask not why you must suffer, young grasshoppers. All will be revealed to you in time."

Indeed, my master plan began to go much smoother from there on out. One day we went to the nearby pueblo of Cañar with my friend Paola to visit some Incan ruins, and to meet her extended family for lunch. Mom and Lynn, both seasoned veterans of Spanish I classes, eagerly exchanged Spanish greetings and first year vocabulary with our hosts. Aided by elementary mime, and at least a rudimentary level of English comprehension on the part of many of Paola’s relatives, they managed to produce some lively conversations and good will. Thus, when "you have a beautiful kitchen!" was accidentally confused with "you smell like a dirty pig" no offense was taken.

Another evening, the three of us went to dinner at my favorite Colombian-owned café, Moliendos, with a dozen of my friends from town. My friend Kathleen, and her Cuban fiancée, Fran, came and shared some entertaining tales of their recent trials to obtain a US visa for Fran. We can all rest assured that the Department of Homeland Security has our backs, because apparently, on the application form, they ask such hard hitting questions as: "Do you plan on attacking the United States once you enter the country, or engaging in acts of terrorism and/or sabotage?" There are boxes provided to check "yes" or "no."

When Fran’s visa was denied for disclosing that he’d at one point been part of the Communist Party in his home country (an offense grouped together with a list that included terrorist and child molester) Kathleen wrote her senators asking for help on his behalf. A New York native, one of her representatives is Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton’s office wrote her back saying that the Senator couldn’t help because Kathleen’s request was quote: "too political." Someone should really sit Hillary down and break the bad news to her that she is currently campaigning not to be the nation’s head hip-hop star or marine biologist, but politician. Dealing with political issues, unfortunately, goes with the territory. Kathleen’s anecdote, along with Clinton’s misguided decision last summer to select an anthem from the she-devil Canadian, Celine Dione, as her campaign theme song, have shoved me more firmly into the Obama camp.

Mom and Lynn and I ended our visit together with a blissfully relaxing stint down in Vilcabamba, a mountain nestled hamlet seven hours south of Cuenca. With its fantastic views, abundance of hammocks, and readily available access to massage, the Izchalyuma hostel in Vilcabamba "vale la pena" (it’s worth the pain) to get there. The journey south proved to be another illustrative experience in South American travel. We’d heard there were problems along the main highway due to indigenous protesters who often utilize road blocks as a means of demonstration. To avoid this, our driver took an alternative route for part of the journey along one lane, dirt roads that paralleled the main highway. It was an exercise in creative maneuvering, to be sure, when we ran into buses coming in the opposite direction. I employed the perhaps less than practical method of closing my eyes and visualizing skinny things like pencils and professional ballerinas as the vehicles gingerly squeezed passed each other on the narrow mountain lanes.

Once we eventually rejoined with the highway, I thought we were home free, but there was one more obstacle to navigate-a group of anti-foreign mining protesters had placed a downed tree across the highway, piled a bunch of forest debris around it, and lit it on fire. "Ok!" explained the conductor on our bus, "that’s it! We can’t go any further, so get all your bags, walk around it, and get on another bus on the other side!" Mom and Lynn again were incredibly good sports, and willingly donned their backpacking bags and clambered around the smoking barricade to reach our awaiting chariot on the other side.

"Ha Ha!" said one of the protesters good naturedly as we clumsily made our way through the ditch on the side of the road, "not all foreigners are bad!"

Vilcabamba was a great place to decompress, and enjoy, stress-free, the end of the trip. Mom and Lynn left yesterday for Quito, and should currently be on a plane, Oregon bound, enjoying some fine Continental Airlines cuisine and a B-level romantic comedy. I hope they are basking in their travel hardcore-ness and looking scornfully at their pampered, moist towelette utilizing seat mates. I’m lucky I have such adventurous Motherships.

Adventures with the Mothership

2008-03-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Well, with one week under our collective belts, the Moms and I can check both "parade marching" and "aggressive sea lion encounters" off our "to do in Ecuador" list. I fetched the Mothership last week at the airport, and we had a couple days in Quito to kill before heading off to the Galapagos. On this first night in country, Mom and I ran into a random acquaintance of mine--a Peruvian digery doo player and ardent fan of the movie "Last of the Mohicans." José joined us for dinner, and Mom and he really hit it off, exchanging conversational fragments in their pigeon Spanish and English, respectively. The next day´s wanderings through the city proved equally illuminating. It was Palm Sunday, and in honor of the holiday, there was a huge parade going through town from the Basilica to another nearby Cathedral. The original plan was to attend the parade as spectators, but when a generous participant shoved palm leaves and corn husks into our hands and invited us to participate in the festivities, it seemed the sporting thing to do. Thus we joined in the haltingly snaking crowd of people which paused every half block or so to accommodate the stubborn, independent-minded live donkey who was carrying a young man dressed as Jesus. The presence of bonified livestock greatly pleased a small seven year old spectator who was watching the parade with his family as he pounded back a can of Pilsner beer. When our procession finally arrived at the plaza destination, a massive crowd had gathered, and was being led in song by an enthusiastic brown cloaked monk who loudly belted out worship songs as he wailed away on his electric guitar. It had more of the festive air of a Pentecostal revival meeting than a somber Catholic religious celebration, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The following day, we set off for the Galapagos--a hotly anticipated highlight of both our Ecuador experiences. The process of finally reaching our humble vessel, "The New Flamingo," on which we would spend the next eight days, was, typical to South American travel, fraught with disorganization and confusion. But we arrived finally unscathed and had a glorious week toodling around the world´s best living laboratory of evolution. There were only 8 other passengers aboard the ship--all of whom were lovely, hilarious individuals. There were three middle aged women from Germany; an English/Danish couple, Ruth and Eric; Ruth´s mom (a feisty English woman prone to humorous comments such as: "I like being in my 60s because it gives me the opportunity to be a cranky old b%&#@."); Liza, an incredibly friendly, enthusiastic recent environmental studies graduate; and Fabian, a 20-something German. Fabian´s defining characteristic at first glance was the large, Gothic lettered tattoo which read "PIZZA," in an arch formation above his belly button. When asked if this tattoo had any special significance beyond the obvious, he replied simply "no." When asked then, if he really liked pizza, he said in a surprisingly non-shalaunt manner given his permanent inked devotion to the food, "yeah, it´s pretty good."

The wildlife in the Galapagos was simply astounding. Our little boat jetted around during the evenings meaning we would awake in the mornings at a new local, ready to explore the exotic creatures both on land and in the sea. Our pleasantly rotund guide for the week, Alfonso, possessed encyclopedic knowledge about all the islands´ flora and fauna, and would relay his vast knowledge to us in a unique and endearing unilateral use of the Socratic Method. Thus, his presentation on the prevalence of a male-only colony of blue-footed boobies went something like:

Alfonso: why are there only males here?
Alfonso: because the females are back on the nest watching the eggs.
Alfonso: when do the females hunt?
Alfonso: in the afternoon.
Alfonso: how do they hunt?
Alfonso: alone.

One afternoon, on a land visit to North Seymour Island, we had the opportunity to see the famous, majestic black Frigate Birds. The male Frigate Bird has the peculiar mate-attracting feature of an enormous, inflatable red balloon-like pouch underneath its beak. Lax, the skin of this pouch hands loose like the gobbler of a turkey. But inflated, it expands to the size of a large football which forces the male´s beak backwards as it strains to accommodate the awkward girth of its sexual adornment. During the mating season, the males gather together with their puffed out red pouches, strutting and awaiting selection by an admiring female. As our group was standing together admiring a particularly bulbous group of eager Frigate bachelors, another crowd of tourists passed us on the path, walking in the opposite direction. At the head of this group was a peculiarly adorned European man dressed only in a large brimmed sun hat, hiking boots, and a crimson Speedo. The irony of seeing two such disparate species concurrently--both utilizing the same unique red pouch method of mate attraction--did not escape me. I suspect the avian practitioners had greater reproductive success.

Our daily underwater snorkeling expeditions also provided much fauna fodder to admire. The Galapagos is perhaps the only place in the world where when people yell "shark!" swimmers jump in to the water. But it´s true--the approximately 5-6 foot long white and black tipped reef sharks, as well as their oddly shaped Hammerhead cousins, leave curious snorkeler admirers in peace, preferring to go about their banal fish hunting daily routine. Sting rays as well stuck happily to the ocean floor, leaving us in peace. The sea lions, however, were a bit more, friendly. "No problema!" Alfonso assured Mom when she expressed distress that one had bitten her flipper, and refused to let go until she won a protracted game of tug of war, "He just love to play!"

The vast variety of tropical fish was also a wonder to behold. Many of the larger species of fish appeared to have been colored by enthusiastic first graders armed with fresh 64 pack boxes of Crayola Crayons. The King Angelfish was obviously the work of a shy, bookish 6 year old girl--with its meticulously uniform symmetrical pattern, and precisely delineated coloration--everything was within the lines. The Blue Chin Parrot fish, on the other hand, with its huge swashes of neon purple, turquoise, and yellow, slapped together in a mushy rainbow of confusion, was clearly the work of a Ritalin popping boy who just wanted to get the job done so he could head out for recess. Later, in the midst of a massive swarming school of red and white silver bellied guppies, I felt like a delegate to a presidential convention, deluged in the confetti released at the end of my candidate´s acceptance speech.

It was a thrill as well, just to realize that the same sandy shores on which I walked, and the same finches I was today admiring, had been observed and chronicled by the mighty Darwin over a century ago. I am now eager to get my hands on a copy of his famous travel log Voyage of the Beagle, to read first hand his impressions of this precious little hamlet. The trip has also made me eager to re-read British humorist Gideon Defoe´s adventure novel The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists! A masterful work of historical fiction, the book chronicles the meeting of a bumbling crew of pirates with Charles Darwin in the Galapagos. The pirates must return to England with Darwin to help him defend himself against an evil Bishop who seeks Darwin´s demise. The bishop´s vengeance is motivated not by theological objections to Darwin´s work, but rather because Darwin is raising a "Manzee," a chimp who has been cultivated to wear a smoking jacket, and comport himself like a sophisticated English gentleman. The Bishop fears this novelty will draw audience, and thus profits, away from the thriving freak circus he owns. High jinx inevitably ensues.

We are back on the mainland now--in Quito for the night to meet up with my friend Jessica before tomorrow again departing--this time for the cloud forests of nearby Mindo. I am hoping that the woozy, unbalanced "I´m still on a boat" feeling that has been plaguing me since disembarking our boat early this morning will wear off by then. My lingering inner ear issues cause me to randomly fall over, or be plagued by sudden bouts of vertigo. Such behavior, when exhibited on dry land, is often wrongly mistaken for public drunkenness, and I´m sick of the slander.

Hasta Pronto, Cuenca

2008-03-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

With another term of teaching duties successfully weathered, it is now time to bid a (temporary) fond farewell to Cuenca’s fair environs. This past week has been a flurry of exams, and farewells. All my students but one passed this term, and I was reluctant to deliver the bad news to the poor chap, due to his admirably diligent attendance and participation record. But, in all good consciousness, I could not pass him on when such basic questions as: “What is one thing you have done that you will never forget?” were answered with a furrowed brow, and the response “Ronoldo?” I think his answer was primarily inspired by his love for the Brazilian soccer team and his misunderstanding of the question. But his English comprehension level was too low for me to explain the somewhat innuendo-laden implications of his mistake.

Since I am planning to return to Cuenca in May after April’s Colombia foray, I haven’t had to say too many “permanent” goodbyes, which has been nice. Whenever I am about to leave a place, even temporarily, I tend to grow incredibly nostalgic. Thus, it is comforting to know I will before long returning to:

-The NY Yankees warm-up sporting goat herder who roams the downtown streets of Cuenca, loudly advertising his urban livestock’s reasonably priced milk

-my conversation partners, 33 year old Paola, and 14 year old Jonathan. The three of us meet weekly for comradery, language practice, and hair-raisingly suspenseful backgammon matches. From these sessions, I’ve learned the Spanish verb meaning “to take your opponents piece” literally translates to “to eat” (i.e.- “Don’t eat me! I’m already loosing!”)

-my Lego primary colored apartment, and my endearing senior citizen land lady Doña Rosa. We’ve had our differences, but her tendency to wear aqua socks on dry land has won me over in the end. She still doesn’t really seem to know exactly who I am after three months of living in the same building (after a 20 minute conversation the other day, she finally realized she wasn’t speaking to my roommate, Jessica. “Well, you’re both blond, so you look the same to me…”). Still, I feel a bond.

On the other hand… there are a few things about my adopted hometown now that Colombia will provide a welcome respite from. Among them:

-insane Cuencana machismo. Granted, Colombia is also not particularly known for its enlightened male-female gender relations, but still, it must be better than Cuenca. At a dinner recently with a Cuencana friend, two looming young gentlemen whom she’d noticed at a restaurant the previous night walked in. “Stalkers!” she proclaimed, proudly showing off a new English vocabulary word she’d learned. Yes, stalker, I agreed. Maria Elena explained to me that following girls, honking, and generally exhibiting obnoxious behavior, were all part of the delicate courting ritual here. “That kind of thing doesn’t bother us Cuencana women!” she assured me. “It’s a compliment. When I went to the United States, no one honked at me! I guess they didn’t think I was pretty.” I tried to assure the 5’9”, stunningly exotic, masterful Salsa dancer, Maria Elena, that that was most assuredly not the case.

“And how do you says ´stocker´ in Spanish, anyhow?” I asked.
“Uh, ‘someone you have a crush on’?” she said uncertainly, struggling for a translation.

-Unexpected pan flute run-ins. The preferred instrument of satyrs across the world seems charming when painted on the side of a ceramic urn, but quickly looses its romanticism after about 30 seconds of breathy, wining high pitched melodies. It seems you can’t turn a corner with out tripping over a rogue pan flute player up here in the Andes, so perhaps the sea level environs of Cartagena will provide some refuge.

Entonces, nos vemos, Cuenca…

Inconvenient Assassinations

2008-03-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

I have only a week left of my teaching commitments here in Cuenca. After that, I’ll be headed north to Quito to meet up with the Mothership who docks on the 15^th. We are going to visit the Galapagos together (blue footed boobies, here I come!), and then return to Quito to fetch her best friend, Lynn. Our merry trio will then commence a 10 day whirl wind tour of the country. After I see them off, the plan is to join two friends in Colombia. Due to recent, well-publicized Ecuadorian-Colombian skirmishes, (Ecuador is apparently touchy about Colombian para-military forces entering its territory to conduct covert assassinations. The targets were FARC rebels the Colombian government had been wanting to check off its long “to kill” list for a while, hence Colombian President Urribe’s feeble excuse which basically boils down to: “they were asking for it.”) I’ve scrapped the tentative bus-across-the-border plan in favor of plane transport. My sense is that the recent hubbaloo amounts to little more than glorified feather fluffing, and a macho, locker room mentality towards foreign policy on the part of the Ecuadorian, Colombian, and especially Venezuelan Presidents. There is undoubtedly a wag-the-dog phenomenon at work as well, since it’s much easier to point to one’s immediate neighbors, (and of course, the insidious evil medaling tentacles of American influence) as the sole source of the nation’s woes, rather than consider the possibility that an utter lack of competent governance and/or economic strategy might play a role in domestic maladies.

Still, this political posturing is doing little to help the unofficial PR image-reworking campaign I’d recently undertaken on Colombia’s behalf in an attempt to alleviate the concerns of well meaning friends and family over the prospect of the upcoming trip. I feel betrayed, and disappointed in my PR campaign customer. I am like the naïve, unsuspecting political operative who agrees to take on the notoriously drug addicted, philandering politician with the intent of spinning his image as “reformed” (i.e.- “Yes, Larry King, the senator has admitted to a weekend romp with those underage twins, but he’s put all that behind him now! What I want to talk about today is his dynamic new vision for future economic growth!”) Then, I wake up one day to see my client’s picture sprayed across page one, laughing jauntily as he exits the DC opium den, his arm draped affectionately around the high class escort at his side. (*cue forehead slap*)—All I asked you to do is stay out of the headlines! How hard is that!?!

We’ve got over a month for this whole mess to blow over, though, and the voting public (my loved ones) have shown themselves to be remarkably understanding in the past. Here’s hoping…

Orchid Ogling

2008-03-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

OK, so technically, given that we were visiting a clearly labeled (via a large billboard), and well known orchid farm and not seeking wild ones out in their native jungle habitats, I guess I couldn’t truly call myself an “orchid hunter.” Still, for a seemingly tame excursion, and one I myself would never have independently sought out without my roommate Jessica’s suggestion, it was a surprisingly edifying and compelling little jaunt. The farm was located an easy 45 minute bus ride outside of Cuenca, on the way towards the bustling metropolis of Gualaceo. A friend, Julie, is stationed there with the Peace Corps, and although she claims to love her site, when I once asked her what there was to do in Gualaceo, she paused a moment, gingerly stroking the delicate furry spines on the small planted cactus she happened to be holding before answering: “ummm…. I guess eat meat.” Given our mutual, at least low-level commitment to vegetarian diet, Jessica and I thus considered Gualaceo proper a less than enticing destination.

But the Orchid farm just outside of it was lovely. I am always enthralled by people with single minded focus, and near obsessive commitment to niche topics. Thus, it was quite entertaining to be led around the grounds by our eager guide, Ramiro, as he passionately described the various eccentricities of the myriad orchid species. “And this one,” he said, his face lighting up with a smile, “we call the monkey face orchid, because, look!” and he delicately pinched the petals of the flower to reveal its surprisingly primate resembling center. “This one is delicious! It smells just like chocolate!” he said, directing us to some delicate brown buds that, due to their delectable aroma, I secretly suspected were made out of Hershey Bars. “And over here,” he continued, “we have the elf shoe orchid.” He directed our attention to a flower resembling a small vertical slipper with long, shoelace-like petals draping down its sides.

Each orchid has an intricate and highly specialized method of tricking unsuspecting insects into spreading their pollen. With this particular flower, the “shoe” capsule of the flower fills up with water when it rains, and the surrounding petals become quite slippery. Thus, when an insect lands on the flower, it falls down into the small vessel of water below, which wets its wings, and makes it impossible for it to fly quickly away. Not wanting to drown its potential pollen transmitter however, the flower has a number of small spines which stick out inside its water-filled pod. The insect thus climbs these delicate spines like ladder rungs, escapes. The flower’s pollen deposits are stored just at the cusp of these steps, so the insect cannot help but brush up against them and inadvertently carry away the plant’s reproductive dust as it leaves. The complexity of this symbiotic relationship boggles the mind.

But the bus ride to and from the farm—winding along side rapidly flowing streams, and looming green mountains, was also a sight to behold. The trip was made even more entertaining by the strange variety of “public service announcement” billboards placed prominently alongside the highway. Instead of the tamer “Buckle up!” or “Vote Chief Wiggam for Sheriff” type of helpful reminders one might encounter in the States, these signs carried messages such as: “Remember: Don’t sell yourself to coyotes!” The latter was a reference, not literally to mangy mischievous canine scavengers, but to the human traffickers who are routinely paid thousands of dollars to illegally smuggle immigrants across the border into the United States.

The journey north from Ecuador is especially treacherous because the Panamanian-Colombian border is closed by land. Thus, the trip necessitates a boat ride in frequently less than sea-worthy vessels across the ocean to reach Central America. Emigration—and the accompanying emotional, psychological, and economic effects on the families and country left behind—is a huge issue of contention and concern in Ecuador. Azuay province, in which my adopted city of Cuenca resides, has one of the highest emigration rates in the entire country. Before I first came to Ecuador I read that Cuenca was Ecuador’s third largest city, after Guayaquil (#1) and Quito (#2). Since arriving, however, I’ve been informed that, with a population of roughly 600,000, Cuenca is only Ecuador’s fourth largest metropolis—the privilege of the Bronze goes to New York, a city with over one million native Ecuadorian residents.

Because of this immense exodus, many small towns in Ecuador are now virtually devoid of any post-pubescent males. In these communities, anyone who can flee to work else where, does. Thus, one of Ecuador’s largest sources of income (after oil and banana exports) is the massive influx of money it receives from foreigners living abroad. Unlike other revenue sources, however, which might be invested into more productive forms of economic growth and business opportunities, money sent home to families is most often spent purely on “stuff”—new cars, fancy clothes, and egregious McMansion style dwellings that look abrasively out of place amongst their ramshackle neighbors.

Many of these small palaces are designed by unethical architects who draft homes far beyond the family’s financial wherewithal to complete. Many homes thus end up left in various stages of incompletion. They are the super models of family dwellings—tall, statuesque exteriors, with nothing inside. The incredible amount of wealth (relatively speaking) that flows into Ecuador from abroad does little to alleviate economic stagnation, because virtually none of the money is invested in domestic sustainable sources of economic growth. Instead, it results in a competitive “keeping up with the Hernandezes” phenomenon, and promotes an increasingly consumer-focused culture.

Interestingly, one of the primary “status symbol” items first on any well-to-do home owner’s list is a blender. Blenders, due to their upper-end price range (50-60$), say: “I’ve made it!” as well as “…and would you like a freshly puréed mango beverage?” My friend, Katie, was trying to convey the identity-defining importance of this appliance to me the other day by relating the details of a minor tragedy that occurred in her host mom’s kitchen several years ago when she was living in Cuenca as an exchange student.

Apparently, as Katie and her host mom were engaged in lively conversation, preparing a sauce to go with dinner, the blender abruptly stopped mid-mix. Katie’s mom stared incredulously and shock stricken at the broken appliance, plugging it in and out of the socket, and pushing the buttons frantically as she fruitlessly attempted to resurrect her prized possession. When her meager restorative options had been exhausted, she sat dejectedly down in a chair, pounded the counter, in frustration, and lowered her head beginning to sob.

“Sín me liqueador… no soy nadie!” cried (“Without my blender, I’m nothing!”) Katie tried to comfort her to the best of her abilities, patting the woman comfortingly on the back and reassuring her that the blender could be fixed, or replaced. I wish all our existential crises could have such concrete solutions.

***

Recently, in my Spanish class, I requested additional grammar homework from my teacher to complement the otherwise purely conversational nature of our supposedly “advanced level” course. I felt I needed a refresher of some of the basic grammar principles I hadn’t explicitly studied since high school. My teacher obliged by giving me a dictionary thick packet to complete on the subjunctive tense. Most of the exercises were fairly mundane, and focused on how to use of the subjunctive with impersonal expressions of desire or doubt (ie- I hope, I wish, I don’t know if.. etc.). One example sentence, however, caught my eye:

“I hope the drug trafficking agent doesn’t make me into a drug mule.” I hope so too. And yes, the sentence requires the subjunctive tense.

¡Fútbol!!!

2008-02-25T15:35:00.001-08:00

Having attended my first South American soccer game this week, I feel I can now more fully consider myself indoctrinated into the Ecuadorian culture. What the home team Cuenca players lacked in their ability to dribble without tripping, they more than made up for in their egregiously aggressive, border-line molesting defensive tactics. Despite the relatively low quality of play they exhibited against their Uruguayan opponents, the match was still quite an enjoyable and anthropologically enlightening affair. My Spanish vocabulary is the richer for the experience, though not with any phrases that would be appropriate for high tea, to be sure. It was interesting to observe both the similarities and differences between Cuencana professional sporting events, as compared to the few in American I’ve been to.

Similarities: enthusiastic fans
Dissimilarities: shield toting, Darth Vader helmet donning riot police out in force to control the vigorous launching of toilet paper rolls, fireworks, and confetti bombs set off when the home team took the field.

Similarities: popcorn and peanut vendors
Dissimilarities: 6 year old girls wandering the stands selling shots of hard liquor straight out of the bottle—served up in containers that looked suspiciously like urine sample cups.

Unfortunately I was denied the opportunity to shout the traditional "GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL" cheer of approval, due to the match's 0-0 tie score. I tried not let my disappointed about this show, but on the inside I was slightly crushed. I remember an old David Letterman list from back when the World Cup was being held in the United States, which detailed the top 10 things that sound better if shouted with quintessential enthusiastic soccer announcer syllable-extending glee. One of which was: "Egggggggg salllllaaaadddd saaaaanddddwhichhhhhhhh!!!!" If boiled eggs and white bread are so exciting to praise in such tones, imagine an actual goal.

Misc. February Musings...

2008-02-22T15:47:00.000-08:00

Last week was Valentines Day—a holiday which is celebrated with equal, if not greater vigor here in Ecuador than in the U.S. Though the traditional flower and chocolate giving practices remain in tact, cross-culturally, Ecuadorians tend to spice things up a bit. A staple of Valentines Day here, (starting when the clock strikes 12 midnight on Feb.14^th) is for men to join together with quartets of friends, get severely tanked up on Zhumir (the insidiously strong and ridiculously cheap cane liquor of choice in Ecuador), and drive around serenading each guy’s object of affection like troops of drunken barbers. Though a marked deviation from the traditional American courting style of gifting mass-manufactured stuffed animals, this practice earned my admiration for its unique mix of archaic Shakespearian under-the-balcony-style wooing, mixed with the best 21^st century transport and alcoholism have to offer.

Another difference from a traditional American Valentines Day atmosphere here was the marked lack of any Valentines Day nay-sayers. Granted, Hallmark and The Shane Company don’t have as obnoxiously aggressive advertising campaigns in Cuenca (which perhaps contribute to some folks’ annoyance with the over-commercialized climate of Valentines Day Stateside). But I think there is something deeper about the tendency towards passion, affection and warmth, characteristic of Latin culture, that also explain the nearly unanimous enthusiasm of Ecuadorians for the holiday.

In one of my classes, we did a listening exercise related to Valentines Day in which a man and woman (a brother and sister, in an oddly incestual casting choice on the part of the text book) enjoyed a Valentines Day meal while debating the pros and cons of the occasion. The students were supposed to determine which speaker, Vicki or Bob, was the “incurable romantic” and which was the “cynic.” Even my beginning students quickly identified Bob as the sappy, flower loving member of the duo, and thus, via process of elimination, could also classify Vicki. But confusion abounded as to what “a cynic” might be.

“Teacher! What mean ‘the cynic’?” asked Rosy, inquisitively.

“Well,” I said, grappling for a meaningful, concise definition. “It is a person who doesn’t feel romantic—who thinks Valentines is a stupid idea, and only an excuse to sell things.”

They looked at me with blank faces. Cynicism was quite literally not in their vocabulary.

***

When I got home in the evening, I found my roommate, Katie, in the midst of an epically scaled cookie baking production—a Valentines Day celebration effort intended for her students. Notoriously domestically challenged, Katie had sent me a message earlier in the day, while shopping in the grocery store, wondering what the ingredients to the exotic recipe of chocolate chip cookies might be. I’d responded to the best of my recollection. She’d followed my suggestions for the most part, with the exception of one key ingredient, however.

“I forgot the damn flour!” she told me, annoyed. She’d dispatched her friend Sean to come over with the necessary missing ingredient, and in the mean time was haphazardly combining what she did have.

“Are you going to measure that?” Our other roommate, Jessica, asked incredulously as Katie casually dumped a mug’s worth of sugar into a waiting bowl before adding an overflowing ladle of butter. “And is that the order things are supposed to go together in?”

“Ah, what does it matter?” Katie asked, unconcerned, taking another large swig from her wine glass. “It’s all ends up in the same bowl anyhow eventually, right? Hey, did you notice how many eggs I just put in? I can’t remember.”

Sean eventually showed up, a bag of flour, and something resembling corn meal in each hand. “I couldn’t read the label,” he explained sheepishly, so I got both.”

“Gimmie that!” Katie said, reaching for the flour, and ripping the bag casually open to empty approximately half its contents into the waiting batter. When finally ready, she dipped her index and middle finger into the bowl, pulling out a generous dollop of dough to test her concoction. “Damn,” she said disappointedly, “it’s missing something. What didn’t I add?” She studied her recipe, scribbled on a now greasy piece of notebook paper. “That’s it!” She cried triumphantly, “this doesn’t call for any salt! No wonder it tastes weird! That’s the best part! It’s why my Dad always used to say chocolate chip cookies were the best when I was a kid—they’re sweet and salty!”

Jessica and I exchanged suspicious glances. “I don’t think they’re supposed to be that salty,” I said, questioningly.

“Yes they are!” Katie protested. “They’re sweet, salty, and what’s the other taste?”

“The only two other tastes humans can sense are bitter and sour,” Jessica responded, “and I really hope your cookies aren’t either of those….”

“No! There’s something else!” Katie insisted. “What’s the other taste we have?”

“That’s all!” Jessica responded. “Don’t you remember doing those tongue diagram experiments in school where you got to try foods that represented each of the four taste sensations and see where you could taste them the strongest on your tongue?”

“Oh yeah!” Sean chimed in, happy to be finally be part of the conversation. “We did those in high school!”

“High school?” I questioned. “Don’t you mean elementary school?”

“Nope! High school! In science class!” he responded unabashedly, crossing his thick, heavily tattooed arms across his chest as he smiled, his eyes pointed skyward, fondly remembering the “sweet” portion of the taste-testing exercise.

“You guys are so wrong!” Katie continued. “My Dad always used to tell me there was this third taste that made chocolate chip cookies so good! Here… I’ll prove it to you!” Flush with wine, and unwilling to let this great, enigmatic mystery wait until morning, Katie decided to use her cell phone to call long distance to the United States to have her father clear up the mystery once and for all. Because it was already midnight, her Dad was confused when he picked up the phone as to why his recent foray into the land of slumber had been disturbed.

“Hello?...” he answered groggily.

“Dad! It’s me, Katie!”

“What? What’s going on? Are you OK?”

“Yeah, fine. Hey, listen! Remember when I was little, and you used to say chocolate chip cookies were the best because they had the three best tastes: sweet, salty, and what was the third one?”

“What else makes things taste good, Katie?” he mumbled, annoyance replacing panic in his voice now that he knew the nature of the call was less than an emergency.

“Uh…. I don’t know….fat?” she hazarded.

“So if you know the answer, why the hell are you calling me at this hour?” he asked. “Good night.” And with that, he hung up.

“Ha! Told you guys!” Katie declared victoriously, putting the phone down on the counter. “It’s fat! That’s the third flavor!”

A spirited debate thus ensued as to whether fat, in and of itself, constituted a distinct taste sensation. The cookies deteriorated steadily in their quality as the batches wore on, due to Jessica and I deciding to go to bed, and thus Katie’s increasing role of responsibility in tending to remaining cookies. When I awoke in the morning, one plate contained a strange, paper thin bark looking pile of baked goods. It is a testament to the deliciously winning combination of butter, sugar, and chocolate chunks that the flavor of these mystery entities was salvageable none the less.

***

If there’s one thing living in Ecuador will teach you, it’s to appreciate the little things in life. My friend James and I were remarking on this fact today after he’d eagerly dazzled me with the excitement of his morning. “I was so excited today!” he began, his smile beaming like a small child on Christmas morning, “because I woke up, and I took a shower!” In the United States, this sentence would have to be followed by “…and then my long lost twin who I hadn’t seen since the Regan administration called me on the phone and we’re going to hang out tomorrow!” or “…and when I picked up the soap, there was a 1000 dollar bill!” But in Cuenca, the mere fact of having steadily delivered warm water at the hour of one's choosing can be enough to merit an exclamation point.

Normally, basic services like water and electricity aren’t such a gamble here, but there have been a series of enigmatic curtailments to both through out this week. I was concerned the first time it happened, thinking something in our house was broken, but when I asked our land lord about it, she just shrugged saying the officials were probably doing work on the system or something and had just forgotten to notify people. One of my roommates improvised hygiene during the short drought by using water she had sitting in a gallon jug to bathe, sponge bath style, standing in the shower. Another acquaintance proudly boasted that he’d utilized sitting water from the toilet tank to clean himself. Though perhaps high in ingenuity, his solution, I argued, given the water’s origin, might well have defeated the purpose.

Our lack of water problem this week is in contrast to what we’d experienced last week when we had an over abundance of water, spewing out, as it was, from the plumbing in our bathroom, and flooding the floor. When the repair man had still not arrived, four hours after the scheduled hour, I went to inquire as to his whereabouts with our down stairs land lady, Doña Rosa.

“And where be the man?” I asked her in Spanish.
“Oh, he’s coming! Don’t worry!” she assured me.

Fearing a similar two week delay in the handy man’s arrival, such as we’d experienced when the refrigerator broke, I pressed the issue.

“But remember you, when the refrigerator is broken, and all the food go sad, and we wait and wait and wait? I’m hoping this time, not the same, because this time with the water from the toilet. And not healthy be staying in our home weeks and weeks.”

“Yeah, but it’s water from the tank, so it’s not dirty!” she protested. Fearing this was her justification as to why I shouldn’t mind wading to the sink to brush my teeth for the rest of February, I countered.

“But yes from toilet!” I pointed out. “And when we don’t have toilet what works in the house, we all feeling very sad and unhappy!”

“Well, you can still use it if you don’t flush, so it’s not a problem,” she continued, refusing to concede my point. I looked at her incredulously, wondering how she could argue the 4 inches of standing water in our bathroom ‘wasn’t a problem.’

“Yes. A problem,” I insisted.
“Not a problem!” she said, smiling.
“Yes, a problem!” I repeated.
“Not a problem!” she said.
“A problem!!!” I said, my volume rising as I grew increasingly agitated.

We had two more similar such back and forth exchanges, my voice rising in frustration, until by the end I was unsubtly yelling. Her grubby little lap dog, Luna, sensed the aggression in my tone, and took it as a cue to all of the sudden jump up from her flea-infested pillow, and lunge towards me, teeth bared, in protection of her mistress.

“What the hell!” I yelped in English, startled by the dog’s suddenly ferocious demeanor.

“You have become an unknown to her,” Doña Rosa said seriously. The gummy gaps in the spaces where her teeth had once resided shone pink as she deliberately enunciated this solemn proclamation.

Luna, it seems, shares her master’s propensity for passive aggression and grudge holding. For later in the evening, when I returned home from work, I found two simple turds sitting in the corner of my bedroom which Luna must have deposited when she followed the repairman in as he worked on our bathroom. I took the exact location of her excrement personally, and we are currently not on speaking terms.

Thus, I find myself somewhat unsympathetic to the whimpering she’s omitting from outside my door right now as yet another forceful afternoon storm sets in. The weather here has taken a marked and dramatic turn for the worse lately, with violent, bone drenching afternoon rain becoming a staple of daily Cuenca life. The rain here has the persistence of a northwest winter storm, but unlike in Oregon, is unfailingly accompanied by terrific bursts of thunder and lightning. These, at least, add some appreciated dramatic flare to an otherwise dreary ambiance. The eardrum shattering intensity of the thunder here makes me feel like I have front row seats to a person tympani and cymbal concert, courtesy of the Aztec God Cotopaxi, whose spooky vengeful spirit is said to roam the surrounding Andes peaks. I only hope the weather improves a bit before my company arrives in March, at which point a little sunshiny cooperation would be most appreciated.

Farewells

2008-02-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

Perhaps motivated by the now less than inviting climate in Cuenca, fellow teacher Ross is leaving here in three weeks to go home to England. His departure marks the end of an era following a considerably long two year stint here in Cuenca. My introduction to Ross came on my first day in Cuenca. I was in the English department of my school, looking through the apartment listings when he came sauntering in. With his loose, gangly demeanor, and generally unkempt dread-locked appearance he struck me as a string-less marionette that someone had long since forgotten in the attic. He was fresh back to Cuenca after a brief stint in an Ecuadorian prison—having been arrested for traveling to another province without any form of identification. This was the first anyone in the office had seen of him since his dramatic affair, and thus program director, Elise, rushed towards him, unsure whether to hug him with relief, or slap him for his carelessness. Her worry was not shared, however, as Ross appeared thoroughly unfrazzled by the affair.

“My God, you’re OK!” she exclaimed, her strong maternal instincts kicking in. “I heard from these crazy men at the jail who said we would have to send them all this money, and when I told them we could only send proof of your identification, they just laughed, and hung up! I had no idea what would happen to you!”

Ross didn’t seem to take offense that the school had, in essence, refused to pay his ransom, and casually recounted a pleasant afternoon spent, behind bars, winning checkers matches against the series of Ecuadorian guards who’d challenged him before enigmatically setting him free several hours later.

His departure will not be mourned by all, however, due to his somewhat unprofessional comportment. Though our school (CEDEI) is fairly relaxed and casual, there is a technical “teachers’ handbook” we all receive at the beginning of our tenure. As could normally be expected at a new job, there is a section in it devoted to rules and expectations of teacher behavior. Ross and fellow Brit, Daniel, invested much energy elaborately mocking the wording and content of this portion of the handbook when it was first distributed, and its quote “fascist, dictatorial” tone. Ironically, they did not, apparently, realize that they themselves had in fact been the inspiration for the inclusion of some of the more basic, simplistic seeming regulations within it (i.e.- “don’t smoke in your classroom” or “shower daily.”)

Though Ross is officially finished now with his teaching obligations, he still seems to spend the bulk of his time hanging around CEDEI. Yesterday, for example, I came into the teacher prep room to find him, and another teacher Sharon, both diligently at work cutting small bits of paper. Sharon, a meticulously conscientious and dedicated individual, was cutting out, and piecing together with small pieces of perfectly sized Scotch Tape, each line of a three page story to make one long continuous snaking line of paper. “It’s for an exercise on run on sentences I’m going to do in my writing class!” she said smiling, as she continued her work. I commended her on her effort.

Ross finished his intricate paper-cutting opus about the same time, and satisfied, proceeded to tape a shallow lid-less origami box he’d constructed out of notebook paper to the wall. Fastened on only one of its sides, the box thus jutted out from the wall like a 6 inch flimsy shelf.

“And what were you making?” I asked dubiously.
“A trap!” he said, grinning at me mischievously.
“A trap?” I questioned.
“Yeah,” he answered, “so when someone bumps into the box, all the bits of paper go flying everywhere! It’s brilliant!”

I got up to look inside his baited snare and discovered the fruits of his diligent labor were hundreds of identically sized centimeter confetti squares which lay awaiting some unsuspecting clumsy passerby’s arrival. They say idle hands are the devil’s play things. I told Ross, thank God for the creative outputs of spare time, and he whole-heartedly agreed.

When I returned after my class was finished, I found a completed Mad Lib left out on the work table. These classic family car-trip time killers of youth are also remarkably useful tools for teaching parts of speech, so there are several books of them floating around the school. Ross had apparently completed one on his own, using the “one person player” technique of filling out the backside of the story where only the word categories are listed. The innocuous story, entitled “Beauty Advice” became far more entertaining with the addition of Ross’ entries for the following categories:

Noun: invalid carriage
Liquid: brine
Food: spoiled meat
Adjective: belligerent
Noun: pedophile
Adjective: brutish
Adverb: beguilingly

In spite of, or perhaps because of, these little eccentricities, I, for one, will miss his enlivening presence about town.

Héroes

2008-02-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of midterms in which the students had to complete the listening, speaking, and writing portions of their examinations. The speaking portion is fairly informal generally, consisting of a smattering of simple questions to which my beginning students’ loose command of the present and past tense permit responses. One question I asked most students was “who is your hero?” There were, of course, the usual battery of predictable answers (i.e.- “My Mom, because she is so with the funny,” or “God, because she help to the poor people and I like her book,” (side note: gender confusion or progressive interpretation of a female deity?)

Sebastian and Mary however, never ones to conform to predictable norms, offered somewhat more creative responses.

“And who’s your hero?” I asked, first to Sebastian. “Not someone fake like Superman, but you know, a real person.”

“Eminem,” he responded quickly, as if he’d been mulling the question over all day.

“You mean, the rapper?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, of course!” he answered.

“Oh. Ok, well…why is he your hero then?”

“Because he is very good with the hip and the hop, and…. I don’t know… I like!” He said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, apparently at a loss for words. He seemed to assume Eminem hero worship was so obvious and logical, that it defied further elaboration—as if I’d asked him the color of the sky, and told him to defend his answer.

“Um… have you seen the movie 8 Mile, then?” I asked, struggling to raid my meager Slim Shady - related trivia bank to continue the conversation.

“Of course I see this,” he responded flatly, shooting me a quintessentially withering “duh!” look such that only teenagers are capable of producing.

“So what’s he up to these days anyways?” I asked, deciding Sebastian was now a Marshall Mathers expert. “I heard he retired or something? Is that true?”

“I no know about the retire. But he genius,” he told me.

Figuring I’d exhausted that topic, I moved on to Mary. “And you, Mary?” I asked, “Who’s your hero?”

“Michael Jackson!” she responded with certitude.

“Really?” I asked, even more incredulous at this response than I’d been to the last. “And why do you think he is a hero?”

“Because he so good with the music, like the “Thriller,” and with the dancing. And,” she said, dreamily pointing her eyes skyward, “he is so handsome!”

My crinkled nose of disgust must have been more obvious than I’d intended because she offered an explanation without prompting.

“Well, I mean he was very handsome before,” she qualified, “when he is a black man. Now, he is looking more like La Princessa Nieve Blanca.”

“Who?” I asked.

“La Princessa Nieve Blanca,” she repeated.

“Hmm, I don’t know who that is,” I said, thinking she was referencing a member of an obscure real-life royal family.

“No no!” she insisted, “it’s uh… ¿Comó se dice?” she asked, turning to Sebastian for help. “Oh yes! Snow White! The Princess Snow White. That is who he appear like today.”

I agreed whole heartedly with her visual diagnostic, and said that if Mr. Jackson were to don a primary colored, puffy sleeved, ankle-length dress, convince a robin to sit on his shoulder, and tie his jet black hair back with a plain red bow, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell the difference either. Some of the vocabulary in my concurrent assessment may have been lost on Mary, but she none the less graciously nodded in agreement.

A+ to them both.

"Landslides, floods, and fires, Oh My!"

2008-02-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

Weekend jaunts in Ecuador provide nothing if not an opportunity to expand your natural disaster vocabulary. “Corrimiento de tierras, inundación, apagón, and ardiendo” (landslide, flood, blackout, and ‘on fire’) are now all part of my Spanish lexicon following an eventful weekend trip to the costal town of Puerto Lopez. Our merry band of five travelers: my roommate Jessica, our friends Ruth and Scotty (female), and Scotty’s out of town visitor, Lori, all decided on the distant costal town as our destination for two reasons: one, the attractive prospect of a somewhat sleepy, beautiful beach pueblo sounded enticing, and two, anywhere was preferable to Cuenca during the infamous “Carnival!” holiday weekend.

Carnival, I thought was traditionally celebrated just on Fat Tuesday, or perhaps for a couple days leading up to Lent. However, it seems any time after Christmas counts as Carnival season around here, and that means water balloon time. And lots of them. A curious bacchanal tradition to be sure, the launching of water balloons—from balconies, rooftops, buses, school windows, etc.—is a staple of the season. As Carnival proper nears, so too does the frequency of such attacks, and the array of weapons. Water guns, buckets, and dustings of flower to coat freshly soaked victims have all been increasingly employed by eager Carnival participants in the past weeks.

Unfortunately, foreigners are primo targets for such attacks. Hitting an unsuspecting gringo apparently results in extra points for the attacker, so every exit from the safety of my home has been a risk. A jumpy, urban warfare style mentality of suspicion and weary guardedness has taken over my psychology as I’ve been forced to constantly scan my surroundings, on the lookout for potential assailants. My roommate Jessica and I compared battle wounds when we got back home this weekend. Her umbrella, which had been pelted with considerable vigor, had broken off the handle, and leaned dejectedly and askew, as she damply related her tale. I pointed to my back, noting that my thoroughly soaked t-shirt was not due to overactive sweat glands when running, but rather from the between the shoulder blade water balloon hit I’d incurred while jogging down by the river. “I never saw it coming,” I told her, “they were in the back of a pickup truck, and didn’t even slow down to beam me. It was another bunch of truck-bed riding hooligans that almost pegged my head. Luckily their amo just grazed my ear.”

Similar stories have been related on a daily basis with the rest of my fellow teachers as we’ve congregated, soggy and shell-shocked in the teachers’ lounge to compare experiences.

“They had me! There was just nothing I could do,” Robin told me plaintively the other day. “There was a gang of them down on Ramirio Crespo street. I saw them coming and tried to dodge behind a car, but then there was one on the balcony above me, and when I ran to escape his bucket, they pegged me good.”

In most professional settings, it’s frowned upon to arrive to work soaked, bruised and slightly tardy. But everyone knows the cause around here. Thus, I always attempt to adopt an unfazed, professional demeanor as I slosh my way into class, brush back my dripping hair and instruct my students to get out their homework on participle adjectives—doing my best not to drip over their corrected writing assignments as I return them.

Thus, it was with gusto that we embraced the chance to flee victimization during the intensified celebrations this weekend. So enthusiastic were we that our plans were undeterred by reports of massive flooding up and down the length of the Ecuador coast line. Figuring we’d be getting wet either way, we decided we might as well see something new in the process. Thus, late Thursday evening, we boarded a night bus from Cuenca headed to the bustling port of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, and our transfer point to Puerto Lopez. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an easy a four hour journey. So when I woke at 2:30 AM to discover we’d been traveling for three hours already, and were still in the mountainous initial leg of the trip, I was puzzled.

Road side stops while on long distance bus journeys in Ecuador are as common as colds, and as enigmatic as Easter Island’s looming figureheads. Thus, for a pause of anywhere from 15-30 minutes, one usually doesn’t even bother asking about the cause, as the answers will be varied and speculative, and chances are, you’ll soon be on your way anyhow. After 50 minutes without movement or engine noise, however, my eyebrows perked. I’d been listening to music as we drove along and awoke to Imogene Heap’s haunting song, “Hide and Seek,” the first lines of which begin: “where are we? What the hell/ is going on?...” Good question, Imogene.

Ruth and I shuffled sleepily to the cabin of the bus where we politely inquired in Spanish “and what might be with the happening, sir?”
“Ah, well, the mountain, she fell down on the road, so now there is no road,” he explained helpfully.
“Oh,” we replied, a bit alarmed, and wondering what would happen next. “So…um… is there having a plan for what to do?”
“Oh yes! There is a plan,” he assured us, “we wait.”

With nothing else to do, a group of us decided to walk down the road to investigate the damage. We weaved our way down the highway in the dark through the half mile of parked towering semi trucks, buses and cargo vans—all sitting silent and still in their lines waiting, like creepy automotive gravestones. It was over a half mile walk to reach the barricade which was indeed formidable—an enormous chunk of the mountain had slid down from the water-logged hillside, coating the road in six feet of deep rich red soil and boulders.

“Crap,” we thought, collectively. Looks like we’re going to be here for a while. Resigned, we trudged back to the shelter of our bus to escape the intensifying misty rain that was falling upon us. We all crawled back into our seats, contorting ourselves in a variety of fetal-like positions in a quest for a night’s sleep. Jessica and I were seated near the front of the bus, behind a family laden with a typically large, but somehow indeterminate number of children, the baby of whom was none to happy with his circumstances. The mother did her best to sooth the waling child, but to little avail.

“Jesus Christ, take it outside!” Jessica muttered, frustratedly in her sleep, as if a bar tender giving advice to bickering, unruly Hell’s Angels customers.

When I fully came to in the morning, around 7:30, I was a bit disappointed to see we hadn’t moved. I was also disappointed to see none of my friends were still on the bus. They arrived back about 20 minutes later, from another reconnaissance mission to investigate the progress, or lack thereof, of the obstacle.

“There’s supposedly a bulldozer on its way!” Ruth reported back. “But the thing is, two big trucks tried to just drive across it, and now they’re both stuck, facing one another.” I groaned. After another hour of fruitless waiting, we decided to vote on a course of action. “Right then,” said Ruth, spear-heading the effort, “there are 3 options: 1. walk back towards Cuenca and try to get a lift home in that direction (we all booed), 2. stay with the bus until God knows when, and possibly miss the whole weekend and be forced into cannibalism, or 3. try to walk across the mudslide, and convince someone stuck on the other side to give us a lift to Guayaquil.” I was ready to raise my hand in support of option three, but it was a moot point. Apparently all the cosmos needed was an ultimatum, because with that, our reluctant chariot roared to life and began to inch slowly forward along with the rest of the stymied vehicles.

The bulldozer had indeed arrived, apparently, and thus the backed traffic began to slowly unclog. We marveled at the gaping crater left in the side of the mountain as we slowly chugged past it. Though we saw several additional remnants of smaller landslides as we proceeded down the hill, there was nothing too significant until we reached the lowlands surrounding the outskirts of Guayaquil proper. There, more direct evidence of the recent rains and floodings were still visible. The streets formed new waterways with the murky brown tides rising up above the wheel wells of our bus as we waded our way slowly through them.

The views out our windows showed heartbreaking scene after heartbreaking scene of families, clad in galoshes, schlepping their way through the watery brown mess by foot or on bicycle as they attempted to salvage what few possessions they owned. The images were eerily reminiscent of the New Orleans flood footage, and again I was struck by the profound injustice of such tragedy befalling people who were already struggling so mightily to survive on a day to day basis.

True to Ecuadorian fashion, however, never an opportunity was lost to turn proverbial lemons in to alcohol-spiked lemonade. Thus, we saw one small rural community which, despite the flood waters rising into their humble homes, had taken advantage of the swelling river level, and had started an impromptu inner tubing contest down the newly formed rapids. A rescued portable radio blasted loud salsa music from an as-of-yet still dry window sill, and fresh crops of contestants eagerly ripped off their shirts to join in the fun.

Once we got to the Guayaquil bus terminal, we were surprised to find we’d be treated to a three hour layover there as we awaited the next bus to Puerto Lopez. In the course of our considerable tenure, we happened to run into two friends of ours from Cuenca, Kevin and Ian, who were headed to another beach town for the weekend, and had also been stuck in the disastrous landslide pile-up. More industrious (or perhaps just less patient) travelers, they’d decided around 6 am to ford the landslide and hitchhike to Quayaquil. The first kind Samaritan they’d solicited had gladly offered to turn around and take them to the city.

Despite our group’s fidelity to our bus, however, we’d still managed to beat the boys to the terminal. Their pants muddied to their knees from their muddy landslide crossing, Kevin and Ian related the tale of how they’d just spent 2 ½ hours driving in circles around the Quayaquil rental car terminal at the nearby airport while their kind hearted, but unfortunately illiterate chauffeur, fruitlessly tried to figure out where he should return his borrowed vehicle. “He just kept staring at the paper, sometimes upside down,” Kevin explained. “We offered to help, but neither of us really speaks Spanish, so I think he thought we were just trying to throw his receipt away or something. He literally stopped to ask about 20 people where he should go. I really can’t wait to get to the beach….”

Neither could we. Thus, we joined in heartily with the rest of the weary Ecuadorian passengers at the end of the next leg of our journey, (another 5 hour bus ride) when we rounded a forest covered bend and were afforded our first glimpse of the shimmering sea. The sun was shining brightly by the time we got to Puerto Lopez proper—the perfect welcoming reward for the considerable duration of our journey. With appreciative hearts, we took our first soul cleansing dip in the heavenly warm ocean waters. We were so excited by the natural beauty that we weren’t even that bothered to discover, upon returning to our hostel, that the recent floods had resulted in the curtailment of both electric, and running water services to the “Sol Inn” where we were residing.

“Look at it this way!” Scotty said, putting an optimistic twist on our rustic amenities “no water means less water balloons, right!”

“Yeah, but more eggs. Gross,” Jessica countered, pointing across the street to the teenage girl gingerly trying to extract the oozing yolk of a freshly chucked egg from her hair.

The next day’s blissful lugubrious pace more than compensated for the previous day’s journey. We had a leisurely breakfast at the Whale Café with real, non-instant coffee (a novelty in Ecuador), and delicious homemade banana pancakes. Afterwards, we found a tuk-tuk driver (basically a motorbike with a glorified tarp-covered chariot in tow) to take us to the nearby Machalilla National Park. Just 10 km north of where we were staying, Machalilla is Ecuador’s only land locked marine national park and offers a delectable combinations of jungle hiking, and pristine beach lounging opportunities. We took advantage of the latter in spades. The piercing equator sun was ferocious in its intensity however, and any oversights in thorough sunscreen application technique were harshly criticized by the bright angry bands of red which appeared on our skin (the underside of our armpits, behind our ears, etc.) later in the day.

Perhaps due to lingering dehydration, my body decided late in the afternoon that instead of joining my friends for tropical themed cocktails down by the beach, it’d be a better idea for me to get post-amusement-park ride style dizzy, and go home by myself to throw up. Resigned, I crawled into my top bunk bed perch, tucked my mosquito net cozily in around me, and settled in for what I presumed would be the end of the day’s excitement. Because there were only four beds in a room, I had volunteered to take the spare bed in the adjacent room to ours, which was also occupied by a small band of European travelers. In my dazed semi-conscious stupor later in the evening, I heard one of my unknown roommates enter the room briefly to putz around for a bit. I briefly, with my eyes still closed, considered introducing myself, but decided against it figuring there would be future opportunities for pleasantries at a time when all my attentional resources did not have to be devoted to keeping the room from spinning in circles.

Unfortunately, due to my semi-conscious state at the time, I did not realize that said roommate had subsequently left the room, pad-locking the door from the outside to prevent theft, thus leaving me stuck inside our tight dormitory quarters. Given my tentative night’s itinerary of remaining unconscious, my captive status might not have been such a problem if I hadn’t been awoken a couple hours later to Ruth’s frenzied rapping on the door, and an accompanying panicked command: “Alicia! Get up now! Quick! We have to leave!”

Jolting upright, I swiveled around in my top bunk perch, trying simultaneously to orient myself to consciousness and swat away the billowing mosquito net which was attacking my face. Scrambling to untangle myself, I squirmed free of my confines, and half slid, half fell down the ladder, groping my way towards the door in the dark, still not understanding the cause for the urgency. Ruth had apparently left the door, and I fumbled in my pockets looking for the headlamp I thought I had with me, and trying to unlatch the door.

“Shit shit shit!” Ruth swore from the outside, apparently having returned. “Damn! It’s pad locked from the outside!”

“Uh, what the hell is happening?” I asked, still half asleep, and pawing at the door uselessly as my brain, sensing the panicked tone in Ruth’s voice, tried to rouse itself to “flight!” level of alertness.

“Right, well, you’ve got to get out now because the thing is, the place is on fire,” Ruth informed me, attempting to be calm.
“What?!? Damn!” I said, jiggling fruitlessly at the door handle.
“Can you come through the window?” Ruth asked, staring wide eyed and alert at me through the small glass portal to the left of the door.

Could I ever. With adrenaline fueled ease, I somehow managed to unlatch the small chest high window in the pitch black room, and bound with new-found agility through the tight opening, on to the waiting porch below. Together we ran together past the flaming, thatched roof entry way, out to the muddy street beyond where our trio of friends awaited. A dilapidated “fire truck” which looked like it might well have dated back to the Eisenhower administration stood ready and waiting outside while a haphazard crew of shirtless “firemen” tried to contain the blaze.

Because the water had been out in the town for over 24 hours, however, their truck lacked normal reserve levels. Also, as Scotty, an ex-boat crew woman, and thus expert in a variety of emergency procedures, pointed out, water is not the retardant of choice when dealing with electrical fires. Apparently, the blaze had begun in a sea of sparks that omitted from some electrical appliance or outlet which surged when the electricity had come back on all of the sudden. Nevertheless, the ragtag group of Puerto Lopez safety personnel managed to quickly contain the fire, and give the “all clear” signal. Still a bit shaken from the adrenaline surging through my body after my rude awakening, I shuffled, shell-shocked, back into the hostel grounds after my friends. Collecting any valuables (money belts, cameras etc.) that we’d be disappointed to find incinerated should another fire ensue, we left to go have dinner.

The rest of the town was alive and well, celebrating the fact that electricity had returned. Thus the main street bordering the beach had been transformed from the night before to a brightly lit, music pumping strip of vivacious Carnival celebrators. We went back to the Whale Café for dinner, and afterwards parked ourselves at a beachside cabana bar for a much needed nerve settling adult beverage. I excused myself slightly early to return to the Sol Inn to partake of their (what I hoped to be now functioning plumbing) “facilities.” On my way through the dark hostel courtyard, I spotted the desk manager, a friendly, sparsely toothed woman of menopausal age, sitting at a candle lit table.

“Hello!” she greeted me in Spanish with a gummy smile, “how are you doing? Kind of shaken up?”

“Ha ha… um, a bit,” I responded nervously. “So, the electricity still no come but only not come to our house?” I asked, pointing to the candle in the middle of the table, and then to the illuminated carnival Ferris wheel we could see spinning in the distance.

“Nope!” she said pleasantly. “We’re the only ones without it, too, on account of how the fire kind of blew our system out. Someone should come tomorrow to fix it, I think. Hey… how’s your friend doing? The one who was locked in the room?”

“Uh…” I said awkwardly.

“Oh wait!” she said, recognition crossing her face as I stepped closer to the candle’s meager glow. “That was you, wasn’t it!”

“Yes. Was I,” I confirmed.

“Woops!” she said sheepishly, laughing. “With all that smoke, we couldn’t find the extra key to the pad lock!”

“Yes,” I said again, “I hear this thing before I go through the window.”

“Good thinking!” she commended. “Oh man, your friends were crying and crying for you! You should have heard them!”

“Really?” I asked dubiously, knowing full well that the three outside had had no idea what was going on, and Ruth’s reaction had been one of panicked rage and frustration, but not tears.

“Oh yeah!” she assured me. “Because, you know… they thought you were going to burn up!”

“Well…they cry because they love,” I said non committally, going along with her version of the story.

“Oh yes, you have good friends! They don’t want you to burn! Well, I guess in the end, nothing bad happened, right? So, ha ha! Tomorrow maybe we’ll have lights and water! We’ll see! Good night!”

I wished her a good night as well, vying to myself under my breath to ask for a discount come checkout time.

Belated New Years Account...

2008-01-16T15:35:00.000-08:00

You know, it’s true what they say—nothing spells Happy New Year like boxed wine, transvestite highway bandits, and burning effigies of narco-trafficking agents. Initially, I thought that New Years festivities with Esther this year would be rather tame given our isolated locale at the jungle Yanayacu Biological Research Station. But, after a lovely meal with all the staff and guests, station manager José suggested we go in to town in search of a more vibrant fiesta. Nine of us: José, his wife Soña, their two kids, Christina and José Jr. (affectionately referred to as “Chino” (i.e.-“China man”) because of his slightly squinty eyes), Lucia, Oscar, Esther and I, somehow managed to squeeze our way into the double benched cab of the research station pickup truck as we headed off to the budding metropolis of Balleza, the nearest pueblo.

“Good thing the old guys decided to stay home!” Oscar commented as we smashed our way, sardine-style, into the car. The old folks he was referencing were John and Kathy—a late 50s couple from the Bay Area who were also guests at the station, but who’d decided to forgo the night’s adventure in favor of an early bed time. John, a criminal defense lawyer and card carrying member of the Audubon Society, was visiting Ecuador with the aim of adding more exotic avian species to his ever expanding list of “sighted” birds. Kathy, a recent late-in-life UC Davis PhD graduate, was an insect expert and part time curator of the Berkeley entomology museum, visiting Yanayacu to collect exotic bee samples. At dinner, they had endearingly worn matching t-shirts, the front of which depicted various rare caterpillar species, and on the back, the same critters in mature, butterfly form. For fun, they told us, one can try to guess which species of caterpillar match with which butterfly. Kathy claimed it was obvious, but I confess to needing the miniature key printed on the small of their backs to solve the riddle.

When our merry New Years caravan finally reached Belleza, we were disappointed to find it even quieter than expected. Everyone had apparently fled to the larger, surrounding towns to celebrate, leaving only the leftover Christmas decorations adorning the defeated looking shrubbery of the main street median for entertainment. Even seven year old Christina was underwhelmed.

“Bah! This place is dead!” she said dismissively, “let’s go to Quito, or maybe Guayaquil,” (the latter Ecuador’s largest, crime ridden beach-side metropolis). Her verdict seemed to speak for everyone, and the group quickly decided to continue on to Choco, a larger hub town about an hour away. The trip took a bit longer than anticipated, stopped periodically as we were by a series of impromptu drag queen roadblocks. Dressing as the opposite gender is a staple of New Years celebrations in Ecuador. Thus, we intermittently came across crowds of Adam’s apple laden “ladies” blocking the road. These awkward damsels would then approach the car, asking for monetary donations as they passed around complimentary bottles of hard liquor from which all passengers were expected to take a polite swig.

“I’m not giving you money for nothing!” José, our driver, protested playfully. “Let’s see those legs! Give us a spin!” Our masked transvestite entertainer obliged, strutting awkwardly in “her” heels as Kanye West’s infamous anthem “Gold Digger” played from the car’s stereo on a mix tape Esther had compiled for the drive. I applauded appreciatively, both for the dance, and for the fact that the camo-adorned smiling rebel beside our dancer, with the gun pointed menacingly at José, had let us pass. I believe this would-be commando was really the spouse of the transvestite dancer, also in drag for the evening. The gun too, I’m hoping, was fake. But when in South America and stopped by an arms-wielding individual, one never knows.

When we finally arrived to Choco, festivities were indeed underway. The main street had been closed to vehicular traffic, and commandeered by the many pedestrian party goers. At the center of the crowd was a make shift stage, atop which a formally dressed crooner of the Tom Jones persuasion was belting out karaoke love songs. Behind him on stage, were 7 chairs upon which were seated life-sized dummies, their heads flopped listlessly to the side. Each of these dummies, with its individualized name tag, depicted a different city official. “The poor, illustrious councilmen of Choco” read a hand made cardboard sign in front of them. All of these individuals, Oscar assured me, were bound for a ritual burning pyre come midnight.

What the Ecuadorian Tom Jones lacked in tonality or innate, God-given talent, he more than made up for in earnestness. He pleaded with the crowd to dance, and gave away multiple cartons of free boxed wine to “the happiest dancers!” Lucilla won three boxes. Some of his attempts to rouse crowd peppiness, however, were a bit misguided—more sobering than inciting. “Dance! Dance!” he encouraged. “You should all be dancing, it’s New Years! My Mom died on Christmas, so, since I’m in mourning for a year, I can’t dance….But you all should! Come on, go ahead!” A word of advice to all potential entertainers: dead mother references = buzz kill.

Never the less, Esther, “a machine on the dance floor!” as several of our Ecuadorian companions admiringly remarked, proceeded to join in the festivities, exhibiting some impressively Shakira-esk hip shaking salsa maneuvers with her many elderly male suitors. I tentatively obliged a couple of dancing offers, but quickly became deterred by the many fire crackers thrown at my feet by both drunken and pre-pubesant (the two demographics at times overlapped) onlookers.

We left Choco to return to Balleza in time for the official New Years count down. In the ensuing hours of our trip to Choco, Balleza had come to life and we arrived in the midst of a drag queen costume judging pageant. Five eager contestants were vying for the official queen title: two strapping individuals who periodically retreated to the edge of the crowd for support and encouragement from their fellow law-enforcement friends; a middle-aged individual whose ten inch mini-skirt disguise proved somewhat less than convincing in the face of his over-hanging gut and bearded face; and altitude-challenged individuals who, judging from their diminutive stature, must have still been in elementary school.

The suspense of the competition was ruined, however, when the pageant was curtailed midway through to allow for proper reverent observance of the 2008 countdown. After a brief pause for celebratory cheers and congratulatory cheek kisses, attention quickly shifted to the Volkswagen Beetle sized pile of effigies awaiting imminent incineration. In addition to cross-dressing, life-sized “muñeca” (doll) burning is also a central fixture of Ecuadorian New Years celebrations. The majority of the effigies were dressed as narco trafficking agents, replete with their uniform bullet-proof vests and protective weapons. Above the bodies was a farcical sign, mocking their reputation for corruption which read: “Hand us over all your drugs, or, baring that, give us $200.” They are, apparently, a universally vilified group in the community judging by the punishing series of swift kicks to the skull that a four year old party-goer delivered to one of the dummies before it was lit ablaze. People cheered and clapped as the pile roared to life with flames, standing back to accommodate the considerable heat emanating from the massive bonfire.

José left the festivities shortly thereafter to give a friend a ride home. Unfortunately, said friend lived about 45 minutes away, leaving the rest of us stranded as we waited for his return. A deep, desperate longing for sleep quickly overtook me as the collective weight of the day’s early morning run with Esther, followed by a five hour hike through the jungle with Oscar, started to take their toll. Our group sat on the cement steps of the courtyard as we were exhaustedly subjected to the vocal stylings of the middle-aged MC of the festivities. His considerable girth swelled angrily against his restrictive ill-fitting cream colored Mariachi suit as he launched into his 20^th microphone amplified karaoke ballad. “So this,” I mused aloud, my enthusiasm for the cultural novelty of the celebration rapidly evaporating, “is the ninth circle of Hell to which Dante referred.” May 2008 only improve in grandeurs.

A Hunting We Will Go...

2008-01-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

Well, it turns out we can now confidently add “frog” to the disturbingly long and growing list of nouns (i.e.- scrapbook) that have recently assumed verb status in the English vernacular. This, I discovered having recently gone “frogging” with my dear ex-college roommate, Esther, a biologist and aspiring amphibian expert. In pursuit of this lofty goal, Esther lived in Ecuador for the year after college at the Yanayacu Biological Station, researching glass frogs (so named for their nearly translucent tissues which allow for an intimate view of their internal organs). She came back to Ecuador this December for a week in part to check up on her little friends. So, after meeting up in the polluted, crime infested environs of Quito, we quickly fled for the oasis of Ecuador’s resplendent cloud forests.

The journey to the Santa Lucia Eco Lodge, where we spent our first evening together, was fairly arduous. It involving a 2 ½ hour bus ride, an hour long truck drive through what could only generously be described as “a road” (what with its repeated stream crossings) and finally, an hour long hike up a steeply traversing muddy trail in the rain. I thought we might both reasonably be interested in sleeping given the journey we’d made, and was fairly excited for this impending probability after a large, satisfying dinner, but Esther had other plans.

“So who’s up for some frogging?” she asked enthusiastically. Due to the nocturnal club-hopping life-style of her amphibian subjects of study, Esther keeps strange hours when in Ecuador, only just starting her work around the inky black hours of 9 or 10 pm. Reluctantly at first, I donned the requisite headlamp and knee-high mud boots necessary for the adventure, gazing longingly at my awaiting pajamas as I did so.

We headed out around 9:30, down one of the many jungle access paths out the back of the Santa Lucia property. The trails were steep, and forebodingly dark, with errant vines and vegetation reaching their ominous tentacles out threatening to envelop us into their endless oblivion. My confidence in the mission ahead we not emboldened when, not two minutes into our journey, I spotted a pair of gleaming yellow eyes floating bodiless in the darkness up at us from the trial below. The reflection of these twin lights off my head lamp was so bright that I initially
thought it was another pair of late night hikers coming up the path, equally equip with a flashlights. Thus my confusion when the lights darted quickly off the path into the mysterious anonymity-affording cover of the jungle.

“What was that?” I asked wearily.
“Probably a rodent,” Esther assured me nonchalantly, her guess defying the considerable elevation of the mysterious eyes.
“Or maybe a jaguar?” Carolyn (the own of the lodge who’d come along for the walk) added less than helpfully. I just hoped it wasn’t a “Princess Bride” movie style hybrid of the two—a ROUS, rodent of unusual size—lurking in unseen darkness awaiting a hat-trick midnight snack.

Potentially unfriendly glowing eyes were no match for Esther’s untamed curiosity, however, at the sound of an unfamiliar frog call.

“Wait! Did you hear that!?” she asked, freezing in position. I had to admit that among the competing cacophony of fellow late night insect and bird sounds, I hadn’t exactly singled out the solitary croak she was referencing. “Just a minute! I’ll be right back!” she assured me. And with that, she resolutely charged off the trail into the maze of the dark jungle before her in pursuit of the mysterious amphibian caller.

Carolyn and I waited on the trail while Esther patiently thrashed around in the thick foliage, listening for another call. In about five minutes, she triumphantly returned, the milk top bottle sized frog clutched protectively in her hands. “Found him!” she said, smiling. How in God’s name she was able to localize such a tiny creature in the dark, amidst the Pandora’s Box of surrounding camouflaging vegetation remains a mystery on par with crop circles or Celine Dion’s enigmatic popularity. Suffice to say, I guessed that she must have been an excellent Easter Egg hunter as a child. She humbly conceded that yes, she’d always beaten her brother handily when it came time for the annual search. I bet she found Where’s Waldo? books laughably unchallenging as a youngster as well.

Esther took pictures of her new found specimen and had me hold the small creature as it lay prostrate on its back so that she could photograph its belly. “Wow! Check out the local sack on this one!” she said appreciatively, admiring his swollen chin as he prepared to belt out his operatic mating call.

Esther’s unabashed enthusiasm for jungle creatures extended beyond just the amphibian class though, as I soon discovered. With equal excitement, she treated Carolyn and me to a miniature Ranger Rick explanation of the number of myriad beetles, insects, and spiders we came across on our hike.

“My friend Kimberly studies this kind of dung beetle at Yanayacu,” she explained, pointing to a delicately rotund insect with a metallic colored rump. “Sometimes she would ask me for help when she was setting her traps,” she continued, a mischievous grin on her face.

“What? Like putting the traps out in different spots in the jungle?” I asked naively.
“No, more like… well, you know what they use for bait, right?”
“Uh, well, they’re dung beetles, so…dung?” I hazard.
“Yup,” she confirmed, “so you know, if she didn’t have to go on the day she was setting up her traps or something, she would ask me if I thought I’d have to go later in the day, and have me save it for her.”

Incredulously, I asked for verification as to the exact revolting implications of her anecdote. My suspicions duly confirmed, I tried to be optimistic in my response, telling Esther I thought it exhibited an admirable commitment to both science, and to their friendship, that this girl felt comfortable asking to “borrow” some feces.

Though the majority of our two hour hike was spent observing critters of the less than palm-sized variety, we did spot one larger animal as well. As we passed a low-lying tree at one point, we accidentally flushed a roosting bird that flew abruptly and frightened from her nest, flapping her wings in displeasure at having her evening egg sitting routine molested. Two dainty sea foam green speckled eggs the size of ping pong balls lay naked and vulnerable behind her. Esther felt a near criminal level of guilt for having startled the poor bird and thus vetoed the plan of turning around shortly there after on the grounds that we’d scare her out again.

“Better we keep walking this same direction and just finish the loop,” she suggested. Her integrity and commitment to nature know no bounds.

By the end of our walk, Esther had completed her evening goal of identifying at least three different frog species. Armed with her photos, she thus had some “samples” to look up when we arrived to the official Yanayacu station the following day. For my part, I had a new appreciation for amphibians, and a head swimming with the conflicting emotions that come from being around someone so thoroughly in their element. On the one hand, seeing Esther’s eyes light up as she examined her delicate froggie friends, it was infectiously inspiring—basking as I was in the radiating energy of someone who is so unbridled in delight. On the other hand, thinking back to Esther’s friend Kimberly, and her unquestionable, uh, ‘commitment’ to her work, it was profoundly demoralizing to think that it was quite possible I’d never been as unabashedly enthusiastic about anything as this girl was about dung beetles.

I need to find my passion. Perhaps grad school is inevitable.

Market day

2007-12-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

A word of advise: if you visit Sasquisil, bring a sheep. You´re guaranteed to feel under dressed if you don't, as I learned the hard way. After Baños, my travel mates, Erin and Robin, headed back to Cuenca, so I had a couple days to myself to kill. I went north to Latacunga, the biggest town on the famous Quilatoa Loop--a ring of mountain perched small villages southwest of Quito. From Latacunga, is was an easy 1/2 hour bus ride to the nearby town of Sasquisil, famous for its vibrant, expansive Thursday morning market. Used boots, rusty machetes, pods of piglets--all are traded amongst the Quilatoa area villagers at this weekly affair.

The food and craft goods were interesting of course, but the animal market, a couple kilometers north of the town centro, was truly a novelty to me. I'd read about its existence in a guide book, but didn't have exact directions. When I saw an old man pedaling past me on a trolley laden with live chickens though, I took my cue and followed his lead. as I walked out of town down the isolated dirt road, I noticed a marked increase in the frequency of both "organic" evidence of livestock, and in satisfied customers, walking in the opposite direction, with their new 4-legged friend on a rope behind them. Good.I´m on the right track, I thought.

By the time I reached the market proper, I realized, embarrassingly, that I´d come without the season´s accessory de jour--a lamb on a leash. Chagrined, I kept my head down as I waded my way through a sea of live dirty wool, enjoying listening to the indignant bargaining underway around me.

"Are you kidding me!?!" one hard bargainer exclaimed incredulously, "60 dollars for that dirty beast? It doesn't even have both its ears!!! 40$! That's my final offer!"

To keep track of whose sheep was whose, the vendors had each painted a different design with red paint on their sheep's heads. Thus, the flocks stood huddled together, looking like devote Hindus, as they awaited their uncertain fate. The cacophony of noise produced from the mixture of sheep, pigs, goats, chickens, cows and lama voices combined to make for a somewhat peculiar harmonic choir ensemble.

By far, the noisiest, pre-Madonna singers of the lot--belting their parts out without any regard for blending or balance--were the VW Bug sized pigs. They were also the least resigned of all the animals to being schlepped haphazardly from the back of one dung-covered wooden pickup truck to the next. I'm, as of yet, still uncertain as to what the technical occupation will read on my future business cards. But after witnessing this spectacle, I sincerely hope it will not be: "Alicia Craven, Pig Herder." As stubborn as they were distressed, these mighty hogs squealed in displeasure and dug their angry hooves into the muddy ground when their owners attempted to coral them towards their new owners. To combat the least cooperative of the bunch, however, there was always a shall-sporting senior citizen woman nearby who would helpfully whack the animal with a hunk of PVC pipe or length of rope, while the younger men grabbed its haunches and tried to wrestle it into compliance.

The larger of these beasts went for around 75-100$, whereas a small piglet could be garnered for a mere 28$. Resigned to the fact that even the latter was ultimately out of my price range, I decided to head back to town. On my way back, I passed a woman manning a buffet table of severed roasted pig heads. "Heads!!!" she yelled, advertising her goods, "does anyone want to buy a head?!? Good deal for you!" I cursed myself for spoiling my appetite by eating breakfast before I'd come. Another edifying Ecuadorian morning.

Bienvenidos a Baños

2007-12-19T09:26:00.000-08:00

With the end of my fall teaching duties in my proverbial rear-view mirror, I set off for a month of Ecuador exploration with my partners in crime, ex-roomies, Erin and Robin. We took a night bus to Baños, a small town 7 hours north east of Cuenca, famous for its volcano heated natural hot springs. Night buses always make for a night of fitful sleep under the best of circumstances, and our attempts at slumber were not aided by the 5 AM cuing up of the insidious “techno-cumbia” soundtrack which is the default music choice for all long distance Ecuadorian bus rides. This Colombia-originated musical genre pairs Mariachi with disco to make its own unique vile fusion. The theme of this particular techno-cumbia mix seemed to be emigration from Ecuador judging by the peppily sung chorus of one song:

“I am an immigrant, I have no pa-pers,
I am an immigrant, I have no pa-pers…”
(spoken):
“But I haven’t committed any sins, amigo!”

..and the lyrics of another ditty:

“I’m going to Spain, la la la,
I’ve lived here long enough…long enough indeed!
Life will be very enjoyabe there! La la la…”

As we passed through the small towns outside Baños, we saw the morning “commuter rush” of children plodding obediently through the cold to reach their school. All the kids, regardless of age, sported the same uniform: for the boys, long sleeve white shirts with matching white pants, and a knee-length black woolen poncho overtop. The girls all wore ankle-length black skirts with white t-shirts and white shawls with thin black stripes over their shoulders.

We eventually passed their school—an extremely humble affair bordered by a large cement wall adorned with faded paint-chipped murals. Only one of the inspirational phrases was still visible amongst the disintegrating scenes of rainbows and dancing children:
“The foundation of knowledge is a fear of God.”
Inspiration, indeed.

Our first day in Baños, we headed out to explore the nearby Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Agua. The Basilica, as per its name, is dedicated to the patron saint of Baños, the Virgin of the Holy water. The inside of the cathedral was adorned with large scale graphic paintings depicting the Virgin rescuing people from a wide variety of natural disasters and near-death accidents (burning buildings, eruptions, car crashes, broken bridges, drownings, etc.) which had occurred in the region.

The upstairs of the church was no less fascinating. A museum of sorts, it housed the most eclectically bizarre assortment of goods. One room incongruously displayed, among other things: old wigs, Quinciñera celebration dresses, antique film projectors, paintings of sad clowns, pre-Colombian pottery, and shrunken heads. Another reminded me of the mysterious and rarely visited “back room” of my eccentric high school biology teacher, Mr. Conley, what with its collection of various deformed, pickled animals shoved uncomfortably into formaldehyde filled jars. Double nosed bull faces, rabbit fetuses and two headed snakes composed the ranks of the malformed animals. All specimens had a small tag board card beside them which severely reminded visitors to “¡No toque!” (Don’t touch!) I tried to resist.

Also in this room was a collection of haphazardly stuffed animals—all the work, apparently, of a severely novice and/or drunken taxidermist. The birds, for example, were left without the traditional glass eye adornments. Thus, the once majestic toucan stood perched, sad and molting, with his empty sockets forlorn in their new-found blindness. In another particularly egregious example of preservation, a small box turtle was prepared with just 4 skeletal limbs sticking out of its shell, but without the traditional inclusion of a head. A label beside the decapitated creature informed: “These turtles are frequent victims of illegal trafficking because of their vibrant coloring. They live in rivers.” Victims of illegal trafficking… yes, their heads are apparently in hot demand.

The museum was on the upper floor of an old cloister surrounding a lush garden. The “outside” patio and corridor that connected the various exhibit rooms was also festively decorated. One wall contained more plaques than an over-eager dentist for his local little-league team. Though ostensibly prizes for good works, or achievements of various civic, academic and athletic endeavors, each plaque simply read: “Award of the Virgin!” I wondered how one could actually get a prize for being the “best virgin” (i.e. - “I’ve not known, in the Biblical sense, more people than you!”)

The other primary decorative theme in the corridor was a series of odd portraits, all with grand, religious sounding titles, but which appeared to depict only drunkards, prostitutes, or mentally challenged individuals. Each painting’s subject was more down-trodden, toothless, and drooling than the one before. Nonetheless, their names (i.e. - Antonio el Sagrado) proclaimed a grandeur that their one-booted, flea-riddled attire belied. It seemed, in this sense, a very democratic work.

All in all, I left the exhibit confident my 50 cent entry fee was one of the best entertainment investments I’d ever made.

After dinner, we headed to the outdoor volcanic-heated pools from which Baños
derives its name. An evening dip in the “Piscinas de Virgin” made for quite the spectacular sight what with the 300 foot waterfall cascading down the cliffside directly behind it. Robin, a firm believer in the restorative powers of daily evening baths, was in heaven. I, on the other hand, have never truly understood the soothing effects of stewing in one’s own filthy water, but I conceded that under these circumstances, there might be something to the whole night time bath routine.

The following day, our trio rented bicycles from a smiley vendor to pedal the 20 km to the nearby village of Rio Verde and its famous “Pilón del Diablo” (Devil’s sink) waterfall. I probably should have been suspicious when the old woman running the rental agency issued us a complimentary wrench, pump, and inner tube with our helmets, “for when you have problems,” she explained helpfully. I noted to Erin that, given my lack of any bicycle repairing expertise beyond chain repositioning, if it came down to needing a wrench, we were going to be hitching home anyways, so why bother?

“Ok….” Said the owner, accepting the repair materials back gingerly, “I mean, you probably won’t have any trouble, I guess?....” The interrogative tone of her assurance gave me pause.

Indeed, a mere 15 minutes into our journey, my bicycle decided that while it would allow either the front, or the back tire to rotate (depending on which I kicked), permitting both to function at the same time was asking too much. Thus, we hailed a pickup truck, returned to town in the back of the cab, and exchanged my decrepit hunk of junk for another fair chariot. My new bike, promisingly enough, looked as if it might have been manufactured post-Carter administration.

Our second attempt at adventure was far more successful (though my chain reapplication skills were still required several times with Robin’s bike). The route was almost all downhill or flat, so it was an easy, gorgeous ride to our final destination. We stopped periodically along the way to take pictures of the many waterfalls that dotted the steep, jetting hillsides to the canyon below.

At one “cascada” (waterfall), there was a small red open-aired tram which ferried people back and forth over the looming gorge below. It was run by an old hippy man with rainbow colored headband which tamed his Madusa-esk pile of dreadlocks. He lounged in the deck chair in his purple linen tie-dyed cargo pants and requested via walkie-talkie that the operator on the other side “send over the basket, man!” when we were ready to go.

I found the experience quite exciting given our impressive altitude, standing position, and the surrounding views, but the short trip was all in a days work for the two little girls along with us, commuting home from school. “Watch it,” the 8 year old warned her 5 year old sister “that white girl wants to take a picture.”

On the other side of the river, we wandered the cobble-stoned paths, admiring the lackadaisical calves which lounged beside it, and the pint-sized monkey who flirted and bounded from branch to branch above our heads.

Late in the afternoon, we finally arrived to the Pilón del Diablo waterfall. A suspension bridge across the stream below afforded magnificent views of the cauldron of angry white mist the Cascada created at its base. Afterwards, we enjoyed ice cream cones at a nearby shelter with a group of mountaineers from the U.S. and Europe, in country to summit the nearby Cotopaxi glacial volcano. I tried to contain my enthusiasm as I subtly interrogated one of the group’s members as to just how he managed to finagle a way into a job that has the description: “Do outdoor activities in Alaska in the summer and in Arizona in the winter. Side trips to foreign countries to obtain more adventuring experience are encouraged. Get paid for it.” I complimented him on both scoring a dream occupation, and the agreeable-climate following migratory patterns of a retired senior citizen.

My last morning in Baños, I got up early and hiked up to the Bellavista view point on a cliff above the Piscinas de Virgin. At night, a large white lit-up cross illuminates the hillside—seemingly floating miraculously above the pools. In the light of day, it was a somewhat less spectacular affair—just two plain gray metal beams fastened together above a chain-link-fence-enclosed guard tower. Praise the Lord! Still, it was an impressive, worthwhile trek for the fabulous views it afforded of the city below.

Baños is nestled in amongst a cluster of dramatically tall Andes peaks, and in the mornings, a cozy cloud layer ensconces the small hamlet. The clouds lifted slowly as I ascended, however, gradually revealing the picture perfect vista of quaint little Baños below the surrounding mountains. The tranquility of the solitary scene was somewhat altered by someone’s decision to cue an insanely loud mix CD of Andean flute pop-song covers. The music may have been part of the commencement of the Baños celebration weekend to come. Whatever the reason, I can’t imagine how loud it must have been at ground level if on my cliff-top perch, even I could hear clearly the unmistakable melodies of “My Heart Will Go On,” “Hey Jude,” “Unchained Melody,” and “The Sound of Silence.” Though the latter is one of Simon and Garfunkle’s more admirable works, I would have appreciated the genuine article more than a pan flute rendition of the 60s hit.

Chao, Baños.

Vilcabamba

2007-12-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

To celebrate our first teaching responsibilities-free week, and my semi-successful completion of a full ¼ century of life, Robin and I headed south this past week to the small Andes hamlet of Vilcabamba. It was a breath takingly scenic journey through the dramatic rolling green mountains. The journey involved an evening bus transfer at the somewhat less than scenic Lojas bus terminal however. I was eager to be on our way since all it had to offer was a hungry, mangy, pregnant dog prowling for scraps with teats as big as dejected, inverted traffic cones. Sadly, she was the most aesthetically pleasing entity in the station.

When we got into Vilcabamba, it was dark already, but luckily, Robin had made reservations for us at the Izchaluma Hostel—a beautiful spa resort perched cozily up in the hills overlooking the town. For just 9$/night we got full reign of this spectacular joint with its lagoon-like swimming pool, life size chest set, evening bar area with pool, ping pong, hammocks and a fire pit, free breakfasts featuring fresh squeezed juices and crepes made to order, and decently clean cabin-style sleeping quarters outside which a choir of exotic birds sang to wake us in the morning.

On Tuesday, our friends Jason and Sarah got in to town. They were staying down in Vilcabamba proper, so Robin and I used our hotel’s free mountain bikes to ride down the mountain to meet them. We all went for a little hike in the Rumi Wilco Nature Preserve—a jungle ensconced Nature trail with helpfully labeled signs identifying the various species of flora along the way. Despite the well tended paths, we still managed somehow to lead ourselves astray, wandering down various trails that inevitably culminated in farmers’ gates. At one barricade however, we simply moved the door aside and wandered out into the inviting green meadow beyond. As the four of us sat in the middle of this open area, surrounded by dramatic jutting Andes peaks and wild, untamed groves of jungle vegetation, it was easy to imagine the dilapidated cattle gate we’d just crawled across was in fact some sort of time portal that had transported us back to a prehistoric era, and we were the only humans alive. Just us, and the jungle… and maybe some dinosaurs. Though unlikely, I suggested we keep our eyes peeled for roving Viloceraptors, just in case.

The following day, the four of us went on a fabulous hike in the near by Podacarpus National Park led by our trusty guide, José. He took us to an “unofficial” entry point, meaning we got off the bus after an hour ride in the middle of apparently nowhere, and immediately began scaling the jungle vegetated hill side to our left. The hike was all through virgin jungle forest—the vines enveloping us Jumangi style at times. In the space of this one National Park, there were over 6,000 plant species and 630 animal species. We saw mostly avian fauna—an owl, and a humming bird so large it sounded like a small motor boat was running when ever it changed nectar sucking locales. There was a lot of evidence of the many “osos” (bears) living in the area too—mostly in the form of poop in the trail, but also paw prints, and strategically clawed down vegetation they’d feasted upon. I was perfectly fine with the fact that we didn’t have a real life sighting of any of these critters though. I asked José if the bears often used the paths we were walking on, since we’d seen so many reminders of their presence.

“Oh yes!” he told me, “we use the paths during the day, and the bears use them at night.”
“Ah,” I said, “so then, you are good with the sharing, yes?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a good arrangement worked out,” he assured me with a twinkling grin.
We saw several other animal tracks in the muddy trail—one which looked quite different from the familiar shape of the bear print. When we asked José what animal had left them, he responded with an unknown vocabulary word.

“And what kind of the animal is this being?” we inquired curiously.
“You know!” he told us, as if we’d inquired about an animal as common as a house cat, “it’s the one that looks kind of like a cross between a mule and an elephant!” Our quartet exchanged puzzled glances as if to ask one another ‘do you know what he’s talking about?’ No one did, but we all had our eyes peeled for donkeys with trunks for the remainder of the adventure.

The hike culminated in an awesome 360 degree view of the unfettered jungle hills surrounding us. We rested at our vista point for a while—drinking water and soaking up the magnificent surroundings. The hike back to the highway was relatively short in comparison to our assent since it was all steep down hill. Sarah made the time pass even faster with her amusing anecdotes describing some of the characters that populate the rest of the Peace Corps ranks in Ecuador. For example, the illusive “Jungle Jim”--a skinny, rabbit slaying, perpetually pot smoking, glasses wearing, Nascar fan who abandoned his steady stint as a consultant to the FDA to live out in the jungle, 6 hours away from what anyone could generously dub the nearest “town.” Visually I was imagining a nerdy, more slender version of Marlin Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now. I asked Sarah if he gets to keep the “Jungle” prefix title to his name after he’s done with his Peace Corp service, and she said she wasn’t sure, but she’d look into it.

On the bus ride back to town, we all enjoyed the combination of stunning scenery and the steady soundtrack of loud 80s power pop blasting from the speakers. A Meatloaf ballad came on, so I posed my friend Alexis’ favorite theoretical question: “what is it that Meatloaf wouldn’t do for love?” (i.e.- “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that…. No I won’t do that.”) Alexis has always been convinced that he wouldn’t pay for his girlfriend to go to nursing school, but Sarah thought it was that he wouldn’t go to the convenience store late at night to buy his girlfriend a Dr.Pepper. The mystery remains….

Back at the hostel, we all sat around the pool, lazily reading in the afternoon sunshine. I was enjoying the first story in a collection by Aldous Huxley in which a pair of noble midgets give birth to a regular sized son who becomes an abusive child, driving his diminutive parents, eventually, to suicide. In the evening, we all had another delicious dinner, in which conversation was held at top volume so as to be heard over the incessant Andean flouting trio playing loudly in the background. Though generally a fan of live music, I quickly began to feel perturbed by the rain stick virtuoso’s inability to hold a steady beat. When one of the “band” members came around later seeking donations, Jason made some feeble mimed excuse to communicate he didn’t have any change, sorry. I told him he should have taken the "honesty is the best policy" approach: “Well, I would donate, but frankly, I found your music a bit obnoxious.” My friends surprised me with a post dinner treat of a fruit crêpe upon which “Feliz Cumpleaños, Alisha” was written in whipping cream. Luckily it was tasty enough that I forgave the chef’s spelling error.

For our last day in Vilcabamba, Robin somehow convinced me to sign up for a 4 hour horse ride through the mountains. Though I appreciate a horse’s nobility in the Gulliver’s Travels
Houynhnmland sense, my actual experiences on group horse rides in the past have been somewhat underwhelming in their timidity. Generally, they’ve consisted of plodding slowly along on dejected animals mere days away from the glue factory, while being treated to the inevitable view of the horse in front of you voiding itself on a regular basis. This experience, however, was anything but dull. Break neck pace running, galloping along mountain ridges, and river crossings were all par for the course for these lively horses. It was quite exhilarating, as long as I remembered to focus more on the excitement factor, and less on the ‘crap I hope I don’t fall off this horse/the cliff’ factor.

My horse, Asabache, had the temperament of a democratic presidential candidate—strong willed, a charmer, an insatiable appetite for food and canoodling with the mares, seemingly independent minded but really needed someone at the reigns to keep him under control, and, most importantly, he loved to run. By the end of our excursion, I was actually feeling quite comfortable with the fast paced tempo of our journey. I particularly enjoyed the end of our trip when we came running into the small town of Vilcabamba. As we flew past the brightly colored adobe dwellings, I felt very authentically cowgirl, and ready for my Blazing Saddles II audition.

I was not nearly as sore the following day as I thought I’d be either, which was a pleasant surprise. Luckily, there was not much on the agenda that day besides braving the 7 hour journey back to Cuenca. I shared my new "Flight of the Concords" CD with Sarah who was pants wettingly appreciative of its comedic potential, especially with respect to their classic tune “Business Time” about a married couple’s seductive weekly routine (“then we sort out the recycling/which is not part of the foreplay/ but is also very important….”). I made her a copy of it for Christmas.

This evening, Erin, Robin and I are headed north to Baños on the night bus to commence the December month of travel. Classes don’t begin again here until the 7th of January, so the plan is to spend a bit of time in the eastern jungle (then a few days relaxin while our intestines recover from the inevitable strange parasites we’ll contract there), then head up to the Latacunga region where there’s a highly praised loop of villages you can walk between around a crater lake filled volcano. One of my college roommates is coming down on the 27th as well to visit the research station in northern Ecuador where she studied the year after graduation. She discovered a new species of frog while working there, so I’m hoping to get an in-person sighting of the illusive Esther-opolis amphibian (or whatever she named it) when I go to visit her. Feliz Navidad, indeed!

Movin' Out...

2007-12-10T15:11:00.000-08:00

What with the impending New Year on the horizon, I thought I’d preemptively celebrate by finding a new dwelling. I recently moved in with three friends, Katie, Jessica and Maureen, to their adorable home just north of my old place. It’s the upstairs floor of a quiet, gated home on a street with little traffic. The common areas—a small kitchen, and a large combination dining/living area—are painted vibrant primary colors—as if the walls were constructed from large scale Legos. The bedrooms are likewise brightly painted, in various citrus shades. I’m betting the combination of festively hued surroundings, and 3 of the most hilarious, easy going girls I know in town, will contribute to a quality of life far superior than that if I’d stayed living with my old devil landlady, Yolanda.

When breaking the news of my departure to Yolanda, what I should have said was: “I’ve decided to move because you steal my stuff, the downstairs neighbors play Snoop Dog until 5 in the morning, you look at me judgmentally every time you see me and remember I’m not in church, you invited another 2-3 people to live in our house, with all their belongings, hoping we wouldn’t notice the presence of an extra fridge in the kitchen, and their stash of rotting potatoes they decided to store in the cabinets with the dishes, and you’re price gauging me for the privilege of all of the above.” Lacking the gumption and vocabulary for the above soliloquy, however, we instead had the following awkward, halting conversation:

Me: (fake happy) Hello! Well there, I have something to be discussing with you! I’m am going myself from this house.
Yolanda: What!?! Why?
Me: um….. the neighbors. They are so much with the noisy.
Yolanda: No, don’t worry! They were evicted yesterday! Now everything will be quiet!
Me: um… Well, still with the noisy from the dog
Yolanda: no, they took the dog too!
Me: um…. Well, the other dog then.
Yolanda: There is no other dog.
Me: right. Well, I tell already to the friends that I say bye-bye here, and hello there. Nothing I can be doing now….
Yolanda: What a shame! When will you leave? January? February?
Me: on the tomorrow I leave myself
Yolanda: Tomorrow?!? I’ve got a better idea! You can move into the other room, and then everyone will be happy! (gesturing to the fishbowl of an enclosure with glass windows surrounding it on all sides facing the common area)
Me: (shocked she would consider this a viable ‘solution’) As I have said in the past just a second ago, tomorrow with the leaving.
Yolanda (resigned, and handing me a shrink-wrapped copy of the 10 Commandments.)
well, take this, so you´ll always remember my house!
Me: what is this? (as in, "why are you giving this to me?" not "what are the 10 commandments?")
Yolanda: They´re from the Bible. THE BI-BLE (spoken slowly, as if I´d never heard of it).
Me: yes, I have heard of this Bible already, you! But you know this belief is a thing of you, not me, correct?
Yolanda: Who said anything about religion? It´s just a gift so you can practice your Spanish!
Me: yeah. well. thanks, I suppose (setting it inadvertently down on the stove burner beside me.)

There were a number of end of the year events this week to mark the last of classes for the regular cycles. I had a bit of drama in one of my teenage classes though on the first day of their finals. They had to do the listening section on their exam, so after distributing their papers, I went down the hall briefly to borrow a CD player from a fellow teacher. While I was out of the room, on student, Alex apparently thought it would be a good idea to try to hide the CD. While in the midst of his high-jinx however, he accidentally broke it. When I came back and saw the offending cracked CD in the case, I was livid.

“What the hell is this?!?” I demanded, narrowly avoiding dropping an F-bomb as I held the cracked CD aloft and stared sternly at Jose and Alex, my prime suspects. “Are you kidding me?!?” I continued, fuming. “Fine. I guess you little barbarians won’t be doing the listening section of the exam then. Automatic 10 points off for everyone! You utter one word, on the rest of it and I’m ripping your paper up and feeding it to goats! Just try me.” I listened to myself in horror, realizing I’d inadvertently transformed into one of the two demonic substitute teachers I used to dread in elementary school. Though not technically related, Mrs. Crow and Mrs. Hawk were always thought of, and feared, as a duo of sorts by the students of Chapman Hill Elementary School—joined, as they were, by their similar predatory avian themed surnames, and hatred of small children. No matter how seemingly innocuous the planned activities, a day under either of these two embittered old woman’s tutelage promised to culminated in a screaming lecture on the impish, unsalvageable nature of our 8 year-old souls. Thus, I tried to back pedal with my class. Telling them in as calm a voice as I could muster after class that I’d decide what to do the following day, and that they should all have a pleasant evening studying. When they handed in their writing section of their exams, at the bottom of one girl’s paper was an informant testimonial: “Please do not say it was me, teacher, but it was Alex who was to break the CD, and friend Jose who try to close of the door and say to you ‘not come in yet!’ Please don’t say it is me that do of the tell!”

As punishment the following day, I made my little offenders write a 500 word essay entitled “Why I was acting like a child.” On Friday, Alex and Jose were there waiting sheepishly with their essays. The first line of Alex’s essay pretty much said it all: “Teacher, I am sorry for of the stupid.” They went on like that apologizing, lauding me as an instructor and assuring me it was a momentary fluke of retardation. “You know I no a bad boy, teacher,” explained, Jose.

Swallowing my putative pride, I went out to pizza with the girls and Alex after giving them their final grades. Alex, I thought, would be reluctant to go since I’d just failed him, but he was surprisingly cheerful once we got to Pizza Hut. I was worried we’d have nothing to talk about as a group, but the time passed quite quickly as I explained American “pranks” to them. Alex brought the topic up by explaining that, for his older brother’s birthday that evening, they were going to drive around town, “throwing bombs” at people.

“Bombs?” I asked, incredulously.
“Yes! The bombs of the water!” he explained to me.
“Oh! You mean like those, filled with water?” I asked, pointing to some balloons adorning a nearby birthday table.
“Sí sí! It’s very funny the bombs!” he told me. “And teacher! Is it true about the paper of the toilet in America for joke?”
“Oh yes,” I explained, leaning back in my chair, ready to deliver my lecture on the ancient cultural practices of the infamous Estados Unidos to my captive audience. “It is a common prank to throw toilet paper all through the trees. In America, we call it T.P.-ing: T for toilet, and P for paper. Yes, it is very hard to clean up. Especially where I live, where it tends to rain, thus disintegrating the toilet paper. Dis-in-ti-grat-ing. It means to fall apart, or in this case, to melt.”

Jose nodded intently. “Dis-in-ti-grat-ing toilet paper…” he repeated slowly.
“But T.P.-ing is not the worst of the pranks,” I went on, encouraged by his new-found ability to focus. “No, it is worse when you put a brown paper bag by someone’s front door that you have filled with dog poop. Then you ring the doorbell—you know the thing you touch that says ‘ding dong!’ to let someone know you’re at their house?—Then, you quickly light the bag on fire, and run away. When they come to the door, they see the fire, and they step on it to put it out. Then, their shoe is covered in poop.”

“¡Qué ásco! (how gross!) Alex said, smiling appreciatively, “but good idea! Teacher! Are you doing this to many friends?”
“No, I myself have not completed this particular prank,” I explained. “But one of my best friends did it, and she got arrested. So be careful.” He assured me he would. Thus I bid farewell to my young pupils feeling slightly more positive about them as a whole than I had before.

There were several more end of the term/December fiestas at the start of this month. One was a combination birthday celebration for another teacher, Stella, and I, and a despedida (going away party) for Jenny, Megan and Erin. I had a pleasant time at the start of the festivities at Jenny and Megan’s place. Stella gave me a copy of her Flight of the Concords CD—the goofy duo from New Zealand that has pioneered such ground-breaking genres as ‘gangster folk.’

After about an hour and a half there, however, someone had the less than brilliant idea that we move to a karaoke bar. The walk there is a bit fuzzy in my mind, by I distinctly remembering shuffling down Calle Larga with Erin and Sarah, when I heard a trio of British guys behind us say “let’s see where these birds are going.” Finding their explicit trolling efforts both insulting and blatant, I may have slurred some sarcastic comments their way about understanding their crazy British ‘bird’ code reference, and coupled this with some disparaging remarks about one of their ‘mates’ use of the popped collar look.

“Why are you being so mean?” one of them asked, nearly running into a trash can. This too, I may well have mocked, resulting in his friend informing us they didn’t want to follow us any more anyways.
“Oh, damn! I’m so upset that you won’t be trying to rape us,” I said faux-disappointedly as Sarah and Erin and I headed down the dimly lit Escalinata stairway to the river below.
“Well not anymore!!!” One of them yelled back in an extremely misguided attempt at a retort.

This insult which, when parsed by even the most novice of linguists, basically boils down to: ‘I was going to try to assult you, but now you’ve gone and insulted me, so you’re punishment is I won’t be trying that anymore! Ha! That’ll show you!’ I helpfully pointed out the semantic flaws in their insults. “Why, who says English chivalry is dead?” I wondered aloud.

The karaoke joint, our ultimate destination, was somewhat of an underwhelming affair. Now, dive karaoke can be immensely pleasurable under the right circumstances, but the right circumstances, these were not. This place had a policy, for example, where each table took turns singing songs, so that each time someone from our group would go with a classic party-starting 80s pop tune, we’d then have to suffer through 7 rounds of Ecuadorian love ballads before it was our turn again. To make matters worse, the lyrics broadcast on the screen were backed not by a ridiculous music video, or even a Technicolor light show, but rather by tranquil nature scenes of Ecuador’s diverse wilderness. Thus, it made for somewhat of an incongruous pairing when someone dragged all the females in our group up on stage to sing ‘Girls Just Wanna’ Have Fun’ and the words scrolled across the foreground in front of various looping videos of ducks swimming tranquilly in Andes Mountain Lakes. I adopted my time-tested reaction in response to the whole ‘I’m trapped here, and want to leave’ scene—I fell asleep. Two words: Party. Animal.

Puppies and panflutes

2007-11-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Today as I was walking to work, in the space of 2 blocks, I saw: a gang of middle aged men hocking puppies (one of whom got confused about the game plan apparently, and had a small turtle in one hand instead, also, I’m assuming, for sale); an old man inexplicably running down the street with an armless distraught looking manikin under one arm, a desk chair under the other; and a small, ice-cream eating child looking intriguingly on as a dozen insatiably horny mice copulated in a cage before him. It was a toss up as to which was most disturbing.

Earlier in the day I went to a “conference” presented on the indigenous music of Ecuador. It was given by this supposedly famous ethno-musicologist who puttered away on various bone and cane derived instruments while lauding the virtues of pre-Colombian scales.

I know I should have been in awe of his ability to coax 3+ octaves out of a fist-sized ceramic ram, but really, after his relentless parade of pan fluting, all I could think about was one of my favorite “Toothpaste for Dinner” comics. In it, a flow chart helpfully aids the curious viewer to answer the age-old question “do I need a panflute?” If one answers “no,” the flow chart clearly directs you to the end result box: “no panflute.” If, however, one answers “yes,” the flow chart takes the liberty of routing you through a helpful “no you don’t” intermediary step before finally arriving to the same conclusion, “no panflute.” My mental consumption with such pressing matters further convinced me of my unsuitability for the rigors of the realm of serious academia.

Of higher entertainment value was the subsequent discussion in Spanish class about how to celebrate the end of the term. In lew of the traditional pizza party, our teacher, Maria Alena, has suggested our intimate class of female students congregate at her house Friday evening, have some refreshments, and then invite some male strippers over.

“I’ll call my friends,” she explained, always the coordinating hostess. “I know lots of them. Maybe they’ll give us a discount. Now then, what should we do for food? How about everyone brings a little snack and some beverages, potluck style?” We nodded our heads in agreement, the shocked, girlish smiles of titillation still on our stunned faces in response to her earlier proposition. “Let’s coordinate,” she continued, leaving nothing to chance. “Now we should all bring the same type of alcohol, because otherwise you end up with gin, vodka, beer, wine—it’s a mess. Does anyone object to Cuba Libres? Anyone? Anyone? Good. Then we’ll all bring a bit of rum and coke and have a pleasant little celebration. Thanks for a great term, everyone! Class adjourned!” I love this country.

This is the last official week of classes that I have to teach too, with the exception of the final Saturday class on Dec. 8^th. Tomorrow I’m beginning finals with my 201 level. Some of my lazier, more inertia inclined students are finally beginning to regret a bit their utter lack of interest in anything resembling studying and/or homework over the course of the term. Taking unwarranted pity on them, I last week offered them the opportunity to do an extra credit assignment in a no-doubt fruitless attempt to recoup some of their many lost points. The assignment was to talk about your family’s holiday traditions—what you used to do in the past (i.e.- I used to believe in Santa Clause), and what you think you will probably do this coming holiday season. Some of the entries I’ve received thus far are straight out of the David Sedaris “Jesus Shaves” story. Jairo’s descriptions of Palm Sunday and Christmas, for example, were sheer poetry:

“Other celebration is the holy week in tribute to the passion and the death of the Jesus Christ, in long ago, these days not working and everybody just heard sacra music. It was forbidden to hear other music. In side of this week, in Sunday of branch, its celebrated the arrived of the Jesus Christ to Jerusalem. the people buys big branch knitted of palm tree and goes to the church to bless the branch.But the celebrations near of Christmas, is the novena and the pass of the child (refer to Jesus Christ) celebrated in Cuenca nine days before to December 24. It’s celebrates the announce, gestation and birth of Jesus.”

As a reward for his diligent effort throughout the term, and for illuminating me as to the fame of the lesser known virgin, Poncio Pilate, I simply wrote “excellent job!” at the bottom of his paper. He is, perhaps tragically, my best student.

Turkey/Encebello de pescado Day...

2007-11-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

The week back from the Shaman experience began as post-enlightenment experiences usually do—with lots of itching. There was little question as to who had gone on the excursion Monday—easily identifiable as we were by our incessant unwitting scratching of every bodily surface that had been torturously devoured by the locus-like hordes of angry, hungry little gnats swarming around our camp site. These deceptively innocuous looking creatures, though small and unintimidating at first glance, turned out to be ruthless blood suckers who feasted liberally on our defenseless skin, leaving us blotchy and welted in their wake. My testimony as to the awe-inspiring wonder of the weekend to my fellow teachers was thus diminished slightly by my uncontrollable need to claw at my neck, arms, and hands as I delivered my glowing review. The bites quickly diminished in their intensity, however, leaving only pleasant memories of the journey in the days to come.

Over Thanksgiving week—though its a holiday obviously unacknowledged in these parts—there was still a celebratory air about the city in anticipation, and in the wake of, Ecuador’s triumphant performance in Wednesday’s soccer match against Peru. The final score was 5 to 1, I believe—a much needed self-esteem booster following a series of demoralizing international matches.

Our downstairs neighbors took the occasion to celebrate by hosting an all night, loudly serenaded, fiesta. The design of our apartment building is such that their living room opens up to a large vertical shaft which goes all the way to the roof of the complex. This architectural anomaly I think was meant to maximize direct day light to each dwelling. It also means, unfortunately, that by opening the window to my bedroom, which borders this open-air shaft, I can peer directly down into their living area below. The musical soundtrack to my neighbors’ all-night celebration was thus conveniently blasted directly into my room as if I too were an invited guest.

Not wanting to be the curmudgeonly party-pooper neighbor, I permitted the festivities to continue unmolested, even as I attempted to go to seep around 1 AM. By 4:30 however, my stores of Buddhist patience were exhausted, as was my tolerance for the looping Snoop Dog/ 50 Cent sound track. Opening my window, I leaned my head out over their living room couch below and plaintively requested in Spanish: “Please, to the Lord, could you be turning off of the music? It is for I am having to work in the morning that come very soon, and I is so very tired, please?”

“Oh! Of course!” they offered, after my request finally pierced their 100 decibel tunes. They were so pleasant about it—as if the possibility a neighbor might have to work on a Thursday had simply never occurred to them, and now that they knew, of course they would respect my please for silence! I was so pleased with their compliance, but my new-found respect was short-lived as once again, around 6 am, it was time for Return of the Snoop--The most insidious sequel ever.

Red eyed and weary, I greeted Yolanda sleepily when I shuffled into the kitchen to make my oh-so-delicious daily cup of instant coffee later that morning

“Good day!” she said enthusiastically.
“Yes, I guess. But I am feeling much of the tired because sleep never is coming for me last night,” I explained.
“Oh. Right, because it was so cold?” she offered tentatively.

“No no. Because for the fiesta that is lasting to so late late with the music of the Snoop and the 50 Cent that is coming from the ground below!” I clarified. “They is so happy Ecuador is winning of the soccer game. But I is feeling so sad, because of the music of crap which is never stopping like the devil,” I continued.

“Why, you should have told me!” She said, helpfully, “then I could have talked to them, and asked them to turn it down!”

“Yes, but the hour—it is so late, and you sleep peace like a baby,” I said, “so I is telling them myself to please for to stop of the devil noise, and they tell to me ‘yes yes! ok,’ for a little bit, but then they is forgetting their promise, and returning to the music. I so tired. I hope, in the future, the Ecuador is never winning again with the soccer.”

The latter I meant jokingly, and thought I said with a smile. But perhaps, I didn’t possess the energy to properly harness my facial muscles into a proper ‘ha ha! This is a funny comment said in jest!’ communicative facial expression I’d intended. Either way, the latter statement proved sufficiently blasphemous to warrant a stare of shock from Yolanda as if I’d just slapped her in the face and suggest we hog-tie the pope for fun this weekend.

“No,” she chided, shaking her head, “never say that.”
“Sorry,” I apologize weakly, “Please--I just need of the coffee.”

The day turned out to be not as painful as I’d feared, however, because I had quite the agreeable morning culminating in an inadvertent Thanksgiving celebratory feast. My Spanish teacher, Maria Alena, had already been planning on do a cooking day to mark the end of the term, so Robin, Erin and I went with her to the market to gather the ingredients while several of our classmates went back to her apartment to ready the kitchen. The plan was to make Encebello de pescado—a fish stew that’s poured over cooked yuka. Yuka is a member of the rooty starch family (though more menacingly pointy than their more jolly, rounded potato cousins), and thus, after being boiled and tenderized for a bit with a pestle, I could almost pretend they were mashed potatoes.

In the market, we went from vendor to vendor, inspecting the quality of onions, spices, and fresh fish, before our amalgamation of ingredients was complete. As we exited the market in search of a taxi, we passed through the live animal section—the majority of which I assumed were headed for someone’s dinner table. Squished drearily between the confines of fellow chicken, geese, rabbit and duck however, were several cages of fatalistic looking kittens. Alarmed, I asked Maria Amena: “And the little cats? Are they for um…. (forgetting the word for pets) “friends,” or for snacks?”

“Ha ha!” she assured me laughing, “pets, of course!” I smiled, not wanting to be culturally judgmental, but feeling secretly relieved that at least kittens weren’t destined for the oven in this country. “Unless, of course, you have asthma,” she added as an afterthought, “then, to cure it, you boil the cat, and eat its fat. But not a kitten! It’s better the older, chubbier cats--they’re greasier.” Well, I guess PETA will be pleased to know at least the infant felines are spared seasoning via spice rack in Ecuador.

Back at Maria Alena’s apartment, we all got to work chopping and peeling to the best of our abilities. Erin and Lauren helpfully, they thought, did their best to separate the platter-sized cross sections of tuna from their skin, before being chided that the skin was the best part, and that it too was destined for the stew. As we were about to put the yuka pot on to boil, Megan let out a yelp of disgust as a ladyfinger-sized cockroach scurried across the counter, on to the oven range.

“What?!? What?!?” Maria Alena asked, alarmed
“It’s the cockroach, and he come to live by our food!” Megan explained.

“Oh!” Maria Alena said, unconcerned when she spotted the unwelcome guest. “Bad bad! Time for you to die now!” and she prodded the bug with a fork towards the lit gas flame on the stove top. The creature squirmed helplessly as it approached the burner, before finally resigning itself to a fiery death, flipping upside down, and ceasing its flailing. “Ah! Good!” Maria Alena said, satisfied. “Now then, who has the tomatoes?”

The dinner turned out to be quite scrumptious, despite the unwanted intrusion of our insect friend. Over the mashed yuka, we poured the soupy Ahi-tuna filled concoction, then topped it of with diced tomatoes and cilantro, thinly sliced red onions, and freshly squeezed lime. We lifted our glasses of local Pilsner brand ale in thanks for the meal, and dug in. Unfortunately, the majority of us had 3:00 classes we eventually had to scurry off to. The post-Thanksgiving meal siesta is a ritual I indeed missed. Unconsciousness, when one is stuffed and slightly buzzed, turns out a highly preferable option to walking out into a monsoon-like downpour on your way to illuminate ungrateful teenagers as to the finer points of relative clauses.

I was exhausted, as always, when I finally arrived home after teaching my evening classes. In the kitchen, if found Jason waiting expectantly, a big smile on his face, determined to have a celebratory evening.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said lacklusterly. “How was your day?”
“It was Ok,” he said, anticipation in his voice, “but it’s not over yet!”
“Oh no?” I said wearily, “what else you got planned?”

“Going out for Thanksgiving drinks! With you! We’re all going!” he said enthusiastically, gesturing to our quartet of roommates. “It’s Thanksgiving! We’ve got to celebrate!” Erin, doped out on the Codeine her doctor had recently prescribed her to aid her painful chest cough, was initially unenergetic in response to the idea. And Robin, whose default answer to any proposed social event is “no,” also required some prodding. Eventually however, with the promise of cab fair on him, Jason convinced us all to go.

Our destination was Percal, a bar famous in Cuenca for its notoriously stiff, (and at $1 each, affordable) Cuba Libre drinks. A round was ordered for all us low class drunkards, whereas Robin opted for a somewhat higher class “I’m a wicked smart girl who’s currently degrading herself by hanging out with alcoholics” gin and tonic beverage.

We were the only gringos in the small two story joint, and were thus serenaded by a quartet of drunken old men—each with their own guitar—who burst out into a series of impressively harmonic mariachi-like numbers. As for our small band of roommates, we speculated on such classic Thanksgiving topics as: what we were all grateful for, and what kind of animal, given our druthers, would we choose to have taxidermied and positioned with a weapon on our mantle? (Answer #1: good friends, family, and cheap Cuba Libres; Answer #2: a kitten on its hind legs, its front arms raised menacingly above its head, with a poisonous blow dart in its mouth).

The rest of the weekend provided more opportunities for celebration, highlighted as it was by the following events:

-thoroughly kicking ass in my weekly backgammon match, 3 games to 1, which, combined with my last week’s success, boosted my running total margin of victory to 3.

-avoiding near death by goat tramplement when, much to my surprise, I rounded a corner coming home from my run, and nearly (literally) ran into what was apparently an urban Shepard

-successfully baking an apple pie for the follow-up Thanksgiving feast on Saturday evening at Patty’s house. While there, enjoying some homemade stuffing and speculating that I’d never consumed a Thanksgiving meal to the hymns of Jay-Z in the background

-going on another hike to Cajas National Park this Sunday with Robin, Erin and Jessica. The only one who’d been there before, I was appointed the unofficial “guide”—a title I accepted under duress. Still, I was happy, during a period of trail-less off-roading that it was Jessica, and not me, who suggested (when we were stuck on a bit of a cliff) we adopt the strategy of repelling down the seemingly impassable obstacle, using the sturdy, heavily rooted grass plants as repel ropes. It was an excellent idea, and we finished the hike unscathed—with hard core points awarded uniformly to all.