Happy Holloween!

So it is Holloween in Ecuador. This is a holiday in as much as Cinco de Mayo is a holiday in the US; it is simply and excuse for a party. It is a major holiday weekend here anyway with All Saints Day on Sunday and a minor independence day (there are several here) on Monday, so one more party is fine.

So what greeted me on Halloween here in Ecuador? Well the tides changed yesterday and now the beach is littered with dead stuff - turtles, birds, fish, and thousands of jellyfish heaped into piles. That really wasn´t a good sigh. So instead of swimming I settled in to read the daily paper (while I cannot speak a lot of spanish, I can read it) and was met with a story about the CIA infiltrating the Ecuadorian armed forces. Here is the link to the CNN version.

No one really cares about that down here. Correra, the President, seems to be pushing any possible story forward to distract attention from the poorly managed changes mandated under the new consitution. Yesterday Correra declared that the country needed to move away from using the US dollar as the official currency and called for a common pan-american currency called the Sucre. Only Venezula and Bolivia commented on this. Everyone else just ignored Correra.

Well enjoy your weekend. I will try to push through a few wrap-up posts about my time in Canoa. Next week Drew and I leave for the mountains and make our way down to Peru.

The Final Week of School

This is the last week of school for Drew and I. It can´t come soon enough, it is time to start traveling again.

Overall, the school at the Sundown Inn has been great. My days here begin early, around 6:30, and I am starting to study by 7 or 7:30. After an hour of review we grab a bit of breakfast and then start two hours of class. At 11:30 we take a break and nap, surf, or swim until lunchtime. After lunch it is back to studying and class picks back up for two more hours in the afternoon. In all, I spend about four hours a day actually in school and several more hours studying vocabulary and conjugation. It´s a great vacation, really.

It gets dark here on the equator around 7:30 and by the time we finish dinner its pitch black out. Typically we spend our evenings playing cards or having bonfires out on the beach. At a $1 a bottle, we drink a lot of beer too. It is a simple existence, and it is driving me nuts.

Luckily, next week we are taking off for Banos, Ecuador. It is a little town (named for a bathroom) tucked up on the side of a volcano. A few years ago it was evacuated for an eruption, but the town was spared. Apparently it is a great spot for hiking, biking, and hot springs so we are looking forward to arriving there.

The final week here in school will not be without its entertainment. I am planning on going parasailing sometime this week (if the weather cooperates) and Drew and I are hiking out to some sea caves and a Blue-footed Boobie nesting site next weekend. Finally, Drew stupidly bet the owner of our hotel. For the next week Drew must eat all of his vegetables and the owner cannot smoke. Lucky me. Drew has to eat food he doesn´t like and our host is going without her smokes. Everyone should be in a great mood.

Danger -- Dancing Ahead!

Violence in Ecuador

Yesterday some awful news came out of Ecuador. Two Americans were attacked; the man was stabbed twenty-four times and the woman was raped. Fortunately neither were killed and both are back in the States, but the guy´s wounds are still life-threatening. Here is the story.

Esmeraldas is considerably north of the little town of were Drew and I are staying, so we don´t feel particularly worried about the attack. However, we purposely avoided the area around Esmeraldas because of the crime in the northern parts of Ecuador.

Sadly, there is always the threat of some crime. A few weeks before we arrived in Canoa, a surfer was shot four times outside a local bar. Luckily, he didn´t die, but there was little the police could do when they arrived. The gunman changed his shirt and walked back into the bar to finish his drink. There are only three policemen in this little town, and they were significantly out numbered by the gunman and his friends. The police simply concluded that they aren´t paid enough to be shot at. We suspect that the gunman was arrested the next day, but no one seems to know for sure.

The full story of what happened in Esmeraldas is still unknown and I will probably be in Peru before it starts to emerge. However, it is a tragic reminder that traveling requires common sense and luck. Hopefully, the common sense kicks in when the luck runs out.

Globalism Strikes Back

Globalism has its ups and downs, but no other economic system produces such hilarious results.

Many Ecuadorians lend credibility to their businesses by associating themselves with anything popular. For example, on a single street in Quito I saw the Scooby Doo Hot Doggery Snack Shop and the Homer Simpson Bar. Sometimes this goes to extremes, like the Stephen Hawkings Pre-Universary Tudoring Center.

But it gets even better.

Quito is the capital of Eucador and therefore all of the major parties have headquarters there. The Communist Party of Ecuador is no exception and it looks pretty much like you would expect a third-world Communist Party building to look like. It is a sickly green color and has giant banners hanging off of it. Except in Ecuador it´s the Communist Party/Chinese Restaurant.

Things I Learned In Ecuador, But Wish I Hadn´t

Ecuador is a great country, but somethings take a little getting used to. These are the hardest lessons to learn, so far.

Lesson 1 - Toilet paper does NOT go in the toilet. In Ecuador (and many other South American countries) the sanitation system isn´t robust enough to handle toilet paper. So in most restrooms (both private and public) there is a little trash can or box to toss the used toilet paper into. This is sort of disgusting, but aparently you can get used to anything.

Lesson 2 - Bugs and geckos are a fact of life. The bugs are plentiful and often blood-thirsty, but it´s the geckos that surprise you. I share my hotel room with Drew and a family of suicidal geckos. The geckos keep the bug levels down, but they also throw themselves off the ceiling with frightening regularity. Usually, they land on Drew right before he falls asleep.

The mosquitos aren´t too bad right now, but the sand flies are a problem. However, South American sand flies have nothing on New Jersey sand flies. Down here they just turn your legs into swiss cheese. In Jersey they do that and then take your wallet. So really it isn´t too bad.

Lesson 3 - Hot water is the world´s greatest luxury. Whoever invented the hot water heater should have been awarded the Nobel prize. You don´t realize how nice a hot shower is until you go two weeks withough one. Supposedly, our hotel has hot water, but there has been a mysterious lack of it over the last two weeks. It turns out that the hotel´s neighbor/local drug dealer was using all of it every morning to wash his dog.

Lesson 4 - Instant coffee is a sin. Ecuador produces some of the best coffee in the world. You just can´t get it down here. Ecuadorians drink instant coffee (usually with milk) and will actively shun the real stuff if its available. So if you ever want to give up coffee just come down to Ecuador. Finding real coffee is a challenge and it requires great sacrifice. The nearest good cup of coffee is about two miles away, so every few days I walk to the restaurant just to remind myself what it tastes like.

The First Aid Kit Was A Good Idea

This was the first full weekend that Drew and I spent in Canoa, so we decided to expand our horizons a bit and visit Bahia, which is sort of the county seat around here. After a surprisingly good and hearty (i ate Drew´s) breakfast we grabbed the bus to San Vicente. It is only about a twenty or thirty minute bus ride depending on how many stops it makes. This is always an open question on Ecuadorian buses since there aren´t really any stops. You just flag down the busy you want and then yell at the driver when you want to get off.

From San Vicente we hoped on the ferry over to Bahia. The ferries are really just oversized row boats that, according to the warning sign, claim to seat twenty people. Ours packed on thrity-five. The trip over was uneventful until we got to the Bahia port. Three Ecuadorians jumped up and quickly hopped off the boat. Now, a quick word about Ecuadorians and weight displacement. Ecuadorian aren´t exactly big people. Drew and I are four to six inches taller than the average Ecuadorian man and quite a bit heavier. So when three Ecuadorians jumped up from opposite Drew and I, you can imagine what direction the boat lurched.

Drew and I flung ourselves forward and an attempt to stop the boat from swamping. Drew shot the three idiots who jumped up a nasty look, which just eccouraged them to move faster. So now we have thirty Ecuadorians with paniced faces sitting in a boat, three Ecuadorians running off the boat, and two gringos sprawled out across the boat. We are making a great impression down here.

Luckily nothing else of interest happened in Bahia and we made it back to the hotel in time to catch some afternoon waves. The surfing conditions have improved dramatically over the last few days and yesterday was my first attempt to surf in Ecuador. (My single previous experience was in Hawaii a few years ago.) The waves were a little brutal and I spent an hour furiously paddling in and out of waves. I had a great time and didn´t even notice the jellyfish sting across my arm until I was getting out.

Today, I decided to repeat my fine surfing performance. That was probably a mistake. I was a little sore from yesterday´s workout and had difficulty controlling the board. I floundered around for a while until a large wave tossed me off my board and sent it spinning away. In the spinning process I managed to get my arm tangled in the rear fins of the board and sliced up my right arm. Amazingly, my new wound is perfectly parallel with my jellyfish sting.

The wave also broke the leash on my surfboard and sent it floating down the beach. So I waded out of the surf in search of my board, bleeding and humming the Jaws theme along the way. Next, I had find Drew. He is always interested in the new and oringal ways that I hurt myself, and I knew he would love this.

He took one look at my arm and said, "You are going to need stitches. Or you can live with a nice little scar." The following is pretty much my thought process:

1) It´s Ecuador. In the middle of nowhere. On a Sunday. Of a holiday weekend. The nearest medical clinic that MIGHT be open was in Bahia. So to get stitches requires me to bleed my way through a bus ride and a boat ride just to bleed in the waiting room of an Ecuadorian Hospital that may or may not be open...

2) The insurance paperwork doesn´t sound at all fun...

3) If scars are sexy then surfing scars have got to be the El Dorado of scars....

Drew patched me up and I thanked God that I packed that first aid kit.