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Pimentel, Peru

So last week some time I took off by myself to go to Vilcabamba in Ecuador. Just south of Loja, the uhmm.. bigger city. I checked my bags when I got to Vilcabamaba, walked around, got some Mex food and looking for some maps of Podocarpus national park, luck on the first front. none on the second. It was on to Vilcabama. It was raining.

I got there and as soon as I stepped to the street corner a guy with a truck was there ready to take me to a hostel. It was raining, I pestered him with some questions for a few minutes and off we went to the Ruinas de Something Something, where they had a swimming pool, hot tub, movies, pool table, free breakfast, hammocks, basketball, and a pretty good crew of people.

It was chill there. I spent the first day hot-tubbing with these british kids that had been up all night high on San Pedro and were slowly coming down with some overtired fried brains. They supplemented with alcohol and cigarettes and potato chips. Hmmm. I also met these 2 dutch cats, Martin and Luse (spelling?) who were going to be travelling out with Jason (USA), Ina (Norway), and her bf Leo, the firecracker of a peruvian boy who had been living in holland studying acting for a few years and has some kind of scholarship to travel around and study the Backpack Actors, or something, a crew of travellers who seem to sustain themselves on street theatre. The second night in Vilcabamba we went to the park in town and drank a,… good deal of wine and had a dandy old time.

A I tink there was a lazy day of doing nothing in between here somewhere where we played some pool at the hostel. I played around on Leo’s guitar and I talked late into the night with Jason about all the goodies like Ishmael, Moneywrench Gang, Zodiac, etc. etc. He does caricature art at amusement parks during the season. It’s great. I’ve got a caricature of me in my little journal book now.

Another day of lazying around, eating a solid breakfast, cooking some pasta for the poor hungry travellers i was hanging out with and shooting some basketball. I got a healthy sunburn while sitting around cueing up some jazz and reggae for the morning on the little stereo they had at the poolside bar. That was nice. Sit there and read the National Geographic in spanish and kick some music around.

That night, Sunday, I think the 6 of us caught a night bus from Loja to Piura, Peru with a chill border crossing at 3:30am. Piura was nuts. Suddenly there were 6 cab drivers hounding us and little 3 wheel motorcycle cabs (think motorized rickshaws) were allll over the place. Different world. We quickly got on a bus to Chiclayo, near the coast and slept another 3 hours.

Quick Quick… Take out some Peruvian currency (sols) and get out the the mellow beach town of Pimentel where we’ve been cooling out since Monday morning. The first night we were all dead after having been on the beach for some more time. Straight to bed.

Tuesday we cruised out to see some old Inca pyramids and walk around the magic market in Chiclayo (where they sell all kinds of psychedelic drugs )…

……. So I wrote this a few days ago with the intent of finishing it… but am too caught up in hanging out in the park hanging out with the local kids in the evening and running aroud doing stuff in the day. Gotta watch a local futbol match tomorrow. Hanging out with college age kids on break all day here and there. I’ll just have to publish a general impression of Pimentel later on when I leave and have some boredom or me-time on my hands. Now I only have a few minutes at the internet cafe and a few emails to take care off…

Days at the beach town are chill. Doing well. Talking lots of spanish. Evebn teaching spanish to Jason. It’s good. Eating fresh seafood every day. Grin.

Notes to self:
Wednesday — chill day visiting with Arturo’s family and chilling in sun with Jason and Fanta.
Thursday — Visiting with Vicente to copy some music to his computer, my first Ceviche
Friday — Watch Beto’s fishing video, listen to hip hop at Arturo’s house, practice freezes in the park.

Off To Peru

Not much time here at the internet cafe in the bus station in Loja — heading to Peru on a night bus tonight with 2 Dutchies, a Peruvian, A Swede, and an American… The new friends from Vilcabamba… Beaches, here we come.

Had a pool and hot tub at the last hostel. Mad chill for 2 days. Movies, music, billiards,.. good stuff. Gotta run.

New Pics, New Pics

With the new camera comes the ability to upload my old pictures. Without much more ado, I present Set 3 starting with whom else but Superbush.

Canon Boy

Todays entry rought to you by the music of Black Star, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Present…

So I bought a new Camera Today. But I guess I’ll keep it all kind of chronologicallly ordered. Kinda. As I like to do, in the Quentin Tarantino sort of sense.

Sunday while I was nursing a hangover and blogging the girls took off to get some food for the hike they had planned. I pretty much felt like I was taggin along. Oh well, I wasn’t good for much more that day anyway.

So we eat pretty well when Liz is involved. Veggies come along to the camping trip. We bring multiple stoves because we have them and because we can cook a sauve on one while cooking pasta or something on the other. Salt and Pepper. Olive Oil and Soy Sauce. Chopped garlic and Ginger, if we had it. I’d be eating Ramen and Instant Oats if it wa just me.

We got going around 9am Monday. Cabbed it to the bus terminal and we were off to Cajas National Park, $10 entry fee. We paid it while the who bus of 30 or so people was waiting,… waddayagonnado if there’s no ranger station near the trailhead. We hiked in about 2 hours observing trash on the left, trssh on the right, and trash on the path. Zhumir bottles. Hard candy wrappers. Yuch.

We found a nice campsite by the second lake we passed, nice if you like being nestled on empty tuna cans and 2 liter bottle. That was quickly remedied and the cigarette butts provided nice padding. We cooked a mean stir fry (well, Liz and Amelie did). I was still pooped. Mis-stepping on the way out. I’m gald I brought my non-ankle-twisting boots. They’re some heavy bastards.

That night was all about reading the newspaper (El Comercio) and progressing to the Life of Pi. I slept well. I was pooped.

We awoke to rain. The rain let up enough to cook some appely oatmeal and then it was back to the tent for a nap and some more Life of Pi, which I finished later in the day. Enjoyable book, very readable. Richard gave me a book, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha which is appartently big in England so I’ll give that a shot next. We slept. It rained. We slept some more. We played Backgammon on Liz’s game set. We slept some more. Big birds sqwaked outside our tents, of and some people arrived on horseback, set up camp, and proceeded to start fishing. I think we took their campsite. Sorry. Liz and Amelie went for separate walks. Liz got soaked. Amelie did not. It was a mellow lazy day and I was too into my book to go for a walk.

We walked out on Wednesday and picked up heaps and heaps of trash, if a heap is a grocery bag full,. we carried out about 3 heaps of trash. Well done. Back to Cuenca by bus. The girls get ready to part ways. Amelie going to the coast, Puerto Lopez, Liz going South to Loja or Vilcabamba. I might catch up with her later on. I stayed here to correct my camera situation.

Wednesday afternoon, in fact, I was trying to get my camera fixed. Inside the lens assembly there’s a little flat cable like they have in little electronics. It bend and unbends every time the zoom lens retracts or extends. After 4.5 years of active use it finally gave way. Or I broke it taking it apart. I think it wa starting to give out because it was doing the same thing for a night when I was in NYC but it started working again after a little banging around… If I did break it, oh well, fuck it. Now I need a replacement part.

I had fixing it all figured out. Saughter two cables onto the contacts that the leads in the wire broke for and closely folow the new cables along the ribbon cable that’s already there. I had a nice guy in the electronics store solder it for me but there’s just not enough clearance inside a leans to put all of it together again. I fooled with it for about 2 hours, then I went camera shopping.

Digital cameras here cost about 50% more than the low price internet vendors of the US. Today I bought a Canon A70, turns out it’s the same camera that Michael Eakes has had to buy after getting his bag ripped off in La Paz, Bolivia. On a side note I just got word from Michael and “Jarrad and Anthony”http://anize.org/volker/archives/travel/2004/02/01/salcedo_and_warubi.html that they had a succesful trip across the salt desert in Bolivia, I’m gald they got along after my long-distance email introduction.

Oh right, cameras, so they cost more here and I was limiting myself to a Compact Flash camera because buying memory is expensive as well so that’s worth avoiding. Plus, all the higher end cameras still use CF anyway. I basically picked the A70 because it was the “not so huge markup” option, I only payed about $100 more than I would have in the US. Shipping one from the US would have cost $80 or so and would have taken time, precious time.

I’m psyched to get all the positive comments on my photos from Micheal. He made me smile.

The guy at the photo store was trying to sell a Canon A40 for $495 dollars. That price is so two years ago. It ws funny. He explained to me that he paid a lot for it and therefor he wouldn’t sell it cheaply, meanwhile the thing is depreciating aloing in his display case. I could have taken it off him for $240 maybe, it costs $170 in the US, and it’s discontinued. Sometimes I don’t understant business tactics. Maybe tghe sucker who will buy it as a “New In Box” antique in 3 years in being born right now.

What else, Que mas? Tomorrow I think I’m out in the morning to head to Loja and maybe Vilcabamba, another tourist mecca but the hostels there sound just heavenly.

I had a tuna melt for dinner. The hostel has an oven. Yay.

Canon because I also have my trusty old Canon AE-1.

Finishing off with some Cannibal Ox to take the blog entry home… Reckon I’m a slow writer.

Caramelo Caliente

Last night was pretty insane.

After running around and looking at digital camera prices which are all about twice what I’d be paying in the US I was off to the Wunderbar (ugh, name) for an espresso and some games of Backgammon. Back at the hostel I ran into Gerald and he said he had talked to Greta (dancer fromb Friday night at the Cafe Del Rio) and that they were indeed performing in Biblian that night and that we could probably catch a ride back to Cuenca with them. Sweet, time for an adventure. Empty the pockets. Stash cash in the socks and in various pockets. Bring nothing else valuable and head out. It was a about 7:30, it had just gotten dark.

We hopped on a bus to Azogues,… I don’t really remember the name of the town and then transferred onto a bus to Biblian. The whole trip took about an hour. Getting off the bus in Biblian was a bit odd. We had a sense of adventure. Sort of a where the hell are we and what are we doing here and why are there white folks walking down the street, oh, that’s just us in the mirror.

We didn’t walk long until we encountered a poster that gave the line up of all the bands that were going to be playing at the fiesta at the local school. We headed in that direction encountering quizzical stares from a lot of locals, I reckon not too many outsiders pass through Biblia. We ducked into a restaurant, ate salchipapas (french fries with sausage) and I drank a bit of coffee to get me through the night. Usually I don’t drink coffee after 3pm or so but I’m willing to make exceptions. The lady in the restaurant told us to take care of ourselves; even though it was tranquilo right now, once the people get some booze in the things might get a little bit uglier. Fights were sure to break out. Ok, warning heeded.

We get in line to enter the school performance space, watch the pimped out car turn its rounds showing off its with the fancy looking speakers that sound like crap because they’re turned up too loud and are distorting. When we get near the end of the line a few guys cut in front of us, being the absolute outsiders there we didn’t exactly feel like standing up to them, and I think the folks behind us understood. The bad people are not the people that let people cut in line, it’s the people that cut in line.

We get inside and there’s a sea of people shorter and darker than us. I usually feel pretty conspicuous but this was about the most extreme I’ve ever had it go in my entire life. The tallest out of the thousand or more people there, and the only one with light hair, whenever I looked up and around I was immediately greeted by dozens of fleeting glances. Many questioning. Some friendly. And then there was the guy who offered us some Zhumir, the oh so delicious (?) liquor drink that every one drank. There was dancing. There were bands. The girls from Caramelo Caliente were backstage and gave us a heads-up nod.

When the first band came off Caramelo Caliente took the stage one by one in their matching skimpy outfits, shaking what their momma gave them, uhm, their money maker if you will. The five took turns dancing and singing. The crowd pushed up close to the stage. I felt a little bit like I felt when I walked around the Amsterdam Red Light District about a year ago - sort of coming to terms with the en masse display of flesh. It was entertaining, the music was good, and they were throwing out posters. Gerald went up close and got himself a poster, much to the chagrin of the guy who had been trying to get one fro several minutes. We were in the in crowd with the sensation of the night, wtf? I guess you just ride it out and see what the night has to offer.

When the show was over at about midnight the girls were husteled out of there and Greta gave us the nod to follow along so we pretty much had to follow along. We found them outside, already piled into their van with manager and driver and all. There was some arguing inside, they had pretty much told us that we’d be able to get a ride back to Cuenca but the manager wasn’t having any of that. It’s perfectly understandable. I think I would have done the same if I was their manager. So we watch the taillights disappear into the distance…

Getting back to Cuenca would have to be a different adventure than riding back in the minivan with the objects of the fantasy of every guy that was at the event. We asked when the next bus to Cuenca might be passing through: 2am. It was 12:15. We headed back into the place and couldn’t find our old friends that we had been sharing drinks with all night. I felt kinda bad about ditching them. Music dance, we hung out until about 1:15 am when some guys Gerald was talking to started asking him for money… it was about time to go then so we headed out to the street and these guys actually follow us out for a while. Whatever, we just start walking down the main road towards Cuenca and they soon drop behind. At this point we start hitchhiking - and the third car picks us up, it’s a truck driven by Eduardo who was heading south - that’s about all we gathered. We didn’t have a lot to lose so we piled in.

We rode for about 10 mintues and Eduardo pulled the truck over by the side of the road with some other cars. Ahead was the sound of music and some lights. There was another fiesta here, in the street, free for all to attend. Why not spend a little bit of time here. Get some more of a taste for the culture. This and that. We were basically fielding questions for about an hour, fending off the one guy who hated foreigners,… our new buddies just told us not to worry, he’s just drunk. I would hate to run into a group of drunk people who hate me for where I’m from. That could be ugly. Eduardo came over and told us that he was continuing so we get that into our head. Time to leave. Right then a bus appears, headed in the direction we wanted to go. We run after it for a little while with no luck and here comes Eduardo with his truck. The new guys that we met are all telling us not to go with Eduardo because he’s a bad man, he’ll rob s they say. Ok, maybe we won’t keep riding with him. We tell him to go on but he doesnt’t leave. At this point another bus comes over the horizon and is blocked by Eduardo’s truck. I’m sure the bus folks are a bit apprehensive with amob of people outside and a truck blocking the way. We couldn’t get them to open the doors and Eduardo was not moving his truck untill a few minutes later when he realized that we were definitely not riding with him. Amidst the shouting of the few guys we had met at this second fiesta that the people on the bus were gay and that we should not get on, the bus finally opened its doors and Gerald and I quickly slipped in. It turns out that the bus was not really in service, they were just coming back from a trip that there were doing and were basically returning to Cuenca empty. They wouldn’t accept any payment. Nice folks.

We got dropped off on the outskirts of Cuenca where the busdriver lived and were told we could get a taki there but it took a while and some other people who were on the bus ended up giving us a ride straight to our hostel. Once again, we were not able to give them anything in payment. Good peoples.

Gerald and I headed up to our rooms, reflected for a minute and decided that being 3:15am the night was not yet over. Let’s go to the Cafe del Rio where we first met the Caramelo Calientes,… that was open until 3:30 on Friday. They were closed. We just wanted to sit down and drink one beer to close out the night but nothing was open. The first guy we asked led us to a closed door that he knocked on and inside we found a chill little bar with a few folks still lingering around, had some more conversations about travelling and working abroad and the likes. I’m glad we found that place, it was really chill.

We ducked out of there after about an hour and were trailed by some other folks that were leaving the bar. They were kind of sticking to us trying to walk to the hostel with us when a truck pulled up and the driver shouted “Hey, Belgica”… hey, Belgium - it was the bar owner who was heading home, he told us that these guys that were hanging around were wanting to rob us and we hopped into his truck for a two block ride out of sight of the others.

I never felt any real sense of danger all night. Even though I had been drinking a bit I did call it quits when I was feeling slightly out of control. I’m still trying to figure out all this calling the other people robbers, are they just watching out for us? Could they be robbers as well that are trying to get us to go with them instead. I guess you just have to trust your instinct and only ride on the back of trucks that you can jump out of.

We got back to the hostel at 5:15am and got up around noon. Today has been very mellow. Gerald might call the dance group to see if we can each get a poster, he lost his somewhere in our long journey home.

Tomorrow it’s off to Cajas National Park for some more camping. I’m beat. Peace Y’all.

Cuenca

So this hostel, El Monestario, where I’m staying is a trip. There’s a kitchen, that’s nice. This morning’s best quote was Amelie saying “There are chicken-feet in the fridge.” There’s a few of us gringos cooking our pasta and stuff alongside the Ecuadorian kids who are on a school exchange program who fry everything. Platain. Suasage. Potatoes. Chicken. Cow. Chicken Feet? We’ll see. They’re young and a little hard to relate to, but there’s an older guy who’s the night watchman, Silvio, who’s pretty open in talking about his beliefs and experiences. I walked in on a conversation that Gerald and ??? (both Belgian) were having with him about Silvio’s experience working in the US for 2 years. About the beers of the world. How we tourists/visitors/outsiders would rather support Pilsener, Club, or Biela, the local brews in place of putting $$$ in the coffers of Anheiser-Bush or some other big company by buying Budweiser or some Pepsi or Coke product. The Ecuadoreans are pretty proud of their beers, and they’re ok if you like something nice and light, what’s sad is that the huge majority has never tried a nice stout or a barleywine or a lambic ale or a …

Suddenly the owner bursts into the entry way where we were talking, told us that it was too late to be out there talking and that it was time for bed. Uhm, ok, boss. I guess we’ll stop our cultural interchange because it’s bedtime. Granted, the walls are thin and people can hear us, but that doesn’t stop people from talking lound on the phone or using the blender at 6:30 am, which is more critical to me than an 11pm conversation. Different world, different cultures, that’s fine, he just wasn’t very nice about the whole deal.

On Friday morning it was all about eating a chill breakfast and reading the newspaper, I met up with Rabah to toss some disc in the park for a little while. It was good to get the thumber throw back in order. His lady Beth is 4 months pregnant and was taking a break at the hotel. They moved hotels, their room was right by the kitchen which gets pretty noisy in the morning. I don’t blame them. After tossing we cruised to this wild art gallery lounge performance space. One of the university scuplture professors took it upon himself to build a bit of a shrine to Heavy Metal,… you pay 25 cents to enter innocent looking building and you’re greeted by all kinds of goth-inspired sculptures, lots of little rooms with lounge areas. One of the hellraiser movies was playing on a tv. I felt like I was in another world. Now I know where all the kids here wearing their Heavy Metal shirts go to hang out at night. The to-scale model stage of a KISS band performance was off the hook. I dug it. There was passion on the place.

Later we looked at some Panama hats, there was a friendly owner of the shop/workshop who showed us around. He lost his voice 15 years ago so he was talking with his hands a lot, making clicking and hissing sounds, resorting to his pen and pas when necessary. Making and selling Panama hats goes back to his grandfather in his family. He’s got two apprentices now who do most of the work, one of his sons has a doctor’s office in the same building as the shop, the other son moved to New York City two years ago because he couldn’t find work as a veterinarian in Ecuador. That was his traning. He would like to work as a Vet in the US, unfortunately he’s outstayed his tourist visa and is not about to get a working visa, that doesn’t make it easier for him to be in the US. Apparently he’s currently working at a hotel in NYC with his dad missing him back home. Oh the opportunity of the US.

After walking around and hitting about 8 little computer stores I finally founf a USB compact flash reader for sale. $53. damn, I’ll wait a little bit, at least until I get my camera fixed, if I get my camera fixed. I took it apart and put it back together a second time, no luck yet. I’ll take it apart again and see if I can find out what went wrong since I last put it together. It’s annoying not being able to shoot photos.

Richard and Claire cooked dinner. Liz made appple cobbler. I bought some ice cream to eat with it. It was time to go shoot some pool and Rabah caught up with us a bit later too. Gerald, the Belgian, joined in as well. After shootong pool we wandered around for a while. The girls wanted to find a place to go dancing. We walked. Looked. Walked. Sat done in one place and only after we were seated were informed that there was a cover charge for the mediocre band that was playing, we kept walking, and Richard and Claire decided that they didn’t want to walk any longer and went home. Gerald had been in Cuenca for a month (he’s studying here) and eventually reccomended a place overlooking the river, it was pretty dead when the five of us walked in. There was another table of four and some Bon Jovi playing. At least we were sitting, having a beer. A bit later a few pimped out chicas came in and sat at the table next to us, that tabled finished a bottle of Red Label before the night was out. Another group arrived right when Liz, Amelie, and Rabah were leaving. Rabah had to get up early in the morning. The girls were tired. Maybe Gerald and I are the types to stick things out, even if things aren’t perfect, it’s all part of he experience. He was busy comparing and contrasting his experiences in British vs French vs Australian prisons when a guy at the table down the room started playing the guitar and the whole place erupted in song. It’s sad not knowing all the songs that they know, I felt so separate, but there’s not a lot more to to but smile and nod.

Smile and nod.

The guitar playing stopped and some salsa music came on on the PA and next thing we knew the room was dancing. There was one girl who had a lot of flair, stealing the show, she and her friends were doing all these coordinared dances, I was trying to figure out if it was some dances like they have in the us, The Macarena, The Electric Slide, all that stuff I see at weddings from time to time. After a while Gerald got to talking to Greta, the one who could not stop dancing and it turns out these girls are all part of some kind of a dance troupe, hence all the coordination. They’re doing a performance on Saturday night, he got her phone number, if he follows up we might very well be going a ways out of town to see some authentic local dance thing tonight. We shall see.

Gerald doesn’t like dancing all that much. He sais he won’t dance unless he’s pissed drunk. Well, we was getting there. Greta pulled him up to dance and here I was wathing all this crew do their thing with the one Belgian who did not fit in,… well, a few songs later he retired back to the chair and they started getting into playing more of a Hip-Hop/reggae selection, I had been wiggling in my chair for a while and I got to dancing as well. When I get back to the table of people I was in the middle of a conversation where Geald was dispelling the American Dream to the Ecuadoreans, the girls that are wanting to seek success dancing in the US, the guys who were thinking of maybe going there the earn a lot of money.

There are a lot of latin americans in the US that are doing alright and happy, but it seems like a lot have a hard time as well. I’m still trying to decide if their quality of life goes up if they go to the us and take some kind of an unskilled job, earning more, but having to spend more to survive as well. Yes, a lot of lating americans and other immigrants are able to send money back home to their families but often times that’s at the sacrifice of a lot of comforts. It was hard breaking to them that many of the immigrant workers from the third world hold down the jobs that the people in the developed world feel too god for. There are of course exceptions, but looking at boston, all the janitors and street cleaners and hard-working landscapers were Brazilian or Haitian or something. It’s not exactly like on TV. I think the best thing for them to do is to talk to someone like Silvio from the hostel who’s been to the US to see what they can gether from their experiences. Talk to the Panama hat maker who’s son is an illegal worker in NYC. Is their life better.

I have a bit more to learn here in Latin America…

This morning I copied some music to Gerald’s laptop, and he burned me a cd of some things, all you kids out there, check out Zebda, a very good french Hip-Hop group that I was listening to while posting this… tmo, what was the way KRS-ONE said we should write Hip-Hop in that lecture at Northeastern?

Oh, and ZUG is pretty funny.

Ingapirca

6:00 am on Sunday, get up and go. The train leaves at 7:00 and we need to be sitting on the right side in the back in order to get the most dramatic views and inhale the least diesel fumes from the engine. We saved some space for Richard and Claire whom we met in Ba�os and are somewhat on the same route that we are. Holy Gringo Madness. I guess there were about three to four hundred fellow white tourists on that train. Cameras galore, I felt left out.

It’s a ritual for the kids along the way. Three times a week they stand out by the railroad tracks and wait for the gringos to throw them candy. Some were throwing them apples. I was throwing only smiles and waves. They’ve been so conditioned to expect candy. If the train passed by and no candy was thrown the look of disappointment on their faces was almost unbearable. Luckily there was a kid on the roof of the train with us who was selling us the tourists overpriced lollipops to throw to the kids on the ground.

So, you know those higway games to keep kids busy on roadtrips. B-i-n-g-o, If I ever get to do this train ride again or know of someone going I really want to make the Nariz del Diablo train ride bingo, with items like:

• dog spinning at least 2 times in excitement because of train noise
• sheep riding on top of a bus
• pigs riding on top of bus
• kid getting knocked down by another kid to get to candy
• you’re the first to spot someone waving to the train from 1 mile up the hill
• tourist pees off the train
• it rains
• the train derails
• a kid catches candy out of the air
• mom picks up candy for her kid
• you get flipped off
• someone on the ground taking a piss/poop
• someone throws something up at the tourists
• a derailment
• you meet an italian tourist
• … I think I have a few more in my book that I don’t have with me right now.

The train passed through a town that had about 20 food stands set up for tourists to buy fried goods. Then we passed through Alausi, where we would get a room later that night. Past Alausi the train ride got pretty neat, going along a pretty steep hillside, but staying too high above the river to get across the valley when a tributary flows into the main river. I have read about a train tunnel that loops through a mountain to allow the train to climb or descend over a short distance of land. The Nariz del Diablo train switchbacks. It goes ot one end of the track, they throw a switch, and the train backs up over the next lower piece of track. At the bottom they throw another switch and the train continues forward along its merry way. Kinda neat. Zigzagging up and down the mountain.

Back in Alausi we got a room and readied ourselves for another 3 day hiking trip. Bought some veggies at the market, some yummy fresh-fried plantain chips off a street vendor. The girls went to bed early and I had dinner with Richard, we talked photgraphy and international economy over some beer and it was off to bed.

Getting to Achupallas which is about an hour away from Alausi was expensive (relatively) but very pretty. There was a bus at noon but we wanted to get our hike started early so we split the price of a $15 camionetta (pickup truck with hig wall and some benches) which afforded some beautiful views as we climbed up to Achupallas, a mellow remote town of farmers. It would have been nice to spend some more time there but we were on a mission.

We had no map. I like having maps for hikes. Topographical maps and a compass. Oh well, instead we had directions from my Footprint Ecuador guide book. They fill a page and seemed pretty sketchy but they got us through the hike ok. There were some doubts at times but common sense and a compass led us through.

The hike was a hike. I’m not going into a whole lot of detail. Good camping. Good food. Some nice weather, but cold when the sun went down. Spiders crawling around high windswept peaks, dogs wanting to protect their territory, and his owner asking us for matches ‘cause he had run out.

I relearned how to play backgammon on the second ovening of the hike. Liz has a little magnetic travel set with a bunch of games. I wanna play more now. O yeah, we actually had a beautiful sunset and a clear night in this great field littered with large boulders. It was a little bumpy but a great sheltered place to camp.

The last day brought nice weather but a lot of road walking that the book did not mention. About 3 hours. The book said there was a road involved, but come on, we kept questioning of we were going the right way. We finally got to Ingapirca, saw the ruins from otside the pay perimeter, and had some beers. We didn’t want to hang around too long as we had to get back to Alausi that night to recover our belongings that we had stashed there. Yuch, 2 hours back-track, a necessary evil.

Chill night in Alausi, early morning bus ride to Cuenca on which I realize that I’m getting better and better at reading the newspaper it’s pretty cool. Keep on building that vocabulary. I listened to Bob Marley’s Kaya album, the title song of which was somehow stuck in my head upon waking this morning. Checked into some rooms here in Cuenca, went grocery shopping because this hostel has, yay, a kitchen! I got back to the hostel and I’m sitting on the ground in the hallway talking about the food situation with the girls when yet another guys walk down the hallway from the kitchen, I say �hola�, he says �hola� and then we both say something to the effect of HOLY SHIT, it’s Rabah, from Fredricksburg, an old Virginia Tech Ultimate player, good guy. I crashed at his house for Fools Fest last year. I knew he was in Ecuador visiting his lady whom I ran into at the South American Explorers in Quito weeks ago, but damn, at the same hostel and all. Maybe I’ll get to throw some disc in the near future :)

Rabah is travelling minimalist. The bus he and Beth were on heading back to Quito from the coast got robbed and they lost almost all of their stuff. The carryon bags that they had stashed under the seats didn’t get taken, but everything else, gone. I’ll try to avoid the night buses.

Notable Sighting: On the bus from Alausi to Cuenca, on the right you pass the Restaurante Jesus del gran Poder. O yeah,

Poor Camera

So I spent a few hours last night and today trying to fix my CoolPix 880, the lens was stuck out. It wa showing a system error. I bought a set of micro screwdrivers yesterday, they were cheap, $1.50 for a 6 piece set. I stripped 2 of the screwdrivers trying to take out one screw. Ok, today I bought the $7.40 Stanley brand name set and that did the trick. I was able to take the camera way way way apart and saw that a spring was not hooked on where it was supposed to be way inside the lens assembly. I put everything back together but it’s still now quite working. Wah. I think I’ll try again tonight. It’s tough to fix trial and error because it takes about 30 minutes to take apart (now that I know what I’m doing) and 30 more to put it back together to where I can try it out. Mas o Menos. I have been very meticulous labelling screws and parts and all that, I think I’ll get a bit more sloppy this next time. We’ll see. I hope I don’t break anything more.

I reminded myself of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig talks a lot about the mindset you must have to work on a piece of equipment. If you’re annoyed, take a break. If you’re stuck, take a break. Be friends with the subject of your work. Don’t work when tired. You’ll break something… All that stuff I knew before, but it was nice having it spelled out by an author.

Today Liz, Amelie, and I bought tickets for the Nariz Del Diablo train, a very touristy thing to do, but, ya gotta do it. We’ll be out there at 6:30am.

Then it’s off to hike the Ecuadorean Inca Trail to Ingapirca. ( 3 days )

Yeah, my hand is fine. It’s but a flesh-wound. A Little puncture in my palm beside a blood blister. Taken care of. No big deal.

Lodo-Rific

Lodo -> Sp..En —> Mud

Liz and I caught the bus to Candelaria at 6:30 in the Morning on Wednesday. As soon as it got out of Riobamba it turned into a school bus for the kids of Penpie and as we got closer to our destination of Candelaria. Bags packed, a few days worth of veggies and fruits, oatmeals and pastas, cookies and oreos. The entry to the Sangay National Park cost $10 per person. It was raining.

The path up was easy to find and follow. Well, easy to follow if you’re into following. I thought I had dealt with bad mud when I went hiking at Cape Scott (northern Vancouver Island) in ‘98 but that was flat. This time it was uphill through a carefully proportioned mixture of cow poop, horse dung, and plain old muddy mud. Uphill. A half a step for every step. A lot of work, at least we didn’t get cold.

Six or Seven hours later we got to the campsite. We had walked across several rivers. Me doing the risky jumping because my boots were still relatively dry inside due to my ankle gaiters. Liz quickly gave in to walking through the streams, her low hikers were already covered and filled with plenty of funky mud.

Ok, bringing along a hot pepper, green pepper, and a tomato or two for a pasta dish at the end of the day is great. I think I’m done with the lazy Lipton campfood. It’s worth putting your own mix together.

We set up the tent on a slight slope inside the fenced area where there were some lodges made of the paramo grass that hikers could rent out for the night. They were locked so we stayed in the tent. Inside the fence so as not to be molested by the horses and cows that were roaming the highland Collanes Plain.

It rained all night. 8pm to 9am. Another lazy morning (hi Streck) and we finally worked up the willpower to make our was up to the crater lake at about 11:30am. There were some great poop covered campsites along the way. Damn the poop. There’s only one thing worse than poop and that’s walking through poop, and eating poop, and smelling poop, and camping in poop… ok, that’s more that one thing.

The we got to the crater lake at 1:30pm. El Altar is a neat volcano. One side of the crater collapsed so now it’s pretty easy to hike up to the western ledge (4300m) that provides a stunning view of the surrounding glaciated peaks. The waterfalls on the way ain’t no joke neither.

The weather up there is so temperamentel. Luckily I haven’t seen any storms yet. There’s always been blue sky above,… but every five minutes it changes. Sunny and rain. Fog nd drizzle. Cloudy and dry. Sunny and dry (I like that one),… always in flux, when we got up to the ledge we got about 3 minutes to view the crater lake before it was obscured by fog. In fact, the fog pulled in right in the middle of a panorama photo session. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something.

Another yummy dinner, some tired tent conversation, and the day was done. Hiking back down today there were some other campers along the path. Their dog was barking. He chilled out. I pet the dog. He’s cool. I talk about how cold my hands are, hey I can use the warm dog to warm my hands. Pet the dog again, oh look, white fangs, hmm, he bit my hand. Grrr. I guess he didn’t like to be used. Good thing I have tetanus and rabies shots cursing through my blood.

Breakfast was time to get another photo, maybe my last photo. At least with this camera. It sucks when you go to turn your camera off and ‘SYSTEM ERROR’ Oh well, I tried fiddling with it for a while and now have a set of mini screwdrivers in my bad to take it apart later on. Cross fingers. What’s a 1e without a camera?

Sliding down throught the poop/mud mix we got to the bus stop right as the bus was pulling up, very nice because it saved us a 4 1/2 hour wait or a 3 hour road-hike or maybe a ride on a local pickup truck. Hey, if my camera had been working I would have probable stopped to take more pictures and we would have missed the bus or something. Still trying to figure out the dogbite, maybe a lesson to not touch dogs down here, maybe next time I would have lost a finger instead of drawing some blood from my palm.

Ok, time for dinner, 4 people waiting on me.

Dj 1e

Sunday was a lazy day of sitting around. Monday was a lazy, last day in Baños. I slept until 11:30 and had a lazy breakfast. Then I dropped off some laundry at the washing place and bought some 3rd grade level spanish books for me to read. Then I read the paper for 2 hours. Chill.

In the evening a crew of us cooked dinner. I made the fruit salad desert, Liz and Amelie made the pasta and sauce. Mhhhh. We made so much that we were able to feed about 3 others, hey, and why the hell not?

Monday night was fun. After dinner we had a few drinks of wine, and headed out to the bar where I got all the music reccomendations. This time I was prepared. It was a 1 for 1 DJ cooperative. I plugged in my player and Fabian had his and we just traded songs back and forth for about 4 hours. Tribe, Aesop, Fela, James Brown, Herbie Mann, Beastie Boys, Deee-Lite, Hendrix, it was a great time. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been able to hear my music outloud, sans headphones.

When am I gonna get myself some work or some situation where I can just spend the evening putting on music for people. It’s so much fun watching how they react.

By the end of the night Fabian had cashed in and it was just the Tribe/De La Soul mp3 cd rocking which made for some chill dancing. I’ve got Fabian’s email and postal address, I should be dropping him a package of some tunes when I get back home. Or if anyone else out there wants to do it in my stead, he’s be happy as well.

Getting up this morning sucked. Tired all day. Today was travelling, shopping for a ground cloth, a sleeping mat for Liz, eating some mediocre chinese food, and internetting.

Tomorrow at 6:30 we’ll hopefully be sitting on a bus to the start of the El Altar volcano hike. I’m psyched to get back out ‘into the woods.’

Ugh, I just got a sad email from Michael who’s down around La Paz with his jeep right now, he just had his “bag of things that mustn’t be stolen” stolen right out of his passenger seat as he was digging through a bag in the back seat. It kind of put a damper on his trip. Gotta send that guy some good vibes,…

I almost finished reading “The Celestine Prophecy” in Baños but had to return it before I left to get my deposit back. Boo, 20 pages to go. Now it’s on to reading “The Life of Pi” which I have traded for so I can keep it as long as I want. Yay.

The Obligatory Cuy

Wednesday and Thursday were relatively uneventful. Wednesday we had a big group dinner at the Hostel and Thursday we cruised to get some Mexican food. 8 of us for night on the town, getting some drinks at The Hobbit the night after and listening to another great jukebox. I sure do like these jukeboxes. Well, music as well.

Saturday I did the bike ride I did with the germans one more time. Oy, the politics of renting bikes are so strange. Our hostel seems to get a comission from one of the bike rental places so they ended up calling a guy to come pick us up and take us to the rental place. Last week I payed $4 for a bike at the same place, this time they wanted $5 and wouldn’t budge. Maybe it was because of the comission. Out of principle we went to a a cheaper place with crappier bikes. Comission on gettting a sale shouldn’t work like that. All should be able to revel in the mutual benefit. We shouldn’t pay for the privilege of the hostel to be able to earn more money because we’re ignorant.

The other bike rental place didn’t provide a pump or tools or anything like that. When I had the guy tighten up my front brake cable I pocketed the hex key for the day, it’s such an important bike tool. All they were sending us off with was one little wrench which didn’t do me any good when my crank-arm came loos and almost fell off. I pounded that back on with a piece of wood and a rock and then tightened the bolt on with my leatherman. Oh well, crappy gear. Cheap prices. Our giy James was tired of waiting at the cheap bike place and ended up going back to the other rental place when we were renting bikes. The funny thing is that he ended up getting the bike for $4 anyway. I’m still a bit confused.

This time the bike ride was much more mellow. We got to see a lot more falls along the way. With Marius and Falk we just busted ahead as fast as we could… With this crew we took it a lot easier and saw a lot more in depth.

After getting back to Baños the vegetrians went to the hostel to cook dinner while the German Amelie and I cruised to try our first taste of Cuy (Guinea Pig). We sat down and ordered the front half off the grill which was promptly chopped in half for us. Silly as it sounds, it tasted a lot like chicken. With a gamey hint to it, like rabbit. All in all a good experience. The photos will tell a lot more. The meal ended with a dissection of the head until we were picking apart brains. Interesting. The funnest part for me was my suggestion that we each pull on an ear and whoever’s piece came off first had to eat it. I lost. I ate the cuy ear. It tasted like,… prork rinds. Kinda. There was definitely a general aversion to get over.

Last night I had a bartender write about 30 different Latin American hip hop, reggae, and other artists. This is something I shall research a little bit more in the future. The internet here is just too expensive.

I think I’m heading off with Liz to do a hike to El Altar crater (3 days) and then we’ll meet her friend Amelie who’s going to Quito to get her Visa extension to ride the Nariz Del Diablo train south of Riobamba. After that, we’ve got some plans to do the 4 day Ecuadorean Inca Train hike at Ingapirca. I hope the weather holds. It’s pretty again after a week of drizzle.

burro

mad props to may for cutting this up for me while i’m on the road, it sure is great to have a support staff.

More About That Later...

I wrote “More about that later… ” in one of my previous entries and never wrote about it, It was just the fact that when Katrina came into the picture suddenly we had a:
Katrina, a Karina, and an Irina.
Oy.

After my last blog session I wound up back at the hostel and Tracked down Liz to go out and toss some disc. There’s a big covered hall with basketball courts and soccer goals that doubles as a market on Wednesdays and Sundays. We busted out there to toss some disc for a bit.

It ended up being like the day in the South End of Boston when I met tmo. One kid that we were playing with turned into 2 kids turned into… 10 kids with one really young one weaving through the masses on his bike with training wheels. We spent about 2 hours throwing the discs with the kids who were all yelling “Aca aca”, “here here”, “A mi a mi”, “to me to me”. I got a kick out of the boy who asked me “Que significa ‘fuck you’”… “Que significa ‘son-of-a-bitch’”. It was cute. One of the girls had some mean throws. My poor disc got nicely worn down on the concrete floor. I certainly wasn’t going to show them the skip pass and luckily they didn’t discover it.

What else,… nothing super special, the TV is still on in the hostel lobby at all waking hours. Kinda driving me nuts. The yummy chile and ginger sauce that I put on the “Free Food” shelf in the kitchen disappeared. I guess I assumed it was Shared Food. Some freeloader stoled it along with Liz’s big bag of oregano and a bottle of vinegar. I don’t think a traveller would be taking a huge bag of oregano and a big glass bottle so we’re thinking it’s an inside job. WFT? The bag of grass I put up there last night was still there as of this morning. The thief is even picky.

Last night as I was about to write a little story for my class I started hearing music outside and walked down the road to catch a fully dressed up band with Sombreros and, well, they reminded me of the Three Amigos, I guess it’s a traditional outfit. I’m not exactly the cultural savante here. There were 6 musicians with guitars and a violin and a bass… serenading a couple that was standing in the doorway. That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen in Boston.

Reminds me of the funeral procession that cruised past while we were playing frisbee on Tuesday, It was led by a car much like a Ford Festiva hatchback with the hatch upen and a mess of big speakers filling the back. It was playing a funeral march as the procession worked its way to the graveyard. The coffin was carried in the middle of the crowd. It was neat to see, follow the musical car. I dug it, I mean as much as you can dig a funeral procession.

Well, time to get back to my rainy day :) Hasta Luego.

Couple More Pics

O yeah, I’ve got a few more pics up at the same old site, the first new one is this one.

More Spanish School

So Friday night Marius, Falk, and Jemma our Aussie friend headed out to the Baños thermal baths and Falk was quickly involved in a conversation with an Ecuadorean girl who was in Baños with 2 other friends for the weekend. One was an English teacher and the other one had spent some time studying in Wyoming so they spook good english and were really easy to understand. The other one was short and really funny but kind of the Princess type. Had a way with words though, even I could gather that. Maye through the little bit that I understood, maybe through judging the others’ reactions. Anyway, their names were Karina, Irina, and Vanessa. More on that later :)

We somehow met up with these ladies later on that night and went out dancing. Oy, these DJ’s are tough tough. They play all the stuff that people know (read this link if you havenb’t yet, i love love love it). Sometimes danceable, sometimes not. Transitions were about as abrupt as possible. Ugh. It’s weird dancing here. After years of dancing up in the attic at South Main Cafe in Blacksburg VA to The Kind (Grateful Dead covers, etc)
I’ve finally gotten over not liking to dance. I don’t dance like the others. I don’t much care. I was getting some funny looks though. I was head and shoulders above the crowd. Oh boy, big gringo boy, dancing like a hippie freak, at least he’s got a little bit of rhythm (i hope). I don’t dance too well with others. Maybe I just don’t practice that enough. I just see myself as more of the type to shut my eyes and move to the music. What I really needed there was my buddy Tim, not tmo, but the Learmouth, I miss the days of dancing with him at the Midway Cafe (when all the way is just too far) in JP. I even tried the dancing with one of the girls when one of the salsa numbers came up but i really don’t know when is a good time to like, spin the girl around, and stuff.

We decided to meet up for to go to the zoo in the AM. Falk was feeling sick but Marius and I showed up right at 10 and we piled into the little car and drove to the Zoo. I learned may words about animals. The one girl was afriad of everything and couldn’t walk on the rocky paths with her city shoes. She was good for a laugh, and even had a good sense of humor about it. Monkeys, Condors, Waterfalls with trash, Parrots, it was a zoo. We hit the snakehouse across the street too. That one of them wouldn’t even go in. Oh well, I think I got some good closeup photos of fish and snakes and newts.

After the zoo we went to the Church Museum and I learned some more Spanish, yay. It’s amazing what you pick up when you’re not constantly taking English or German. After, Marius went back to the hostel for some rest and I cruised to get lunch with the three ladies. By this time it was just me. On the way to find a place to lunch I was chased down by Katrina, whom I met playing disc in Quito. She was in Baños for the weekend and we agreed to meet at the hot springs at 7pm so I could eat some and get a little bit of rest. Seven rolled around and it was off to the hotsprings for a while yadda yadda, what I’m trying to get to is this.

The girls had a car. Baños is small. They drove to the springs. After the springs we drove around for 15 or 20 minutes looking for a place to eat. The springs would have takes 7 minutes to walk to. We would have found a restaurant in 5 minutes walking around. All this driving around drove me nuts. After an Italian dinner I went to chat with Katrina for a bit longer over Ice Cream and we got to talking about all these issues of the TV being on all the time in the hostel lobby and this driving around when it’s easier to walk. And the littering.

I guess it’s a bit of a status symbol to have a car to drive around in. And to watch to. I sooo value play for kids to learn and grow. It’s hard to see the kids at the hostel sitting there watching TV most of the day. I guess I’ve just come from a society where all of these things are done in excess and I’ve come to renounce them and they’re still glorified by the locals here. Anyway, something to think about some more.

I met Katrina again in the AM and we talked about hippiedom, Captain Planet, Ayn Rand, Daniel Quinn, and stuff like that. I’m not so good at starting substantial conversations. It was good having her start good conversations about intriguing topics, I don’t know why I don’t do that more often. I really enjoy conversations like that. I guess it often has to start with a few deep questions and stuff and I’m never sure where to go with those. Hmm, My sis seems to get into those kinds of conversations in a flash. The kind of conversation where you end up questioning your own value. Someone elses values. Come up with cool new concepts. Yay.

Katrina hopped on a bus to Quito to study some more Spanish and then go volunteer on the Galapagos for a month. Back at the Hostel I had a lazy afternoon of it, the Germans were up reading in the hills and I sat around the grassy yard doing some spanish reading while listeing to some Alison Krauss until I got into a conversation with Liz, who had just gotten in that day. She be a Kiwi who’s been living in UK for 2 years and is out travelling for 10 months. We all met up at the Casa Hood later on that night for yet another movie

I started Spanish school this AM, ugh, 8 AM. It’s good to be able to ask lots of questions. I’m definitely refining some things that I’ve had questions about in the past and getting some practice talking in the future and past tenses.

Ok, enough blogging, time to head back to Mr. Hostel and see if I can track down Liz to kick some hack or toss some disc.