Suspirar´s travels in South America

The blog software provided by mail.com is highly unreliable, although free. On many occasions I have been unable to access it. I could not access it for the past several days until today.

I have started a new blog at http://invigorar.blogspot.com/

• Read More »

I´m inside Quito´s airport, before leaving to Panama. The airport is pretty nice. Quito´s airport is nicer than Bogota´s–there are toilet seats to sit on on the toilets, and the bathroom stalls each are stocked with toilet paper.

There was a tremendous line to go through customs. I was prepared this time, after a bad experience in Buenos Aires with customs/immigration. The customs/immigration paper in Argentina is two forms of the exact same format attached together. In Buenos Aires at the Gol airlines counter, when I asked a Gol employee if I needed to fill out one of the 2 customs forms, he told me in Spanish ¨No, you only need your passport.¨ However, in the Buenos Aires airport, there was a horridly long line in immigration. When I reached the counter, the Argentine woman asked me if I had the immigration form filled out! When I said ¨No,¨ she gave me a deathly dirty look and slammed the immigration/customs form down in front of me. I wonder if the Gol employee was intentionally trying to be cruel to me.

• Read More »

I don´t want to leave Ecuador. I feel like I have unfinished business here. I hope to come back to Ecuador sometime in my lifetime. Tomorrow I´ll leave Baños for Quito´s airport.

• Read More »

I am in Baños, near Ambato. Baños is one of the most popular places to visit in Ecuador. It is located near an active volcano. Slopes outside of town are very steep.

We have had a lot of rain here, and even more in Puyo. The sun has finally come out.

Internet is expensive here–$2 per hour–but hostales and swim suits are inexpensive. River rafting for half a day only costs $30. Bicycle rental is $5 per day.

• Read More »

There have been many days when I have wanted to buy land in Ecuador to grow trees, to help with reforestation. I’ve also wanted to help with other environmental issues such as water and air contamination. Last night I read the following article, describing the border between Ecuador and Peru, and I got depressed: http://www.parkswatch.org/parkprofiles/pdf/turz_eng.pdf 

I think a big part of Ecuador’s problem is that its government lacks sufficient laws, and it is weak on enforcement of laws.

I wish I could do more to help. How would a volunteer in Ecuador be able to make the largest impact possible to aid forests and their animals? If you have ideas, feel welcome to write your comments.

I received my guide books on Panama and Costa Rica from Amazon.com today, delivered to South American Explorers. I had chosen the cheapest international shipping for them; they shipped out of Amazon.com in the USA on December 2 via DHL, and today is December 18.

I’m making plans to fly to Panama City.

• Read More »

From a San Diegan’s point of view, Quito is horrendously cold in the rainy season (and it is cold at night in the dry season too). I told a foreigner that Quito was too damn cold for me, and she looked at me funny and asked if I was from California. She had lived in Canada and was able to cope. 

Yesterday I was miserably depressed from the cold and the almost constant rain that we’ve had in Quito. Plus, Sundays here are pretty dead. Only National Geographic TV entertained me last night.

My only happy moment yesterday was when some police officers rescued me from a mob of shoeshine boys. When one offered to clean my boots for $.60 per boot, I accepted, and two boys cleaned my boots. However, when they finished, they raised the price to $10 and higher–the same-stunt pulled by a shoeshine boy in Piura, Peru.

Near my hostal is a karaoke bar. As I was the only customer in the whole restaurant and bar, I ordered 12 songs, costing 25 cents per song. I improved on Enananitos Verdes’ “Lamento Boliviano” my second try at it, but I butchered Noelia’s “Tu” both tries. I was so bad that I could have caused an Ecuadorian embargo against all U.S. tourists. However, the karaoke  perked me up, and I carried the songs with me outside the bar.

Quito can be beautiful in the quiet evening rain. I switched back to a warmer hostal today.

• Read More »

After almost 3 days of diarrhea and intestinal discomfort, I resorted to taking Ciprofloxacina for my diarrhea problem.

In Puerto Lopez a cute guy on a bicycle, named Jorge (the one who took me to the hair salon with the 2 transvestites) had invited me to a dance club. Because of my intestinal pains, I stood him up. Embarassingly, I ran into him the following morning, and I apologized. He wasn´t offended, and he seemed to wait for me to finish using the Internet. Warning lights and the word ¨gigolo¨ flashed in my head. Later, I felt ashamed that I had thought that he was a gigolo when he offered to pay for me and told me that he worked for the Pacific Wildlife Foundation.

Jorge took me on a short bus ride south to a beach with absolutely no one else on it. He calls it ¨La Playita¨. We had to walk a ways from the highway to get to it. The vegetation is fairly green, but cacti grow here too. We walked to the natural bridge in the rocks in the water, passing starfish and sea urchins.
 

That night I ended up dancing with Jorge in a night club right on the beach front. Even leaky with gas from the diarrhea, I still managed to dance, though very poorly. Strangely, the club only had male customers that night, all of whom seemed to be heterosexual. They danced really, really well! The two female customers had left early on. Next door, in the ¨salsa romantica¨club, heterosexual couples could be found dancing.

After dancing, Jorge wanted to spend the night with me, but I was pretty leery, fearing getting burglarized in my sleep. When I told him that he wouldn´t sleep with me, he said coldly, ¨I won´t write to you anymore¨ (he had sent me an e-mail earlier). The older woman working in the hostal gently shooed him away. Our relationship ended this way, with me feeling sad. I wonder how Jorge feels. He probably isn´t hurting as much.

Yesterday morning I took a bus from Puerto Lopez to Santo Domingo de los Colorados. Guide books often describe Ecuador as having 3 regions: coast, sierra, and oriente. I would describe Ecuador as having 4: beach, western plains, sierra, oriente. Right on the beach can be enjoyable for tourism. However, the western plains contain towns that are too hectic for tourists. I was confused as we passed through the western plains; was the land dry, or was it moist? My surroundings didn´t get pretty until we got far enough away from civilization, into the hills with sparce palm trees.

I recommend that tourists NOT spend the night in Santo Domingo de los Colorados. I was too scared to leave my hotel yesterday evening. Fortunately my hotel room had a TV with music channels. 

• Read More »

My blog software is working again.

Yesterday I travelled from Montañita to Puerto Lopez on a bus. The bus fare was $2.50 for a 1-hour ride, costing much more than the typical $1 per hour. However, the ride was beautiful, through green forests. Although the sky was overcast, I think I could live in a place like this, between Montañita and Puerto Lopez, happily if I had a boyfriend.

Puerto Lopez is not a good place for getting one´s hair dyed. A woman helped me find some places. The first place was closed. The second place was missing ¨Victoria¨, the person who could dye my hair, and was only staffed by a man passing as a woman who couldn´t dye my hair. Later a young heterosexual man brought me to another hair-cut place, staffed by two men living as women. There was no shampoo chair. To rinse my hair, I had to stand over a bowl while the stylist poured water from a jar onto my hair. I was charged $10 for the dye job, and I had to buy my own hair dye. I think I was overcharged. Earlier I bought a bikini from a gay man. The gay men here are a bit uppity, as if they are too sexy to be sweet.

We had rain this morning, before dawn, and the lights temporarily went out. After walking around on the dirt roads this morning, the back of my shorts was filthy with splatter from mud.

• Read More »

I had intestinal problems today. They kept me in my hostal most of the day. I think I got sick from the breakfast I ate this morning.

• Read More »

I spent yesterday morning in the bay of Salinas. Near the area where boats are harbored, waves are small, so swimming is easy. As I travelled north, waves got bigger and the sand changed to consist sea-shell bits, which were large enough to be uncomfortable with my flip-flops. 

Yesterday I left Salinas on a bus for Montañita. First I travelled from Salinas to La Libertad in a city bus, instead of a taxi, which was probably a mistake. The bus filled up within a few stops.

In La Libertad I was lost and reprimanding myself for not taking a taxi. However, a group of young men, going home to Montañita from a swimming contest, helped me find the buses. From La Libertad we travelled through desert with sunlight. On the bus, large items are carried inside in the front. As we approached Manglaralto, we lost our blue sky, but the desert was replaced with green terrain. A man who had won his swimming contest sat next to me and helped me get off the bus in Montañita.

Montañita is full of hostales and full of white people. From my eavesdropping, most are English-speaking, and the vast majority of English speakers are American. I think Montañitas is the place in Ecuador with the highest concentration of foreigners that I have seen. Hostales here are at a great price, $7-$10, with no TV, but Internet in Montañita is very costly, at $1.75-$2 per hour, in comparison to $.60 - $1 in other towns/cities. Although Montañita had cloudcover, it was still cozy and attractive–a pueblo of thatched roofs with a blanket of clouds over the ocean.

My 90-day tourist visa was set to expire December 13 of this year. Today I travelled from Montañito to Guayaquil to renew my visa. Although I arrived 3 days early, I was still granted an extension of my visa, for 81 days. I believe I can only spend a maximum of 180 days out of a year on a tourist visit. 

In Guayaquil, a man named Mauricio, whom I met on the bus, gave me a tour of the city. I toured the Malecon 2000 along the riverfront. It is picturesque. However, the rest of Guayaquil isn´t so great. If a person visits Guayaquil after visiting the sierra, I think this person will not find Guayaquil attractive.

During my last visit to Zaruma, I found myself sick of Ecuador and wanting to leave soon. However, after visiting Guanazán, I have a renewed interest. There are still many places that I would like to visit, especially with the change of season that occurs around December. I still plan to spend the end of the year in another country, if possible. I´m waiting to receive guide books in Quito.

• Read More »

Cuenca is filled with gringos. I didn´t feel special at all there. One evening I saw three unrelated gringo couples walking consecutively past me.

This morning I took a bus from Cuenca to Guayaquil. In Cuenca´s bus station, I was afraid when many men working at the entrance of the terminal called out city names and asked where I was going. I was afraid that they were trying to get a tip from me, like in my unpleasant first experience in Guayaquil. Finally, while trying to find the bus office, I let one of these men guide me to the office; he expected no tip; he only wanted to get business for his bus company.

The land west of Cuenca was lovely, with picturesque stony brooks in the countryside. Then we drove through popular Las Cajas park, so high in elevation that trees cannot grow up there. We then descended into the clouds.

When we reached level ground, some light blue sky was peaking through the cloud cover. This flat land was more that just a landscape of banana trees, making it more interesting than the ride through the flatlands near Machala. There were a variety of trees, natural and planted, as well as grazing animals.

Guayaquil to the bus terminal was better than I had expected, since I had expected ugliness, but what I saw was well…attractive, with flowering plants planted in the median, a pleasantly developed riverfront, and interesting urbanization. The new arrival terminal for buses was impressive.

While walking to the departure terminal, a man asked me if I was going to Cuenca. This time I was prepared with a ¨No.¨ Then came ¨Salinas?¨ Reply: No.  He followed with ¨Quito? Puerto Lopez? Ambato? ¨ Obviously he was trying to get a tip and not working for a particular bus company.

The line to go to Salinas was long, slow, and confusing. I stood in the line to get a direct bus with air conditioning the first air conditioned ride in Ecuador for me) and non-locked bathroom. This bathroom, unlike others, was built to prevent people from looking from the outside inward. However, the toilet in the bathroom did not flush, although it is supposed to flush automatically. Fortunately I was the first passenger to use it on the ride.

The exit out of Guayaquil was well…ugly. Travelling west from Guayaquil, we passed through desert with dry vegetation. The blue sky helped compensate.

The view was not attractive until we arrived in La Libertad.

The waterfront in Salinas is truly attractive with a nice beach. Some foreigners are here. My guide book does not speak well of Salinas, because of its prices. Yes, prices for food and hotel are high here. However, Salinas is a nice place.

• Read More »

On Wednesday morning I made it to the chiva station in time to catch the 6:30 chiva, the only one each day, headed towards Guanazán. Outside of Zaruma we began travelling through some scenic green valleys with mountain views. At some point I transferred to the roof of the chiva, where I had a much better view.

I was careful to avoid getting decapitated on the roof of the bus, but at one point I was panick-stricken when my hat nearly blew off. While I was securing the hat to my head with hair clips, a thin branch-end hit me in the face. 

Strangely, as we ascended high into the mountains, I saw many palm trees. Then we ascended into sheep country, with at least one pine farm near Cerro de Arcos. After Sabadél I started seeing the other side of the mountain range, which was much drier, with desert mountains in the distance. Then we began descending. As we approached Guanazán, I saw what looked like a triangle of land, not a mountain, pointing at the sky:  The triangular point is the beginning of a mountain range.

In Guanazán, I asked the town preacher if I could stay in the church´s lodging. Unfortunately, 40 kids had already made reservations to use the lodging. The preacher was very helpful and helped me find a room for $5 elsewhere in town. The room, and the disconnected bathroom, did not have electric light originally, but the owner was able to give me light by the time that I returned at 9 p.m.

The preacher had told me that an American young man lives in Guanazán. While I was eating lunch, the preacher appeared and told me that he had the American with him. The volunteer, Jeremy, talked with me at my table. He is volunteering for the Peace Corps for agriculture projects, and occasionally he teaches classes at the high school. When Jeremy had heard that another American was in town, he thought that one of his Peace Corps buddies had come to visit him. Apparently, foreigners are very rare in Guanazán.

Jeremy was really helpful. He gave me a walking tour of one of the hills, which we didn´t have time to complete, because we had made plans with someone else for 2:30. That person didn´t show up at 2:30-3:00, which is common there. Guanazán is way out in the middle of nowhere, and there are no Internet cafes or telephone stalls there. It´s kind of sad that a cute 24-year-old guy is living so isolated. I hope to try to find an Ecuadorian girlfriend for him on www.hi5.com someday. Luckily he just got a horse on Wednesday night, to keep him company.

On Thursday morning Jeremy and I travelled to Machala where a Peace Corps meeting was to occur; Jeremy invited me to come to the meeting. The descent down from Guanazan had enjoyable scenery, with views of desert than gradually changed to something tropical.

I had been expecting Pasaje to be a small town; it was not. The buildings and streets in Pasaje look like those of Machala, and Pasaje is not small. The sky was dark with clouds, making me feel a little depressed. Machala was gloomily overcast too when we arrived, but the sun appeared later.

I met the other Peace Corps volunteers in a nice pizza place. They make me proud of the USA. The USA has a bad reputation in the world, especially among Europeans, but Zarumenians love Americans, partly because Peace Corps volunteers are there. They also love Americans because Americans developed a good infrastructure (e.g. water canals) for mining operations that occured almost 100 years ago.

Afterwards, I left Machala for Cuenca. The highway to Cuenca took me away from the overcast skies into a valley surrounded by stark desert mountains. Then we came to Santa Isabel, which was bigger and much greener and more developed than I had expected. I had expected it to be a very poor town; it is not.

The land between Santa Isabel and Cuenca is green. Close to Cuenca, there is a wide valley with gentle rolling hills covered by grass and grazing animals, with occasional coniferous/pine trees. Cuenca is a pretty affluent town, with nice buildings. As we entered Cuenca, many buildings were covered beautifully with Christmas lights. The air, which is always pretty chilly in Cuenca at night, added to the Christmas feeling. In contrast, icicle lights seemed silly in warm Zaruma. Unlike the last time when I was in Cuenca, there was no obnoxious honking. In total contrast, the drivers were very tranquil on the cobblestone streets. However, my room in the hostal was uncomfortably cold at night—colder than Loja, Quito and Guanazán!

• Read More »

I didn´t leave for Guanazán this morning because my clothes hadn´t been returned to me by the cleaning service. The guy who runs the cleaning service is sitting only 5 feet away from me now, at another computer. We´re friends.

My trip to Salatí today felt a bit scandalous because I was allowed to ride on the bus, while some other local people were not permitted to board, because of overcrowding. When I boarded the bus, I couldn´t move towards the seats because of blockage by kids, yet some seats were still unfilled. The kids behind me was pushing me, but I didn´t push the people in front of me. The bus auxiliar had me sit next to the bus driver (the auxiliar´s spot), which is a place with an excellent view. Somehow the auxilar got approximately 25 more kids onto the bus, barely fitting in the starewell.

The trip to Salatí from Portovelo was incredibly beautiful and surprisingly green, since the hills around Zaruma are brown. Sugarcane farms covered much of the hills in Salatí. I found dirt roads like what someone would have found in the USA in the 1800s in the Midwest.

On the chiva back to Portovelo, I enjoyed the sunset. It reminded me of walks with my walking partner in northern San Diego County at sunset, which were some of the best times of my life.

• Read More »

I´ve finally finished Mariela´s web site for her hotel. Here it is: http://cerrodeoro.galeon.com/index.html

If you find any obvious errors in it, other than incomplete information on the bus schedules, feel free to tell me.

Hopefully I´ll wake up early enough tomorrow morning to go to Guanazán.

• Read More »

When Mariela said that she would have to pay a lot of money–$150–to have somebody design a web page for her hotel, I offered to do it for free for her, stating that her children could help modify the pages in the future. I love Mariela, but she talks a lot, and other people know it too. When we have a task to accomplish, we only spend at most 30% of the time working on the task; the rest of the time is spent chatting with girlfriends, often about stupid stuff. One night, at 7 p.m., Mariela told me that once she had finished her dinner, we would walk to a private tourism office; almost 2 hours later, dinner was finished, and when we got to the office, it was closed. I´m going to try to finish her pages today so that I can leave Zaruma.

With Mariela, I went on a tour of a manjar (dulce de leche, or milk caramel) plant, and we visited the hummingbird (colibrí) garden in Jocotoco, west of Piñas. My mind was so set on eating manjar that I didn´t think of bringing my camera to photograph the ecological reserve. In the jardín de colibríes, there were so many hummingbirds that they looked like swarming insects. There were several types of hummingbirds, but the most common type had a shiny turquoise-green neck and a royal blue chest. There were also some non-hummingbird blue-green birds with black heads, as well as light-green birds. All these birds drank sugar water from red humming bird feeders. Some of the feeders were ponds over 1-foot long.

Last night Mariela, myself, and her family visited some hot-looking young men at the police station. This was my 2nd time seeing them. The first time I only saw them when looking out the window of Mariela´s pick-up truck. When Mariela said that she wanted to visit her cousin at the police station, I assumed that he was a police officer, and that police officers were sleeping at their police station. However, when I saw that the building, one side of which was wire-cage, with the men was locked, I realized that Mariela´s cousin was in jail. The jail wasn´t very secure; Mariela slipped food and coffee through the metal-wire door to her cousin. The jail was more funny than scary; the prisoners looked like pets in a cage with TV. Later Mariela talked to the police officers at the station–older men who also were pretty hot. The police officers were professional and kind. Mariela´s cousin was in jail for being in a fight while drunk. Extreme drunkeness is a big problem in Zaruma.

• Read More »

Yesterday I planted my guaba seeds on a property in Zaruma that already has a lot of fruit trees on it. I hope that the seeds survive, but we haven´t had noticeable precipitation yesterday or today, just a few drops falling from the sky.

I started my adventures today in Portovelo. This time I walked westward from the bus station, along the river, towards El Pache (not to be confused with the cantón of Paccha, also known as Atahaulpa). Portovelo has more poverty than Zaruma. Zaruma has gorgeous old buildings, and a good trash-collection system, while Portovelo has shanty towns near the mines. While looking into the river, I saw many tires discarded there. Many hills in the area are dry, even though Portobelo has a lot of water. Hills are often cleared by burning. Since the hills are so steep, a rain can easily carry away the upper layer of burned soil.

Later, I took a taxi to Moromoro. The land west of Piñas is very green, with lots of ferns, and protected from the sun by mist. However Moromoro was sunny. The resort El Paraíso has a gorgeous swimming pool with three water slides, showers, and bathrooms, and entrance to the pool is only $2. Staying in El Paraíso´s lodging costs $30 - $50 for one night, depending on the number of people. A stream also runs alongside the resort.

I took a bus back to Piñas at 2:15, and then returned to Zaruma.

• Read More »

The last time when I was in Loja, over a week ago, I bought a green ¨guava¨ pod, approximately 1-foot long, of which I ate its inside fruit. A Latin American guava, Inga Edulis, is different from a United States guava. A U.S. guava is called ¨guayava¨ in Spanish.

While eating the fruit, I noticed that a few of the seeds had sprouted roots, so I kept most of the seeds in a clear, moist, plastic bag, with a little air. I transported the seeds from Loja to Zaruma this way. Most of these seeds have since sprouted small green shoots. I´m hoping to plant them here in the Zaruma area to see how hard it is to grow a tree here. Guava trees require a lot of water. This will be my contribution to Gonzalo´s reforestation project.

On Saturday, a man showed me video footage, taken by his cellular phone, of me dancing on Friday night; it wasn´t so bad. There was more public dancing on Saturday night and Sunday night, with food booths in Zaruma´s plaza during the daytime Sunday, and a parade on Monday morning. There were a lot of ¨borrachos¨ in the nights.

• Read More »

Yesterday I was in a bad mood because we still didn´t have tap water in the morning, and the electricity in my hotel was still off in the morning. Electricity returned by 11 a.m., and I had water in my hotel room by 3 p.m. I spent most of yesterday sleeping, probably as a result of a migraine combined with heat in Zaruma. In the late afternoon we had a light drizzle and rain.

There was music and dancing in Zaruma´s town plaza last night. One drunk guy was brave enough to invite me to dance, not with words, but with his arms. A lot of people laughed at us as we danced, including myself, but I felt self-conscious when people–2, no…3, no…more people–started using their cellular phones to take photos and videos of us. 

In Zaruma, which is a mining town, there seems to be more men than women. Men were aggressive in trying to find dance partners. I had fun with many dance partners. Apparently lots of people witnessed the spectacle of me dancing ridiculously, and the local TV station even broadcast my dancing, live on TV–what a horrible site!

Some Zarumenios are very flirtatious, and this is starting to feel like a problem for me. I sort of feel scared at times, with men that I have known for a while. People are also jealous. This is a bad combination. Women can be pretty silly too without thinking of the consequences, trying to arrange relationships that were not meant to be.

• Read More »

Two days ago I took a bus trip by myself to Huaquillas, where I bought pants. Wearing flip-flops was a good idea, allowing me to try on pants and shorts easily.

I was the last person to deboard the bus in Huaquillas. As I was deboarding, the crowd of people wanting to climb onboard pressed forward. I was actually stuck; the pressing people, competing against each other to board, caused me to be a plug in the entry to the bus.

I paid $.80 for the trip from La Avanzada to Huaquillas. However, I paid $1.50 to travel from Huaqillas to La Avanzada. Perhaps the higher return price is why I didn´t have to fight with people to board the CIFA bus in Huaquillas this time.

I have moved back to Zaruma. I got dirty again here when a friend led me on a guided walk on the steep slope of Zaruma. I think I´ll try to avoid hiking with Ecuadorians from now on; the hikes have always been dangerous. Locals will say that a hike is safe when it is risky and dirty by American standards.

• Read More »

I took a 30-minute bus trip to Marcabelí this afternoon, on a paved road. Marcabelí has pleasantly dry weather, with some palm trees growing wild, along with other trees, in the surrounding hills. Unfortunately, many hills of trees were cut down to grow grass for cattle grazing. Many hills have been burned. I worry about soil erosion and desertification. A driver in Marcabelí drove me to a waterfall where a natural-hot-water and a natural-cold-water stream converge.

Two young men in Balsas told me that Marcabelí is uglier than Santa Rosa, but I disagree. When I asked them what they meant when they said that Santa Rosa is prettier, they said that Santa Rosa is more developed, which is true. Marcabelí has many dirt roads and no Internet cafe at this time.

Last night, a man in Balsas took interest in my environmental assistance to Zaruma. He told me that Balsas needs help with reforestation too. He said that the government of the El Oro province is giving attention to Zaruma, but not to Balsas.

The Balsas area has nice weather with mild temperatures. I actually prefer it over Zaruma. In Zaruma, I never saw stars, because of the nightly cloud cover. In Balsas last night, I could see the moon and a few stars. Also, Balsas is not as dead on a Sunday night as Zaruma.

I got locked out of my hotel last night. What happened was that I befriended two musicians on the street of Balsas last night, around 8 p.m. When I said goodnight to them, between 10 and 11 p.m., one of them walked me back to my hotel–Gran Hotel Arly. The hotel’s buzzer did not work, so I banged on the door many times, causing a guard on the other side of the street to walk over. Finally I gave up and had to sleep next to the musician, which was a mostly unpleasant experience. Ecuador has a bad reputation for rape, worse than the U.S.’s, but the United States has a lot of rape too. It’s as if overly-sexual raping men outbred civilized men, enough to affect the genetic personality traits of the population. Rape typically is not committed by strangers; it is committed by overly-sexual men who start off on friendly terms with their female victims. I’ve learned that the best way to prevent rape is to hit the man as hard as possible, more than once; don’t try to be lady-like. Based on my experiences in Ecuador, including last night, a woman can hit a man hard and refuse sex, and the man and woman can still continue to be friends afterwards.

I was ticked off at the Arly hotel, which has a huge sign declaring that it has 24-hour reception. Not only was there no employee on staff last night, it is impossible to leave the hotel at night without an employee’s help. Even greater than my worry of being locked out of the hotel was my worry of being burnt alive in the event of a hotel fire, in which case there would be no way to escape, without the presence of a hotel employee. I have moved back into the Express hotel in Balsas, which does not have hot water in the shower.

• Read More »

The one lone Internet cafe in Balsas is in fact open on Sundays, until 8 p.m. It is open Saturdays 1-8 p.m. There was a party outside my hotel from 10 p.m. to midnight last night, but I could not escape the locked doors of my hotel. This was probably for the best. I heard 2 groups of people banging intermittently on the doors to my hotel to enter last night, and it took many minutes for a hotel employee to finally let each group in.

• Read More »

While studying the deforestation problem of Zaruma, I thought about the even worse deforestation problem involving the manglares (mangrove trees) that were cut down on the coast to allow for shrimp farms. I have been afraid of Ecuador’s coast because of the “mala gente,” but I’ve heard from several people that the coast is very interesting, so I forced myself to face my fear.

Yesterday I took a bus from Balsas to Machala. The subtropical natural scenery was attractive until sometime after La Avanzada, when were started seeing more city. The sky was blue, which improved the appearance of Santa Rosa. A salesman was selling aloe-vera/ginseng vitamins on the bus. This nice man helped me transfer to the Number 1 bus in Machala, headed towards Puerto Bolivar; he even paid for me on the #1 bus!

Puerto Bolivar is an attractive port, kind of like San Diego, but with very little traffic.  

On the boat to Jambelí, I met a woman from Holland who has lived in Jambelí for 8 years. She said that Jambelí has a low crime rate, gentle surf that does not tend to drown people (unlike other Ecuadorian beaches), and at least a little sunshine every day of the year.

In her eco-hostal lives a tour guide. He gave me a tour, in a canoe, of the mangroves growing on the islands, for $7 for 2 hours. I enjoyed this tour. Lots of fish jumped into the air during the tour, and I saw many types of birds.  Although parts of the mangroves smell bad, and although some of the bubbly algae on the mangrove roots looks gross, the mangroves are still overall attractive, and they’re definitely more attractive than the flat shrimp farms, which are not worth looking at.

One downside of the Jambelí experience was that while I was sweating in the sun, wearing a tank top that left a strip of skin exposed at the bottom, I was bombarded by mosquitos. They got me many times in that strip of skin, as well as near the shoulders. To cope, I applied repellent, but I was too late. Later the repellent bottom leaked in my pocket. I was loaned a long-sleeve shirt, which provided better protection.

Because the Internet cafe of Balsas is closed, I am writing this message from an Internet cafe in Piñas. Piñas has a water shortage during this time of the year, so we cannot get water from the pipes until 6 p.m. I learned this after using a toilet here.

• Read More »

Yesterday I took a morning bus from Loja to El Cisne, where there is a large church that is being re-painted very beautifully. It was worth the trip, even though I am not religious.

From El Cisne I travelled back down to San Pedro. From San Pedro I rode on a bus to Chaguarbamba, in the Loja province. Originally I wanted to de-board the bus in Olmeda, but the highway does not pass through Olmeda directly.

I paid $4 for my hotel room in Chaguarpamba. Chaguarbampa has only one hotel as far as I know, with a shared bathroom, no hot water, no office, and no Internet in town (but one Internet place is under construction).  Despite all this, I was not grumpy until the earthquake struck around 10 p.m. I was both scared yet thankful that my hotel was only 2 stories tall.

This morning I took a bus, with my luggage, to Balsas. I am paying $5 per night for my hotel room in Balsas, with no hot water; at least the water is not too cold. I explored Jambelí today; I will write about it tomorrow.

• Read More »

The rain stopped by 9:30 p.m. last night, and we had blue sky in Loja this afternoon. This morning, government workers were clearing dirt and rocks out of the street near my hotel.

Loja is my favorite metropolitan city in Ecuador. It is incredibly green, literally… because of its plentiful rains. Also, the city planners left some land within the city undeveloped, where grass could grow. Loja doesn´t get the foreign tourism that it deserves. However, the crime rate here is probably low because of the lack of foreign tourists.

I went shopping at Supermaxi and Fybeca today. Both stores have ¨cards¨, similar to Vons-Club cards. The national-level Supermaxi card costs $45. The Fybeca card costs $8. Sometimes a price shown for a product on a shelf is the card price, and it isn´t obvious that this shown price is the card price. Fybeca was kind enough to accept a return by me when I discovered that I paid more than I intended to.

• Read More »

When I arrived in Vilcabamba yesterday night, the roads were so muddy from the road-work and rain that I had to take a taxi to the Rendez-Vous hostal. My laptop computer didn´t work with the Wi-Fi offered by the Rendez-Vous hostal in Vilcabamba, I had cold shower water at night, and the toilet had problems too. At least breakfast and service were excellent, but I did not want to stay in this hostal. This morning, a woman honestly told me that Vilcabamba still has its water cut off for 2-3 hours each day. Therefore I left Vilcabamba.

I moved back into the Marbella hostal in Loja. I couldn´t go out in the afternoon because the street was flooded. Mud was running into the street on my side of the street. Large rocks rolled into the street and then down the street in the rain. When the rain subsided a bit, I saw that some of these rocks were quite big. Some cars got stuck in the rainwater in the street, including in one of those traffic circles that I hate. I videorecorded the torrential rain:

http://crackle.com/c/Flip_Video/Rocks_rolling_down_street/2080133#vt=1

Now, at 9 p.m., we only have a light drizzle.

• Read More »

I finally feel like my chemical engineering background is useful. Recently I found myself in a political meeting in Zaruma, to which Mariela and Gonzalo invited me, without them telling me that it was for politics. When people asked what my work background was, I replied that I had worked in the microchip industry, electroplating with metals like gold, and that I had dealt with disposal issues for cyanide solutions. Similarly, Zaruma´s gold industry uses cyanide. One man in the meeting was very interested, since his gold-related business was shut down by the government for polluting the environment. When the man had tried to find help in treating his cyanide wastewater, he wasn´t able to find any. I told the man that cyanide can be destroyed with chlorine bleach at alkaline pH, and I´m leaving a paper with information for him.

In Zaruma, I also gave Gonzalo and Mariela lessons in how to use Internet in an Internet cafe.

I still have congestion in my nose. I´m leaving for Vilcabamba today in hopes that this will cause my nasal congestion to go away.

• Read More »

Mariela and her 17-year-old daughter Stephany took me to Huaquillas, where Mariela had business to do. First we took a bus that was headed towards Machala, bus we got off at ¨La Avanzada¨. This first leg of the trip cost $1.50. Then we took a cab headed towards Huaquillas.

The drive through the sunny desert area was pleasant. After crossing a bridge, we were in sunny Arenillas, with many bicycles and motorcycles. Arenillas reminds me of Shreveport, Louisiana, but it seems happier. When we arrived in Huaquillas, we paid the cab driver $3 for the 3 of us. This seems like a mistake; I think we should have paid $3 each, but the cab driver didn´t object. Bus fare on the return trip from Huaquillas to La Avanzada was $0.80 per person.

We crossed the border to Peru, which consisted merely of a bridge, with no fence and no checking of documents in either direction. In Peru, Mariela argued with the manufacturer of the plastic bags that her retail business uses. Mariela has a nice way of reprimanding people, like when she reprimands somebody for arriving late at work, or when she refused to pay for her defective bags, but promised to pay for non-flawed bags in the future for the same vendor. She chastises people like an Italian mother talking to her children, in a caring way.

Both sides of the border are filled with outdoor vendors, as well as legitimate buildings. After reading and hearing many bad stories about this border crossing, I was expecting a rough experience, but nothing bad happened.

People were very aggressive in bording the Civa bus in Huaquillas. In Ecuatoriano Andean towns, I have often wondered why the bus company bothers to sell bus tickets with assigned seats when other people board the bus without tickets and sit randomly. After this experience in Huaquillas, I understand the reasoning. When people were rushing to board the bus, instead of proceeding in a line, I wondered, ¨Why are they rushing to board, when the bus is not going to leave without us?¨ Well, shortly after I was able to get on the bus, all the seats were taken. Some people had to stand. Using tickets with seat numbers, in theory, reduces the pushing and shoving of people trying to get a seat on the bus. When Mariela was first in line to board the bus back to Piñas, 5 men cut in front of her and boarded the bus first; we almost didn´t have seats.

Mariela and I both have been sick with colds, almost with identical symptoms each day. I hope to be well enough for a day-trip to Manú tomorrow.

• Read More »

I left Zaruma with Lourli this morning to travel a dirt road to Ortega with her husband and her helper. Around Ortega there are streams/rivers all over the place. 

Once in Ortega, the first site that she drove me to was a waterfall near Sinsau. I was then invited to climb this waterfall to go to an even more impressive waterfall. I should have turned down the invitation. During the climb, my foot slipped on a wet rock and my foot went into the water, wetting my pant leg. Fortunately my boots are waterproof, and this made a huge difference. Halfway up, I announced that I had had enough. During this wateffall adventure, I did have the pleasure of seeing some very tropical-looking plants.  

After an afternoon nap in her Ortega house, Lourli, myself, and Andrea went hunting for pomarosas, with the company of the neighbor´s dog. In Ortega, Huertas, and Portovelo, if someone invites you on a nature walk, you are bound to get dirty. I refused to cross one river. The teenager among us slipped on a rock when crossing the river back to me, wetting her pants with water. I also fell down the bank of the river. In this area, like in Portovelo, people use barbed-wire fence to mark property boundaries. My shoelace got caught in a barb and is now broken open because of it. My hand also got scraped lightly by a barb, enough to break the skin (I´ve had my tetanus shot, and I used disinfectant gel on the wound). After all this, when we finally got back to Lourli´s property, a 2-meter tall wire-mesh fence on the border of Lourli´s property kept us from entering her own property. Lourli exclaimed ¨¿Que bobería! Esto es un camino bobo!¨ I agreed. We walked back to the river to get around her property´s fence. Later I found tree leaves inside my underwear.

In Ortega, Lourli showed me a plant that has the awful name of ¨cierra el culito.¨ When a person touches the leaves of this plant, the leaves close right before the eyes.

• Read More »

A cousin of the woman who owns my hotel died in a gold mine yesterday when a part of the mine fell on him.

As for myself, I´ve been planning to go to Salatí and Guanazán by myself, but I´ve had loose intestines today and yesterday. This morning, my intestinal trouble felt like what I had in Peru–lingering with pain, not disappearing after using the bathroom. In hopes that I could still ride a bus today, I took antibiotics, but I still wasn´t well enough to travel. Hopefully on Friday I will take a bus trip.

• Read More »

I went to a great party in Zaruma last night, for only $2. Zaruma was crowded yesterday with tourists celebrating Dia de los Muertos. Dia de los Muertos was Friday, but the holiday was celebrated all weekend, filling up hotels. Adult children returned to their parents´ homes for this holiday.

I haven´t had success in finding Ecudorian driving laws on the Internet. I´m not trying to follow the laws; I´ve learned that that can be hazardous to my health. Pedestrians can be hit by cars if they assume that they have the right-of-way when they have green pedestrian lights or painted pedestrian crosswalks. Cars in this country don´t yield to pedestrians in the aforementioned situation, even when the drivers are perfectly capable of slowing, stopping, or staying stopped. Also, drivers don´t stop for stop signs; they only stop for lights. If a pedestrian has a green light to cross and is already in the intersection, but a later arriving car, which had plenty of time to brake for the pedestrian, wants to make a left or right turn into the same lane, instead of yielding, the car will honk at the pedestrian to hurry up.

• Read More »

Piñas has some big parties that are thrown in the street. I was lucky to be at one when a radio station was celebrating its anniversary.

Zaruma and the surrounding areas have some environmental issues that should be dealt with soon: deforestation for an unprofitable cattle business, the dumping of cyanide into rivers by people in the gold industry, landslides partly caused by mining, and the dumping of trash near rivers.

The owners of my hotel have almost adopted me into their family. They took me to the party in Piñas, and and they introduced me to 3 of their nephews. I´m trying to help with Gonzalo´s reforestation project. A man named Mauricio Carrión was also kind enough to feed me salad in his house and invite me to live in his spacious house with him (I´ll decline, since I don´t trust men, and a woman named Lourli made me the same offer before she left on a mini-vacation).

• Read More »

Yesterday I rode on an Azuay bus to Machala. The bus driver was obnoxious with his honking, but he did get us to our destination in 2 and a quarter hours, in contrast to the typical 3 hours; he may have also driven a shorter route, with fewer banana plantations. Machala is not an attractive city. Although my bus back to Zaruma travelled through a rich neighborhood in Machala with nice homes, most of Machala is ugly. However, it is a bigger city than Zaruma, so I was able to buy a $2 pre-paid http://www.on.net.ec Internet card; I still have the problem that phone calls are fairly expensive from Zaruma to Machala. I did´not find any supermarkets in Machala, just small shops. I didn´t have any problems with people trying to rob me there, which was my main concern.

For some reason, Zarumenios are talking to me about their environmental problems. I´ve been invited for Saturday to travel with a group see how gold mines have contaminated the rivers. Another man wants to show me photos and videos of the problems.

I got to see the land west of Piñas without fog. Wow, it was beautiful, like rainforest.

• Read More »

I think my tonsils have been overreacting lately. They felt like they were on fire the last time that they gave me pain. Nothing worked for the pain, except gargling with Listerine. Listerine not only kills germs; it also kills the sensation in the mucous membranes that it touches. My sore throat probably was not caused by bacteria. After my REALLY BAD sore throat, I had cold symptoms. I´ve been producing a lot of nasal mucous, but I´m okay.

I walked to Portovelo´s aguas termales yesterday with a 16-year-old girl who invited me. She also showed me a large gold mine and the beginning of the canal in Portovelo, where it branches away from the river. I ate the skin of a pomarrosa fruit that fell on dry ground, without washing it, and I swam in a public pool in Portovelo that probably was not chlorinated. Fortunately, I haven´t had intestinal problems.

The owner of my hotel, Cerro de Oro, has enlisted me in his effort to reforest the deforested hills of Zaruma. Trees on the hills were cut down to allow for cattle grazing. Sometimes the remaining vegetation was burned too. The burning creates nutrition for the soil immediately, but the soil can be easily washed away in rains, with no vegetation to hold it down. Even today, there are a some hills that are black from being recently burned. Deforestation has caused the area to become drier. Cows in the area got sick from eating some wild ferns that grew in the vegetation, so cattle raising is not wise in this area.

• Read More »

Yesterday I took a bus on switchback highway through the mountains, from Catacocha to Catamayo. Just like the last time when I made this trip, in September, I got carsick, but this time there was no auxiliar named Cesar to hold my hand.

Then I had the horrid bus ride on the dirt road to Zaruma. I tried using the bathroom on the bus this time. I had to ask the auxiliar for a key to enter, there was no toilet paper or toilet-paper waste basket, and the window was not covered. I guess this is typical for Ecuadorian buses. Perhaps I had Ecuadorian buses confused with Peruvian buses when I expected more. Perhaps I had the Ecuador-Peru border-crossing buses confused with intra-national Ecuadorian buses.

I arrived in Zaruma, where I have friends! The people in the Cerro de Oro hotel were glad to see me, and I made plans with two female friends as well.

The owner of my hotel had me help him write stuff on the Internet to get volunteer help reforesting Zaruma.

I had trouble sleeping last night because of a REALLY BAD sore throat. At 6 a.m. this morning, I walked down the hill to Zaruma´s hospital. The visit was free. I was prescribed 4 1-day pills, 500 mg each of Azitromicina, plus pain killer. I had to wake up a pharmacist, who sleeps above her store, to buy the pills.

• Read More »

Quito is not only cold; it is dangerous. A young American woman told me that 6 days ago, 5 men, with 2 guns, robbed her at gunpoint, when she was in a group with 2 other people. 

Yesterday, starting at 6 p.m., I began a horrid bus ride from Quito to Catacocha, via Santo Domingo de los Colorados. The journey started well, with the lights of Quito looking attractive in a cozy fog. However, once we got storming down the mountain switchback, I started feeling a little carsick.

In Santo Domingo, near 9 p.m., I bought a bag of candy-covered peanuts from a young man selling them on my bus. Since they came in a factory-printed bag, I assumed they were safe. After I had eaten half the bag, I noticed that the bag´s printed words were not only hard to see, but also backwards. I noticed that the bag was somehow inside out, even though the peanuts were inside. Also, the plastic bag had ¨mora¨ (berry) flavor printed inside it. I took a Doxycycline tablet immediately after finishing the whole bag (I was hungry), and I haven´t had any intestinal problems from it.

Starting in Santo Domingo, I noticed that we had some moonlight for our trip. After Santo Domingo, we entered the flat Guayas area, so I got some relief from the side-to-side swaying on mountain roads. The side-to-side swaying resumed again this morning as we approached Catacocha. I have had good experiences with Loja International in the past, so I was disappointed with their bathroom on the bus this morning, which required a key from the auxiliar to enter and had no covering over the window, so that I could wipe in front of people on the side of the road (luckily none were present). 

Catacocha is a pleasant town in the cantón of Paltas. Paltas is the name of an indigenous people from here, and it is also the another word for avocados.

Above the city and near the hospital is a statue of Jesus Christ, with a steep drop behind him. Apparently the local indigenous people, a long time ago, used to throw people off this cliff as sacrifices. Two other people told me that the sacrificial humans volunteered to jump. Broken-hearted lovers have also jumped from here.

Catacocha had relatively nice weather and little traffic. Although we had some clouds throughout the whole day, there was almost always at least a sliver of blue sky showing, and it never actually rained. Cloud cover rolled in in the late afternoon, with some blue sky to be seen in the west.

• Read More »

Yesterday I took buses to the Mitad del Mundo site. There were at least 3 museums there, but I did not enter any of them. Instead, I joined a tour to volcano Pululahua. We climbed up the mountain, starting at 2800 meters altitude, and ended around 3100 meters altitude. The tour group actually ascended higher that 3100 meters, but I dropped out of the tour after we walked right through a prickly bush with long thorns; there was not a cleared trail in this area. There were some pretty flowers, including orchids, during our ascent. We looked inside the volcano; the volcano is alive but sleeping. Behind us we could see dusty Mitad del Mundo.

The Mitad del Mundo area is drier that Quito. There are few trees on the hills, and some hills have been cut away for mining. This area would be considered unattracive because of the lack of greenery. There is a light breeze there, kicking up dust. 

Two days ago I had lightning diarrhea, in which the flood gates opened within one minute of the initial cramps. I’ve firmed up since then. I don’t know what caused this problem. Was it the antibiotics? Without going to a doctor, I bought a 3-day supply (recommended by the manufacturer) of 500 mg Azitromicina (brand Binozyt) antibiotics to treat my sore throat. I’ve finished the 3-day regimen, and my throat is still sore, although it is better than yesterday. I’ve had a sore throat for 9 days now, with the worst symptoms in the evenings.

I’m hoping to head to Catacocha tomorrow, to escape this frigid weather.

Today TV news covered people celebrating the leaving of Congress, to make room for the new Assembly. Ecuador’s Congress was considered corrupt. I am ashamed and embarrassed that I don’t know more about this subject. Today on a bus I stood next to a man who described his job as “political revolutionary” fighting for the poor people. He was happy to see Ecuador’s old Congress leave.

• Read More »

That song that I like, that starts with bubbly notes like circus music from outer space, is called Chiquilla and is by Kumbia Allstarz. The band’s name is written as “Kumbia Allstarz” in their video, which can be seen here: http://www.gritala.net/ver/kumbia-all-starz-chiquilla . However, Rhapsody has them listed as “Kumbia All Starz.”

• Read More »

On Friday I walked up a hill to the Instituto Geographico Militar in Quito, to get maps. A map there typically sells for $3.
  
After acquiring some maps there, I checked out a children’s art museum that was within IGM’s compound:

I was told that Tumbaco is near Quito but warmer than Quito, so I decided “I’m going there!” This morning, without washing or brushing any part of me, I left my hostal for Tumbaco, to make use of the early hours without rain. First I took an Ecovía bus to its northernmost station–Rio Coca. The Ecovia was incredibly crowded–a good place for pickpockets. I left the Rio Coca station for a nearby bus station. I boarded a green bus, clearly marked for Tumbaco, for 35 cents. The bus was comfortable and only half full. It traveled over modern roads through Cumbayá. I have a feeling that the bus was traveling through one of the more affluent Quito suburbs.

In Tumbaco, I looked for lodging near the plaza.
Apparently Tumbaco only has one hotel, Copa Cobana, for $10 per night, hot water included, and it was full. It is on the edge of town. Outside the hotel, after nearly being hit by two bicyclists, I realized I was on a bike path. The bike/pedestrian path goes back to Cumbayá after over 4 kilometers.

Around 12:30 rain clouds were moving in from Quito. I boarded a bus that took me up the hill to Quito. 

Here’s a tip that I’ve learned at the bus stations for Ecovia and Trolebus. When the doors to the bus open to let people onboard, some people often stand in the line to the bus, instead of boarding. These people are waiting to sit down on the next bus. If you’re willing to stand on the bus, it’s okay to pass these stagnant people in line when the doors are opn. However, waiting in line to have a seat is a good idea, since you can guard your belongings better when you’re sitting.

I give the day-trip to Tumbaco a “thumbs up”, with the exception of standing on the Ecovia bus.

• Read More »

During the afternoon after my last blog post, we had a heavy downpour, thunder, and hail. The current weather in Quito now seems crappy to me, although it could be worse. It’s causing mild depression for me. Around 12 noon everyday, the sky becomes dark with clouds, and the afternoon is typically dark.

At 10 p.m., after a trivia dinner with South American Explorers, I had to travel 4 blocks to get back to my hostal. I was going to walk the distance, but my SAE friends suggested that I take a taxi, since technically we were in the dangerous Mariscal district, even though we’re not in the trendiest part of the district. My gringo friends hailed a taxi for me. The taxi ride turned out to be a nightmare. The driver originally wanted $2.50, but when I started walking away, he offered the 4-block ride for $1. On Amazonas, after we drove past my street Davalos, I asked the driver to turn left and drop me off. He turned left, but he wanted to keep driving. I was hoping that he was turning around to take me back to Davalos. At the end of the street, he offered to drop me off, but we were in the wrong area. He turned left again, continued on and stopped at a park. He said in Spanish, “Amazonas is that way, and Ramirez Davlos is that way,” pointing in the opposite direction. I showed him the brochure for my hotel, indicating the Davalos and Amazonas join each other (near the hostal location), but my taxi driver didn’t believe me, or he pretended to not understand. I just wanted to get out of his car, for safety, so I paid him and exited the car. Since I was in an unfamiliar location, I had to asked people for help in finding my hostal. I had to jog more than 4 blocks to reach my hostal. The whole point of taking the taxi was defeated.

Since Davalos is a road that dead-ends and the re-starts again, this may have been an innocent error by the taxi driver. However, if he didn’t understand the destination from the start, he shouldn’t have accepted me as a passenger, especially since I did all my negotiating while standing outside his car, not from inside his car.

My guide book recommends taxi rides in the Mariscsal district for trips as short as two blocks, but guide books often fail to acknowledge that entering a taxi is risky business. Once inside a taxi, the passenger is at the mercy of the taxi driver.

• Read More »

I am currently lodged in a great location, on the street Gil Ramirez Davalos, very close to street Amazonas. I am within walking distance of the Mariscal Sucre district and South American Explorers. 

On Sunday, this area was pretty dead, with over half of the restaurants closed. It was strange to be in Quito, where people would not greet me or even smile to acknowledge my existence, in constrast to southern Ecuador. Later, I did find some exceptions to this rule among friendly security guards.

Even the foreign tourists here are colder. As she was the closest person to me, I asked a German-speaking white woman in Spanish what “fritadas” were, pointing to a picture of food. She quipped, “What?!” I asked her in English. She didn’t smile at all in replying. I later read that fritadas are fried pork. Sunday was pretty lonely.

The people here look different than what I’ve seen during the past 2 weeks. I see lots of black skin, white skin, fair hair, people of Asian descent, hippies.

If one reads the weather forecaset on msn.com or weather.com for Quito, one would think that Quito is having constant rain clouds and miserable cold. Sunday was like that. However, yesterday and today we have had beautiful blue sky in the mornings. Only afternoons have rainclouds, and the rain sometimes doesn’t really fall; only occasional droplets are felt on the face. The cold nights are bearable too; I found myself sweating during the day. No bugs have bitten me.

I am now a member of South American Explorers.

• Read More »

I had been warned about the people of coastal Ecuador, particularly Guayaquil, as well as Machalas. In describing coastal people, a Zarumenian used the phrase ”mala gente” . In describing Guayaquil, the verb “robar” has been used often. People told me that in Guayaquil someone would snatch off the money pouch that I wear around my neck.

The road leaving Zaruma for Guayaquil was not horrid like to road leaving Zaruma for Loja. Piñas was not foggy, but the land west of it was very foggy, making me worry about the safety of bus travel.

We drove into the town of Santa Rosa which lacked trees to cover up the poverty. The paved road to the north was only one lane in each direction, but heavily travelled. It was a bit scary, with cars trying to pass each other, sticking their noses into the opposing lane but retracting upon seeing the oncoming traffic, while the oncoming traffic swerved to avoid collision. 

When we were close to Guayaquil, we turned onto a road in which two lanes were travelling in the same direction, with no opposing lanes next to us. When I saw the modern green highway signs, they reminded me of the USA. My spirits and my impression of Guayaquil picked up. I even saw some stars. Fancy modern buildings and modern roads were well lighted. In the shadows I detected some shanty buildings. I thought to myself, “In the future, I would love to explore Guayaquil during the day.”

The bus dropped us off in a modern station. However, this area was for arrivals only. I had to take a free bus to the departure area. That’s when things started going sour.

A crossed to where the buses were parked, near ticket offices. A man, not in an office, cried out, “Quito, Quito, Quito.” In other bus terminals, it is common for bus employees to walk around and cry out the name of their destinations. I asked the man when the bus was leaving. He said, “Now, immediately.” I told him that I would wait for a later bus, because I didn’t want to arrive in Quito until around 7 a.m., not in the darkness of pre-dawn. He told me that the next bus would leave at 11 p.m.  I told him that I would wait for the 11 p.m. bus. He told me that I could store my luggage in the luggage reception. I was interested in this, and the man wheeled my luggage to the office of company San Cristobal. The man then told me that my bus was already in the terminal, and that I could store my luggage on the bus. He had me buy a ticket.

He then insisted that I give him $1.25 for a soda. I protested; a soda does not cost $1.25 for one person’s serving in Ecuador! A colleague of his approached and said that yes, this was normal price (not true; I confirmed later). I was offended, because I did not need any help in buying a ticket or in maneuvering my wheeled luggage; I could easily have accomplished this myself without help. I gave my so-called helper $0.75, and I payed the 10-cent entrance tariff for him too. He wanted more when he saw more in my money pouch, but I refused.

When I read my ticket, the hand-written departure time was 10 p.m., not 11 p.m. like I had requested.

When we got to the bus, the bus was already 80% full, which was strange, since it was only 9:25, and the bus wasn’t to leave until 10 p.m. I asked the bus’s auxiliar for comfirmation that the bus was to leave at 10 p.m.  He didn’t move his head. My head and my helper’s head tilted sideways. When I asked th 2nd time, he said, “Yes.” After storing my luggage on the bus, my helper and the auxiliar tried to get me to climb onboard, but I told them that I hadn’t eaten in 7 hours, and besides, we had plenty of time before 10 p.m. They told me to eat at the nearby outdoor restaurant. The restaurant employees in this area were unusually aggressive. Before I could finish my dinner, the bus auxiliar told me that we had to leave. It was only 9:35 p.m. I protested. Then he showed me his watch indicating 9:50 p.m. Onboard the bus, I confirmed with another passenger that it was only 9:37 p.m.

The bus departed around 9:45 p.m. Other passengers who boarded after me also protested our early departure. Later I found out that some passengers had been told that the bus would leave at 9 p.m. That’s why the bus was so full at 9:25 p.m.!

I complained to the passenger in front of me. He told me that all people in the bus terminal were liars. He said that Ecuatorianos were the most corrupt people. I replied that I had only had this problem in the Guayaquil bus station, and not in other bus stations. He also told me that his American friend always gets diarrhea in Ecuador, and that I should only buy bottled water from stores, not off the street.

Since I couldn’t use a restroom in the terminal terrestre, I had to use the bus’s bathroom. I had to request a key from the auxiliar. The auxiliar stood outside as I used it, which was good, because he confirmed for me that there was no light nor toilet paper in the restroom. In the dark bathroom, I used a red hazard light that I had bought to help prevent Ecuadorian cars from hitting me. I used my own toilet paper. When I stood up, I realized that I had sat on a wet seat. I wiped my wet left hindquarter with my left hand. There was no sink with water to wash my hands. Upon returning to my seat, I doused my hands with disinfecting gel.

The bus trip was humid for the first hours.

At 3:10 a.m., we were in Santo Domingo, after a bathroom break at a restaurant. I told my neighbor, “We’re going to arrive in Quito too early, just like I had feared.” The neighbor tried to console me, saying that we wouldn’t arrive in Quito until 6:30 or 7 a.m.

I arrived in Quito’s bus station at 5:50 a.m.

I was glad to be back in Quito, a city of relative sanity.

• Read More »

Yesterday I rode on a ranchera/chiva, which is an open-sided bus, to Salvias. On the dirt road, the ride was bumpy. The collection of change (60 cents) for the ride was risky, but no one lost their change in their interactions with the chiva´s auxiliar. The auxiliar maneuvered about the ranchera with the confidence of a monkey, swinging from one part of the ranchera to another, and onto the roof.

Salvias is a very quiet town, without a tourism office. A high-school boy had to show me how to reach the waterfall. An old man had to show me how to find the petroglyph, which was protected inside school grounds.

The ride back on the chiva was wilder, probably because there were fewer people onboard to hold the chiva down. We were airborne several times.

Many foreign tourists travel to Alausí, Ecuador, with hopes of riding on the roof of the train to Sibambe, only to find out that riding on the roof is strictly prohibited now. These tourists should consider travelling to Zaruma, Ecuador, to ride on the roof of a chiva, which is probably safer than riding on the roof of a train. Tourists should not stand up on the roof.  

After my trip to Salvias, I sat at a restaurant and had a malta with huevo criollo. After drinking my frothy malta, I asked where my huevo criollo was. The woman in the restaurant told me that it was in the drink. I was a little disgusted that I drank raw egg, but I must admit that the frothy drink was tastier than a typical malta.

• Read More »

Today I took a series of bus rides that took me in a counterclockwise loop.

I started with a bus from Zaruma that ascended to Huertas. Huertas has dirt roads and little traffic, in contrast to Zaruma, where being a pedestrian can be scary with the narrow streets, intermittent sidewalks, and plenty of cars. On this bus ride, I was fortunate to meet a woman named Rosa, who invited me to her home, fed me bean stew, and walked me to a gold mine with her mother. These women care for a bunch of guinea pigs (which will become food), which eat outer sugar cane stalks. Huertas was pleasant in the shade, but hot in direct sunlight.
 

I then took a bus from Huertas to Paccha, looking for a site called Atahaulpa, which was recommended in a map from the tourism office in Zaruma. I learned that Paccha and Atahualpa are the same place (or the same bus stop).

From Paccha I travelled to Piñas. When I arrived, Piñas was covered in drizzly fog. I ate bolón there, which is not bologna; instead it is a cooked peanut-banana mixture. From the little that I saw of Piñas, the streets are wider (and probably safer) than the narrow streets of Zaruma.

I plan to leave Zaruma tomorrow, but I´m not sure where I´ll go. The forecast for Quito is rain, rain, and more rain for the days ahead, with cold nights (below 10 degrees Celsius), but perhaps the rain is only in the afternoon.

• Read More »

The ride on the bumpy unpaved road to Zaruma was unpleasant. This time I wore shorts, and it was overcast outisde, so heat was not as big of a problem. We had to close the windows again to keep out the dust.

Despite the cloudcover and light rain that began, Zaruma was still a nice place to come to. It looked different today from just a week ago. Today it looked autumnish.

In Catamayo, I caught a ride from the side of the road with the bus company TAC, which has a direct route from Loja to Zaruma that does not require passengers to switch buses in Portovelo, unlike Piñas Interprovidencial.

• Read More »

Catamayo received rain yesterday morning!

Yesterday I took a day trip to Zamora from the Loja bus station. Zamora is almost a 2-hour bus ride east of Loja. It took longer during my trip, because there was almost a 2-hour delay while we waited for the army to remove part o a hill, to prevent future landslides. This activity tends to happen after a rain. Since there was little to do while we waited, I took pictures.   

My experience visiting Zamora was much different from my experience visiting Tingo Maria, Peru. Tingo Maria was sunny and hot in July. However, Zamora was cold and misty. The bright greeness of the vegetation made up for the lack of visible blue sky. The misty cloudcover was fairly bright, and a little bit of blue sky appeared in the afternoon. The trip to Zamora included waterfalls and rivers.  Podocarpus national park is near Zamora.

Only 5% of the Ecuadorian population lives in the Amazon region. This is good, because people shouldn´t be cutting down trees in this region. Trees here have very long, skinny trunks with branches spreading out only at the top. I also saw fern trees.

On the way back to Loja from Zamora, we had to wait one hour again in the same army spot on the road! 

My lower legs have been bitten much by bugs, but for some reason the bugs have left my arms alone. The bug bites are becoming an issue and a reason to head towards colder weather.

• Read More »

Yesterday evening I asked someone who lives in Vilcabamba if that town was still having water problems. He told me that he believed so.

It´s funny what people think of other cities´water quality. In Catamayo, a man from Quito told me that the tap water in Quito and Cuenca were safe to drink, but that the tap water in Catamayo and Loja were not. However, two Catamayans told me that the tap water in Catamayo is safe to drink.

Yesterday, while dining in Loja, I met a man from Guayaquil. He told me, ¨Of course the tap water in Guayaquil is safe to drink.¨ He also implied that Guayaquileño water was better than average potable tap water.

Today I wandered about Catamayo. I got hot and thirsty. I ate an ice cream sandwich, and then felt like I needed to rest. I fell asleep for 2 hours while watching TV. When I woke up around 4:00, I was uncomfortably hot. A little rain fell outside. I got myself onto a bus to Loja to cool off.

In Loja I walked to Guayaquil street, looking for a hardware store called ¨Hierro¨. It is smaller than Home Depot, more like an Ace Hardware. I was hoping that they sold boxes of dispoable vinyl gloves, but I had no luck. Nearby on Guayaquil was a large shopping center with glass elevators running up the front of it. I entered the supermarket, called ¨Hipervalle¨, on the first floor. The supermarket did not have boxes of disposable vinyl gloves. In defeat, I ate in the food court on the third floor, where the movie theater is. A movie costs a maximum of $3.50 per person. I ate quimbolitos and empanadas de verde; the empanadas contained chicken; that´s okay, I ate chicken yesterday too, ending my pure-vegetarian run.

• Read More »

My hotel does not have hot water in the shower. Since Catamayo gets hot in the day, this isn´t so bad.

Competition was fierce at noon between the boys selling helados. They were selling coconut helados, which are red ice over frozen coconut mixture, with a raisin at the bottom. I saw one bus pass with two helado boys in the stairwell, and a third one running alonside trying to push the others upward so he go get on board. While waiting for my bus to leave for Loja, three helado boys were onboard at once! A problem arose when a passenger requested an helado and two boys were shoving their product in her face, trying to be chosen.

Loja is beautiful like always.

• Read More »

I give Zaruma a thumbs up.  

My hotel in Zaruma cost only $7 per night total, with a nice unstained, soft bath towel. The weather was sunny and warm. Most tourists are not impressed with the food in the Ecuadorian Andes, but I really enjoyed the food in Zaruma. I ate Tigrillo (eggs, non-sweet banana, and cheese scrambled together), empanadas de verde (cheese inside a deep-fried banana shell), and humitas (sweet ground corn kernels).

I had also spent time in Portovelo, which was very hot, except where a river extended northeast beyond some small primitive gold mines.

The trip from Portovelo back to Catamayo today was not as bad as my first trip. This time, the windows were open.

I´m spending the night in the dusty town of Catamayo. I´m paying $7 per night here total for hotel, called Reina de el Cisne, with a window in my room, a pool, and an unstained, soft, bath towel. I found a restaurant that would serve me rice and beans, almost next to my hotel. An Internet cafe is directly next to my hotel.

• Read More »

On Wednesday, I was considering that on Thursday I would take the risk of eating a sandwich with lettuce and tomato, even though I didn´t know about the safety of the water. However, before I took this risk, a local man told me that there was no chlorine in the local tap water, so I should drink only bottled water.

Today a woman confirmed what the man told me. There is potable tap water in Cuenca and Loja, but not in Zaruma or Guayaquil.

There is plenty of vegetarian food in Zaruma, even though there are almost no foreigners here (I think I´m the only one).

A string of forecasted rainy days in Quito is keeping me away from there. I´ll try heading to Catamayo tomorrow, Saturday.

• Read More »

My hotel bill at the QuoVadis was a bit of a shock. An I.V.A. tax of 12% and a 10% service fee was added on top of both the price of my room and the price of my laundry. This is common in fancy hotels in Ecuador. I don´t know what the 10% service covers–the porter who eagerly carried my bags to my room, the receptionist, the maids? The porter also wanted to help me carry my bags to the bus terminal, but I didn´t know if I was expect to tip for that service, or if it was included in the 10% fee. I guess I could have told him that I wouldn´t tip, to see how that would have affected his desire to carry my bags.

In the bus terminal in Loja on Wednesday, I asked a Vilcabamban if the water problem in Vilcabamba had been resolved. Two Vilcabambans replied, ¨No.¨

On Wednesday I took a Piñas (pineapples) Interprovidencial bus from Loja to Portovelo. The bus was decorated festively inside.

It was a four-hour bus ride. The 2nd two hours were on a very bumpy unpaved road along steep slopes, with paved road only appearing at the very end. ¨Horrid¨was how I would have described the experience. The bus had the ability to throw standing passengers into their seats. At one point, all passengers were airborne. Additionally, the auxiliar on the bus closed the windows to keep dust from entering the bus. Therefore, the inside of the bus was very hot; closing the blinds helped somewhat. Eventually I had to open my window a crack.

Unfortunately, in Loja, I wore long thermal underpants under my pants to stay warm, and I forgot to take them off before leaving town. Therefore, I was cooking on the bus at lower elevations. It got bad, and I got desperate. Fortunately, the bus was not too crowded, especially at the back. I moved to the back of the bus. I took off my boots and my belt. I wrapped my jacket around my waist, and I proceeded to take off my thermal underwear and replace it with only my brown pants, which I then rolled up and buttoned in this elevated position, like capris.

In Portovelo, I switched buses to proceed to Zaruma, an attractive town with super-narrow streets, built on the side of a steep slope, overlooking foggy mountains.
   

• Read More »

I´m inside a building that looks like a train in Jipiro park, using Internet for only 50 cents per minute! However, the keyboards have keys that stick. Someone said that the reason why Internet cafes are cheap in Perú is because the Peruvian government gave them subsidies so that Peruvians would vote for Machu Picchu as one of the 7 Wonders of the World; I suspect this person was joking, or into conspiracy theories. 

Loja still has gloomy, cold weather. It killed my desire to venture out to Zamora today. In my grouchiness, and during my ponderings on mood related to weather, I pondered on why Europeans immigrated to the cold regions of the Americas (Canada, USA, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) and not closer to the equator.

On Sunday, Ecuador had elections for Assembly. After the election, president Rafael Correa said (my translation): ¨With Congress it is difficult to act and I believe that the pronouncement of the ecuatoriano town has been strong: Congress has to go home.¨ So now Correa wants to dissolve the Congress. I don´t understand why Ecuador has both an Assembly and a Congress; my web searches on Ecuador´s government only mention the Congress, not the Assembly.

In 2007 International Living (internationalliving.com) ranked the best countries in the world to retire to as Mexico, Ecuador, Italy, Panama, in that order. I was not surprised to see Ecuador ranked as #2, but I was surprised to see Mexico ranked as #1, when we (North) Americans have read/watched so much bad news coming out of Mexico:  serial killings of prostitutes, drug crimes, assassinations of political figures, smog in Mexico City. Compared to Mexico´s Tijuana, Baja California, Ecuador is nicer. I suspect Mexico beat out Ecuador simply because it is a shorter flight from the U.S.A. To find out what the list was, I had to read off of http://www.prnewswire.com .

• Read More »

The weather has been depressing throughout Ecuador–clouds, clouds, clouds. There has been light drizzle and dark cloudcover for the past two days in Loja. Finally, around 6 p.m., I saw a little bit of remaining blue sky through some rose-colored clouds.

I moved into a luxury hotel today called Quo Vadis. It costs $29 per night plus 15% tax. It came with a nice basket of stuff like shampoo, conditioner, comb, toothbrush. However, the laundry was outrageously expensive. Here is an example of the laundry list. The prices below are for washing in water (NOT dry-cleaning) and drying, and do not include ironing, which is an additional $1.50 per item:

• big towel: $4
• one pair of panties: $2
• one pair of socks: $2
• 1 pant: $4
• blouse: $3
• shirt: $3.50
• undershirt: $2.50

There was no option to wash all my clothes together in a machine for one price. Since the prices were so high, I only gave my very dirtiest clothes to the laundry service, and I wiped the dust off of my backpack with some of them before handing them over. When I received them later today, I had to admit that they were cleaned very well.

I hopped on a green public city bus today.  It was quite modern. The stations for catching the bus were elevated next to the street. Upon arriving at a station, two platforms would extend out from the bus, one for entering, and one for exiting. This prevented the common problem of people boarding a bus blocking the people exiting a bus.

I deboarded the bus when I saw a Supermaxi supermarket. It was clean, attractive, modern, and accepted credit cards, with prices as high or higher than in the United States. One egg, packaged with 12-20 others, costs 14 to 20 cents, whereas the local mini mart sells them individually for 8 cents each. A box of 8 Ferrero Rocher chocolate balls cost $4.91, but the drugstore next-door, and the nearby mini mart, sells boxes for only $3. Most items in the drugstore were significantly less expensive.

In both the supermarket and the drugstore, I was required to leave my backpack at the entrance. When I did this in both stores, I was given a ticket to later retrieve my backpack. Therefore, the storage was pretty secure, and it was free.

Next to Supermaxi was a food court, with food costing perhaps the same as in the USA.

Loja has some very nice parks with lots of play-things for kids, where you can walk on and sleep on the grass.

In the evening, I found a laundry that will wash and dry a load for only $4.

I have not had diarrhea since yesterday morning.

A person can be Ciprofloxina here without a prescription. I bought 6 500-mg pills here for a total of $3.

• Read More »

I can no longer say that I´ve never had diarrhea in Ecuador. It forced me to the bathroom at 5:00 this morning. Fortunately I haven´t had a recurrence for the past 11 hours. I have no idea what caused it.

When I returned from Malacatos at 8 p.m. last night, water service had returned to my hostal; at first only one of the cold or hot water pipes was supplying water to my sink.

However, we lost our water again this morning. At first, there was inadequate hot water coming out of my shower, probably because of low pressure. Less than 2 hours later, there was no cold water either. This prompted me to leave Vilcabamba. I´m living in Loja again, in a hostal across from the bus terminal.

• Read More »

Vilcabamba currently has no running water in its water system. I think at least one pipe broke open.

Fearing that employees in restaurants would not be able to wash adequately, I left Vilcabamba for nearby Malacatos (less than half the distance to Loja). However, when I got to Malacatos, I could find no restaurants serving vegetarian food. I even asked two people to help me, and they told me that I would not be able to have a vegetarian dinner.

I also tried to find a hotel in Malacatos. The only hotel in town was closed. All other lodging would require a taxi or bus to reach.

I had to eat chocolate and flavored milk for dinner.

• Read More »

I moved back to Vilcabamba today, in hopes of going dancing tonight in the warm air. I am planning to move to Quito within the next two weeks; this seems inevitable. The price of lodging in Quito has dropped, now that the high-tourism season is over. I would like to be near a South American Explorers office and Wi-fi Internet access. After 3 months of vacation, I should put pressure on myself to be productive. 

• Read More »

My bus left Loja at 10:00 a.m. and arrived in Cariamanga at 12:30 p.m. 

Once again I got to enjoy the pine trees west of Loja on the way to Catamayo.

Cariamanga was attractive, with some interesting and colorful architecture. To the south loomed a green hill. Stretching to the north was a long, never-ending dry mountain range. The weather in Cariamanga was pleasant, but I would not want to live there, or even spend the night there.

Cariamanga has an attractive plaza with a blue Disneyland-like building next to it.

 Much of Cariamanga has this bright-colored festival sort of architecture. Around the east of the plaza, cars often drive on the wrong side of the street, and one nearly hit me when I crossed on a green pedestrian light; this dampened my mood.

In the outdoor market I bought towel for $4.50.

• Read More »

Loja was chilly yesterday evening and freezing last night. The cold temperature killed my infatuation with this city. I had been impressed with my $10/night hotel room in Loja when I moved into it in the afternoon. However, the night´s coldness made the room seem quite uncomfortable.

My guide book states that the elevation of Loja is 2063 meters, but it seems higher,  when nearby Vilcabamba has an elevation of 1520 meters. The lotion that I had used in Vilcabamba oozed all over the place upon opening the container in Loja. Also, a yogurt drink splattered all over me in Loja from the high altitude, but I had had no problems of this sort in Vilcabamba.

Today I took a day trip to Catamayo; the bus ride was a little less than 1 hour long. Upon deboarding the bus, I was so hot (and wearing two jackets and two long-sleeve shirts from Loja) that the first thing I did was buy ice cream. After eating my pineapple ice cream, I walked to the plaza. The plaza was quite nice, with friendly people sitting around. I was disappointed that there was a low iron fence around the lawns, because I really wanted to sleep on the grass. People told me that I could sleep on the grass, but I didn´t take any chances. I napped in a sitting position. Later, I saw two men sleeping on the grass.

A local named Juan Carlos guided me to a park west of Catamayo, with a creek/river running through it.

The mountains around Catamayo are bleak with dry vegetation. In southern California, east of the coastal mountains there is desert surrounded by ominous, bleak mountains. The mountains around Catamayo reminded me of these.

• Read More »

I didn´t want to leave Vilcabamba. I dragged my feet in packing my bags. The complete cloudcover and light drizzle didn´t encourage me either.

When I arrived in Loja, I wasn´t as grumpy. I still haven´t been able to locate Cesar. I lost his phone number within 2 days of receiving it, or else I threw it away, thinking I would never use it.

Loja in theory should be a better place for me. I can take daytrips both towards the east and west.

• Read More »

I went to sleep early yesterday, after unsuccessfully looking for ¨Agua de Hierro¨ stream. I was awakened by the sound of strong winds banging against windows. To make matters worse, around midnight or 1 a.m. there was a mild earthquake. ¨Peru¨ raced through my mind. However, when I turned on the TV later, the Equatoriano TV station mentioned nothing of the earthquake; as of this morning, there still was no news on it. Based on the lack of news, I assume that the earthquake didn´t do any damage.

• Read More »

I didn´t move to Loja today after all. Hopefully I will move tomorrow.

Often in Vilcabamba, there will be a blanket of cloudcover to the east, where the jungle is. The cloudcover sometimes moves westward and covers Vilcabamba, which happened today. The weather was pleasantly cool and a little windy today.

I walked to the zoologico today, which was hidden inside a sports park. At the entrance to the park is a large swimming pool and playground. I only paid 50 cents to enter the park, which included free access to the zoo. The state pays for the upkeep of the zoo. I was the only visitor inside the park.

• Read More »

Yesterday, Sunday, I watch a auction in the town plaza, accompanied by a band. When the live chickens were auctioned off, they were held upside-down by their bound feet. Fortunately a winner of two chickens had the kindness to take them home head-side up. Later, a pair of live guinea pigs were auctioned off, held by their necks, probably so that the auctioneer wouldn´t be scratched by their paws. 

I did not leave my hostal until 12:30 today. I felt tired after my breakfast, like yesterday, even after consuming two cups of coffee.

After finally finding comfortable lodging, my interest in travelling through Peru to Patagonia has escaped me. My laziness worries me, because I cannot spend eternity in Vilcabamba eating ice cream. Other tourists are much more productive than me. 

Vilcabamba is definitely more relaxed than other towns like Cajamarca, Peru. The Vilcabambans pass much of their work days just standing around–standing around in their shops, or in their restaurants, or in the hotels where they work. I´m sure the heat has something to do with the slow pace.

For hours I have been wondering what I´ll do from this day on. If I´m good, I´ll move into Loja tomorrow, and then take some day trips by from there.  I suppose I should go to Quito in a week, since it is very livable, with large supermarkets like in the USA. However, in the five days when I was in Quito, I was unable to strike up a chat with any Ecuatorianos. All foreigners have this problem. In constrast, people in southern Ecuador are more open to conversation with strangers, perhaps because of the Peruvian influence. Bus stations are good places for chatting with Ecuatorianos. People in southern Ecuador are also more flirtatious than the norherners.

I had another intestinal problem today, after lunch. I took a nap in the afternoon and woke up with pain in my lower left abdomen. Since then, the pain has shifted to the center, so it is not an ovarian problem. Hitting the pain with my hand and with a plastic bottle seemed to ease it, followed by lots of burping. I passed lots of gas out both ends and had a normal bowel movement, and I took simethicone and Meditoina. An hour later I drank a gulp of bismuth (like Peptobismol). The gas and the pain are not necessarily related.

Vilcabamba receives a disproportionately high number of people with cancer and similar diseases, who come to Vilcabamba to lengthen their lives. I asked a young Ecuatoriano working in Vilcabamba if the Vilcabambans were angry that so many foreigners have moved in. He told me, ¨No, they´re used to it.¨ However, an old Vilcabamban told me differently the following morning. He said that Vilcabamba was once nice, but then sick foreign people moved into Vilcabamba, dirtying the town. I´ve learned that foreigners have also brought a drug culture to Vilcabamba.

• Read More »

I had heard that Vilcabamban adults would be dancing freely on the street on Friday. So I showed up Friday to watch, but still there were no adults dancing in the street, so I headed back to my lodging. When I tried to enter my room, the metal key to the padlock on the door tore in half when I turned it. Fortunately, the owner was able to get me into my room. However, the broken-key incident really disheartened me, so I decided to go to bed instead of partipating in the plaza festivities. Close to midnight, I awoke to the exciting sound of modern Latin music, coming from outside. It was loud enough to prevent me from going back to sleep. I tried to leave the hostería to join the fun, but the only exit for the hostal was locked with a padlock. I had been wanting to dance all week. I walked all over the hostal in the dark, looking for an open exit, but found none. Additionally, my headlamp wouldn´t turn on after I installed batteries; there was a short circuit somewhere, heating the batteries. I was angry at myself for staying a second night in a hotel that only charged $6 per night and that smelled like bird guano in the bathroom.

On Saturday I moved back to the lovely hostal Margaritas. The water coming from the tap is slightly orange in color. At night I enjoyed dancing under the stars in what appeared to be a schoolground. Ecuadorians seem shy when it comes to dancing. Peruvians are shy in this regard too, except for the drag queens.

Saturday I took a bus to Loja.

Loja is colder and receives more rain than Vilcabamba, and I find that it has more natural beauty than both Vilcabamba and Cuenca. If the decrepid buildings are ignored, perhaps it is the prettiest place I have seen in Ecuador.

Saturday I waited from 1 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. for Cesar and his bus to arrive, but they never did. I then did some exploring of Loja on my own, starting from the street Chile and walking north on the street Sucre. Eventually I came to a crowded market area. This is a good place to buy shoes, tools, and clothes. I found a shop selling swiss army knives and pepper spray, but the prices were over 50% what I´d pay in the USA.

I am paying $10 per night for at Margaritas in Vilcabamba, which includes a breakfast with eggs, toast, milk (with instant coffee) and juice (this breakfast is worth $2). In Loja, hotel stays cost $12 - $15 per night, including tax, without breakfast.

I found a condo (¨departamento¨) complex in Loja called Akropolis, on calle Sucre, south of Azuay street. A departamento with 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and 2 half baths sells for $98,000. According to the man showing the model, we can flush toilet paper down the toilets in the departamento without having problems.

After the crowds in Loja, I felt frazzled and was glad to return to sleepy Vilcabamba.

• Read More »

I signed up for a 4-hour horse ride today in Vilcabamba.  Fortunately, it lasted a little less than 3 and a half hours, with a break in the middle. My crotch, butt, and legs really took a beating. It was worth the $15, in my opinion. I can´t imagine surviving the 6-hour horse ride. 

Yesterday I took a local bus to Loja, to look for Cesar. While waiting for his bus to arrive, I bought some freshly-extracted coconut juice. My first thought upon sipping it was, ¨Oh, this is a mildly alcoholic drink.¨ Within an hour, I had bad abdominal cramps and burning in the stomach region. I took some anti-gas medication (simethicone). As the gas escaped my body in the next few hours, so did the pain.

I never found Cesar.

On the way back from Loja, I caught another Ecuadorian throwing trash out the window. Apparently Ecuadorians aren´t as clean as I thought. However, some are making an effort. In Loja, I saw a sticker on a vending machine, from an environmental group, asking people to honk only when necessary (unlike the custom in Cuenca).

The Vilcabamba square is going to have more festivities today and tomorrow. On two previous days, there was a fun ceremony called ¨Vaca Loca.¨ The first day that I watched this, a kid was skipping with a cardboard cow on top of him. The horns of the cow were on fire, and fireworks shot out of the cow, while kids tried to hit it with a stick. The second day, a man carried the flaming cow, chasing the kids who were trying to hit him, and sometimes chasing people in the audience too. Vilcabambans are pretty easy to talk to.

• Read More »

Warning to travellers to Vilcabamba: the Internet can be very slow throughout the whole town. It´s as if there is only one cable to town providing Internet to the whole town. All of the Internet cafes have slow Internet. My hostel´s computer at times had fast Internet. At other times, the Internet was too slow to use. I have given up on my Internet usage during some of my visits to Internet cafes.

The Internet here in the bus terminal in the city of Loja isn´t any better.

• Read More »

Yesterday I had bad heartburn starting around 10 a.m. and lasting until 5 p.m. I don´t know what caused the heartburn, when my breakfast was the same breakfast as in the previous 3 days, except for a new flavor of fresh-made juice. After lunch, I had to lie down for a few hours. I was in the nice Hostal Margaritas, with pretty trees and birds to look at.

Vilcabamba has had 9 days of celebrating the town´s patron virgin. Last night was supposedly the last night of partying. Male and female teenagers danced in traditional clothing, hopping and whirling about. This performance was the best of the performances I had seen in Vilcabamba´s plaza. The adults in the audience didn´t seem interested in dancing. Three Colombian tourists danced for one song on the sidelines. That was all of the dancing performed by the audience. I think Vilcabambans are shy.

I´ll try to check out the city of Loja today, while still spending the night in Vilcabamba.

• Read More »

Vilcabamba is a location known for good health. My health certainly has felt better. I´ve had a vegetarian diet since I entered Ecuador. Today I ate strawberries. We´ll see if I get sick, but according to posted signs, this provice (Loja) has potable tap water. The town is pretty safe too. I´ve seen 11-year-old kids running around at 10 p.m. It also appears that a local high school lets its students out at 10 p.m. in the night. The nights inVilcabamba are memorable with a very black sky and clear stars. Because of the mountains surrounding the town, the sunset sets a little early.

Yesterday I climbed a mountain, called Mandango, with a funny-shaped peak; some think the peak looks like the face of a woman lying on her back. The base of the mountain was hot and without wind. The top of the mountain was very windy. I worried about being blown off the mountain, especially since one hand was constantly catching my hat. Luckily I wore gloves and long pants, since the dry vegetation was scratching against my legs, and I slipped on the way down and landed on my hand. Some of the vegetation has long thorns.

The gridded town of Vilcabamba is only 5 blocks by 5 blocks–definitely a small town. In town, people plant tropical vegetation. However, the natural mountains are very dry and brown. Housing is not cheap here either, for reasons unknown to me. Vilcabamba is not that pretty, nor excessively popular like a resort, so I can´t see how the housing prices can be justified. The housing advertisements that I saw were in English. Perhaps Spanish speakers get better prices for homes.

Photos of Vilcabamba are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9025705@N07/sets/72157602063148959/detail/

• Read More »

I took a bus from Macará to Loja yesterday. The auxiliar working on the bus looked like one of the miners that I was falling in love with in Peru. His name is Cesar. I caught two Ecuatorianos throwing trash out of the window of the bus, and there was a nasty pile of trash on the side of the road. One of the perpetrators was the bus´s auxiliar. I didn´t given him a dirty look. Later he gave me a kiss and his phone number. 

After being carsick on the bus, I arrived in Loja, in warm drizzle. After eating a good vegetarian lunch in the bus station, I travelled to Vilcabamba (a one-hour ride). I almost left my luggage in the bus station at Loja when I quickly jumped on the bus to avoid the rain, but fortunately bus employees caught my mistake and loaded my luggage. On the bus I happened to sit behind an employee of the hostel to which I was going.

At night, my acquaintance from the bus and I walked around Vilcabamba. In Vilcabamba´s plaza, a church was setting off loud fireworks in their weekly celebration of the local virgin saint. My friend and I then went to a place that is both a bar and supposedly a hostel (it´s difficult to believe that it would be a hostel, since it only has one toilet, which does not flush and only allows urine) with Bohemian white people dancing around a fire, to non-Ecuadorian music.

I have painful-yet-bearable ?intestinal? cramps, but my stools are not even mildly loose. Last night I felt like I might have diarrhea, but instead I´ve been more like constipated.

• Read More »

This morning I took a bus from Piura to Sullana. My legs were so cramped in the bus. My luggage sat next to me; it counted as another person in the bus fare. For some reason, I found the situation funny and enjoyable.

In Sullana, a friendly local helped me catch a colectivo car to the Peru-Ecuador border. This truly was an enjoyable experience. Two women shared the passenger seat in the front; perhaps the trip was not so enjoyable for them. Three men sat in the hatchback of the car, facing the rear of the car. The car departed with 9 adults and one baby. My suitcase and large backpack were on the roof of the car. At higher velocities, I could hear the sounds of the straps of my backpack (or something else strappy up there) hitting the roof of the car. With the windows partly rolled down, the sun shining in the desert, and the wind in my face, I smiled almost the entire journey in delight.

There were times in the desert when it was cloudy; I did not find the desert so pretty during these instances. As we climbed in elevation, we drove past citrus orchards. Then palm trees started to appear. The locale resembled Hawaii because of the palm trees and greenery, but we were really in the desert!

When I arrived at the border, the air was hot, humid, and with cloudcover.

I am staying in the hospedaje Conquistador for $10 per night. It includes air conditioning.

I asked the hotel desk clerk if the hotel water from the tap was potable. She told me that the hotel adds chemicals to the water to kill the germs in the water.

Two people told me that the air would cool down in the afternoon. As the afternoon progressed, the sky changed from grayish blue with gray in the background, to gray all over.

Macará looks a little 3rd-Worldy. However, the people here do not leave trash in the streets like the people of Sullana and other northwestern Peruvian cities. The clerk in hotel Conquistador told me that there are no laundry services here; she seems to be right. I found only 1 Internet place here; the fee is $1 per hour. In Peru I paid one third that price for Internet.

• Read More »

The bus ride from Cajamarca to Chiclayo was a bit rough. It was hot onboard. Now I need a nap! I´m in the hospedaje Tumbas Reales.

• Read More »

After counting my antibiotic pills and counting the number of days needed to get to Ecuador, I’ve decided to leave Cajamarca this afternoon. I’ll send Jessica an e-mail. I don’t want to have diarrhea for the rest of September!

• Read More »

Yesterday morning I had diarrhea of a highly liquid type, as well as some mild abdominal pain. I walked to the Hospital de la Solidaridad and after paying 7 soles, I was quickly seen by a doctor. He gave me a prescription for 6 pills of Bactrim Forte (sulfametoxazol and trimetoprima) 800/160 mg.

I’ve taken two of the pills so far, and I’m feeling well enough to leave Cajamarca. I’ll head towards Ecuador today.

I will miss the miners. I want to see them and more of Peru in the future, but fear of diarrhea is making me leery of Peru.

Oh, I just received an e-mail from one of the nice miners (they’re all nice), named Jessica. She says that she’s going to visit me this afternoon; I haven’t seen her since Friday. Should I stay or should I go?

• Read More »

Since I wasn’t feeling totally well in the morning, I decided to spend another night in Cajamarca. In the afternoon, I ran into my miner friends on the street. We got into their truck to take care of some of their workplace paperwork. While in their truck, I had nausea bad enough to have to get out of the truck to recover; the miners let me rest in their employer’s office. I don’t think it was carsickness. The miners took me back to the Plaza de Armas, where they bought 3 pills for me from a pharmacy, which were recommended by the pharmacist: Gravicoll 50 mg Dimenhidrinato; Furazolidona or Nolais 100 mg; Meditoina.

That night, I had burning in the stomach area, to the point that I was cursing sporadically. The burning lasted until midnight. I could only watch TV between 6 p.m. and midnight; pain kept me from sitting up to be on the Internet.

I’ll be avoiding restaurants, and I’ll try to stick to factory-packaged foods and peel my own citrus fruits.

I got my hair dyed back to a more natural color yesterday morning (not so red).

• Read More »

After being in some cities with ”slopped-together” buildings, I was so happy to be in a city with pretty buildings like Cajamarca. I found the buildings to be prettier than in Lima, Ica, and Huanuco.

I was click-happy with my camera. I took more photos than I could handle.

Here is a link to general photos of Cajamarca (of course, these are the pretty places; there are uglier parts too):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9025705@N07/sets/72157601939010993/detail/

Up the street Dos de Mayo where my hotel is, steps lead up an attractive hill called Santa Apolonia. I took pictures of the non-admission part of this public area:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9025705@N07/sets/72157601929619972/detail/

I paid 1 sol (30 cents U.S.) to continue further up the hill. It was worth the price:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9025705@N07/sets/72157601938902341/detail/

The photos may Cajamarca appear to be sunny all the time. In reality, I think it was sunny less than 50% of my stay here.

• Read More »

Rules for using a taxi (learned the hard way)

1. Be prepared. If anyone should spend time so that the passenger has his/her destination info, that person should be the passenger, not the taxi driver.
2. Passenger and driver should agree on taxi fare BEFORE PASSENGER ENTERS VEHICLE, even for short trips.
3. The passenger should provide the address to the driver. Asking to be taken to “the hospital”, or “the post office”, or “Radio Shack” is vague, and the driver may take the passenger to the wrong location. A map helps if no address is known.
4. If possible, passenger should provide directions, in addition to the address.
5. Know the upper and lower range for what the taxi fare should be. Be prepared to ask for a lower price than what the driver quotes.
6. Don’t panic around taxi drivers, even when they are pressuring you or when traffic is heavy. Walk away from the driver to avoid making panic decisions.
7. If the driver doesn’t understand your destination, walk away.
8. Be prepared to wait 10 minutes to catch a taxi. Patience pays off.
9. It’s handy to carry a map on you when in a taxi. You’re less likely to get overcharged this way, if you open it up.

• Read More »

I found my former travel chum’s photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/snapant/

There are some breath-taking photos of Machu Picchu, as well as some humor. He and I split ways before he went to Machu Picchu.

• Read More »

Three loud explosions went off near my hotel. They sounded louder than gunshots. I stayed inside my hotel room for protection. After the 5th explosion, I asked a hotel employee what was going on. He told me that the church next-door was setting off fireworks for a celebration. I decided to check it out.

An elaborately dressed doll, wearing a crown and a beautiful dark cape with gold embroidery, was being paraded around on what looked like a coffin, but upon closer inspection was determined to be a wooden pedestal. The doll represented the virgin Rosario. People threw rose petals at the doll, and several people in the parade were carrying long-stemmed roses. A trumpet band played music. This time I actually participated in the parade, falling in line behind the band members.

A police officer blocked cars when the parade entered the road around the Plaza de Armas. This parade wasn’t traffic controlled like the government-sponsored parades in Huanuco, in which traffic was completely blocked off. Therefore, there were cars on the road around Cajamarca’s plaza de armas, stuck. After many minutes, some of them (fortunately only a few) started honking (fortunately, not too harshly, so the music could still be heard).

At first, only women were carrying the pedestal with the doll. Then, only men were carrying the doll. A block later (many, many minutes), the carryers changed back to all-women. Some people pushed along an electric generator, which provided lighting for the doll.

When I returned to my hotel room, every once in a while I would jump from the explosions of another pair of fireworks.

Supposedly I’m going dancing with the miners around 9:30 tonight. I had dinner with them last night.

• Read More »

Casa Blanca is a pleasant hotel, for 80 soles per night (less than 30 USD). Like other hotels in this price range, it has a nice central courtyard. Here are some pictures of the hotel:

After eating a lot of soda crackers yesterday evening, my bubbly side cramps went away. I’m doing well enough, intestinally. Later I ate chicken with the miners.

Even Peruvians have indigestion when they travel from one part of Peru to another. It typically lasts only a few days. Coca cola does seem to help ease mild indigestion, but it won´t cure a serious infection.

After a few days of cloudiness the sun finally came out strong today.

There was another parade today in the plaza; you can’t have too many. Lively Catholic parades are common in Peru too. People will carry a doll, often Virgin Mary or a saint, and play happy music and dance as they walk through the street. I didn’t get a chance to photograph this type of parade, but I photographed a photo of a Mary doll in a parade:

• Read More »

Well, my bliss ended temporarily. The WiFi adapter for my laptop seems to have died yesterday. It has been flaky during my trip. I´ve ordered a new adapter; it is supposed to arrive from Chiclayo today.

I succeeded in finding out how to get from Cajamarca to Ecuador without going to the Peruvian coast; that trip would take at least twice as many days as by going to the coastal route. I was about to change my plans to take the longer inland route, but last night I started having  digestive sideaches, near the bottom of my rib cage. It was followed by loose stools this morning, but without any pain this morning. The sideaches at the bottom of my rib cage have come back today, like a gassy pressure-pain, but without gas. For this reason, I will take the quicker coastal route (not pretty, in my opinion) through Chiclayo, Piura, and Sullana, to get to Ecuador. From what I´ve heard and seen, the south-Ecuadorian water municipalities of Cuenca and Loja (including Vilcabamba) provide potable water to buildings. I saw the sign by Vilcabamba´s water municipality stating potable water.

I found a nice, new modern mall in Cajamarca; it looked like the type of indoor mall found in the USA. The movie theater inside was showing Hostel 2, among others. Unfortunately, I didn´t have time to see it, since I was hunting down a Wifi adapter, which was not in the mall´s Radio Shack. I had to go to many little computer stores near the Plaza de Armas to find a place that would order one for me.

Luckily, a black Peruvian, who works for a gold-mining company, started a conversation with me yesterday, and two of his co-workers joined in. I spent quite some time speaking to the miners in Spanish, or Castellano as they call it here. According to them, Cajamarca was much poorer until gold mining started occuring in the outskirts of Cajamarca. The black man´s name is Jose Antonio de la Cruz, in room 8, in case I need to find him later. Poo, I just missed a parade, with music, outside my hotel. There was a marching band playing in the plaza last night too. That´s one great thing about Peru–the free music. Parades and protests in the plazas are frequent.

• Read More »

I wish I had paid for a luxury or super-luxury bus from Lima to Trujillo. I had little leg room and little room to lean back during the night.

Trujillo was overcast when I arrived in the morning, until I left at 10:30 a.m.

The trip from Trujillo to Cajamarca was definitely worth it. The bus left at 10:30 a.m. and didn´t arrive in Cajamarca until 5:30 p.m. Leaving Trujillo, we entered a bleak desert with low clouds:

Finally we escaped the clouds completely, and we ate lunch at a restaurant by a lake, in a location called Gallito Ciego, in the desert mountains. As we continued through the desert mountains, I saw green farmland in the valleys between the mountains. People farm by flooding steps  , like people do for rice paddies in other parts of the world.

As we got higher in elevation, trees started to appear:

By the time the we reached Cajamarca, I had taken off my jacket and my sleeved shirts (I had a tank top underneath); it was wonderfully warm and sunny.

A day after arriving in Cajamarca, I realized I had caught a cold. Since the weather here is not as severely cold as in Buenos Aires, and since I can step  out of my hotel room to see the sky, life is not too bad. Pharmacies are very close by. I have bruised the top of my foot too, so I’ll be taking it easy.

Now I am in the Casa Blanca hotel, with WiFi. Heaven is being in front of computer with Internet access, looking up stuff for any question that pops into the head, studying as much as you crave.

• Read More »

I bought a Peruvian dark wine called Borgoña Especial, or else called La Jarra, in Cajamarca for 10 soles (a little over 3 dollars U.S.). It is delicious. It tastes like grape juice, with only a mild alcohol bite. I usually don’t like the taste of wine, but I enjoyed this. It is from the Chincha/Ica part of Peru.

• Read More »

1.1 kg of Chirimoya is too much for one person in one meal (I could only eat it in one sitting). I didn´t finish all of it. 0.5 kg would have been plenty.

I travelled from Lince to downtown Lima on Sunday.

Unfortunately, I didn´t have my camera on me while I was exploring Lima. Perhaps that was a good thing, since I was in some semi-risky neighborhoods. If I had taken pictures, people on the streets may have said to each other, ¨Look at the obnoxious tourist taking pictures of our ugly parts; let´s get her!¨

On Sunday afternoon, I went to the touristy park along the river Rimac and bought some anticuchos (chunks of cooked cattle heart). To my surprise, along wih my anticuchos, I was given some other cooked animal parts, as well as potato. The stand was selling anticuchos, mollejitas, and grometas, so I assume the other things on my plate were mollejitas and grometas, whatever those are. One item was light-colored/whitish and long with strips cut into it, and the strips had long bumps sticking out. I´m guessing this was either tongue or intestine, but I really don´t know. Most of it tasted good.

I headed back to hotel at 6:15 p.m., and it was getting unbearably cold, numbing my fingers to stiffness.

Days before, I hadn´t expected to go back to the hotel in Lima where I had stayed before, but that was the only place where I knew I could find a travel agent on a Sunday to help me buy a bus ticket, and give me directions to the bus station, for that night. I decided to visit the waiter that I had dated, named Aris. He has at least two relatives working in the hotel, including the travel agent. At first, he didn´t seem excited to see me, but later he told me that there were cameras hidden in the restaurant area. Later he snuck out of work; this was really bad work behavior on his part. Of course, he still had to prepare food for the guests, so he was in and out of the kitchen. For his job security, I think I´ll avoid seeing him in the future. I want to find a way to go to Machu Picchu in October without going through Lima.

There was another waiter in the hotel restaurant, who was also friendly, like Aris. He asked me if I was alright, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. At the end of my hotel stay, while Aris was still working in the restaurant, he caught a cab for me. He asked if I would come back to Lima, and he asked for my e-mail address. I told him that Aris has my e-mail address. Before we parted, he gave me another kiss on the cheek, pretty close to the mouth. I assume that this other waiter saw me and Aris slipping out of the restaurant together. Maybe the hotel has cameras in the restaurant to catch its waiters who have affairs with the guests.

Someone in Peru gave me a counterfeit 5-sol coin. It was rejected at the anticuchos stand; I thought the employee just found the coin to be too ugly to use, since it had scratches on it. Later, when I tried to pay for a drink with it, Aris told me that the coin was counterfeit. He compared it to a legitimate coin, and I saw the subtle differences. 5 soles is only worth 1.7 U.S. dollars, so I was surprised that someone would bother to counterfeit the coin.

• Read More »

I went on a city tour of Argentina yesterday with my French-Canadian friend before boarding an airplane to Lima. There was a long line inside the B.A. airport for passport stamping and customs; the process could have been handled better. Additionally, the employee of Gol airlines told me that I wouldn´t have to fill out a customs form, available on the Gol counter (2 identical forms on one piece of paper); he was wrong.

I arrived in Lima around 2:30 a.m., Lima time. I killed some time eating a lavish fruit and ice cream treat in the airport (the waitress said they guaranteed that the fruit wouldn´t give me diarrhea), but eventually it was time to leave. I went to one of the Remis counters and asked how much a ride to the Lince district would cost. The employee told me 31 U.S. dollars (93 Peruvian soles)! I went to the airport´s information desk, as recommended by signs, and inquired about taxis. The woman there recommended the company Green for taxis. Green quoted me 35 Peruvian soles for the same ride to Lince, including toll fees. The Green taxi driver pressured me into tipping him, so I made him work for the money. I was a bit distrustful of the Green driver, even though Green is the most recommended company. Hiring at cab in Quito hadn´t been so unnerving.

I guess James and I weren´t really ripped off by the taxi driver who had charged us 28 U.S. dollars (84 soles) to go from the airport to Miraflores. Miraflores is further from the airport than Lince.

In Lince I found some blocks with lots of cheap shopping, almost like Tijuana. I bought myself a 1.1 kilogram cherimoya there, to be washed with bottled water of course!

• Read More »

I went out and bought a pedestrian light and siren to help protect me in Ecuador. My greatest worry about Ecuador is of being hit by a car, but tripping on a hole in the sidewalk is a danger I have already experienced. However, I have also heard stories of incidents occurring at night when tourists have been followed by scary men in Ecuador. To be fair, despite these scary incidents, I have heard fewer bad stories coming from Ecuador than from other countries in S. America. Here are the stories I’ve heard so far about predators in S.A.:

ARGENTINA:

Buenos Aires: Tourist was charged 200 pesos for a round-about cab ride, starting a airport, that should have cost only 60-80 pesos (maybe more for a Remisse).

B.A.: Tourist paid 170 pesos for a cab ride from airport, that should have cost 70 pesos, because cab driver accepted 100 pesos, could not give change, demanded another 70 pesos, denying he had received the first 100 pesos.

B.A.: College student was sprayed with a dirty liquid from behind and later found herself missing money. Similar to my incident of getting pick-pocketed.

B.A.: Male tourist left nightclub around 2 a.m. A man put knife under tourist’s jaw and made tourist go to ATM, where tourist was forced to withdraw as much cash as ATM would allow.

Backpack was cut and emptied while on person, without person knowing.

B.A.: Near my Tango City hostel one afternoon, some motorcyclists drove up to a woman and ripped her watch off her wrist, and they tried unsuccessfully to snatch her very large suitcase, in plain sight of other people.

PERU:

Backpack was slashed and emptied from behind while backpack was under the bus seat of the owner (owner sitting on the seat).

Man used credit card in a hotel that he had used before. Later, through impropriety of a hotel employee, his credit card was maxed out.

Me and James in Lima: cab driver charged $28 U.S. for a ride that should have only cost $15 US maximum. Cab driver quoted “23″ before we entered vehicle, but later informed us that the price was 23 US dollars, not 23 Peruvian soles, and asked us to pay $5 U.S. for his airport parking too.

Me and James: Father of tourism woman semi-working in hostel (not a paid employee of hostel) pressured 10 soles out of James to pay for his cab fare home, even though he took a bus to see us (costs less than 2 soles), after man’s daughter said that she would tell man not to visit us. Man told us that he abandoned the class he was teaching to visit us, which I HIGHLY doubt, because he would have had to be crazy to do something like that. The man waited over 4 hours for us to come back to the hostel, even though his daughter said she was cancelling the appointment.

VENEZUELA: 

In Peru, a woman discovered that her bank account had been completely emptied through an ATM in Venezuela.

ECUADOR:

Quito: Around 8 p.m., Korean tourist found himself being followed on the street by a group of scary men. The Korean man ran away and found a police officer. The police officer escorted the tourist home.

Quito, nighttime: a Caucasian tourist couple was being followed by a scary man. A police officer saw the problem and told the tourists to get into a cab immediately; the tourists complied and escaped unharmed.

Cab driver charged $5 for a cab ride with a stardard fare of $3. Passenger and driver had not agreed on price of ride before passenger entered vehicle.

• Read More »

Yesterday morning I finished the bus ride from Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires. In the morning, we drove through cattle land (flat grassland). I saw old-fashioned wooden windmills sporadically.

Even though there is a lot of beef in Argentina, milk is not as common here as in the USA. In the USA, it is easy to go to a mini mart to buy a pint of milk, to help consume a donut. In Puerto Iguazu, I went on a walking tour to find a small quantity of milk to drink, with no intention of storing any leftover milk in the refrigerator. The closest that I could find was 1 liter of milk(too much), or 200 mL of chocolate milk (too much sugar for me).

I took a “bus cama without auxiliar (steward/stewardess)” instead of a “bus super cama” to Buenos Aires. Besides not having a 180-degree near-flat seat/bed to sleep on, I was missing many other luxuries of the super-cama bus. For example, no one ever offered me a vegetarian meal, so I ate a lot of beef, in a canneloni, and a lot of salty ham. There also was no overhead storage bin for my smaller backpack; the pack sat on my feet.

I hired a Remisse (secure form of taxi) immediately upon stepping off the omnibus in the Retiro bus station. I was lucky to meet a woman, from French-speaking Quebec, named Jen at the bus station. She and I shared a cab to the same hostel together. Unfortunately she tore a ligament in her foot in Puerto Iguazu while running, so she is wearing a cast.

• Read More »

While travelling, when I have a need to be around people, and people are hard to find, I go rent time on a computer in an Internet cafe. Internet cafes are a cure for loneliness. They are warm, always filled with at least one other person (the employee), and many Internet cafes have nice music playing (rock en español!). They are a cheaper alternative to bars, concerts, restaurants, and real cafes.

Where do Americans go to ease their loneliness when friends cannot be found, during a whim to be with others? Is there a place that is cheap enough to go to every day? Another problem with the USA is that driving is required to go almost everywhere.

• Read More »

It was very cold this morning. At 11 a.m., my fingers were stiff from the cold.

I´ll be leaving Puerto Iguazu today. I will arrive in Buenos Aires by bus tomorrow. I have attached some more picture of the Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls.

I had difficulty finding fast food in Puerto Iguazu, especially vegetarian fast food. I was looking for restaurants where I wouldn´t be expected to tip, since I still am not quite sure about this custom. Almost all food establishments here provide some form of table service.

• Read More »

I´ve seen the mate drinking custom here in Puerto Iguazu, with people carrying around thermos bottles of hot water and pipe-like cups filled with green stuff.

Yesterday, there was major smoky air pollution during the bus trip from the falls to Puerto Iguazu. I looked like a fire was polluting the sky. When I got back to my hotel, someone was burning ¿rubber tires? near the hotel, probably as a protest, since there had been a similar protest 2 days before. I have seen lots of protests while in South America.

I´ve already been to Cataratas de Iguazú 4 days, but I think I´ll go back for at least two more. First, I need to let the blister on my foot heal. This is good, since my body wants rest too, because for some reason I´ve been really tired since yesterday afternoon, probably from the heat.

• Read More »

I have enjoyed the Argentine park for Cataratas (Waterfalls) de Iguazú so much that I will go there 4 times by the time that I move out of Puerto Iguazú.

I travelled to Puerto Iguazu from Buenos Aires in hopes of finding warm weather. When I arrived in Puerto Iguazu, there was no warm weather. The nights in Puerto Iguazu were undeniably cold. Yesterday I moved to the warmed Hosteleria Helechos, which provides a heater in the room, but last night, at 8 p.m., the air was hot. Surprisingly, despite resembling Hawaii in lush vegetation, the air in Puerto Iguazu is often dry. When it is hot and humid, bugs are flying about. However, so far during my stay, I have witnessed more dry air than humid air.

At Iguazu Falls, I saw wild guinea pigs, which are all one color, not multi-colored like the pets sold in the USA.

Long-tailed mammals called coaties were also abundant. They have long snouts for digging into dirt, but many have changed their diet to that of leftover human trash.

• Read More »

So I think it finally happened to me; apparently my money was stolen in Buenos Aires. The day that my bus left for Puerto Iguazu, I lost all my cash.

That afternoon I used a coin-fed Internet computer in an Internet cafe, and then I decided to go eat dinner outside of the Retiro bus station to mingle with the locals. As I was walking from the Internet cafe to to outside of the station, I suddenly noticed two drops of oily gray liquid on the front of my shirt; I thought they must be hair-coloring solution be from the hair salon where my hair was dyed. Then two women stopped me and said something about my backpack. I took off my backpack and found it covered with more oily gray liquid.

The two women then informed me that it was also on my jacket. They told me that I needed to clean it off. They told me that I needed to go to a bathroom to wipe it off, and then they took me to one. I looked like a mess. I thought to myself, ¨This is just my luck to get crapped on by a bird¨, when I had only been outside in the cold very briefly, and there were so few birds around (few birds probably because of the cold). Memories of being crapped on by a seagull in 7th grade came back to me.

The women helped clean off my jacket and backpack in a very small restroom adjoined to a restaurant. I was careful to prevent them from touching the pouch outside my waist, where my money and plastic cards were.

Afterwards, I thanked the women profusely, and they left. I ate dinner at the restaurant whose bathroom I had used to clean myself. When it came time to pay, I found myself without my coin purse and my cash purse, which I had kept in a pouch worn around my waist. Later, I discovered that my new (still in its plastic wrapper) pre-paid phone card was also missing.

Fortunately, I still had my ATM cards, credit cards, and passport. Therefore, after going to an ATM machine, I was able to pay for my dinner.

A question burned inside my mind: Had I left the zipper to my pouch open before the robbery, or did someone manage to unzip one of the 4 zippers of my pouch–the one with my cash–and then re-zip it shut?

Now I´m distrustful of everyone in the Retiro bus station. I´m worried that it´s a large conspiracy at the bus station. Who was involved in stealing my money? I assume the two helpful women were thieves. But also what about the owner of the restaurant whose bathroom we used to clean me off? What about the people in the Internet cafe? What about the hairdresser, or the man who sold me my pre-paid phone card? Were they involved in robbing me too?

I arrived in Puerto Iguazu the folowing day, safely but disgruntled.

• Read More »

I am taking a super-cama bus to Puerto Iguazú tonight. It called super cama because unlike regular cama (bed) buses, the seats fold down to provide a full 180-degree surface to lie on. It is still cold in Buenos Aires. The bus will leave at 7:40 p.m. tonight and arrive in Puerto Iguazu between 11 and 12:30 tomorrow.

I checked back in to the Hostel-Inn Tango City last night. I found my dark blue jacket still hanging on the coat rack in my old room.

I got my hair cut and colored at the bus terminal for a really great price today.

• Read More »

My hotel room in Uruguay had CNN en español, and CNN was dedicating much attention to the earthquake that hit Ica, Peru on August 15. Fortunately Lima, a city of 8 million people, was not affected much. Numerous buildings in Lima are flimsy structures erected by squatters. They look like they are crumbling into the mountain. I took a video of some buildings on the southern edge of Lima:
http://crackle.com/c/Blogs_and_Podcasts/Southern_Lima/1994975#vt=1

• Read More »

I took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia de Sacremento, Uruguay on August 15.

Colonia was sunny and warm enough when I arived, but the nights here are very cold. I spent the first night in a hostel affiliated with Hosteling International, and the wind caused the doors to make an eerie thumping sound as they tried to open. 

Colonia is a sleepy town, which was nice after Buenos Aires. A Colombian man named Heriberto and I rented a scooter in Colonia for an hour.

Many people here carry a thermos bottle and what looks like a pipe (it is like cup with a metal straw). From this, people drink their mate. I am surprised that this custom is so common here in contrast to Buenos Aires.

Since Uruguay is so cold, I will travel by ferry back to Buenos Aires today, and then I will go to warm Iguazú Falls, Argentina, tomorrow. I left one of my jackets in the shared hostel room in B.A., so I hope to get it back.

• Read More »

Buenos Aires is a charming city, even on a cold, gray winter day. The buildings have a grayish antique style, somewhat stark and scary, but in an attractive way. They would be fitting for an old British suspense story. Drivers here are much quieter, patient, and courteous than in Peru or Ecuador. The people don’t have a pushy rush rush attitude; they are willing to wait politely. Myself and some others have remarked that the people are quite friendly in person.

My computer was sick too; I finally worked on it today. The anti-virus software had slowed my computer so much that it was almost unusable. Today I finally got to upload some photos through my computer.

I’m trying to figure out how to tip in Argentina. The law states that it is illegal here, as far as I know. However, many written sources still give recommended amounts for tipping. I understand why tipping would be illegal, knowing how people don’t report their tip income in their taxes, and I read a story about a waitress who secretly spat in someone’s food because that person didn’t give her the tips that she expected. In Ecuador and Peru, tipping is not expected, so life wasn’t so confusing. In the USA, I was often frustrated by the excessive amount of money that many waiters earned for a job that requires almost no education. In the USA, many waiters earn over $20/hour; many even earn over $25/hour. To add insult to injury, the vast majority of them admit that they drastically under-report there tips to the IRS, and therefore they don’t pay their fair share of income tax that other people of the same earnings pay.

I rented some videos 2 days ago. Unfortunately, most movies for rent are not Argentinian. A huge percentage (over half?) are from the USA.

• Read More »

Unfortunately, 1 day after arriving in Buenos Aires, I started having cold symptoms: runny nose and mild sore throat. I thought it would be over soon; I underestimated it. I couldn´t sleep at all on Wednesday night, not just because of the discomfort of my clogged nose, but mainly because I could not stop salivating for some reason. Additionally, I have been very tired; I can only go for one long walk per day now. When my body heats up during walking I feel nausea. I have to remember that overheating is a risk during the winter too, not just the cold.

I moved to a hostel that is part of Hosteling International on Friday morning. I am sharing a room with 7 other people. It is difficult for 8 people to sleep in a room together, when they all have different schedules.

For example, my 3 French roommates like to go to sleep between midnight at 1 am., and they like to wake up around 10 a.m. However, the 3 Irish girls and their Canadian companion like to leave the hostel at midnight at return between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning. Because our room gets almost no natural light, one must turn on the lights to see in the room, often when someone is sleeping.

The Irish girls were already drunk when the left shortly after midnight on Saturday morning. When they came back at 5:30, they were even worse.. Rosie was so drunk that she fell down on our floor ad fell asleep. The Canadian man tried to move her to her bed, but instead she fell into bed with one of the other Irish girls, and the 2 stayed in bed for 16 hours. When Rosie tried singing, loudly, to us at 6 in the morning, the French, after many minutes, started yelling at her, to which she drunkenly replied, ¨Just because you´ve already brushed your teeth doesn´t mean that you can talk to others like that.¨ She has a pretty good attitude though. She took criticism in stride 8 hours later when her Irish friend told her, ¨You were a fecker last night.¨

To make things more uncomfortable, the hostel played loud music for a party in the bar until 5 a.m. Saturday morning.

• Read More »

After arriving at the modern and attractive Buenos Aires international airport, I took a bus for 10 US dollars to downtown. My hotel is El Cabildo, on the pedestrian street DeValle, near the more popular pedestrian street Florida. I am paying 40 US dollars per night, which is more than what I  had expected to pay, but this was the cheapest I could find. It is a descent hotel, but the window faces the interior empty patio space of the hotel, so daylight does not enter my window.

The people in Buenos Aires are very tall (many men are over 6 feet tall, and I saw several woman who were taller than me), good-looking, and thin. I tried to figure out why they seem good-looking, and I think I have the answer. It´s the scarves that they wear. A very large percentage of the people in Buenos Aires wear attractive thick scarves, as well as good-looking jackets.

During the day, the weather reminds me of San Jose. Last night, the weather was more like Sacramento (that cold!) or almost like New York. Still, I like Buenos Aires, to my surprise, with its chicness.

Surprisingly, there is more light here at 6:30 p.m. than there was in the Andean towns. Andean towns tend to be in valleys between hills or mountains, which causes an early sunset.

Prices seem to be double of what I paid in Peru.

Many Internet cafes here do not have accessible USB ports for me to download pictures. By the way, I broke down and bought another digital camera in Lima, Peru. This computer has a USB port, but the computer is rejecting my flash card.

A shoeless kid in B.A was asking for money, so I gave him 10 pesos. My philosphy is that instead of complaining about the government not taking care of the poor, a person should instead fill the role and help the poor directly, if possible. However, upon giving the boy 10 pesos, another shoeless older boy stepped in and asked for money. I gave him 10 pesos and said ¨No mas!¨ However, the older kept asking me for more money until a police officer shooed him away. However, I ran into him on the way back. I gave him another 20  pesos, but he wanted still 100 more!, for shoes and for his sister. I told him I would buy him shoes if he would return my 30 pesos back and cross the street to the shoe store with me. When the light turned green for pedestrians, he pushed me into the street and ditched me.  

• Read More »

On August 5, Beto and I went to a lagoon oasis on the outskirts of Ica. By noon it was sunny in Ica, and the lagoon, surrounded by clean, white sand dunes, had pure sunshine. Sandboarding is a popular sport here.

• Read More »

I am currently in the Buenos Aires airport. Since I have my luggage on me, writing is a bit awkward. Additionally, I have to pre-pay to use the Internet by the half hour, and I don’t have the small denominations to easily pay for it.

• Read More »

Yesterday, Beto and I travelled by bus from Lima to Ica, trying to escape the cold in Lima. When the bus stopped in Pisco, it was sunny. However, when we arrived in Ica around 7:30 p.m., it was cold! We checked into the Hostal El Dorado, and we´ll stay there another night.

Surprisingly, there were some nice-looking beach communities south of Lima. However, most buildings in Peru are quite unattractive. In Lima, looking at hillsides, the buildings look like they are crumbling to become one with the dirt of the hillside. I think this appearance is partly from dirt getting onto the rooftops and never getting cleaned off. Additionally, people put rocks on their roofs to keep the metal roofing from flying away.

From Pisco to Ica, we saw vast deserts of sand. Occasionally, in low spots, there would be green marsh vegetation.

• Read More »

Yesterday Beto and I went to see the movie The Simpsons together, dubbed in Spanish, for 5 soles (less than 2 US dollars) in downtown Lima. All of the movies that I have seen advertised in movie theaters have been movies from the USA. It´s a bit disappointing. Peruvians seem to like the USA. When I was shopping for a pouch to wear on my waist, 2 of the 7 pouches had US in big letters on them. Much of non-news TV programming here is American TV shows.

I´ve been a little distrustful of Beto, partly because of other experiences relating to Peruvian dating. I had read in guide books about Peruvians having romantic affairs with tourists, and I had wondered why foreigners dating Peruvians was mentioned in the book, when surely the same thing must happen in other countries.

My first Peruvian romance occurred with a waiter working in a hotel in Lima. After having a rough ride on a bus overnight to Lima, and looking like hell, I was surprised that he asked to see me later that day, when he I hadn´t really talked; I had merely ordered breakfast and paid. I didn´t think he was using me, until 2 days later I was having dinner in Miraflores and talking to 2 nearby Americans. One American was married to a Peruvian. The other American told me, ¨When I date women here, I know they´re just pretending to be in love with me because I´m American.¨ When I asked him why women would do that, he said, ¨They´re desperate to get out of here.¨Then I remembered my dates with the waiter. I remember how I offered to help him pay for dinner, and then he looked at my funny, and then I explained, ¨It´s not that much¨, and then he had me pay for the whole meal, which still wasn´t much. Later that night, he suggested that we have dinner again, and he ate a full meal while I only drank chicha juice, but when it came time to pay, he had less than 2 soles (not enough, but he gave his money as a tip), and I had to pay the rest. We took a cab home to the hotel, and of course, I had to pay the cab fare….

I´ve become comfortable riding the buses in Lima around town.

• Read More »

Beto and I travelled from Huanuco to Lima during the day. The landscape was fascinating to watch. It started with desert vegetation in Huanuco, it changed into somewhat greener farmland, it became barren-like in the mountains, then the mountains turned red, then they looked like crumbling earth from a dumptruck, then we were in the outskirts of Lima with sun, and then we disappeared into the low clouds of Lima. The 2 American movies shown on the bus were inappropriate for families–too much sex or too much violence.

I’m paying a very expensive 137 soles tonight ($40 U.S.) for a hotel room at the Soul Mate Inn (strange name, but it is nice) with 2 beds, even though I’m only using 1 bed. Tuesday night I’ll move into the Versalles hotel, which is south of, but outside of, downtown, for only 45 soles per night, in a pretty classy hotel.

• Read More »

Yesterday afternoon I shared a car ride, called a colectivo, from Huarica to Huanico with a friend of one of the women who took me dancing the night before. He was a computer network engineer. He suggested that I meet him and his friends at the Kilombo night club, stating that he and his friends would arrive there around 10 p.m. Well, they never showed up. I paid 16 soles to enter, which is a high price. The ticket that I got in return stated I could get one pitcher and one bottle of beer for free. Since I didn´t want to  drink, I asked for water instead. I received a pitcher of water and 3 bottles of water from the nice waitress, including an empty glass which the waitress filled with the bottle of water. After drinking a few sips, I realized that the glass was still had salt or something solid on the rim from a previous glass. I walked away carrying the 3 bottles of water.

Anyways, the night ended well because I found a Peruvian friend. I think his name is Beto. We will travel to Lima together tomorrow during the day. He is another person who quit his job because he didn´t like the stressful lifestyle. Man, I have met a lot of travellers in South America who have quit their jobs.

Tonight I am back at the Las Vegas hostal in Huanuco.

• Read More »

Today I will check out of the Hostal Tunaspampas in Huarica. My room gets too cold at night. I will head back to Huánuco.

I was grumpy at 9:30 last night for two reasons. First of all, I was angry at myself because earlier that afternoon I had turned down free toilet paper that a hostal employee had offered me. In South America, one must never turn down free toilet paper. The toilet paper in South American hotels runs out more quickly than what I am used to in the USA. So at 9:30 at night, I only had 6 squares of toilet paper left.

Secondly, I yelled at myself because when I went out to try to get a new roll of toilet paper, and I could not find a hostal employee, I asked 2 Peruvians in a nearby building, which serves a purpose I do not know, ´¿Eres un empleo del hostal?´, or ´Are you an employment of the hostal?´ They looked at me confused. Later I realized that I meant to say ¨empleado¨, not ¨empleo¨.

So I was still yelling at myself when some young Huarican women and I left the hostal to go to the plaza to hear music for Peruvian Independence Day. Shortly after reaching the plaza, I perked up and began laughing for the rest of the night, when I started dancing. Anyone who has seen me dance before knows that I am not timid in this sport. The Huaricans were timid, but after they saw me and various Peruvians dancing at the beginnings of songs, they would come out to the dancing space to join us. Embarrassingly, I got a lot of attention. I usually get quite a bit of attention in the USA when I dance, so you can imagine how different I must have looked last night. It seemed like the whole plaza took note of me. The next morning, I got a short ride from a mine worker who recognized me.

Huariacans, and other Peruvians probably, celebrate the eve of Independence Day, similar to how we celebrate a New Year. The day before Independence Day, they have music and public festivals at night. In Huariaca, seconds before midnight in the plaza, there was a countdown, and when the time turned to midnight, there was great screaming in joy, and then fireworks were launched into the sky. This was followed by more music and dancing. Today, the actual independence day, is more solemn though, kind of like Christmas. There is even an official public Christian mass that the Peruvian president attends today.

• Read More »

Huariaca is a small scenic mountain town alongside a gurgling river and a highway. However, it gets very cold here at night, and they consider this to be their summer! I´ll spend one more night here, but then I´ll return to Huánuco because it´s just too cold here.

For the first time in over a week, I did not have diarrhea this morning!

Last night, in Huariaca, I saw another parade that put American parades to shame. The parade occurred primarily at the town´s main plaza. I think American cities would be better off if they had similar town plazas where people and tourists could congregate or relax. While a trumpet band played, young children carried their handmade red and white (the colors of the Peruvian flag) lanterns, which each contained a lit candle. The laterns were all sorts of shapes, like a fish, or a face, or a pattern. One kid had a red and white latern in the shape of Sponge Bob Squarepants, and Sponge Bob was carrying a Peruvian flag.

I actually haven´t mentioned all of the Peruvian Independence Day Parades that I´ve seen so far. The first parade that I witnessed occurred Saturday in Lima. Before the parade in Huánuco that I mentioned in my last post, I had seen a prior parade at that same plaza de armas, the day before. I saw another parade today here in Huariaca, this time with older children and adults. Everyone wore their school uniform or work uniform in the parade. Strangely, when Peruvians march in parades, they march with straight legs and arms, similar to how Nazi Germans marched. Children here get a week off from school for Independence Day.

• Read More »

I got to watch a great desfile (parade) from my hotel room today. This parade put to shame the parades that I have seen in the USA. Huánuco only has about 100,000 people, but the people have a lot of pride. The teams of school children and their teachers paraded around the Plaza de Armas of Huánuco, and the band music never stopped.

At noon I caught a bus for 8 soles to Cerro de Pasco. I noticed the altitude headache on the bus, but I could handle it. Upon arriving in Cerro de Pasco, I prompty went to a bathroom to urinate. The bathroom was terrible. The stall only had a hole in a square depression in the wet ground. I did not aim well at my target, but since the ground was wet, I suppose may other women had trouble aiming for the hole. Within 10 minutes of walking around Cerro de Pasco, I was having to slow down or stop because of my headache. People around me were very helpful. They crossed the street to help me, and they got me into a shared car to Huariaca. Therefore I spent 8 soles to get to Cerro de Pasco only to turn around and pay 10 soles to return to Huariaca. I still have dizziness and headache here.

• Read More »

I had painful diarrhea at midnight last night, and at 8 a.m. this morning. 

I also yelled when I woke up to find a ?naked? man tugging on my bedsheet, by my shin, in the dark of the night, who quickly said, ¨Disculpa¨and left. I suspect he is a hotel employee having an affair with a hotel guest, who got his rooms confused! No one else would have been able to get into my room.

I finally went to a doctor today. I really should have gone earlier. I took a mototaxi to the hospital, which I barely recognized as a hospital. The hospital is only one story high and has no parking lot. It is in the midst of busy city streets, looking like any other large building. However, the employees there were very helpful. At first I was worried about the hygiene of the place, but now I feel confident that they stuck a clean needle in me.

After explaining my diarrhea condition at check-in for the emergency room, I paid some fees, and I talked to a doctor. My blood pressure was very low: 90/40 I believe. The doctor wrote a prescription for 5 items and then had me go to a pharmacy to buy them. The 5 items included Cifro/Cipro, an intravenous bag of salt solution, and items/tubing to connect the solution to my body. I returned to the hospital with these items. I spent a few hours receiving fluids and Cipro intravenously. I´ll also take 10 Cifrofloxoeiro (Cipro) and 9 Plidan pills. I paid the hospital less than 20 soles for all their work!

• Read More »

James is OK. I received an email from him today. He said that Pucallpa is hot!

I´ll be in Huánuco again tonight. I had diarrhea cramps and loose stools 4 times this morning!  Where did all that food come from?

A nice Peruvian family recommended Coca Cola to treat diarrhea, but I am highly skeptical of this remedy. Plus Coca Cola makes my teeth feel awful. I plan to start trying yogurt today to treat my diarrhea. Yogurt, in drinkable form, is sold in incredible abundance in Peru and Ecuador in small food marts, more so than refrigerated milk! Actually, refrigerated milk is quite difficult to find.

I sang a little Karaoke in español last night in a bar. I was terrible, but no one complained.

• Read More »

James didn´t seem too upset last night when I said that I wasn´t going to Pucallpa with him. He left this morning. We parted on good terms.

I took a bus, for 10 soles, from Tingo Maria to Huánuco this afternoon. The view was great. Tingo Maria has these very tall trees with very skinny tree trunks growing on the side of what looks like steep vertical laminates of rock (the mountains). Ferns and palms are all around, and the river looks like fun for rafting.

In contrast, Huánuco is in the brown mountains, with desert vegetation. A decently-sized river flows nearby. I am reminded of the desert in New Mexico.

I am staying at the Las Vegas hostal. I´m a little worried about James.

• Read More »

It´s like something out of one of those brainless MTV reality shows: my travel chum and I are on the verge of splitting up, after only a week together. He wants to live a rough existence in the Amazon jungle, but I want to return to the safer mountain region. We were getting along so well too. I was happy when we were getting tossed around in the back of a mototaxi on a dirt road today, when we boarded our comfortable bus last night, and when we finally saw clear sky and bright stars (after days without in Lima) on the bus. Maybe we just need some time apart, but we haven´t had, and won´t have, much of that.

I am really not looking forward to insects, and heat and humidity that are worse than what I experienced today. I really don´t need him, but he needs me, to translate. I know he´s only using me for my Spanish-English translations. He had told me that he was considering leaving me to go to the jungle when I had diarrhea, because he was stagnating in Lima. I get the feeling that he´s only looking out fo his own interests.

Pucallpa seems primitive. I can´t find any Pucallpa hotels on the Internet.

• Read More »

I arrived in Tingo Maria, Perú, this morning, after a vomitous bus trip. Many people were literally throwing up. I had felt queasy too.

Tingo Maria is hot, but it is not as hot and humid as the jungle that is lower in elevation.

 James and I rode a mototaxi from the town of Tingo Maria to the Cueva de las Lechuzas (Cave of Owls) national park.

• Read More »

The delay in my blog postings was caused by some painful diarrhea that left me bedridden for a few days. Sorry for all the worries that my web-absence generated. I feel better this morning. I still have diarrhea symptoms, but the pain is much less.

• Read More »

Yesterday, Monday, I finally started taking risks in eating unreliable food. I had been looking forward to doing this for a long time. I bought two small sealed bags of peanuts with raisins, each costing 50 centimos, around 1:30 p.m. The bags came without factory labels. I also ate a bowl of fresh fruit in a nice restaurant last night, around 9 p.m. I felt fine until around 9:30 p.m., when I started having some abdominal pain. When I woke up this morning, I had worse pain, and then mild (chunky and not completely liquid) diarrhea. I took antibiotics (Doxycycline) last night and this morning. I also took Peptobismol this morning. I´m starting to feel better.

I think it was the fruit salad that made me sick. I felt no pain for 8 hours after eating the peanuts and raisins, and I even had a problem with constipation during that time. The nice restaurant was full of locals, but I saw no other obvious foreigners there.

I slept in a co-ed room in the Loki Backpackers Hostel last night with 3 other people.

I´ve been warned so many times about Peruvian con artists. I think getting ripped off in Peru is part of the Peruvian tourism experience. It happened last night after I met James at the Jorge Chavez airport. I had studied taxi fares in my guide book and on the Internet. I had been questioning why my guide book in one place quoted cab fare as $6-$8 U.S. from the airport to Miraflores, but in another part it quoted $14.50 for the same ride. I went to a website to find out why. The reputable companies with counters inside the airport charge $14.50, but a cab on the street would only charge about 25 soles ($8). However, my guide book recommended the expensive taxis for at night and with luggage. Taxi fare from the airport to Miraflores costs double the fare from the airport to downtown Lima. I paid 11 soles from downtown Lima to the airport.

You know what…I´ll get back to this blog later; I need to rest.

• Read More »

I am currently in an Internet cafe in Lima´s Jorge Chavez airport, waiting for my travel chum to arrive from Bogotá. 

I moved to the Eurobackpackers Hostel in the Miraflores municipality of Lima on Saturday. The showerhead for this hostel is heated by electricity at the shower head. That means we should use lower water flow to give the water time to heat up. It can get quite cold inside that hostel. The air pollution in Miraflores was almost unbearable Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday I walked to the beach, which was pretty and peaceful, with expensive hotels near the water. People are quite friendly. In contrast?, they are inconsiderate when they drive, honking gratuitously and nearly hitting pedestrians who have the right of way.

I moved into the Loki Backpackers Hostel today, across from Parque Central/Kennedy. I´ll be sharing a co-ed room.

I rode on a private bus for the first time in Lima today, from Miraflores, costing 1 sol (30 cents). These private buses are not luxury buses. What wildness!, with the bus stopping and starting to pick people up and drop people off.

My taxi ride from the airport was also pretty wild, with weaving, honking, and the cutting off of pedestrians in the street, even though we were in no hurry. I negotiated 10 soles for the ride from Centro Lima (at Avenida Arequipa and Avenida España, near the big Justicia building) to the airport, and I gave a 1 sol tip.

Sometimes Lima makes me want to cry. However, the airport is pretty plush, with toilet seats over the toilets!, in contrast to Bogotá´s airport.

• Read More »

I  checked into the Piramide Real in Chiclayo yesterday (35 soles/day; it has nice bathroom accessories to hold stuff in, but room has cockroaches) only for a few hours, to set my luggage down, to use the bathroom, and to take a shower. Chiclayo, despite being in the desert, is fun, with nightclubs all over the place; too bad I could not visit them. Unfortunately, being a pedestrian is a bit rough and wild. Some busy intersections have no stop lights! It is madness.

At 7:30 p.m. last night I caught a bus from Chiclayo, Peru, to Lima.

When I awoke on the bus at 7 a.m., it was drizzling just outside of Lima. It stayed cloudy like this for the rest of the day, drizzling again in the evening.

I took a taxi costing 8 soles to the Hotel España in downtown Lima. I´m sharing a co-ed dormitory room for 13 soles per night. The restaurant upstairs is wonderful and full of foreigners.

The hotel does not provide toilet paper or soap in the bathrooms.

Lima is quite slummy. Yes, there are some flashy places,  but some buildings are hardly covered by roofs.

In Chiclayo and Lima I noticed that the people look different from ecuatorianos. Ecuatorianos are smaller.  I don´t see people in traditional indigenous clothing in Lima or Chiclayo.

Miraflores at night was flashy and full of what I though were gringos. However, my Peruvian friend Arís told me that many of these Caucasians are Peruvians of recent European decent. El Parque Central/Kennedy was full of people and loud music.

• Read More »

A few minutes ago, my digital camcorder caught on fire in an Internet cafe. The USB connector caught fire. I hope I can still use my camcorder to upload video to the Internet! I pulled the camcorder and USB port out of the computer. I´ll not going to make another camcorder upload attempt in Peru, until I have Wifi in Lima.

I´m in an Internet cafe in Chiclayo, Peru. Sullana, Peru, is not a tourist town. Neither is Piura. Note to self: do not move to Sullana or Piura.

Note to tourists: DO NOT CROSS A BORDER AND ARRIVE IN YOUR NEW COUNTRY AT AN HOUR WHEN ALL THE BANKS ARE CLOSED. It was a mistake to cross the border last night. It was hard to sleep on the bus from Loja to Macará. The bus did not take us to a terminal terrestre in Piura; there is no terminal terreste in Piura. Instead, a Japanese tourist (23 years old) and myself were left on the side of a busy street, with no banks open to exchange money, with no Peruvian soles, at 7:30 a.m. He and I travelled by mototaxi (a motorcycle rickshaw) and took a bus together to Chiclayo.

Sullano, Piura, and Chiclayo are located in the desert. I don´t know how people can support themselves in Sullano and Piura. There is litter all alongside the highway.

Peru seems worse off than Ecuador. The ecuadorians that I met in Riobamba told me that they don´t like peruanos because the poor peruanos are migrating in large numbers to Ecuador for work.

• Read More »

Note to self: Cuenca has those traffic circles, without stoplights, that I dislike. Crossing the street is scary there.

I left Cuenca for Loja this morning. I paid $6 plus $.10 at the gate. I enjoyed the bus trip. I saw brown mountains and desert vegetation from the bus.

Loja alo has traffic circles without stoplights; I saw 3.

Tonight, starting at midnight, I’m going to travel by bus to Piura, Peru, crossing the border during the trip. My ticket to Piura cost $8 on Unión Cariamanga International.

I also took a bus to Vilcabamba today, from the Loja bus terminal. The bus trip took us through beautiful valleys surrounded by hills and mountains. Vilcabamba is lower in elevation than Quito, Cuenca, and Loja. When I was there from 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m., there was a warm, dry breeze. The sky was clear, and the stars were bright. Vilcabamba is a primitive town. It is NOT a gringo town, like I had imagined. Most people only speak Spanish. I did not see other gringos on the bus to, and from, Vilcabamba.

• Read More »

The wind was really strong in Alausí this morning. It was banging things around outside. The day started off cold as usual. It took 10 minutes to get hot water in the Hotel Panamericano; I think it only took 6-7 minutes for my previous shower in this hotel.

When I boarded the bus to Cuenca, there were 4 people who looked like gringos aboard, but one of them spoke Spanish. When I got to Cuenca, there were gringos all over the place. Cuenca is known as a pretty city, but when I arrived in the bus terminal, I thought otherwise. I saw yummy food when I deboarded the bus, which I walked over to buy, and I forgot to get my luggage that was stored in the lower compartment of the bus. Fortunately I arrived back at the bus before it departed, to save my luggage!

I don´t like Cuenca as much as other places. There´s an obnoxious amount of honking of car horns, although it´s still less obnoxious than in Tijuana, Baja California.

My hostal, Hostal Pachamama Lodge, is along the main river in town, Río Tomebamba. I really like the owner, who drove me from the bus terminal. I´m paying $5 to share a room with one other person and to use a nearby bathroom outside the room. Today I saw some people washing their clothes in the Río Tomebamba.

A man named Milton took me to a mini zoo, on a busy Cuencan street, containing aquatic animals, mostly from Ecuador. The personalized tour (we had our own tour guide) was great for learning Spanish.

• Read More »

Here´s a video to my parents about my sock-drying experience in Alausí.

http://grouper.com/video/MediaDetails.aspx?id=1948081&vt=1

• Read More »

I decided to stay one more night in Alausí because my socks were still quite damp this morning, even though my dress shirts were almost dry.

Also, Alausí is quite pretty and relaxing, so I enjoy staying here. I feel quite safe crossing the street here, not having to worry about being hit by a car, because there are so few cars here. It rains slightly less than once per day here, and when it rains, it is only a light drizzle.

I got locked out of my hotel last night, until some women passing by helped me out. To enter the hotel after 6 p.m., one must push the ¨timbre¨/bell on the side of the building. A short person, my height or shorter, might not be able to reach the timbre. You must stick your hand through a hole in the door to ring the bell, and you won´t hear any noise after pushing the buzzer.

Drying my socks was the highest priority for today. I first tried to dry my socks near the statue of San Pedro, which is on a low hill, but then somebody started a smoky fire nearby. I then moved my sock-drying operation to next to the train tracks. Fortunately the Nariz de Diablo train tours were not occuring today, and, for the most part, people and cars did not pass along the tracks. Drying my socks in public was a humbling experience.

• Read More »

The train ride from Alausí to Sibambe to Alausí is famous, but…  

Many passengers were disappointed to learn that we could not ride on the roof of the train. Apparently, within the past 2 years, some tourists died when riding on the roof of the train on this route, when they were decapitated while standing up on the roof, either by hanging wires or by the overhead street lights.

The train was only one car of a train (it looked like a bus) called an autocarril, powered by combustion. The ride cost $7.80. We did not get off the train in Sibambe. The Sibambe train station is inoperable and abandoned. I think it would have been more enjoyable to walk along the length of the tracks on one of the days when the train is not running. I was told that 40,000 black slaves built this railroad, under consignment of the Queen of Spain. Many died building it.

Today I had my first bad experience with the indigenous culture. After the train ride, I heard an animal moaning/screaming. A chivo (like a goat) was hanging upside-down by a rope, by its feet, on the side of a covered pickup truck used by indigenous people. I watched in horror as it hung there, alive, for minutes, with no one showing any desire to take it down. The animal reminded me of Jesus Christ hanging on a cross, suffering. I asked people, ¨The animal is suffering, no?¨ They said, ¨Yes, it is suffering,¨ and they did nothing, continuing on. I found a man who looked somewhat authoritative by his attire, and I asked him about the hanging live goat. He said that yes, the animal was suffering, and it would suffer more on the trip to the other side of the mountain, because its body would be hitting against the side of the truck during the ride. I asked the man why no one did anything about the abuse to the animal. He said that he had no authority to do anything, and that the police wouldn´t do anything, because the indigenous would bribe the police if required. He said that this type of thing was seen in this town every Sunday.

I looked for police for 10 minutes and found none. I walked over near the hanging chivo, which moaned about once per minute, wanting to tell the indigenous people that the animal was suffering and that this was not right, but I was afraid they would beat me up (I had no history to think this, though).  Finally, to my relief, an indigenous woman let the chivo down. After about 4 seconds it was able to walk. The woman walked the chiva across the street with a rope; just then, a police car came patroling by.

A boy came up to me begging for money. He needed new shoes, since his were falling apart, so I bought him some, for $15.

I shampooed some clothes today, since I couldn´t find a laundry service or laundromat in town. My shampoo is definitely not as effective as Tide with Bleach. There was only a washing machine in the hotel, and no dryer, so I´m hanging my clothes in the bathroom. They show no sign of drying.

ferrocarril = railway

• Read More »

You should watch the video that I´ll make about my arrival in Alausí by bus. There is no bus station in Alausí. I was dropped on the side of the road. I´ll be paying $8/night for tonight and tomorrow night.

This is a photo taken from where the bus dropped me off.

• Read More »

I woke up cold. Chicago hostal provided breakfast that included scrambled eggs. It took 5 minutes for the shower in my private bathroom to turn hot. My room cost $9 for the night.

Took bus from Quito to Riobamba, passing Cotopaxi and Chimborozo, and through Ambato. Bus ride cost $3.75 plus $.20. There were no visible non-Ecuatorianos on the bus.

On bus ride out of Quito, I saw some very poor parts of Quito that were not nearly as attractive as Old Town or New Town. We drove up a mountain, and on the other side of the mountain was more Quito. Quito is quite a long city.

Crossing the streets in Riobamba was scary, with their traffic circles in which traffic never stops.

 I stayed at the ¨Canada¨ hostal for $10 for one night, with a private room and bathroom. Their computer didn´t work.

At night, I was lonely and bored, so I went out onto the streets, where loud music could be heard coming from a KFC. I met 3 flirty ecuatorianos on the street. I told them that I was Canadian. I asked them what they thought of the U.S.A. They said that the U.S.A. was bad a crazy, because it was so powerful. They took me dancing at Tequila Bar.

• Read More »

I woke up warm in the Hostel de los Jazmines, and I enjoyed a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, fresh juice, and coffee.

Moved into the Chicago hostal on the edge of Old Quito.  This hostal has a new computer with 2 USB ports in the front for $1 per hour. This place has rocking music downstairs.

I walked to Old Town at night; the old historical buildings were lit up beautifully.

At night, we had live music in the bar (but it was smoky).

• Read More »

Because I hadn´t made a reservation for July 4 the previous morning, the Posada del Maple was all full for the night of July 4. Therefore, I moved across the street to the yellow hostal Posada de los Jazmines for $20/night (including tax), for a one-bed private room with its own private bathroom. A nice breakfast that included scrambled eggs was included in that price. I didn´t see any other gringos in this hostal; everyone spoke Spanish. There weren´t many people around.

During the day, I ran into two Dutch travellers that I had met that morning at breakfast at the Posada del Maple. We went to an art museum together. After a Chinese lunch, we walked up the steps to the statue of the virgin Mary. While descending the mountain around 5 p.m., an indigenous woman told us not to descent down the steps, and to take the street instead, which is what a local girl had told us earlier. We didn´t understand why, and we were about to proceed, when the woman made the gesture of ¨slit your throat¨. Luckily, a local man escorted us down the mountain.

The 2 Dutchmen and I ate Indian food together that evening.

• Read More »

I explored Old Quito, specifically the centro historico, with Sonia, a woman from Germany. Old Quito has fewer gringos. New Quito, where my hostel is, is full of gringos. I was surprised by how many gringos I saw leaving the Quito airport.

Restaurants generally only accept cash. They will only accept credit cards for amounts over $10 (which is a difficult amount to achieve).

Because Quito is in the center of an extinct volcano, it gets dark early (gets dark shortly after 5 p.m.).

• Read More »

I flew in to Bogotá and transferred to Quito. I had trouble understanding the Spanish of the Colombian flight attendants on the airplane (Avianca). The toilets in the airport did not have seats; I was afraid I would fall in!

The Quito airport was modern and attractive. I had no problem leaving it and taking a taxi for $5 to the Posada del Maple. The mountains that I saw before landing in Quito were very stark and brown, in contrast to the shorter green mountains outside Bogotá. However, once in Quito, the surrounding peaks were green. The clouds of Quito were are big and fluffy, in a clear bright blue sky.

I ate 2 cheese empanadas(sweet) and hot tea for $3.10 in a restaurant. Later I had tea with a woman from Oregon.

• Read More »

Here´s a picture of my family room, with  its bright magenta carpet, taken the week before my flight to Quito.

• Read More »

This is my townhome in Oceanside, California. It’s even more colorful inside (like my personality!). The carpet downstairs is a warm magenta color. The carpet upstairs is blue-green, like the ocean.

• Read More »