Birds on a wireStreets of Puerto Lopez
Men playing Cuarenta, Puerto Lopez
Street meat vendors, Puerto Lopez
Isla de Plata hike! The group, plus Blue Footed Boobies, first of around 100.
Charles, the Blue Footed Boobie
Albert and Jane and their hatchling. Yes, I'm just naming them randomly.
Andrea and Elle re-enact egg warming.
Shoreline of Isla de Plata
Oh, and on the way back I managed to catch some whale shots. This is from where we were:
And these are cropped close-ups:
Having a nice camera is fun.
Eloy Alfaro national museum.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Cayambe, Isla de Plata
After arriving in Cayambe, we parked downtown and took a walk through a light morning misting of rain to the local cemetary, which was packed with people there for Day of the Dead. In Ecuador, as with a majority of Latin America, Day of the Dead is an extremely important holiday when families come together to visit their passed loved ones in the local cemetaries. The Cayambe cemetary had a festive air as we entered, full of mostly indiginous Ecuadorians with their telltale brimmed hats and more formal clothing than what we're used to on the coast. All were congregating at their relative's graves, if possible directly on top, and having happy picnics which all featured 'Colada Morada', a purple drink (wikipedia calls it a 'spiced porridge') with all sorts of lightly fermented fruits.
Right after the cemetary visit, where Andrea found and paid her respects to a host-sister that was buried there, we went to a local cafe and had Colada Morada and bread for the first time that day. It was delicious, and I drank a large cup not knowing that I had two more to drink before the day was over.
From central Cayambe, we got in the car and headed first to Andrea's first host-family's house, where I was introduced and we hung out in the kitchen for an hour or so catching up. This featured a large cup of Colada Morada with bread on the side, and trying to project my good-boyfriend-Ecuaness I consumed all of mine while Jason and Andrea both were content to just eat a bit.
Jumped back in the car, which we kept stopping as I popped out to take pictures of the volcano Cayambe, which peeked out of the clouds at intermittent intervals. We bounced along a rutted road that twined in between the sweeping patchwork fields of the Andean mountains, and were at Jason's host-family's house about an hour later. Jason hadn't seen this family since his orientation some 2.5 years prior, so it was funny and awkward to just drop by during Day of the Dead, when a bunch of the kids now living in Quito were back to visit. One more cup of Colada Morada and one more helping of bread later, my stomach first started to yell 'No mas!', but we enjoyed the heck out of the visit and Jason pledged to stay in better touch.
From there we headed back to Quito, where we returned the car and watched Monday Night Football! Whoohoo big city.
Two days later, Andrea's friend Elspeth arrived in Quito, and Jason and I headed south from Tabuga (I'd gone back to look after the pets) to meet them as they flew into Manta. Along with our friend Santiago and his Italian car that he drives rally-style around the empty roads of Ecuador, we headed further south to Puerto Lopez, jumping off point for Isla de Plata, or 'The Poor Man's Galapagos'. I readied my camera to take hundreds of pictures of boobies of the blue-footed variety.
Right after the cemetary visit, where Andrea found and paid her respects to a host-sister that was buried there, we went to a local cafe and had Colada Morada and bread for the first time that day. It was delicious, and I drank a large cup not knowing that I had two more to drink before the day was over.
From central Cayambe, we got in the car and headed first to Andrea's first host-family's house, where I was introduced and we hung out in the kitchen for an hour or so catching up. This featured a large cup of Colada Morada with bread on the side, and trying to project my good-boyfriend-Ecuaness I consumed all of mine while Jason and Andrea both were content to just eat a bit.
Jumped back in the car, which we kept stopping as I popped out to take pictures of the volcano Cayambe, which peeked out of the clouds at intermittent intervals. We bounced along a rutted road that twined in between the sweeping patchwork fields of the Andean mountains, and were at Jason's host-family's house about an hour later. Jason hadn't seen this family since his orientation some 2.5 years prior, so it was funny and awkward to just drop by during Day of the Dead, when a bunch of the kids now living in Quito were back to visit. One more cup of Colada Morada and one more helping of bread later, my stomach first started to yell 'No mas!', but we enjoyed the heck out of the visit and Jason pledged to stay in better touch.
From there we headed back to Quito, where we returned the car and watched Monday Night Football! Whoohoo big city.
Two days later, Andrea's friend Elspeth arrived in Quito, and Jason and I headed south from Tabuga (I'd gone back to look after the pets) to meet them as they flew into Manta. Along with our friend Santiago and his Italian car that he drives rally-style around the empty roads of Ecuador, we headed further south to Puerto Lopez, jumping off point for Isla de Plata, or 'The Poor Man's Galapagos'. I readied my camera to take hundreds of pictures of boobies of the blue-footed variety.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Pictures from Cayambe
Heaping Continued
It's hard to recall right where to pickup the update, as I'm now typing from glorious, internetless Tabuga – but I'm pretty sure it was right after the El Chaco arm of our Halloween trip. I definitely skipped over some funny stories, such as walking around El Chaco at night dressed as a band of pumpkins, saying 'Happy Halloween' to all and receiving an excellent mix of confused stares in return.
Another was on our way out of El Chaco, on our way to Tena. Only 20 minutes outside of the town, we stopped in a line of cars with no indication of what the stoppage was or how long it would be. Some drivers in front of us lounged outside their cars, apparently unconcerned, but for five hungover Americans this was unacceptable. It didn't take much nagging to wear down Andrea's insistence on staying in the line, and we spurted free of the line into the open opposite-direction lane. Just 15 cars in front of us or so was a police blockade, the operator of which waved us over to the side with an annoyed look on his face.
For me, these situations are like Christmas, because I don't think Andrea's complete mastery of Ecuadorian Spanish is perfectly showcased until she finds herself in situations that require a delicate mix of completely improvised logic and 'Angry Gringa.' The poor policeman at the blockade never knew what hit him, as he tried to advise us that there was a bicycle race about to start but quickly crumbled under Andrea's verbal assault. He radioed his captain.
The captain showed up, a stout dark man with clipped speech and a bureaucratic air, and made some gestures as he walked up to our rental car that we needed to turn around, as if it could possibly be that easy. He bent over to the window, and received a long winded explanation that our friend Jason here had a plane to catch in Quito in just two hours, it was an international flight, he couldn't possibly hold us up, and what's this? A two hour delay for a bicycle race? Well that's fine, just take us as far as the 'Y' in the road up ahead and we'll go that way, and drop Jason off to wait at a bus stop to get the next bus to Quito, we couldn't possibly just wait here on the road, there was no where to eat or go to the bathroom, sure, sure you can just escort us up the road, no sir there's no way we're headed to Quito, the 'Y' will be fine.
I would've applauded if it wouldn't have blown our cover – we only wanted to go to the 'Y' anyway, and the logic of going up there to get to Quito was wonderfully misguided and circular, but nonetheless did the trick. The captain grumpily strutted to his truck and pulled in behind us as we pushed up the windy road, hoping not to see hundreds of bicyclists around the next curve. We took a left on the 'Y', thereby leaving the race course, and pulled over as Jason needed to find a bathroom. As he got out, we heard a police siren 'boop boop' from behind us; apparently the captain wouldn't be satisfied until we actually drove all the way into the next town, assuming that we were just trying to trick him and as soon as he left would turn around and speed into Quito, gleefully plowing through bicyclists as we went. Andrea stepped out of the running car to go talk to him, and got back in shortly thereafter to drive the short way up to the next town. At which point the rental car started shrieking alarms, and turned off its own engine 30 seconds later.
So there we were, the aforementioned five hungover gringos in a rental car that was making it hard to concentrate by sounding ear-piercing sounds with regularity and was completely disabled, backed up by an annoyed and increasingly suspicious Ecuadorian Police captain.
When we rented the car, the rental agent had pointed at a blue light to the left of the steering wheel and warned us many times over not to smuggle the car into either Columbia or Peru, as the car had an automatic shutoff system that was tracked by GPS, and they'd be able to turn the car off remotely. I had scoffed at this point, not thinking that the place we'd rented from – named 'Renta Car' and quite a few steps down in service and quality from the next door Budget Rental Cars – had access to this kind of technology. However, it now appeared that they did have this technology, and furthermore Andrea had unwittingly turned the car off by getting out of the drivers seat and then getting back in, without turning the car off. No amount of button pushing would get the alarm to turn off, or the car to start – we even had the police captain push all the buttons to prove to him we weren't in charge of this angry beast of an automobile. The captain got increasingly fed up with our insistence or inability to leave, and gave us a stern lecture that if we turned around and headed to Quito, we'd be in a very large heap of trouble as he'd radioed ahead our license plate number. This being clear, he sped away, leaving us with our noisy rental car.
Some combination of unlocking, locking and climbing in through the open car window eventually got the alarms off (though it may have just been the passing of time) but the car still wouldn't start. Andrea fished out the business card of the guy who'd rented it to us, who told us to call some other lady, who had never heard of the first guy and didn't have anything to do with our rental car, so back to the first guy (thank god we were in cell phone service) who reluctantly gave up the placement of the reset switch for the cars alarm/black box system after 20 more minutes of haggling.
This done, we sped on towards Tena!
An enjoying and fairly uneventful (except for the dramatic Amazonian scenery) trip to Tena and then beyond to a delightfully named town called Misahualli, we partook in a classic Ecuadorian meal supplanted by monkeys chattering in the green square beyond, and then an enjoyable beach visit with some cliff diving and swimming through a strong current in a wide, rushing river. I now see in my guidebook (had to look up how to spell the name of the town) that Misahualli sits at the confluence of two major rivers – the Rio Misahualli and the Rio Napo. They were both lovely, and the area was crowded as our Halloween trip just happened to coincide with an Ecuadorian national holiday, so there were plenty of national tourists around to keep the beach lively with music, soccer and swimmers.
From there we drove straight to Quito, as it was Monica's first day of work the next day (for those of you who don't know Monica, she's a friend from my Duke days who turns out to be half Ecuadorian and now lives in Quito – who'd a thunkit!). For those of you who haven't driven from the Amazon up into the high Andes in the dark, I say this: .... crap, can't think of anything glib. You should try it, though. We spun the radio dial constantly to keep up with the changing stations at our different altitudes, and spent the 5 hour trip singing loudly to a mix of 80s American pop and current Ecuadorian pop, which led to many an interesting thesis on why they sound exactly the same.
We awoke the next morning (Monday) at our buddy Hamilton's apartment, armed with a hazy inclination to use the rental car as well as possible before we had to return it later that night. Jason had forcefully expressed his intentions to hang out with friends in Quito that we didn't know – what?!? You hang out with friends other than us? Bastard! -- but when he heard we planned to head to Cayambe, the Andean city where he and Andrea did their Peace Corps training two-and-a-half years prior, he succumbed to the pressure to continue hanging out with his most amazing and spirited amigos, Andrea J Crosby and Alex H Johnson, Esq.
The drive to Cayambe reminded Yours Truly of his long-ago travels through California – hilly, scrubby and a dull yellow for most of the way, like Grapevine Hill outside of the City of Angels. We climbed higher in elevation and the air got colder, the vegetation greener and an hour and a half later we were up in Cayambe.
Another was on our way out of El Chaco, on our way to Tena. Only 20 minutes outside of the town, we stopped in a line of cars with no indication of what the stoppage was or how long it would be. Some drivers in front of us lounged outside their cars, apparently unconcerned, but for five hungover Americans this was unacceptable. It didn't take much nagging to wear down Andrea's insistence on staying in the line, and we spurted free of the line into the open opposite-direction lane. Just 15 cars in front of us or so was a police blockade, the operator of which waved us over to the side with an annoyed look on his face.
For me, these situations are like Christmas, because I don't think Andrea's complete mastery of Ecuadorian Spanish is perfectly showcased until she finds herself in situations that require a delicate mix of completely improvised logic and 'Angry Gringa.' The poor policeman at the blockade never knew what hit him, as he tried to advise us that there was a bicycle race about to start but quickly crumbled under Andrea's verbal assault. He radioed his captain.
The captain showed up, a stout dark man with clipped speech and a bureaucratic air, and made some gestures as he walked up to our rental car that we needed to turn around, as if it could possibly be that easy. He bent over to the window, and received a long winded explanation that our friend Jason here had a plane to catch in Quito in just two hours, it was an international flight, he couldn't possibly hold us up, and what's this? A two hour delay for a bicycle race? Well that's fine, just take us as far as the 'Y' in the road up ahead and we'll go that way, and drop Jason off to wait at a bus stop to get the next bus to Quito, we couldn't possibly just wait here on the road, there was no where to eat or go to the bathroom, sure, sure you can just escort us up the road, no sir there's no way we're headed to Quito, the 'Y' will be fine.
I would've applauded if it wouldn't have blown our cover – we only wanted to go to the 'Y' anyway, and the logic of going up there to get to Quito was wonderfully misguided and circular, but nonetheless did the trick. The captain grumpily strutted to his truck and pulled in behind us as we pushed up the windy road, hoping not to see hundreds of bicyclists around the next curve. We took a left on the 'Y', thereby leaving the race course, and pulled over as Jason needed to find a bathroom. As he got out, we heard a police siren 'boop boop' from behind us; apparently the captain wouldn't be satisfied until we actually drove all the way into the next town, assuming that we were just trying to trick him and as soon as he left would turn around and speed into Quito, gleefully plowing through bicyclists as we went. Andrea stepped out of the running car to go talk to him, and got back in shortly thereafter to drive the short way up to the next town. At which point the rental car started shrieking alarms, and turned off its own engine 30 seconds later.
So there we were, the aforementioned five hungover gringos in a rental car that was making it hard to concentrate by sounding ear-piercing sounds with regularity and was completely disabled, backed up by an annoyed and increasingly suspicious Ecuadorian Police captain.
When we rented the car, the rental agent had pointed at a blue light to the left of the steering wheel and warned us many times over not to smuggle the car into either Columbia or Peru, as the car had an automatic shutoff system that was tracked by GPS, and they'd be able to turn the car off remotely. I had scoffed at this point, not thinking that the place we'd rented from – named 'Renta Car' and quite a few steps down in service and quality from the next door Budget Rental Cars – had access to this kind of technology. However, it now appeared that they did have this technology, and furthermore Andrea had unwittingly turned the car off by getting out of the drivers seat and then getting back in, without turning the car off. No amount of button pushing would get the alarm to turn off, or the car to start – we even had the police captain push all the buttons to prove to him we weren't in charge of this angry beast of an automobile. The captain got increasingly fed up with our insistence or inability to leave, and gave us a stern lecture that if we turned around and headed to Quito, we'd be in a very large heap of trouble as he'd radioed ahead our license plate number. This being clear, he sped away, leaving us with our noisy rental car.
Some combination of unlocking, locking and climbing in through the open car window eventually got the alarms off (though it may have just been the passing of time) but the car still wouldn't start. Andrea fished out the business card of the guy who'd rented it to us, who told us to call some other lady, who had never heard of the first guy and didn't have anything to do with our rental car, so back to the first guy (thank god we were in cell phone service) who reluctantly gave up the placement of the reset switch for the cars alarm/black box system after 20 more minutes of haggling.
This done, we sped on towards Tena!
An enjoying and fairly uneventful (except for the dramatic Amazonian scenery) trip to Tena and then beyond to a delightfully named town called Misahualli, we partook in a classic Ecuadorian meal supplanted by monkeys chattering in the green square beyond, and then an enjoyable beach visit with some cliff diving and swimming through a strong current in a wide, rushing river. I now see in my guidebook (had to look up how to spell the name of the town) that Misahualli sits at the confluence of two major rivers – the Rio Misahualli and the Rio Napo. They were both lovely, and the area was crowded as our Halloween trip just happened to coincide with an Ecuadorian national holiday, so there were plenty of national tourists around to keep the beach lively with music, soccer and swimmers.
From there we drove straight to Quito, as it was Monica's first day of work the next day (for those of you who don't know Monica, she's a friend from my Duke days who turns out to be half Ecuadorian and now lives in Quito – who'd a thunkit!). For those of you who haven't driven from the Amazon up into the high Andes in the dark, I say this: .... crap, can't think of anything glib. You should try it, though. We spun the radio dial constantly to keep up with the changing stations at our different altitudes, and spent the 5 hour trip singing loudly to a mix of 80s American pop and current Ecuadorian pop, which led to many an interesting thesis on why they sound exactly the same.
We awoke the next morning (Monday) at our buddy Hamilton's apartment, armed with a hazy inclination to use the rental car as well as possible before we had to return it later that night. Jason had forcefully expressed his intentions to hang out with friends in Quito that we didn't know – what?!? You hang out with friends other than us? Bastard! -- but when he heard we planned to head to Cayambe, the Andean city where he and Andrea did their Peace Corps training two-and-a-half years prior, he succumbed to the pressure to continue hanging out with his most amazing and spirited amigos, Andrea J Crosby and Alex H Johnson, Esq.
The drive to Cayambe reminded Yours Truly of his long-ago travels through California – hilly, scrubby and a dull yellow for most of the way, like Grapevine Hill outside of the City of Angels. We climbed higher in elevation and the air got colder, the vegetation greener and an hour and a half later we were up in Cayambe.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Big Heaping Update!
Well, I´ve had myself some pretty crazy travelling times since you heard from me last, with the photos to prove it, and as I find myself in Quito where the internet flows like the salmon of Capistrano, I figure it´s time to dump out as much as I can tell in one sitting. First off I´d like to give a shout-out to my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend who just completed all of the paperwork in Spanish for me to get a volunteer visa and stay another 8 months... I wouldn´t be here if not for her, and I wouldn´t be staying if not for her efforts. Awwwwwww sappy.
Anyhoo, dry your eyes and pull up a chair: we took off... what, like two weeks ago? on a trip to the 'Oriente', which is the local name for the Amazon rainforest, to meet up with a bunch of Peace Corps kids that had organized a rafting competition in El Chaco for Halloween.
We priced out the hassle and money it´d cost to make it to El Chaco, and found that for the four of us -- Andrea, Jason, Monica and I -- it´d be better just to rent a car for $40 a day, so that´s what we did... FREEDOM! Andrea buzzed it out to El Chaco with a quickness, and we started making plans for all sorts of other places we could hit on the way home.
This is our team, Los Topos Mojados, which was supposed to mean 'The Wet Beavers', but we just found out that we effed up the translation and we were actually 'The Wet Moles', which isn´t quite as funny of a double entendre.
Andrea chilling next to our beer which is also chilling.
The travelling team minus Yours Truly, with Jason doing the Pumpkin Party Patrol dance.
The Wet Moles before losing pitifully. Note Monica´s sick airtime.
Yes, the right side of our boat was a bit of a week spot. Back right, Garrett, fell out within 30 seconds of starting, and front right, Wes, decided to take many strokes off. There was little Andrea could do to salvage the situation...
Sadly, the Wet Moles were terrible at rafting, but our spirits remained high.
We had two nights in El Chaco, the second night being a big Halloween party organized by the rafting guides, and we showed up in orange ponchos we´d found back in Pedernales (used for shrimp pond workers in the rainy season) and a vision of being the Pumpkin Party Patrol. With liberal use of black sharpy, our dream became reality, and we spent the night wandering around El Chaco drinking orange and vodka, then partying and showing the PC kids how to do our recently invented Pumpkin Party Patrol dance. Very technical stuff.
On Sunday, as we were not invited to take part in the second and third heats of the rafting competition, we climbed in our compact chariot, picked up a kid that needed to get back to his site in the Amazon, and headed for Tena, which is the jumping off point for Amazonian expeditions. I can´t remember the names of all the places we stopped at, hopefully Andrea can clear that up, so let these pictures speak for themselves:
Our friend John jumping into an Amazonian river, no big deal.
A monkey with a piece of garbage that LOOKS like a beautiful pink flower:
The Amazonian mountains from outside of Tena.A meeting house under construction.
Some kids in front of our friends Peace Corps house (17 people, one bathroom, one bucket shower. Wow).
Crap gotta run! Second part coming up on the Andes and then Isla de Plata (The Poor Man's Galapagos). OUT.
Anyhoo, dry your eyes and pull up a chair: we took off... what, like two weeks ago? on a trip to the 'Oriente', which is the local name for the Amazon rainforest, to meet up with a bunch of Peace Corps kids that had organized a rafting competition in El Chaco for Halloween.
We priced out the hassle and money it´d cost to make it to El Chaco, and found that for the four of us -- Andrea, Jason, Monica and I -- it´d be better just to rent a car for $40 a day, so that´s what we did... FREEDOM! Andrea buzzed it out to El Chaco with a quickness, and we started making plans for all sorts of other places we could hit on the way home.
This is our team, Los Topos Mojados, which was supposed to mean 'The Wet Beavers', but we just found out that we effed up the translation and we were actually 'The Wet Moles', which isn´t quite as funny of a double entendre.
Andrea chilling next to our beer which is also chilling.
The travelling team minus Yours Truly, with Jason doing the Pumpkin Party Patrol dance.
The Wet Moles before losing pitifully. Note Monica´s sick airtime.
Yes, the right side of our boat was a bit of a week spot. Back right, Garrett, fell out within 30 seconds of starting, and front right, Wes, decided to take many strokes off. There was little Andrea could do to salvage the situation...
Sadly, the Wet Moles were terrible at rafting, but our spirits remained high.
We had two nights in El Chaco, the second night being a big Halloween party organized by the rafting guides, and we showed up in orange ponchos we´d found back in Pedernales (used for shrimp pond workers in the rainy season) and a vision of being the Pumpkin Party Patrol. With liberal use of black sharpy, our dream became reality, and we spent the night wandering around El Chaco drinking orange and vodka, then partying and showing the PC kids how to do our recently invented Pumpkin Party Patrol dance. Very technical stuff.
On Sunday, as we were not invited to take part in the second and third heats of the rafting competition, we climbed in our compact chariot, picked up a kid that needed to get back to his site in the Amazon, and headed for Tena, which is the jumping off point for Amazonian expeditions. I can´t remember the names of all the places we stopped at, hopefully Andrea can clear that up, so let these pictures speak for themselves:
Our friend John jumping into an Amazonian river, no big deal.
A monkey with a piece of garbage that LOOKS like a beautiful pink flower:
The Amazonian mountains from outside of Tena.A meeting house under construction.
Some kids in front of our friends Peace Corps house (17 people, one bathroom, one bucket shower. Wow).
Crap gotta run! Second part coming up on the Andes and then Isla de Plata (The Poor Man's Galapagos). OUT.
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