Cooking my culo.

We thoroughly enjoyed Playas, but it was time to move on again. First breakfast, where just in case we hadn’t noticed how friendly Ecuadorians are, the owners gave us their phone number and offered to meet up in Guayaquil over the next couple days. Unfortunately we’re headed the other direction, with a quick bus ride then a turn in a camioneta, arguably my favorite Latin American transport option, also known as riding in the back of some dude’s pickup truck for a quarter.

This took us to the side of the highway, where we waited to flag down a bus to Salinas, the wealthy counterpart to Playas’s working class clientele. The bus was packed, and K and I squeezed into the last bit of space on the front steps. The driver signaled that we had to sit down, and the ticket-collector guy stuck a newspaper in my face, gesturing with it at my crotch.

It took me a second to realize he wanted me to sit on the newspaper. A couple miles down the road I understood why, as the engine beneath the floor started cooking my culo.

The ticket guy spent the trip picking his nose, burping, and whenever he’d jump out to open the luggage compartment for someone a noticeable odor of methane+ would follow him back in. he was very considerate though, and would leave the door open for a little while.

That took us to Libertad, then one more local bus to Salinas. On this one a local dude got on with his acoustic guitar and started singing us a song about Jesus. I’m not super good at ignoring people, and the resulting eye contact helped him zero in on me.

As he came around to collect coin donations he paused to tell me he recognized me from the TV. I was confused, “you saw that thing in Colombia?” He nodded, then went on a rant whose level of Spanish was far beyond me, but I think I heard the word “archeology” in there at least once. I highly doubt he saw me on TV, but it was fun anyway.

We found accommodation for a decent price after bargaining them down, then getting a further discount for paying with cash (the “sweet, now we don‘t have to tell the tax collector you were ever here” discount). Restaurants in town were more expensive too, but we had a grocery store across the street and a fridge in the room, so returned to the pattern of having one warm meal per day. For the rest we snacked in the room, too often while watching whatever sitcom was on the single English channel. (My judgment: Big Bang Theory is pretty good, but Two and a Half Men is idiotic. They occasionally have a good joke, but then they explain it.)

Salinas had two beaches, though one was thick with rusting bottle caps, so we tended towards the other. Turns out rich families dig holes, throw sand, and eat ice cream just like the families in Playas, though they treat the vendors worse and don’t talk to strangers.

It was a pretty sedate week, quick swims in the surprisingly cold ocean, slow walks around town, working on a project, and eating in the room except for lunch. For that I’d head a couple streets away from the beach to an eatery marked only by the plume of gray smoke from the barbecue out front. I’d take a bench and enjoy a bowl of savory sancocho (fish soup with a hunk of canned tuna, a piece of starchy plantain, and a thick wedge of yucca), a cup of some sweet (usually greenish) juice, and a plate with fish-or-chicken on a bed of white rice that served as an excellent medium for the hot sauce. Plus the waiter and I had moderate Man Crushes on each other.

It was a relaxing week…then we came to this nutty place…

A beautiful place to sit, eat, and die.

The town of Playas is billed as the “lower middle class beach town”, crammed on the weekends in season, and empty the rest of the time. Sounded perfect. (We arrived Sunday afternoon and high season is not quite here.)

The bus approached Playas through dusty fields, shacks approaching shanty status, and scenery generally in disrepair. It was clearly not a wealthy area. The town’s streets were poorly paved and dusty, plenty of empty storefronts, and there was certainly nothing shiny or polished to attract tourists, with none in sight anyway.

I felt the familiar “where the hell am I?” that feels so tentatively delightful.

There was no clear direction to walk in, so I picked one and started, just to move away. This is a general policy of mine, to flee the bus drop point, and always feels a bit like the beginning some special-ops video game. Hide and Seek. The Hunger Games. Run!

We found Hotel Vista del Mar (Hotel Ocean View), which, sure enough, had an ocean view, if you  peered through the laundry lines and over the roofs of the more expensive hotels closer to the beach. The price was a tad high, but via the classic “do you have any rooms with shared bathroom for cheaper?” we bargained him down a notch.

We had a bed, toilet, cold water shower, and most blessed of all, a fan, necessary not for heat but to keep the mosquitoes away. The manager explained that the entire town basically has no internet access, and phones are iffy.

The menu next door featured marine viagra, beach orgasm,
and seafood orgy. But alas, no broccoli.

Hungry after seven hours on buses, we went looking for food, hoping against hope for vegetarian dishes for K. Place after place sent menu-wielding salesmen at us like hookers in the park after midnight, but when we asked if they had any vegetarian food they all looked disappointed, acknowledging that they had none whatsoever, and walked away, shoulders slumped, menus hanging from limp arms.

Then we found the place our hotel guy had told us about. Foolish me thought “the Chinese restaurant” meant a restaurant with Chinese food. Turns out it meant a normal restaurant whose owner was Chinese. This man with the steady gaze of a rather severe grandfather acknowledged that there was nothing vegetarian on the menu, but yes, he could make a plate of rice and some veggies. And for me they had the typical Ecuadorian lunch special of soup and main course for two bucks.

The pollo was good, and K found broccoli! We ate our daily warm meal here the whole time we were in town.

There isn’t much to do in Playas, beyond, of course, the playa. The beach stretches for miles of fine sand, not a spec of shade in sight except for the umbrellas and chairs set up every morning by enterprising locals. For a few bucks you can sit and watch the beach life: families picnicking with hordes of children, vendors selling anything and everything, and a whole lot of sand throwing.

We bought watermelon wedges, a fried plantain, and a yellow patty of something like mashed potatoes stuffed with chicken. We declined soda, beer, fried things, coconut water, sunglasses, cigarettes, other fried things, chicle, inflatable swim toys, bootleg movies and cds, ice cream, more fried things, jewelry, hair-braiding, and pictures with the inflatable orca.

The beach was fairly deserted Monday afternoon and we strolled down the beach, stunned by the amount of garbage, dead sea life, and people not making the connection between the two.

I find this tragic and baffling in a place where local fishermen are packed on the sea every morning and at dusk, and a constant flock of incredibly acrobatic frigate birds at one end of the beach attested to the steady flow of fish being cleaned there. Basically 100% of the restaurants in town serve 90-100% seafood, and that is a major reason why people come here from Guayaquil.

And the tideline is speckled with small dead fish and pieces of plastic like a Jackon Pollock painting from hell.

I felt like I was wandering a battlefield after the battle, only the people lounging around couldn’t see the corpses or the wounds. (Like the deleted scene from Henry V where French tourists walk around Agincourt remarking on all the pretty feathered sticks and wondering what that smell was.)

My stunned silence wanted a bullhorn to explain that plastic garbage doesn’t just “go away.” I wanted to cut open the fish that would never grow to reproduce or be served fried with rice and beans, and show the people the bellies full of little plastic shards.

The most horribleautiful™ part was the jellyfish. In their dozens (hundreds?) they lay dead in interstellar beauty gone limp. Bodies that had floated, drifted, and pulsed, were now dead rubber, drying waxy in the sun. The little pockets of organs in the caps were devolving from miniature Milky Ways into just more rotten slime not to step in. I know this probably has everything to do with tides and currents and nothing to do with human waste, but it just fit into the whole picture.

Is the "danger" tape a little heavy-handed? I can't help
it, it was already laying there, just another piece of
plastic garbage on the beach.

We met a family playing on the beach, sand flying everywhere, who was very curious about us, and welcoming as they chatted us up. (Did I mention I love Ecuadorians?) We had a nice little chat, but I couldn’t resist getting on my Preachy Horse just a bit, lamenting the verguenza of all the plastic garbage killing the marine life. The adults agreed, though the kids looked at each other in what I fear was incomprehension. “What’s the gringo talking about?”

Maybe we should stay here for awhile longer…volunteer in the schools with big posters about littering, decomposition (or lack thereof), and the food chain…

Why is environmentalism so damn fused to economics? Oh, right, everyone needs to eat first.

Somehow I managed to not pee my pants.

Hostel rooftop laundry in Quito

Quito grew on us, Mindo seduced us to extend a couple of days to nearly a week, and Cuyabena filled five days with predatory beasts, nighttime boat rides, and swimming in a flooded Amazonian jungle. Then Papallacta was beautiful and shivering, Riobamba was finally Ecuador with nearly no other white people around, and strolling around Cuenca was a perfect way to celebrate my birthday. And I haven’t even talked about Cajas National Park. Oh dear.

All of those were beautiful, and all of them are in the Ecuadorian Highlands, except Cuyabena, which is the Oriente. The Highlands and the Oriente are two of the three distinct regions in this phenomenal country. The third is the coast. Sun, sand, and…do you really need a third one? After nearly two months at high altitudes in Colombia and Ecuador, wearing all of the meagerly few warmish clothes we brought, we were ready for some sultry coastal heat. We’d take the bus to Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, then directly onward to the (appropriately named) coastal town of Playas.

Hiking around misty Papallacta

Just about everything in Cuenca was closed on Sunday morning, but we found a café with pancakes, fruit salad, and large cups of coffee. All three seemed like a good idea at the time…

We checked out of our hostel, taking down my birthday streamers (Muppets no less) and saying goodbye to the handful of people we had met there, including Sparrow, the inspirational retiree whose tales of teaching in Georgia (the country) made me want to send Nepal another Thank-You Note…and go to Georgia. Then a local bus to the station to catch the 5 hour bus to Guayaquil.

The first couple hours climbed to, then descended from, the epic valleys and slopes around Cajas National Park, which I promise to tell you all about some day. (If you love the Scottish Highlands, but have visited plenty of times, come to Ecuador next year.) After that we came into the humid heat of the lowlands, where my stunned gawking out the window was replaced by admiration of the flocks of snowy egrets, and the full-body stiffness that comes with a desperate need to urinate.

As we pulled into the bus station in Guayaquil I wasn’t exaggerating when I said “I’ve seen airports smaller than that.” It’s huge. A monstrous concrete hanger with buses descending ramps from the second storey, and hundred of buses napping in the dusty parking lots that stretch into the hazy distance.

Hiking above Banos

(Bus companies are to Ecuador as temples are to Thailand, sand is to Morocco, and bad haircuts are to Spain. There seems to be a different company for every possible route between two destinations. To buy a ticket in the main stations you have to check the map to see which wing of windows corresponds to your region, and Quito is not alone in having at least three bus stations, each one for a different direction of travel.)

We walked through the bustling bus-ticket business-place and found a bathroom, watching in agony as the sign “closed for cleaning” went up. We agreed to buy out tickets before finding the next closest one, which we did, only to look down and see a scheduled departure nine minutes away.

I asked the ticket-seller kid where it left from, and most of his murmured response was blocked by the plate-glass window with only mouse holes cut in it for speech, but I did hear “seventy…first floor” and see him point upwards.

Differing philosophies on how to count the floors in a building are nothing new to me. In America of course we count the floor as a floor, and if you add a second level to your one-floor house, you now have a second floor, whereas in Europe you can apparently live in a house with no floors if there’s no stairs. (It’s nice to be right about something, although it still doesn’t make up for not using the Metric System.)

Cajas National Park

This is fine, it’s an easy adjustment, but Latin America is somewhat harder since there seems to be no consistency. I remember quite clearly encountering both systems on consecutive days in Costa Rica. The ticket kid pointed up and said “first floor” so we took the escalator up, saw no apparent bus gates, and asked a guy standing there if we were on the first floor. He looked torn between wanting to help the escaped patients from the mental institution, versus looking around for the hidden cameras, before pointing down and saying, slowly, “first floor.”

We headed back down, probably blushing slightly, but could only find gates for arrivals. (Did I mention this bus station is enormous?) There, an information desk! “Excuse me, where does the bus to Playas leave from?”

“First floor. Take the escalator up, the gates are in the middle.”

Back upstairs, knowing full well “the middle” was less than supremely helpful, but seeing that our 9 minute window had shrunk to 2 minutes. The escalator ride behind three teenagers sipping their florescent sugar drinks with bovine slowness was an exercise in self-restraint.

The market in Otavalo

We found the Departure gates! We walked up to the turnstiles and produced our little bar-code pre-tickets (it costs $0.20 to get to the buses…clever bastards) but luckily the kid working there pointed us to the turnstiles on the other side of the building. We ran over there, wondering where the adults in Ecuador work (I found out the answer the next day).

We found our bus lane, space 70, empty. It was running late, which was fine with me because it meant I would get to pee after all. I went looking for a bathroom.

There are no bathrooms.

All the bathrooms are on the other side of the turnstiles I no longer had a ticket for. What sadistic alien species designs a bus waiting-area without bathrooms? I considered making a run for it only to see our bus pull up, seeing immediately that there was no bathroom onboard. As I flung my backpack in the baggage area underneath I asked the grizzled driver if I had time to run to the bathroom. As he shook his head I felt my stomach sinking…or trying to, but the over inflated bladder prevented it.

“How long until Playas?” He held up two scarred and stubby fingers.

As I sat down next to K she asked “Did you get to go?” I shook my head. “Do you want me to finish the water bottle so you can go in there?” Proof #6,743 that I got a good one.

That didn’t prove necessary, as we made it to Playas without resorting to that classic Trapped-on-a-Bridge maneuver. I kept my mind off it by giving up my seat to a lady carrying a baby, then Politeness-Sparring with a kid when a seat opened up, him determined to let me sit out of respect for his elders, me determined to let him sit to avoid being an Elder. He won, then we shared a nod of congratulations when a second seat opened up a short time later.

Is this the TMI llama now?

Of course, my seat had the button for sideways adjustments stuck down, so with every racecourse turn of the highway my seat went slamming two inches one way or the other. The guy next to me slept through it all.

Eventually we got to Playas, found a hostel, and I stood in the bathroom, slightly concerned that I didn’t feel a need to go any more. But things got going, and a minute later they still were. You know that feeling? When you have to pee so bad that you can’t feel it happening when it does? Then after about 40 seconds it feels like your system switches to the back-up tank, and you get comfortable for the long haul.

Once that was completed, we set out to explore Playas…

For my birthday I want...Ecuador.

First thing this morning there were some strangers singing to me in bed.

Luckily I heard K as she came up the stairs say to them “it’s my boyfriend’s birthday” and “can you open the door for me?” so I had time to sit up before my serenading began. It was a fantastic way to start the day.

From there we moved straight into big bowls of fresh fruit we bought at the market yesterday. Strawberries, grapes, and uchuvas, straight from the small hands of tiny indigenous women in bowler hats. Those three officially make my favorite fruit salad. Add some natural yogurt and surprisingly good granola, with a cup of hot tea on the side, and my day was made before I even got out of bed.

It was a nice slow morning, finishing the last book of the Hunger Games. (I didn’t set out to read them, but in a sequence of unbelievable luck we encountered each one precisely when we wanted it on hostel or restaurant shelves, free of charge. I have never seen K get as into a book as she does when reading these ones, and I openly admit that I enjoyed them too.)

The morning was so relaxing that the candle in the bathroom fit right in, and it took me a minute to realize the power was out. It was still out at noon, when I was supposed to skype with my mother, so we went electricity hunting in Cuenca. Unsuccessfully.

But the sun was out in strength, and the breeze was precisely calibrated to complement it, so we ensconced ourselves at a coffeeshop table, despite the handsome barista’s warning that they had no service due to the power outage, and I spent a comfortable hour on a project I’m working on. When the barista yelled “woohoo!” I knew the power was back on, though the cars continued to blaze right through the now active stoplights. (Driving here, as in seemingly all “developing countries”, deserves its own post.)

I got to talk to my mother and K’s folks, and was feeling the birthday groove.

Then we had a delicious vegetarian set lunch for two bucks that fueled a pleasant afternoon wander around a new part of the city. Cuenca is a beautiful place, with colonial architecture and an Andean flavor that earned it UNESCO World Heritage status in 1996. The architecture, cathedral, and passion for desserts make Cuenca wonderful, but it is the people who make it extraordinary.

Literally within the first hour of arriving in Cuenca two days ago, K and I stopped to take a picture of a lock, as we do, and were hailed by a distinguished gentleman who invited us into his shop. We are well versed in turning down such entreaties, but something about this silver-haired senor could not be resisted. An artist of note, Gustavo showed us some of his work, and along with his wife, showered us with more hospitality than we’ve experienced all trip.

I have been unbelievably blessed with hospitality while traveling (a bow with my forehead on the floor to the temporary homes I’ve found in Nepal, Seattle, Belgium, Hungary, Scotland, Spain, and Zambia) but this was a unique experience. Here was someone who met us on the street, had no connection or relationship with us whatsoever, and within a few minutes I had his name, business info, and contact number, plus those of his sons, on a card in my shirt pocket, an apparently honest invitation to call any time for anything, a standing offer to stop by again any time for a cup of coffee, and an invite to join the family on Friday night to blend my birthday to their celebration of his daughter’s Master’s Degree graduation.

We walked away from the workshop a tad stunned.

Yesterday as we walked around town a taxi stopped and honked at us. We are fairly inured to aggressive taxi drivers, but this seemed excessive. Then we noticed Gustavo in the front seat, reaching across to wave at us and confirm that my birthday was today, extending best wishes ahead of time, just in case.

This evening we stumbled home, podged and fighting food comas after a massive dinner of Indian food, which was delicious despite the sign advertising “flafel” in the window, and where we luckily didn’t see the cockroaches until after we ate (there was one crawling right next to that rotating meat consortium they hack at to make shwarmas…mmm…crunchy).

The notion of surmounting our blood sugar barriers and venturing out into the street again was not met with a ton of enthusiasm, but the memory of Gustavo and his wife’s genuine hospitality overcame us, plus we didn’t really expect to be able to find them anyway.

“We’ll just go to the restaurant they mentioned and see if they’re there. If not, we come home.”

We found the restaurant and peered through the window to see Gustavo’s giant smile and enthusiastic hand waving us in. The next thing I knew I was being introduced to and toasted by a long table of about 20 well-dressed Ecuadorians. I wished I’d worn that one fancy-pants shirt I brought (and not yet worn). I sat and hoped they wouldn’t notice my repair-stitching on the sleeve of my shirt and the fly of my pants, nor smell the miles I’ve walked in these sandals.

People we’ve never met seemed genuinely happy to have us at their table, where they gave us glasses of excellent wine and toasted us with smiling eyes.

Undoubtedly this family is exceptional, but I suspect they are not alone in Ecuador. The staff of the hostel makes us feel at home here, but not in the kinda creepy/clingy way they did in that one place in Bogota. And going into an antique shop yesterday we met Laura, an elderly Ecuadorian woman who married a Dutchman and spoke to us in wonderfully accented Dutch. After poking around her shop (which is also her house and a museum) for an hour, she felt like our third grandmother, and when we ran into her this afternoon all three of us were happy to see each other. I even love her dog for crying out loud.

I was impressed with Costa Ricans, and Colombians on the buses were quick to offer help. But Ecuadorans? Can I “friend” the entire country?

More vomit and a mystery solved.

I apologize to those with vomit-sensitive eye-stomachs, I don’t mean to include it so often on here, it invites itself. Yesterday on the bus from Banos (sic) to Riobamba, it invited itself all over the outside of my window. It wasn’t mine.

We got on the bus to find it stank of mildew and general staleness far more than average. The entire floor of the bus was wet, and no one looked happy with their transportation situation. K and I got on, taking the only open pair of seats, and as I sat down I realized why.

The previous passenger had (censored) for breakfast. I’m not sure where the bus started, but it must be far up a winding road, because by the time it picked us up there were more than a few people apparently feeling the motion. We started out, and even on those (presumably) mild roads we were definitely swinging around up there.

Five minutes in the older guy behind us got up and tottered towards the front, looking extremely precarious with his digestive integrity. I watched, spellbound, every step of the way, dreading the Summer Movie tradition of his spewing all over some poor unfortunate passenger, but he made it to the front and the bus stopped.

Enough of that.

We made it to Riobamba, where tourists come to start the Devil’s Nose train ride, which we are not intending to take, unfortunately. We walked around town with our cameras and didn’t see a single other tourist all day until we went out for dinner.

Off to Cuenca after breakfast, a good 7 hour bus ride. See you there.

Oh, and after I posted that last blog I solved the mystery of whose feces I was smelling… Instant forgiveness.

Hot springs, drunks, and...is that feces?

Wow. It reeks here. Cigarettes and some sort of feces, I would guess dog, but circumstantial evidence indicates otherwise. We sure know how to pick a hostel.

Papallacta was a beautiful surprise of lush foliage in high altitude misty valley, walks along a cold rushing stream before extended soaks in thermal water just a hair shy of searing. Still not high season and not a weekend, we were nearly the only people there, and had the baths to ourselves. Peace and quiet.

(Nearly the only time there were other people there was two sets of new parents, bringing their toddlers out from Quito. I bonded with the fathers after their machismo made them follow me into the cold plunge. “Muy bueno por el corazon, no?)

But shivers. Around sunset the first night we learned how cold it gets at 3,300 meter above sea level, there were no heaters and only a couple thin blankets at our first hostel, reputedly the cheapest in town.

We asked the expressionless manager if there was any vegetarian food available. “No.”
“A portion of rice and some vegetables?”
“No.”
“Just plain rice?”
“No.”

The impasse lasted a moment until he told us about a place up the road with vegetarian food. Great! We walked up there, marveling that even after so long in Quito we still got out of breath so quickly, and found…another place with no vegetarian food on the menu.

I asked the proprietress and she said “sure, I can make you something, I’m vegetarian, it’s just not on the menu.” Excellent! The plate of rice and veggies was just was K was looking for. (I had the regional specialty, trout.) Papallacta is just a wee town, so I got the feeling we would be eating most of our meals there. And it’s a hostel too? We asked, but the price was too high for us budget folk.

“Where are you staying?” Asked our vegetarian gastronomic savior.
“Chozo de Don Wilson” we answered, awkward as always when mentioning the competition.
“Oh. My dad. He’s out of town right now, but did you see an old lady?”
“Yeah, peeling off corn kernels and watching a novela.”
“That’s my mom. I’ll give you the same rate here as you have there if you want.”

We’d already looked in a room and seen the much nicer rooms, complete with (gasp!) fireplace. Como se dice “hell yes”?

A hike through the valley, pleasant day of soaking, and evening by our fire later, it was time to say goodbye to Papallacta. We bused back to Quito, staying in town for a grand total of about 3 minutes before the bus to Banos left. (The "n" should have the ~ tilde above it of course, but I can't find it on this Anglocentric font/keyboard, and did I mention it stinks like feces where I'm sitting?)

Banos quickly presented itself as a great town, and we found a place for $6 where we expected to stay a few days. It had a central spiral stairway and tile floors everywhere. Pretty cool architecture, though lots and lots of echoes… That night as we got ready for bed we heard the voices. Loud conversation, laughter, and the clink of glass bottles on tiles. The television AND the radio both on, both blasting.

Looks like a great place to get wasted, no?

Who has their party in the cavernous stairway of their hotel?!? Who is that utterly lacking in empathy and manners towards the others in the building? I’ve had a lot of drunk backpackers, but this was a new low. As the clock moved past midnight, this quandary became even more aggravating. When it hit 1:30 AM I had moved past anger into pure bafflement. I went out to talk to them.

Claiming to be a writer trying to understand (only the title was a stretch), I asked them what they were doing, where they were from, and in my passive-aggressive Western way tried to shame them into realizing they were acting like complete assholes.

They were just so friendly. Drunk and noisy as a damn rodeo, but friendly too. An elderly man with bloodshot eyes looked up at me and said (in Spanish) “it’s a tradition. One night. Then, no more.”

I barely restrained myself from saying “being a huge pain in the ass in a hotel is the worst tradition I’ve ever heard of” (though it’s not, not by a long shot) and went back to bed, kinda liking them despite myself.

My brain without sleep.

By 3:00 though I didn’t like them anymore. I went back out.

All new people except one dude, who was now sitting on the bench, bent over at the waist, head hanging down, elbows on his knees, drunk past communication. The two women had gone to bed, as had the older man, but four younger guys had shown up and were ably carrying the raucous torch.

Upon seeing me they all burst into apologies, saying they would move upstairs downstairs to the roof. “Where you from? California! We love California! We want to be like you! You have the…what’s it?..the…Governator! Yeah, you guys have the Governator! Great!”

I politely thanked them for their interest in my state’s political situation, then tried, repeatedly, to remind them of the idea of relocating. They eventually picked up their plastic lawn chairs and plastic 2 liter bottles that bore little chemical resemblance to their original contents, and moved downstairs. One floor. In the spiral stairwell and tile hallways.

It would have been quieter to have them in our room.

I put my ear plugs in and managed to sail away on a stream of consciousness. Around 4:30 I took out the ear plugs and heard…nothing. Blessed silence. I sighed contentedly, put the ear plugs on the table, and rolled over.

And heard the first rooster. I fucking hate roosters.

So the next day we moved to a new hotel, run by a family who clearly took pride in the place and is hoping to turn the top floor into a community center of sorts, with art exhibitions and music. Wifi, a pool table upstairs, and a pretty building with a large open central courtyard like a Moroccan riad. The floor sloped noticeably downwards, which we found kind of endearing. Plus we bargained him down from $10 to $8.

Happy with our new accommodation we spent the day in the charismatic town of Banos before returning that night to find that the space on the ground floor, which was shuttered up that morning, was a hookah bar. Along with the thick smell of smoke came blasting bass and a soundtrack of four pop anthems. On loop. For hours.

Better than shouted conversation, but still not super conducive to a good night’s sleep, so after two nights we moved again. This one is $8 and includes breakfast, and it’s clean enough. And there’s a bunny hopping around the little yard. But, unable to sleep, I came out here to type this up and found myself sitting on a torn leather couch, trying to ignore the stink of cigarette and feces (can rabbit crap possibly smell that bad?), which I managed to do until reminding myself of them just now.

So I’m going to bed. Good night.

Quick break for a piece of Tourist Responsibility

I'm going to take a quick break from travel stories because even though I don't take several showers a day and I've never played golf, I have been to one of the communities in Zanzibar mentioned in this article. Crap. Did I conceivably use 686 liters of water in a single day?

Did I conceivably use 16 times as much water as a local?

"Charity condemns tourists' use of fresh water in developing countries" - The Guardian

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jul/08/fresh-water-tourist-developing)

The jist of it is that we tourists, gallivanting around the world in the modern age of wonders, need to realize that we are part of the world, even on vacation. And more precisely, we are part of the place in the world where we are breathing. You're breathing in Dubai, Zanzibar, Goa, or basically any place other than the UK? Don't take long showers.

(In fact, quick rant, don't take long showers anywhere. As long as the temperature's decent, turn the water off while you soap up, then back on again to rinse. It feels better, saves soap, and saves water. I am always surprised that this one doesn't make very many "Top 10 Eco Tips" lists.)

You get the point. But now a question:

Anybody know what the water table is like in Ecuador?

Shit.

Graffiti in Cartagena, "First the locals, then the tourists."

I promise I'm not actually trying to kill my girlfriend.

(note: for more pictures, see the wordpress version instead, which site is easier to follow on anyway: http://vagabondurges.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/i-promise-im-not-actually-trying-to-kill-my-girlfriend/)

To Whom It May Concern;

The setting.

With this letter I hereby acknowledge the debt I owe to one K.F. incurred on July 4 in Cuyabena National Park in Ecuador. Aforementioned debt being of sufficient magnitude to qualify for significant reparations.

The incident in question occurred at approximately 10:00 AM in a small lagoon of flooded rainforest, wherein the water is the perfect depth for such fauna as anacondas, caimans, and piranha, the lattermost of which being crucial to the debt owed.

The relevant parties, being myself, K, a family of four from Oregon, and a guide in the employ of Samona Lodge did engage in a leisure activity consisting of placing raw cow flesh on small fishhooks attached to sticks, which were then placed in the water after splashing the surface of the water with the stick to simulate the arrival of some unfortunate creature in that liquid death zone.

Upon completion of this process, the holder of the stick would wait for a tug on the line, which customarily occurred with astonishing rapidity. This activity resulted most commonly in a simple feeding of the bovine flesh to the piranhas, who demonstrated astonishing ability to quickly eat flesh without endangering themselves on the hook. Precise savagery.

However, the human in question, if lucky and attentive enough, could opt to yank on the stick, potentially setting the hook in the piranha’s voracious little jaw.

This eventuality occurred a number of times for each human, excepting naturally the pacifist vegetarian K, who, being of angelic disposition, forewent the pleasure of seeking to capture the demonic fish, instead serving as documentarian via her digital camera.

Upon capture of one particularly large specimen, the Ecuadorian guide demonstrated their predatory capacity by inducing the fish to bite a stick of substantial size, which was accomplished with a sharply snapping jaw that made your garden shears look like butter knives.

This demonstration was followed by the relating of a recent anecdote regarding a Dutchman who, while attempting to release a piranha from his hook, donated a substantial portion of his finger flesh to one of the creatures, resulting in a clean scoop of missing flesh which bled freely for an extended period of time, resulting in a loss of consciousness for the Dutchman in question.

Shortly following this bedtime story occurred the incident whereby the debt was incurred.

Myself, upon feeling a tug on the cow flesh, did strongly pull the line out of the water. The piranha in question, being a ferocious monster, was pulled with the bait. However, its jaws were locked only onto the meat, not the hook, which detail resulted in the fish being catapulted straight out of the water, through the air, and into K’s lap. Upon arrival it began to thrash like, well, a fish out of water. Only with flesh-rending teeth and burning eyes of hatred for all living things.

The one I flung at K.

The setting for this incident was a thin river boat, and given that jumping out would be a severe error of judgment, the debt owner K was obliged to basically sit still, hoping the flailing beast would not happen to flail in a manner resulting in the loss of her corporeal wellbeing.

Luckily, this eventuality (loss of material flesh) did not occur, yet the cerebral chemical rush resulting from having a carnivorous fish flung in one’s lap constitutes the bulk of the debt owed.

Mitigating the extent of the debt owned is the novelty of being able to say, in a future argument “well at least I never threw a piranha at you!”

And now I ask the jury, what measures are appropriate recompense for this offense? Candle-lit dinner for two? Or should we invite the piranha and make it three?

Groomed by Nacho and whipped by a shaman.

“How about we go to Papallacta, the town in the mountains near Quito rumored to have the best hot springs in the country, relax, email, and write about our jungle trip?”

Good plan, except this place is so bloomin’ beautiful I could rant and rave about it for a week, easy. (Plus the power tends to go out, delaying this post.) Laying back in any of the several pools (or the grotto!), weightless and wrapped in heat…divine. I enjoy wearing a bathing suit to church.

In the warm water you can just see the marks on K’s back from the whipping…

Day Three in the jungle began (after breakfast of course, what are we, savages?) on the river, spotting pink dolphins, toucans, and weary tourists. At one point we smelled the large dead caiman rumored to be in the area, but couldn’t find it.

We were headed to one of the local villages of the Siona people for something of a Meet and Eat, shamans and yucca bread, respectively, but roared up to find a deserted village. One of the local shamans, extremely respected and important people, had died a few days before, and everyone was at the burial taking place just upriver.

Well, not entirely deserted. Nacho came running up, although “running” isn’t quite the right word for the motion of basically four hands and a tail, somehow clumsy and graceful at the same time.

Someone killed, and ate, his parents (woolly monkey meat is supposed to be quite tasty), but Nacho became part of the village, wandering around with his goofy monkey knuckles, thumbs on his hind feet, and amazing prehensile tail with its thick leathery pad. He hung from laundry lines, danced in trees overhead, and happily engaged in grooming behavior with anyone, giving or receiving (when receiving he sprawls on his back, totally limp and blissful).

While we waited, Jairo brought out a blowgun (made from the core of a palm tree wrapped in black duct tape), still used to hunt bush meat, using poison from poison dart frogs (the “ruby“ one was my favorite) who excrete it from their backs when threatened. One session of annoying a tiny frog and rolling darts on its back produces enough poison to kill multiple animals.

We took turns shooting (unpoisoned) darts at a small spiky fruit, while Jairo painted on a couple of our faces with the red juice of its small pomegranate-like seeds.

Nacho’s incredibly dexterous tail and hangs seem to automatically reach up and grip things, and he ended up hanging from the blowgun several times, until our boat driver mentioned that he might break it.

Oh, by the way, our driver, a super friendly young man named Juan, spent the whole week driving us around, morning, noon, and night, spotting animals, and waiting hours while we tromped through the bush. And the whole time he was sick as a dog. Fever, chills, headache, body ache, nausea, the works. Not a word of complaint (I only found out via intercepted quick Spanish comments with Jairo, who didn’t seem to want us to know).

We heard a chirping sound like a hummingbird, and a tiny handful of animal came galloping up to me, then up me, climbing my pant-leg, shirt, and onto my shoulder with quick grips of its tiny claws. There was a pygmy marmoset riding on my shoulder.

They are the world’s smallest (true) monkeys, and feed on the sweet sap of certain trees, which they get flowing with little pygmy nibbles of their little pygmy teeth. They live in groups in a territory of a tree or two, which they eventually deplete and move on. His wee head darted around like a bird’s the whole time, though he seemed pretty darn relaxed exploring us.

We were pleased as peaches with the pygmy marmoset, but eventually it was yucca time, ostensibly “helping” the  impressively efficient woman who peeled the root with precise machete chops, shredded it on metal sheets with jagged holes in it (like the annoying back side of your cheese grater whose only purpose is ruining sponges),  squeezed all the juice out with a woven rope net, then cooked the yucca into a sort of tortilla, which we ate with tuna or pineapple jam. (Pygmy marmosets apparently also enjoy pineapple jam.)

Dribbling water for him to drink/wear

The bread tasted like the dusty stuff at the bottom of a bag of shredded wheat (unfrosted of course), packed into a dry pancake that resembled cardboard more than anything in your kitchen. It was good, but I can’t honestly say I would welcome a diet that features it so heavily (it is the primary food source for the villages in this area).

Saying goodbye to Nacho, which was difficult for everyone (including the monkey, who made a last-minute sprint to try and climb into our boat) we headed downstream to where a shaman had agreed to talk to us.

I was a little uneasy about meeting the shaman, fearing it would be one of those abhorrent cases of cultural exploitation verging on mockery. “Okay, native-type-person, put on something ‘tribal’ and do a little dance for us tourists so we can take your picture. And look noble.” Face paint in the market. Eagle feather headdresses in the roadside attraction. Culture turned into advertising for a product that is diminished with every performance.

Sally told us a story of her sister arriving with a tour in a village in Africa half an hour early, and all the startled inhabitants jumping up to run home and change out of their jeans and T-shirts into “tribal dress.” But Jairo reassured us that the shaman here would be wearing what he always wears, and it would basically be a Question & Answer between us, then he would demonstrate a basic ritual, using one of us as a volunteer.

We met shaman Raul in one of the thatched-roof huts, and I immediately felt reassured. Here was a genuinely kind man, supremely and comfortably dignified, wearing the outfit he designed himself through ayahuasca-inspired visions, who was happy to share his time and information with us. Excellent.

He told us how, when, and why one becomes a shaman in the Siona culture, and about his own initiation, in enough detail to be interesting and informative while clearly keeping his own secrets. Perfect. K, the consummate vegetarian, got to ask how they feel about eating animals given their respect for the animal spirits. (The spirits check to see if the community and the shaman are in harmony, and if they are, the animals are happy to join with them. Bush meat is a significant part of the diet, along with yucca bread.)

Then it was time for the ritual. We had all looked at the nasty-looking clipping of nettles on the table, and I had investigated enough to find that brushing it didn’t hurt as much as the nettles I was used to, but even a slight prick of the skin stung in that familiar way (I have something of a torrid past with stinging nettles).

I was ready to volunteer in order to give you guys something to read about, but K’s eyes shone with desire to do it (and I wasn’t really that keen anyway). She took a seat in front of Raul, who began a chant of preparation through which he tunes into the patient’s aura, like a diagnosis. Then it was the nettles, swept across her back, gently, but enough to leave the skin shining red and covered with small welts. Apparently K is either genetically superior to me or tough as nails, because when asked if it hurt she replied with a shrug “un poco.”

Weekly Photo Challenge - Movement

Apparently someone issues weekly photo challenges, and this week is movement. My own movement means catching a bus in a bit, but here's three pictures of our guide Jairo standing heroically in the bow of our boat. Which, if any, do you like best?