Domestic adventures in Ecuador

Back in Ecuador. The adventures are a little different this time. I have responsibilities back home (work) that keeps me occupied and leashed to a good internet connection a good part of each day. I am also back at the Simon Bolivar Spanish School for 4 hours a day. An excursion to the jungle may not happend this time around but I have found some domestic pleasures. First I thought juicing would be fun. They have these great fruits called 'tomate dulce' which I remeber were great in juice form. I bought a hand juicer (a cone with ribs) and tried it a few times. Not only is it exhausting, it takes forever to get a glass. Almost two weeks later I had a bunch of tomates going to waste, but then I found a jam recipe. A slow afternoon/evening later I had some fricken great sweet tomate jam!

Step 1. Get tomate dulce


 
Step 2. Scald them

Cool them.

Peel them

Cut them in half.

Remove the seeds.

Get the sugar.

Add water and heat to a boil

Add the tomates

Bring to a boil

After a few hours, reheat for another couple of hours

Look at that. Ready to can.

The next morning in the can.

Spread and Enjoy! That's right.

Dear God

I’m going to need those legendary reflexes of yours. Somehow I climbed up on this glass ceiling and I think it’s beginning to buckle. There are cracks everywhere and I've run out of crazy glue. Maybe you can just get your hands ready like when a quarter rolls toward the edge of the kitchen table. Those tiles are hard and I don’t want a repeat of the ‘changing table’ incident. A shit storm is coming; can I borrow your new umbrella? You know the one that can hold like 4 people under it? I like that one ‘cause it has the two layers so the wind won’t catch it and Mary Poppins my ass over the ledge. Good job by the way; this canyon is gorgeous. I’ve been staring at it for days. I was thinking about building a place right over there just beneath the horizon and a garden in that sunny spot; I’ve got it all figured out. But there’s a damned lean on the land and I don’t want to get involved with the lawyers and I heard the owner is a bit of a jerk. But seriously, you better catch me if something happens. Thanks dude.

Grad School

Cinco de mayo

-Let my works, not my ambitions,
Bring me to the precipice of my life
And my faith to the path of my salvation.











April 19th, Leadville CO. I had lunch on that peak behind me at 13,100 ft the day before with Ioan during the hut trip i did make to the 10th mountain hut. Hightlights from that trip include: the hike to the peak, playing big booty, and a crazy dude who crashed the party and did not kill us in our sleep.

Well I can't say my past posts have been very complete so don't expect this one to be either. Ecuador finished out with bang. I met back up with Kristina the last night and had some dinner with her roommate then we went out for some drinks and all of Quito lost power. In a normal town i'm not sure if this would be a big deal; but where we were and the fact that its Quito the streets suddenly became very dangerous. so we were forced to stay in the pub and sip our drinks and I told some riddles. oh yea, i'm an entertainer all right. The president of Ecuador was set to give a big speech that night and in protest a number of cities had their power cut by his opponents. THe first blackout lasted for about 20 minutes then the next one came on long enough for us to try and move locations and then went out again. This time it was for a few hours. We all decided to brave the streets and called it a night. I don't know if its true but my theory is if you run you can't be mugged so i sprinted back to my hostel and decided to get a good sleep before the taxi arrived at 5am.

At 4:50am in I was almost robbed, but with my quick thinking I was able to escape back into my hostel moments before the assailant nabbed me. This is how it went down. I couldn't sleep because i was too excited so at 4:30 i gave up, packed and went out to wait on the curb. This drunk guy walking up the street starts yelling at me "what are you doin? are you crazy gringo? you ganna get robbed!" he tried to get me a cab but i had a ride scheduled already so convinced him to stop hailing cabs. about 10 minutes later a sinister looking fellow was walking down the cross street and suddenly stopped. turned towards me and began walking very quickly right at me. All the buildings in quito have metal gates with locks controlled by someone on the inside if you don't have a key. I realized this guy meant business so i rang the bell, waved at the sleepy attendant, he buzzed the door, i opened and pulled it shut just as the crazy dude grabbed the bars in the window of the gates. He banged on those metal doors for a while yelling at me as stood out of site getting my blood pressure back down. This time i took the drunkards advice and waited until my ride arrived before i left my sanctuary.

On the way to the airport I drove with a Lisa from Norway and we turned out to have mutual friends at the Spanish school and the same flight to Houston before I went to Denver and she to Norway so had a good time chatting. In houston we enjoyed our first american meal in months and ate at Wendy’s (welcome home fast food). Joel picked me up from the airport and we caught up for a bit wiht some beer and he dropped me off back home. aaaannnnddd then when I was about to go to sleep my roommate got home and he very surprised because he thought I was dead because I had given him the wrong return information (about 15 days before I actually returned) so he and my neighbor and I dressed up in my souvenir clothes (poufy white pirate shirts) - sorry dad the shirt you got has been worn before you -from Ecuador, put on funny hats, grabbed a bottle of whiskey, started a bon fire in our back yard, and sang crazy songs and talked like foreigners ( I was English, neighbor was Irish, and roommate was pikey) for 4 hours until 2am. It was so fun. I laughed really really hard for a long time. And then slept for the first time in 38 hours. The end - of Quito.

Ok, that was January 15th and 16th. School started on the 19th.

Life lesson from the semester: Some things you can't force. its like trying to hold onto campfire smoke.
It took me about 3 months to remember that i needed to study outside of class so these past couple of months have been a little fast paced. Spring break would have been much better. I was a little stressed. I wouldn't have had to cancel one of the hut trips i was going on, and I would have been able to use my 4pack at A-basin and Keystone. But overall my first semester of grad school has been amazing. I love the subject. Urban social problems are really interesting and learning about the different programs set up to address these issues and how they have and have not worked has been eye opening. Plus i've met some great people in my program and out of my program. I hope these friendships continue. yes i do. they are fun people. I thought i was going to be able to do alot more with my 'free' time when I first envisioned grad school life. I thought i could be a little assistant to my pastor at church, running errands and crap like that. did not happen. I thought i would do more snowboarding. did not happen. I thought i would eat better. did not happen. I thought i would substitute teach for extra money. did not happen. I thought I would volunteer on the local search and rescue. did not happen. I thought I would get a job doing research at the school. BOOYA! This happened! shit. that was awesome. I thought I would have a lot of fun. Also happened. I thought i would do some simulation work on the side. did not happen.
no problem. time management is a good skill to learn so maybe i can add one or two of those thingies on for next semester. for the summer i hope to do these:
1) mountain bike lots
2) hike and camp with friends
3) have fun
4) continue to work for the school
5) get an internship
6) do some out-of-state trips with my buddies here
7) see Dave and Val's new baby
8) make it to Joseph Oregon
9) learn spanish
10) clean my room

ok, got some goals. we'll see how that works out for me.

Ecuador time

I quickly noticed that in both volunteer groups in Ecuador and the one in Italy it was always the Americans that would interrupt the enjoyment of dinner, walking down a street, relaxing in the sun, with the question of "what's our schedule for tonight" or "when are we starting work" or "what else are we doing later" you get the point. Everyone else was able to just enjoy the moment, but not us USA'ers, nope, we had to get moving, get organized, talk about the time tables, the work for the next day, and all the logistics. Not that I am any better while at home, but I was able to transcend my native roots and join the rest of the world and relax. With this adoption of relaxed time tables I decided that I would take 4 days to travel between the Jatun Sacha reserve in Tena and the La Hesperia reserve in the Cloud forest instead of the previously arranged 1.5 days. Certainly this would reduce my volunteer time from 10 days to 7 but you know, I didn't think they would care much. So I joined Sakshi, Leigh, and Natalia, who were staying a while longer in Jatun Sacha for a long weekend in the town of Banos. Banos sits beneath an active (and recently very active) volcano which has created some hot springs and is a major touristic town. Its located south of Quito by about 3 or 4 hours and I think it is still considered to be in the Highlands. Within an hour of arriving we had found our hostel (Plantas y Blanco) or something like that, arranged for a morning of cascading (repelling down waterfalls) and found a great place for dinner called Casa Hood. If i knew what i know now, i probably could have set up a volunteer program for my self at the local library and enjoyed the town of Banos for an entire month and lived for around 8 dollars a day on very good food and a nice clean hostel. In contrast to Quito, I found the people very friendly and the streets safe. Almost each night we were there we walked around by ourselves down deserted streets between 1 and 3 am feeling completely safe. Such a nice change from the streets of Quito where anytime after 4pm its better to take a taxi.

The cascading excursion consisted of 5 waterfalls. 12 meter 18 m, 25m, 35m, and a 12m that we more or less slid down with some assistance from our belayors. One of these guys (excuse my french) was a total bastard. On the last waterall he asked if I wanted to go slow or fast. I said fast of course and he really let me go, until about 6 inches before splashing into the pool at the bottom he slammed the brakes on the harness which basically required me to go through puberty again to get my balls out of my chest cavity. I could have killed him if he weren't hold my life in his hands. The other four were great. Even with some climbing experience the adreniline started to pump each time I stepped over the ledge of the waterfall and began to decend through the water and mossy rocks. On the 3rd fall they set up a zip line which we were attached to in addition to our main rope. Second only to Ecuador public transportation, this was the most dangerous thing I did in South America. A large section of this second rope had completely lost its sheething and the the core of the rope was exposed. Oh this reminds me, before we left they handed me harness with my safety rope (the one used to attach yourself to the cliff while tieing into the repelling rope) tied to it was a glorified overhand knot. real nice. I found one with a double figure eight before we left.

That evening we got some dinner at a mexican resturaunt then toured the town a bit. We headed backto Casa Hood from happy hour and a band came in off the street and played for a while . We talked with them a bit and they told us that later that night they would be playing at a bar on the other side of town. After listening to them we headed back to the hostel and hung out for while on the terrace until it started to rain a bit.

Next day we rented bikes and traveled down a highway to look at waterfalls. below are some pictures from that trip.
All in all banos and the surrounding little friendly towns was one of my favorite places so far. Very friendly people and beautiful landscape.


Looking down on "El Diablo" on the road between Banos and Puyo



A nice town on our bike ride from Banos



Another waterfall on the bike ride

Crazy scary trash cans that are found throughout Ecuador

A band that we met at dinner and found later at a bar

On the way to repelling down some water falls. Here we have Leigh, Sakshi, and Natalia

The large church in Banos by night

Last days in the jungle

Me under the water fall at Misahualli

The waterfall at Misahualli


Cheeto Monkey

A little bug and me playin at the remote cabin

Water break on the way to the remote cabin

A view of jungle to the left and clear cut to the right.

Embarking on our inner tube adventure down the Rio Napo from Misahualli

Giant grasshopper drinkin some coffee

Tree boa on the gutter. this guy was easily 9 feet long

A Christmas day eve tarantula

Another view from the tower. lovely.

The Beach on the Napo river where I pulled the girls to safety.

A view from the bird tower looking down the shaft we climbed up

At a cultural event Gillian and I stumbled across

A view from The Basillica from one of the churches in Old Town, Quito

The Ecuador north of Quito

Even though the Jatun Sacha station here near Tena, Ecuador has had its major disapointments (for example, only working 3 days out of 17, in my opinion a very poorly managed volunteer program, and a lot of lazy hammock time reading steven king) its been an experience I want to last for months more on end. My first few nights here I probably didn't sleep a wink because of the volume of the jungle sounds. Insects, frogs, birds, RAIN, lizards, its crazy out here. Everynight i would wake up and groggily think "i should record this" and then realize my camera was on the otherside of my mosquito net and realize the effort to untuck the thing, find the camera in the pitch dark (i could not even see my hand if it were about to jab my eye), get back in the net, re-seal it....ok it wouldn't be that much effort, but i never did record a thing, but believe me, the sound at night is awesome. For 3 days straight we had rain. normally it only rained in the weeee hours of morning (probably what woke me up to remind me to record some sounds) but after new years it just started to pour.

The other day (January 1st or 2nd) before lunch it really began to come down hard. big fat grape sided drops. So hard your vision was distorted by the water and if you were inside you couldn't hear yourself think. just when the noise had escalated to a point where you thought something would pop and silence would begin it (thats mother nature) just notched up the volume another six clicks. This was the perfect time to go run without out your clothes on. well i kept my knickers on but not much else and after about 4 bounds out from under the thatched roof i was drenched. wow! this was exhilirating! nothing like being in the raw force of nature. no one cared to join me so i just plodded through the trails then out to the highway to see the river that had formed and then thought twice about being out in a large open area and returned to the shelter. shower for the day...check!

Another lazy day after some previous rains had subsided (this would be the weekend before New Year and the day before we go to the remote station) we grabbed some inner tubes, hailed a pickup/taxi, stuffed ourselves and our tubes in teh hback with the other families traveling down the highway and headed up river. We were back in the town of Misawalli (spelling is not correcet but phonetically it sounds meeesawhalyee) the town with the cheeto monkeys (similar to cheeto deer at Willowa Lake) and the waterfall where the staff party was on dec. 23 (i'll have to post a picture of that). We had to walk about 40 minutes from the highway down the riverrock road, accross the standard Ecuadorian cement supension bridge and to the docks. Because of the rain the river was super high and looked like chocolate milk.

The ride was so great. I went with Sakshi, Simon, Natalia, and Leigh. The river had a few nice class 3 rapids which i don't know if they were larger or smaller because of the rain, but going face first down on a little innertube and into swell about 4 feet tall was alot of fun. I was also able to be a super cool guy on this trip. After the last set of rapid you are required to paddle hard to get out of the current and make your way to the beach that had the trail which took us back to our home. If you misssed it of course, you would be swept down river and deeper than you want to be taken into the jungle. So i see the red rocks and paddle over and onto the beach. Sakshi barely makes it out of the current (after a lot of yelling and persuation on my part...see what I'm getting at....) and Leigh and Natalia just sail by. I realize my shore-side coaching isn't going to work this time and without hesitation and in the nick of time I do an awesome bay watch move and dive back into the river, swim out into the current, grab their inner tubes, and swim them back to the ass end of the beach. I know what your thinking; I'm a hero. well i wouldn't go that far but pretty darned close. pretty darn close.

The next day after saving the girls we headed to the remote station which was a 3 hour hike into the jungle. A few note worthy portions of this trip: eating lovely raw and ripened plantanes off the bunch! so good and sweet. Bathing in the river for 3 days instead of the freezing showers back at the main station. Finding a tree snake at night and letting him climb all over me. watching the crazy swiss guy Mike sting himself with a conga ant. almost touching a deadly viper known as the 5 hour snake. trying to swing on a vine that was rotten and it toppling ontop of me. swinging on a good vine like tarzan. listening to Don " " play the harmonica in the little village we visited and drinking veinte cinco from a water bottle. the stars at night and the smiling and extremely slender crecent moon. the gigantic trees.

We returned intime for New Years in Tena.

I leave tomorrow or the next day from the Ecuadorian Oriente and will first head south for 3 days to a town called Banos for some vacation (haha) before moving north to the Cloud Forest on the western slope of the Andes Mountains. I heard today that the volcanoe near Banos is rumbling enough to make the windows shake in town so if i'm extremely lucky, as i have been, the thing will probably explode while i'm there. if it does, no worries, i have my camera.

Video heading to the remote station.

Merry Christmas!

Most people out here in this part of the jungle don´t celebrate Christmas. This is because they are Quichua which if you follow their ancestory back far enough they started with the Mongols of China. The language is extremely different than spanish and few non-quichuans speak it. For Christmas eve all the volunteers who were at the reserve, that´d be seven, went into the nearest town called Tena. By bus or pickup its about an hour drive west. Catching a ride here is pretty fun. If you don´t see a bus while you are waiting you can flag down the first pickup that goes by and jump in the back. The other day when the staff and the volunteers and a few extras went to Misahualli for a little part and if you don´t count the baby someone had there were 21 of us in a truck the size of a ford ranger. 5 in the cab ant 16 in the bed of the truck. This was great until the rain started. SO the 7 of us caught a pickup to Tena and went to a little bar and then out dancing for a Christmas eve celebration. The stars out here are amazing adn because we are on the equator, to the north you see your friendly neighborhood constellations like the big dipper, corona borealus, etc, but to the south they are all new. The highway we were on is just two lanes across so the swath of starts visible through the jungle was limited but after an hour on the road I saw about 5 shooting stars. The ride to Tena was 1 dollar a person, on teh way back at 3 AM it was just 2 bucks.

Christmas breaksfast was this really tasty fried dough with cheese inside. Lunch was the standard scalding hot soup served with a plate of rice, beens, and thinly chopped cucumber. After lunch I walked down a 30 minute path to the Napo River. on teh way i learned about army ants. these succkers can latch on to your feet even if your in a dead sprint. The first encounter happened while i was standing and looking for anything of interest through the leaves, as usual i didn't see jack, but all of a sudden one of my feet was on fire. an odd sensation when you are not expecting it. i looked down and one of the little buggers was on the knuckle of my big toe whith is head jambed down at about mid jay and his little army arms pumping away. I got a good look at him to know what to watch for and the next time i saw their line in the trail i started running and trying to dodge it. this didnt work at all. one guy found the same spot as the first and then three others were on my ankle. After a stroll on the beach i got back and another volunteer and I headed to an observation tower for the sunset.
This tower is made of three 100 foot long pieces of rebar that are reinforced by 8 inch peices creating a small triangle. there are not handles so you just grab hold, say a prayer, and start climbing. wow. at about 80 feet up you break through the canopy and things aren´t so bad because you can´t see the ground any more. at the top is a disc of metal about 6 feet in diameter with the triangular spire sticking through about 4 feet for you to hold onto and a 10 inch high lip has been welded on for security. even with the guide wires this thing wobbles tremendously with any movement. I, for one sat quite still with my left hand melted to the center of the spire while the crazy swiss guy just sat on the 1/4 inch railing enjoying the veiw. it was a great view.

we are going to head back for a sunrise at some point.

Well I'm off to bed, and someone just found a trantula outside so i need to get my camera.

Merry Chirstmas!

Sam

Quito day...no se´

One of the best parts of traveling is you get to loose track of the time: the time of day, the day of the week, when a big project is due, and best(?) of all, what you do in your normal life. Sometime during the work camp in Italy one of my friends asked me, "...so what kind of music do you like?¨. I drew a complete blank. All that came to mind was "the police" since we had been listening to that twice a day, everyday, as we traveled to and from the work site and our home. After a few minutes it hit me, that I did in fact listen to music and that I used to drive this car to and from work with some Cd's in the player.

Remembering my life back in Colorado seemed like recalling a very vivid dream where once you remembered one fact six others jumped along then 36 others and so on. So similarly, now that I'm down here in Quito, I have no idea how many days I've actually been here. However, being connected online has kept most of my memories in place, perhaps its the fact that I am in contact somewhat with people back home on facebook and I read the news and since memory is very associative I haven't forgotten what it is like to live outside of Quito like I did in Campsirago.

moving on.

The fall into the hole has turned out to be a great blessing in disguise. For one, i get to learn more Spanish, which has not come as quickly as i thought it might. I actually did not become fluent after 3 days. weird. Plus the other students here at the school are a blast to hang out with. Making plans goes like this, first, walk into the room with the computers and the INTERNET are and, second, say to who ever is in there "hey do you have plans?", "yes, come with us" or "no, what should we do" orrrr "hey, we're (insert activity here) do you want to come?" "yes". its that easy. I don't think its too much harder back home, but many times i have to use the phone or drive somewhere or other really complicated logistical items which take an extra effort that sometimes turns into me watching old episodes of Seinfeld or family guy.

The leg is healing really well. the stitches come out thursday and i plan to catch the bus to the jungle Saturday morning. Thursday night we are having a little going away partay for a few of us that are leaving the school soon. should be a grand time. Someone has found a chocolate flavored liquor at the supermarket.


Here we have Sigi, Bliss, I'm sorry I forgot a name here, Dom, Kristine, me, and Gillian (the glow here may or may not have been due to either my finger covering the flash or the angelic personality of Gillian) and the Chocolate Liquor (tasty)

And finally, some Ecuadorian pizza. its pretty good too.