Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Drywall on my Ceiling
So, now that we are back in the States, all the interesting things that happened to us in Ecuador are still happening to us. Except now they are happening in English so I understand them a little bit better. If you have some time, and think that a discussion about the drywall on the kitchen ceiling could be interesting, check out this link.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Return of the Cuy
We arrived back in Alexandria last Saturday night. Opa and PoPo were there to meet us and our 12 pieces of luggage at National Airport and cook us a welcome home stuffed shell dinner (one of Maya and Jonah's favorites).
Now, we've been home almost a week. Sad to say how easily one becomes accustomed to the old routines again. It's like someone hit the pause button on Alexandria and only released it when we got back.
Our last day and a half in Quito was spent running around doing last minute things so we didn't have a chance to linger over the things that we liked about the city. There was no last visit to Parque Metropolitano to admire the views, no final leisurely stroll through the narrow streets and pretty squares in the old town. Maya and Jonah didn't get to terrorize the pigeons in the plaza fronting the Iglesia de San Francisco again.
Instead, we spent the hours doing what any self-respecting American would do - shopping.
It wasn't until we were flying over the city that had been our home for the better part of three months that it really hit me that this was it - we were leaving Quito and I might never return there. Truly, it is a sad thought.
I spent some time during the last few weeks of our adventure trying to figure an answer to the question I knew we are bound to hear again and again - how was it?
"Good!" just doesn't seem to cut it.
Not even an enthusiastic "Neat-o!" really delivers the message.
As I tried to explain in an earlier post, our plan this summer was to find out if we could live overseas generally, and specifically, if we could do so with children. We haven't really learned the answers to those questions. But I think we've gotten a little closer.
First of all, we learned that we can live overseas. And we still want to, but not right now. What we learned was that we really like the life that we have right now in Alexandria. We have a great house (with a beautiful new front door that I had completely forgotten about) in a great neighborhood. Rebecca really likes her work and we are close to our families, who love and support us. The people and families who live on our block and in our general area really create the sense of community that we thought we were lacking. We knew we liked these things, but it took being away from them and from our home to realize that right now, it will be hard to find something as good as what we already have.
Second, we learned that we can live overseas with kids - but not the two monsters that we have right now. Maya is five and Jonah is three. We figure that in five to seven years, they will both be much better behaved and more inclined to want to do things other than be carried. Probably this is a pipe dream, but, if I can steal a line from Ernest Hemingway, isn't it pretty to think so?
Finally, I personally learned a lot - both about stuff and about myself.
The old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks turns out to be false. The greatest apprehension I had when Rebecca and I decided in the Fall of 2007 that we would spend the summer of 2008 in Ecuador was that I didn't know a lick of Spanish. Frankly, I had pretty much given up any hope that I would ever learn another language well enough to communicate with someone without having to draw pictures in the dirt. But, look at me now. Although I had to ask a lot of people to repeat themselves, I managed to 1) not get us lost; 2) not eat anything really gross; and 3) not get punched in the face.
And the realization that my old, tired brain can handle another language well enough made me realize that it isn't really that tired. I had just put it in a jar on the top shelf. This trip has inspired me empty out the jar, stick the brain back in my head and learn a few more things.
At some point early in our trip, I decided that I wanted to become an EMT. After Rebecca told me what an EMT actually has to do, I decided that a first aid class might satisfy me. But we'll see.
I read (figuratively) about the first thirty pages of the epic that is South American history. I want to learn more. We thought that the U.S. Cavalry sucked in how they treated Native Americans, but they have nothing on the Conquistadors (read about Pedro de Alvarado sometime. Hell, read about Francisco Pizarro - the conqueror of the Incas. He was a mean bastard too).
But probably the biggest thing that I learned is that even when you are thirty-eight and married with children, life does not have to be predictable. We met so many people who are chasing their dreams or acting on impulses that I couldn't help but realize the possibilities that are open to me. I feel very fortunate to have options and to have done something that made me realize that the dreams I had ten years ago are still attainable.
Oh. The other thing that I learned is that no matter where in the world you are listening, The Kinks rock.
Now, we've been home almost a week. Sad to say how easily one becomes accustomed to the old routines again. It's like someone hit the pause button on Alexandria and only released it when we got back.
Our last day and a half in Quito was spent running around doing last minute things so we didn't have a chance to linger over the things that we liked about the city. There was no last visit to Parque Metropolitano to admire the views, no final leisurely stroll through the narrow streets and pretty squares in the old town. Maya and Jonah didn't get to terrorize the pigeons in the plaza fronting the Iglesia de San Francisco again.
Instead, we spent the hours doing what any self-respecting American would do - shopping.
It wasn't until we were flying over the city that had been our home for the better part of three months that it really hit me that this was it - we were leaving Quito and I might never return there. Truly, it is a sad thought.
I spent some time during the last few weeks of our adventure trying to figure an answer to the question I knew we are bound to hear again and again - how was it?
"Good!" just doesn't seem to cut it.
Not even an enthusiastic "Neat-o!" really delivers the message.
As I tried to explain in an earlier post, our plan this summer was to find out if we could live overseas generally, and specifically, if we could do so with children. We haven't really learned the answers to those questions. But I think we've gotten a little closer.
First of all, we learned that we can live overseas. And we still want to, but not right now. What we learned was that we really like the life that we have right now in Alexandria. We have a great house (with a beautiful new front door that I had completely forgotten about) in a great neighborhood. Rebecca really likes her work and we are close to our families, who love and support us. The people and families who live on our block and in our general area really create the sense of community that we thought we were lacking. We knew we liked these things, but it took being away from them and from our home to realize that right now, it will be hard to find something as good as what we already have.
Second, we learned that we can live overseas with kids - but not the two monsters that we have right now. Maya is five and Jonah is three. We figure that in five to seven years, they will both be much better behaved and more inclined to want to do things other than be carried. Probably this is a pipe dream, but, if I can steal a line from Ernest Hemingway, isn't it pretty to think so?
Finally, I personally learned a lot - both about stuff and about myself.
The old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks turns out to be false. The greatest apprehension I had when Rebecca and I decided in the Fall of 2007 that we would spend the summer of 2008 in Ecuador was that I didn't know a lick of Spanish. Frankly, I had pretty much given up any hope that I would ever learn another language well enough to communicate with someone without having to draw pictures in the dirt. But, look at me now. Although I had to ask a lot of people to repeat themselves, I managed to 1) not get us lost; 2) not eat anything really gross; and 3) not get punched in the face.
And the realization that my old, tired brain can handle another language well enough made me realize that it isn't really that tired. I had just put it in a jar on the top shelf. This trip has inspired me empty out the jar, stick the brain back in my head and learn a few more things.
At some point early in our trip, I decided that I wanted to become an EMT. After Rebecca told me what an EMT actually has to do, I decided that a first aid class might satisfy me. But we'll see.
I read (figuratively) about the first thirty pages of the epic that is South American history. I want to learn more. We thought that the U.S. Cavalry sucked in how they treated Native Americans, but they have nothing on the Conquistadors (read about Pedro de Alvarado sometime. Hell, read about Francisco Pizarro - the conqueror of the Incas. He was a mean bastard too).
But probably the biggest thing that I learned is that even when you are thirty-eight and married with children, life does not have to be predictable. We met so many people who are chasing their dreams or acting on impulses that I couldn't help but realize the possibilities that are open to me. I feel very fortunate to have options and to have done something that made me realize that the dreams I had ten years ago are still attainable.
Oh. The other thing that I learned is that no matter where in the world you are listening, The Kinks rock.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Picturebook
We are back in Alexandria. I am working on a sum it all up post, so stay tuned. In the meantime, hope you enjoy these pictures.
The Beach - Canoa
Running around in circles on the beach in Canoa:
Banana break:
Maya, invoking the spirit of the sea from the bow of a local fishing boat:
and then plunging to her death (figuratively, of course):
Jonah does everything his sister does (but not as well):
Seaside dinning (thanks for the picture Maya!):
Making friends with local kids at the beach:
and at a swimming hole outside of Canoa:
Picking out dinner, delivered by the fisherman - straight from the sea to our bellies. Lobsters on the left. Giant crabs front and center:
Feeling good in the courtyard at Olmito's, the hotel where we stayed in Canoa:
On our balcony at Olmito's:
Maya's knight without shining armor:
Rio Muchacho Finca Organica, north of Canoa.
Ecuador has the highest rate of deforestation in the world. The area where the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm is located has the highest rate of deforestation in Ecuador. The finca has been operating for about ten years and the co-founders (Dario and Nicola) try to engage the locals (who all farm) in more efficient and self-sustaining farming methods. Rio Muchacho has adopted the perma-culture method of farming. Perma-culture means that each aspect of the farm complements the other. For example, the cows and pig poop is composted. The compost is picked clean of bugs by the chickens. The cleaned compost is then given over to the worms. Once the worms have worked through it and pooped it out, the worm poop dirt (which is apparently the best fertilizer you can have) is used to grow the crops. The crops go to feed the people who live and work at the farm and also to feed the cows and pigs. And the cycle continues. There's more to it than that, but that is the twenty-five second summary.
Maya adored feeding scrap food to the pigs, who truly do live up to their name:
Jonah loved picking bananas and feeding the peels to this donkey (who was named "Donkey"):
Maya and Crystal visit the cuyes (guinea pigs), by climbing inside their hutch and terrorizing these animals, who clearly aren't used to being picked up and cuddled. At the finca, rather than cute pets or tasty dinners, the cuyes are only used for their poop, which falls from their hutch into the worm beds below, mixed with cow poop and pig poop, and left for the worms to eat.
Milking the cow (I actually knew the grip to use):
Love to the fishies in the river:
Jonah's birthday cake: lemon cake made with local lemons, frosted with chocolate grown at the farm, decorated with edible hibiscus flowers picked outside the kitchen. You can see that he's a bit overwhelmed by the whole affair:
We took a horse-ride
to a waterfall
where Maya had a great time:
and Jonah fell asleep on the smooth ride home:
The local harvest and harvesters:
Farmer Jonah:
and Maya with her harvest:
Roasting cocoa beans:
grinding them
and eating the chocolate syrup
which made Maya's second front tooth fall out:
Making cheese, a wet piece of curdled milk that couldn't win honorable mention at a cheese show even if it was the only entry (no offense meant to any Ecuadorians who actually like this stuff).
The giant Matapalo tree
Climbing the giant Matalpo tree
In the courtyard of the communal dining area
Rubber boots are a vital component of farm attire. I never went anywhere without them:
There were animals on the farm in addition to the domesticated ones. This tree frog was on our bathroom door one night. Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad? I do:
And this reptile was trying to cross the road on our way out of the farm. A real-live boa constrictor.
Dario Proano, one of the farm's co-founders and a devout vegetarian, pushed the boa in a new direction (i.e., out of the road), so it could live to kill and eat another animal.
After the farm we went back to Canoa. But we were out of cash so we had to go to Bahia, a one-hour bus and panga journey, where the closest ATM machine was located.
This is Jonah with Miguel, a 100 year-old Galapagos turtle who lives at an Eco-school in Bahia. Notice the trash strewn about the courtyard:
A few days later walking on the beach in Canoa, we came upon a sea turtle that had washed up after being struck on the head. It had a cracked skull. Some locals conjectured that it was caused either by a propeller from one of the local fishing boats, an angry fisherman and an oar, or even by a shark bite. We tried to push it back into the surf so it could swim away, but all it wanted to do was die on the beach. It could barely move and kept trying to get itself out of the water. Sad, but it was neat to see the turtle close up (and touch it). We didn't have our camera, so no picture.
After the farm, Jonah's new love: carrots!
The Beach - Canoa
Running around in circles on the beach in Canoa:
Banana break:
Maya, invoking the spirit of the sea from the bow of a local fishing boat:
and then plunging to her death (figuratively, of course):
Jonah does everything his sister does (but not as well):
Seaside dinning (thanks for the picture Maya!):
Making friends with local kids at the beach:
and at a swimming hole outside of Canoa:
Picking out dinner, delivered by the fisherman - straight from the sea to our bellies. Lobsters on the left. Giant crabs front and center:
Feeling good in the courtyard at Olmito's, the hotel where we stayed in Canoa:
On our balcony at Olmito's:
Maya's knight without shining armor:
Rio Muchacho Finca Organica, north of Canoa.
Ecuador has the highest rate of deforestation in the world. The area where the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm is located has the highest rate of deforestation in Ecuador. The finca has been operating for about ten years and the co-founders (Dario and Nicola) try to engage the locals (who all farm) in more efficient and self-sustaining farming methods. Rio Muchacho has adopted the perma-culture method of farming. Perma-culture means that each aspect of the farm complements the other. For example, the cows and pig poop is composted. The compost is picked clean of bugs by the chickens. The cleaned compost is then given over to the worms. Once the worms have worked through it and pooped it out, the worm poop dirt (which is apparently the best fertilizer you can have) is used to grow the crops. The crops go to feed the people who live and work at the farm and also to feed the cows and pigs. And the cycle continues. There's more to it than that, but that is the twenty-five second summary.
Maya adored feeding scrap food to the pigs, who truly do live up to their name:
Jonah loved picking bananas and feeding the peels to this donkey (who was named "Donkey"):
Maya and Crystal visit the cuyes (guinea pigs), by climbing inside their hutch and terrorizing these animals, who clearly aren't used to being picked up and cuddled. At the finca, rather than cute pets or tasty dinners, the cuyes are only used for their poop, which falls from their hutch into the worm beds below, mixed with cow poop and pig poop, and left for the worms to eat.
Milking the cow (I actually knew the grip to use):
Love to the fishies in the river:
Jonah's birthday cake: lemon cake made with local lemons, frosted with chocolate grown at the farm, decorated with edible hibiscus flowers picked outside the kitchen. You can see that he's a bit overwhelmed by the whole affair:
We took a horse-ride
to a waterfall
where Maya had a great time:
and Jonah fell asleep on the smooth ride home:
The local harvest and harvesters:
Farmer Jonah:
and Maya with her harvest:
Roasting cocoa beans:
grinding them
and eating the chocolate syrup
which made Maya's second front tooth fall out:
Making cheese, a wet piece of curdled milk that couldn't win honorable mention at a cheese show even if it was the only entry (no offense meant to any Ecuadorians who actually like this stuff).
The giant Matapalo tree
Climbing the giant Matalpo tree
In the courtyard of the communal dining area
Rubber boots are a vital component of farm attire. I never went anywhere without them:
There were animals on the farm in addition to the domesticated ones. This tree frog was on our bathroom door one night. Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad? I do:
And this reptile was trying to cross the road on our way out of the farm. A real-live boa constrictor.
Dario Proano, one of the farm's co-founders and a devout vegetarian, pushed the boa in a new direction (i.e., out of the road), so it could live to kill and eat another animal.
After the farm we went back to Canoa. But we were out of cash so we had to go to Bahia, a one-hour bus and panga journey, where the closest ATM machine was located.This is Jonah with Miguel, a 100 year-old Galapagos turtle who lives at an Eco-school in Bahia. Notice the trash strewn about the courtyard:
A few days later walking on the beach in Canoa, we came upon a sea turtle that had washed up after being struck on the head. It had a cracked skull. Some locals conjectured that it was caused either by a propeller from one of the local fishing boats, an angry fisherman and an oar, or even by a shark bite. We tried to push it back into the surf so it could swim away, but all it wanted to do was die on the beach. It could barely move and kept trying to get itself out of the water. Sad, but it was neat to see the turtle close up (and touch it). We didn't have our camera, so no picture.
After the farm, Jonah's new love: carrots!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Canoa to Puerto Viejo to Manta to Quito, with a couple of crybabies
The last seventy-two hours have seen us travel lots of kilometers by truck, panga, taxi, bus and airplane to four different cities and three different hotels. As you would expect, it has been pretty miserable - primarily because of the kids. They whine and cry starting from the minute that they wake up and lasting every second that they don't get exactly what they want.
That's not entirely true, but Rebecca wanted me to stop painting such a rosy picture of life with the kids on the road. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to getting home just so I can send them to Opa and PoPo's house for the weekend. We all need a break from each other. I really pity those parents that have to spend all day every day with their kids because they don't have parents or family nearby to ship the kids too a time or two a week.
While Maya and Jonah have been pretty good a lot of the time, they also make things so much more difficult a lot of the time. And while the ice cream bribe is still a 100% success in getting them to do what you want, I've been trying to employ it a lot less (it doesn't do mornings).
Below is a photo from our hotel room in Canoa. We really loved the place that we stayed - Posada Olmito. We really loved Canoa. Rebecca and I have recently seriously considered coming back in a few months to look into buying some property. We are certain it is a good investment, but didn't have the idea early enough to make it happen this time around. Plus, we had the kids with us.
One of the things we liked was that the guy in the below photo (wearing the number 11 shirt) delivered fresh bread to us every morning. He rides around town starting at about six-thirty a.m., honking his horn to let you know he's coming. Because town is pretty small, you can hear him coming for awhile. If we could actually sleep past six-thirty, it might be annoying. But, Maya and Jonah rarely make it that late. So, we'd always be awake. Rebecca and Maya would stand on the balcony of our room (or hang out the window), flag him down and make the exchange. He'd toss up bread and we'd toss down seventy or eighty cents - depending on how many loaves. Then we'd have fresh bread and jam. It was something to look forward to at that ungodly hour, at least.
Here's a couple of other photos of Canoa. In order, they are 1) the courtyard of our hotel from our balcony - looking towards the ocean; 2) Maya's photo of Jonah looking out our window and munching his morning bread; 3) a view of the beach and ocean from the entrance to our hotel.
Anyway, we spent our last night in Canoa (Tuesday night) much like we spent the previous four nights - partying. Rebecca discovered this Ecuadorian knock-off of Kahlua and we imbibed an entire bottle while watching the sun set over the Pacific with our friend Brian.
We spent a lot of good times with Brian and images of him will definitely be scattered through whatever brain cells we have left that have bits and pieces about Canoa. Here he is in digital.
After breakfast at our favorite restaurant in town - the Coco Loco (Maya and Jonah liked it because there were these two puppies there that they could play with)
we took a final walk around Canoa on Wednesday morning (accompanied by lots of whining from Maya and Jonah and yours truly (I was "tired")).
Then we hitched a ride out of Canoa on the back of a large rack truck that had four or five propane tanks in the back resting on a bed of wood chips. Nothing like traveling for free and in style.
By the way, say goodbye to that hat of Rebecca's. She left it on the bus a few hours after I snapped this photo.
Once we got to Bahia, we planned to take a $30 taxi ride for two hours fto Manta, but the other hitcher in the truck talked us into a more economical solution - a bus ride. It would have been great, however, the bus didn't go directly from Bahia to Manta - we had to first travel two hours to a dump of a city called Porto Viejo. To get to Manta we had to take a taxi an additional half hour and ten bucks. Add the ten to the $8 for the bus ride and we didn't end up saving that much. And the $12 we did save we promptly blew on an $85 hotel room.
The one perk to the hotel in Manta was that it had a pool. On Thursday morning (today, as it were) when Jonah and I went for a swim, there was some weird thing going on with this beautiful, well-endowed women and two men and a camera. The weirdness involved her laying around the pool area in a very small bikini top (do they make a thong for tits? If so, this was it) and a butt thong and the men video-taping her. When Jonah and I weren't swimming, we were comfortable in the shade eating sunflower seeds. We spent all morning at the pool.
Combine this free show with the free wireless internet that made Rebecca so excited, and there was a little something for everyone.
After a quick lunch, (where Rebecca also brought a panama hat from a vendor that came into the restaurant)
we made it to the airport in time for our flight to Quito. For the next two nights we are at a pretty cool place called "Posada del Maple". I'm sitting in the hotel common area taking advantage of their free wireless while Rebecca is probably sleeping upstairs.
Earlier she was talking to another family that is staying here that is two months into their year long travel through South America with their five year old and and two year old. They are convinced that they have the worst behaved kids in Ecuador.
That's not entirely true, but Rebecca wanted me to stop painting such a rosy picture of life with the kids on the road. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to getting home just so I can send them to Opa and PoPo's house for the weekend. We all need a break from each other. I really pity those parents that have to spend all day every day with their kids because they don't have parents or family nearby to ship the kids too a time or two a week.
While Maya and Jonah have been pretty good a lot of the time, they also make things so much more difficult a lot of the time. And while the ice cream bribe is still a 100% success in getting them to do what you want, I've been trying to employ it a lot less (it doesn't do mornings).
Below is a photo from our hotel room in Canoa. We really loved the place that we stayed - Posada Olmito. We really loved Canoa. Rebecca and I have recently seriously considered coming back in a few months to look into buying some property. We are certain it is a good investment, but didn't have the idea early enough to make it happen this time around. Plus, we had the kids with us.
One of the things we liked was that the guy in the below photo (wearing the number 11 shirt) delivered fresh bread to us every morning. He rides around town starting at about six-thirty a.m., honking his horn to let you know he's coming. Because town is pretty small, you can hear him coming for awhile. If we could actually sleep past six-thirty, it might be annoying. But, Maya and Jonah rarely make it that late. So, we'd always be awake. Rebecca and Maya would stand on the balcony of our room (or hang out the window), flag him down and make the exchange. He'd toss up bread and we'd toss down seventy or eighty cents - depending on how many loaves. Then we'd have fresh bread and jam. It was something to look forward to at that ungodly hour, at least.
Here's a couple of other photos of Canoa. In order, they are 1) the courtyard of our hotel from our balcony - looking towards the ocean; 2) Maya's photo of Jonah looking out our window and munching his morning bread; 3) a view of the beach and ocean from the entrance to our hotel.
Anyway, we spent our last night in Canoa (Tuesday night) much like we spent the previous four nights - partying. Rebecca discovered this Ecuadorian knock-off of Kahlua and we imbibed an entire bottle while watching the sun set over the Pacific with our friend Brian.
We spent a lot of good times with Brian and images of him will definitely be scattered through whatever brain cells we have left that have bits and pieces about Canoa. Here he is in digital.
After breakfast at our favorite restaurant in town - the Coco Loco (Maya and Jonah liked it because there were these two puppies there that they could play with)
we took a final walk around Canoa on Wednesday morning (accompanied by lots of whining from Maya and Jonah and yours truly (I was "tired")).
Then we hitched a ride out of Canoa on the back of a large rack truck that had four or five propane tanks in the back resting on a bed of wood chips. Nothing like traveling for free and in style.
By the way, say goodbye to that hat of Rebecca's. She left it on the bus a few hours after I snapped this photo.
Once we got to Bahia, we planned to take a $30 taxi ride for two hours fto Manta, but the other hitcher in the truck talked us into a more economical solution - a bus ride. It would have been great, however, the bus didn't go directly from Bahia to Manta - we had to first travel two hours to a dump of a city called Porto Viejo. To get to Manta we had to take a taxi an additional half hour and ten bucks. Add the ten to the $8 for the bus ride and we didn't end up saving that much. And the $12 we did save we promptly blew on an $85 hotel room.
The one perk to the hotel in Manta was that it had a pool. On Thursday morning (today, as it were) when Jonah and I went for a swim, there was some weird thing going on with this beautiful, well-endowed women and two men and a camera. The weirdness involved her laying around the pool area in a very small bikini top (do they make a thong for tits? If so, this was it) and a butt thong and the men video-taping her. When Jonah and I weren't swimming, we were comfortable in the shade eating sunflower seeds. We spent all morning at the pool.
Combine this free show with the free wireless internet that made Rebecca so excited, and there was a little something for everyone.
After a quick lunch, (where Rebecca also brought a panama hat from a vendor that came into the restaurant)
we made it to the airport in time for our flight to Quito. For the next two nights we are at a pretty cool place called "Posada del Maple". I'm sitting in the hotel common area taking advantage of their free wireless while Rebecca is probably sleeping upstairs.
Earlier she was talking to another family that is staying here that is two months into their year long travel through South America with their five year old and and two year old. They are convinced that they have the worst behaved kids in Ecuador.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Cuba Libres in Canoa, Again
We returned to Canoa yesterday (Saturday) after our much anticipated week on the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm.
The farm visit lived up to expectations. Maya and Jonah enjoyed feeding the pigs (pigs really do eat anything), milking the cow, riding the horses, gathering eggs (well, gathering the one egg that a hen left in the saw dust box by the toilet every morning) and being allowed to go to bed without a shower every night. They also enjoyed crying a fair amount and being carried everywhere they went.
On Friday, Jonah turned three and the ladies who cook at the farm prepared a great lemon cake with chocolate icing. It was decorated with these big fancy red flowers (that you could eat!) and Jonah was pretty much speechless. Though he did manage to blow out the one candle stuck in the cake pretty easily.
So, now we find ourselves back in Canoa after spending a week here before going to the farm, trying to figure out what to do for the last few days of vacation before we return to Quito on Thursday and to Virginia on Saturday.
Canoa, as a beach desitination, did not look promising when we set out to get here from Manta a few weeks ago. The taxi ride from Manta to Bahia was alternatively through banana/rice farms and mountainous desert several miles inland from the coast. The mostly paved, heavily potholed road was littered with piles of trash on either side and passed through hot, dusty villages where the people seem to make trade in loitering and selling coconuts to each other. Each time we managed to successfully pass a slow-moving truck or bus without being crushed by oncoming slow moving trucks or buses, our taxi driver would give me a thumbs-up. We liked him. We got his number so he can drive us back to Manta from where ever we are on Thursday for our flight to Quito.
As we approached Bahia, advertised as an eco-city and stopping point for many a rich, yankee yacht-owner, the piles of trash got higher, but the road did widen to two lanes. We took a panga across the bay to San Vicente (a panga is a wider, smellier version of a canoe. Until the bridge that is under construction is completed, panga is the only way across. I don´t know why it took until 2008 to begin building a bridge. I guess the car ferry was working so well, they figured, what the heck to we need a bridge for) and then hopped a taxi for the final 15 or so miles to Canoa.
Finally, as we approached Canoa along a mostly smooth road that paralleled the beach, things came into a better view. Here and there some nice looking habitaciones dotted the landscape, and the beach was a wide, undeveloped, masterpiece of sand and waves.
When we turned off the main road, we crossed three unpaved roads and dead-ended in the beach, and our hotel - Posada Olmito (I´d link the hotel website, but Rebecca said it sucks.)
I met an American shortly before we left Quito who had spent some time in Canoa a year ago. He described where the town ended (at the Coco-Loco hotel/restaurant) and was sure that it would be developed quite a bit to the South from there already. Turns out that the town has developed by about two more blocks - including the Posada Olmito. In a town that runs four or five blocks north to south, two blocks is quite a bit.
But still, the development is light years behind the over-development common to East Coast beach towns. Canoa is basically a main street that fronts the beach. It´s lined with ¨hotels¨, restaurants, shops, and bars. Only as you move further south do the places start to get taller than two stories. Most of the places have names like The Bamboo, The Surf Shak, Casa del Mar, Playa Bar, etc. etc. During the week the main occupants in town are gringo-surfer types. During weekends town fills up with Ecuatoriano´s down from Quito, mostly, for the weekend.
The beach is about a football fields length from road to ocean. It´s clean and safe and swimmable at low or high tide. In the morning, the fisherman come in with their haul of lobsters, crabs, and various fish (including baby hammerhead sharks!). We brought five lobsters (about 4 to 6 inches in length each) and two enormous crabs that we are having the lady who does it all at the hotel cook up for us tonight. She cooked us some lobsters when we were here a few weeks ago and it turned out pretty awesome - thus, the repeat performance.
Posada Olmito is owned by a Dutch guy that has been in South America for decades. The hotel is simply designed - eight or ten rooms on two stories around a central, sand courtyard. There are privtae or shared baths and showers. We got a private bath, but I end up taking all my showers in the public ones to keep sand out of our room, which turns out to be impossible anyway. I´ve never seen Rebecca with a broom in her hand so often.
Anyway, the hotel is a very friendly place - we basically treat it like home. We leave the kids playing there when they don´t want to cross the street to come to the beach with us. I walk behind the front desk to get whatever I want - which is mostly beer from the refrigerator. thw owner writes down our tab and then tears it up when we´re done for the night. It´s that kind of place.
Canoa is that kind of place. It´s the kind of place that when I was younger, I might wake up hung over five out of seven mornings a week. As it is, we´ve settled into a pretty easy routine of waking up, buying some hot bread from the guy that rides his bicycle around town tooting his horn to let us know he has fresh bread. We can lean out the window to our room and he´ll toss it up for us. Then we head to the beach until the breakfast places open up. After breakfast, we head back to the beach until noon-ish. Then we eat lunch. When the sun is out it can get pretty hot, so after lunch we tend to hide in the shade for a few hours until it´s time to go back to the beach to make a bonfire and have rum and cokes before dinner. Yesterday we shared our bottle with a few Ecuatorian women that happened by. It turned out to be great fun - though at two p.m. my head is still a bit sore.
Jonah has been totally into fires lately. He´ll carry a stick that he finds on the ground around for hours until we build a fire so he can throw it in.
Because the beach is beautiful, safe, and further development is coming, we have considered the place as an investment opportunity. Some local was dangling a beach-front, two-cabana property a few kilometers north of here in front of us for $40,000. It´s fun to think about, but we probably won´t do anything.
We did met a few americans here that we have also been sharing bottles and stories with. One guy, David, is mostly retired and owns property (he built a house here in Canoa on one lot and grows trees on his other lot, a few kilometers up into the hills), the other guy, Brian, is a pilot and has been here about two years. Since we got back here, we haven´t seen David and Brian is in Quito - maybe on his way to Greece if things worked out for him.
Anyway, because I am at an internet cafe, I can´t post pictures and I can´t write more about our impressions of this part of Ecuador or more detailed accounts/stories of the last few weeks. I will say that one night in Canoa I distinctly remember (but only because I wrote it down) Chris (one of Brian´s friends from the States who was visiting) saying, ¨I wouldn´t mind seeing if that guy has anything else besides corn.¨ The possibilities of what happened before and what could happen after someone forms a sentence like that are endless.
So to conclude, we are safe, mostly-happy, and outwardly healthy. The next few days may have us going to Puerto Lopez to get on a whale watching tour, paddling a canoe up the Rio Chone to the Isla Corazon to look at some mating frigate birds, driving up the coast to Jama to look at the property that is for sale, or just hanging out drinking cuba libres on the beach. We haven´t really made a decision yet.
The farm visit lived up to expectations. Maya and Jonah enjoyed feeding the pigs (pigs really do eat anything), milking the cow, riding the horses, gathering eggs (well, gathering the one egg that a hen left in the saw dust box by the toilet every morning) and being allowed to go to bed without a shower every night. They also enjoyed crying a fair amount and being carried everywhere they went.
On Friday, Jonah turned three and the ladies who cook at the farm prepared a great lemon cake with chocolate icing. It was decorated with these big fancy red flowers (that you could eat!) and Jonah was pretty much speechless. Though he did manage to blow out the one candle stuck in the cake pretty easily.
So, now we find ourselves back in Canoa after spending a week here before going to the farm, trying to figure out what to do for the last few days of vacation before we return to Quito on Thursday and to Virginia on Saturday.
Canoa, as a beach desitination, did not look promising when we set out to get here from Manta a few weeks ago. The taxi ride from Manta to Bahia was alternatively through banana/rice farms and mountainous desert several miles inland from the coast. The mostly paved, heavily potholed road was littered with piles of trash on either side and passed through hot, dusty villages where the people seem to make trade in loitering and selling coconuts to each other. Each time we managed to successfully pass a slow-moving truck or bus without being crushed by oncoming slow moving trucks or buses, our taxi driver would give me a thumbs-up. We liked him. We got his number so he can drive us back to Manta from where ever we are on Thursday for our flight to Quito.
As we approached Bahia, advertised as an eco-city and stopping point for many a rich, yankee yacht-owner, the piles of trash got higher, but the road did widen to two lanes. We took a panga across the bay to San Vicente (a panga is a wider, smellier version of a canoe. Until the bridge that is under construction is completed, panga is the only way across. I don´t know why it took until 2008 to begin building a bridge. I guess the car ferry was working so well, they figured, what the heck to we need a bridge for) and then hopped a taxi for the final 15 or so miles to Canoa.
Finally, as we approached Canoa along a mostly smooth road that paralleled the beach, things came into a better view. Here and there some nice looking habitaciones dotted the landscape, and the beach was a wide, undeveloped, masterpiece of sand and waves.
When we turned off the main road, we crossed three unpaved roads and dead-ended in the beach, and our hotel - Posada Olmito (I´d link the hotel website, but Rebecca said it sucks.)
I met an American shortly before we left Quito who had spent some time in Canoa a year ago. He described where the town ended (at the Coco-Loco hotel/restaurant) and was sure that it would be developed quite a bit to the South from there already. Turns out that the town has developed by about two more blocks - including the Posada Olmito. In a town that runs four or five blocks north to south, two blocks is quite a bit.
But still, the development is light years behind the over-development common to East Coast beach towns. Canoa is basically a main street that fronts the beach. It´s lined with ¨hotels¨, restaurants, shops, and bars. Only as you move further south do the places start to get taller than two stories. Most of the places have names like The Bamboo, The Surf Shak, Casa del Mar, Playa Bar, etc. etc. During the week the main occupants in town are gringo-surfer types. During weekends town fills up with Ecuatoriano´s down from Quito, mostly, for the weekend.
The beach is about a football fields length from road to ocean. It´s clean and safe and swimmable at low or high tide. In the morning, the fisherman come in with their haul of lobsters, crabs, and various fish (including baby hammerhead sharks!). We brought five lobsters (about 4 to 6 inches in length each) and two enormous crabs that we are having the lady who does it all at the hotel cook up for us tonight. She cooked us some lobsters when we were here a few weeks ago and it turned out pretty awesome - thus, the repeat performance.
Posada Olmito is owned by a Dutch guy that has been in South America for decades. The hotel is simply designed - eight or ten rooms on two stories around a central, sand courtyard. There are privtae or shared baths and showers. We got a private bath, but I end up taking all my showers in the public ones to keep sand out of our room, which turns out to be impossible anyway. I´ve never seen Rebecca with a broom in her hand so often.
Anyway, the hotel is a very friendly place - we basically treat it like home. We leave the kids playing there when they don´t want to cross the street to come to the beach with us. I walk behind the front desk to get whatever I want - which is mostly beer from the refrigerator. thw owner writes down our tab and then tears it up when we´re done for the night. It´s that kind of place.
Canoa is that kind of place. It´s the kind of place that when I was younger, I might wake up hung over five out of seven mornings a week. As it is, we´ve settled into a pretty easy routine of waking up, buying some hot bread from the guy that rides his bicycle around town tooting his horn to let us know he has fresh bread. We can lean out the window to our room and he´ll toss it up for us. Then we head to the beach until the breakfast places open up. After breakfast, we head back to the beach until noon-ish. Then we eat lunch. When the sun is out it can get pretty hot, so after lunch we tend to hide in the shade for a few hours until it´s time to go back to the beach to make a bonfire and have rum and cokes before dinner. Yesterday we shared our bottle with a few Ecuatorian women that happened by. It turned out to be great fun - though at two p.m. my head is still a bit sore.
Jonah has been totally into fires lately. He´ll carry a stick that he finds on the ground around for hours until we build a fire so he can throw it in.
Because the beach is beautiful, safe, and further development is coming, we have considered the place as an investment opportunity. Some local was dangling a beach-front, two-cabana property a few kilometers north of here in front of us for $40,000. It´s fun to think about, but we probably won´t do anything.
We did met a few americans here that we have also been sharing bottles and stories with. One guy, David, is mostly retired and owns property (he built a house here in Canoa on one lot and grows trees on his other lot, a few kilometers up into the hills), the other guy, Brian, is a pilot and has been here about two years. Since we got back here, we haven´t seen David and Brian is in Quito - maybe on his way to Greece if things worked out for him.
Anyway, because I am at an internet cafe, I can´t post pictures and I can´t write more about our impressions of this part of Ecuador or more detailed accounts/stories of the last few weeks. I will say that one night in Canoa I distinctly remember (but only because I wrote it down) Chris (one of Brian´s friends from the States who was visiting) saying, ¨I wouldn´t mind seeing if that guy has anything else besides corn.¨ The possibilities of what happened before and what could happen after someone forms a sentence like that are endless.
So to conclude, we are safe, mostly-happy, and outwardly healthy. The next few days may have us going to Puerto Lopez to get on a whale watching tour, paddling a canoe up the Rio Chone to the Isla Corazon to look at some mating frigate birds, driving up the coast to Jama to look at the property that is for sale, or just hanging out drinking cuba libres on the beach. We haven´t really made a decision yet.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Finally Shorts!
From Guest Blogger, Rebecca:
We arrived in Canoa on Tuesday, after a blissfully hassle-free trip from Quito. Rather than opt for the 12-hour overnight bus ride to paradise, we hopped on a 30-minute flight from Quito to the coast. All flights should be so short. It´s not that this country is so big, but that the roads are generally pretty poor and there are mountains bisecting it, making road travel unbelievably time consuming. With 2 kids, our days of roughing it on day-long buses is sort of out of the picture.
The weather here is perfect and I am thrilled to put on shorts for the first time this whole summer! We´re staying at a really cool beach-side hotel. The common areas are sand and the kids love playing there. It´s a new and small place, so very homey. There´s no restaurant, but this morning the manager of the place bought $8 worth of lobsters (about 8 of them!) and will cook them up for us for dinner!
Though it´s summer high season in Ecuador right now, Canoa is relatively quiet. The waves are supposedly good for surfing, so there are quite a few surfers around and a handful of travelers, but nothing like what a US beach looks like on any summer weekend. It´s nice and tranquilo.
I´m trying to post some pictures, but this connection is pretty poor and it´s not cooperating. I´ll try again later and leave the longer descriptions to Paul. I think he plans to visit the internet cafe one of these evenings when I´m getting the kids to sleep.
We arrived in Canoa on Tuesday, after a blissfully hassle-free trip from Quito. Rather than opt for the 12-hour overnight bus ride to paradise, we hopped on a 30-minute flight from Quito to the coast. All flights should be so short. It´s not that this country is so big, but that the roads are generally pretty poor and there are mountains bisecting it, making road travel unbelievably time consuming. With 2 kids, our days of roughing it on day-long buses is sort of out of the picture.
The weather here is perfect and I am thrilled to put on shorts for the first time this whole summer! We´re staying at a really cool beach-side hotel. The common areas are sand and the kids love playing there. It´s a new and small place, so very homey. There´s no restaurant, but this morning the manager of the place bought $8 worth of lobsters (about 8 of them!) and will cook them up for us for dinner!
Though it´s summer high season in Ecuador right now, Canoa is relatively quiet. The waves are supposedly good for surfing, so there are quite a few surfers around and a handful of travelers, but nothing like what a US beach looks like on any summer weekend. It´s nice and tranquilo.
I´m trying to post some pictures, but this connection is pretty poor and it´s not cooperating. I´ll try again later and leave the longer descriptions to Paul. I think he plans to visit the internet cafe one of these evenings when I´m getting the kids to sleep.
Monday, August 11, 2008
A Dinner Party and a Birthday Party
Before I get to a brief (I promise!) description of Maya and Jonah's last day at school, I have a follow-up observation to raise regarding our jungle trip. Mosquitoes did not seem to be a problem to us when we were there. Oh sure, we saw some, especially on the jungle walk. But they were not the pesky varmints I am familiar with from Virginia. In fact, we thought we'd come through the jungle mostly unscathed.
But whoa-nellly. Apparently, bites from a jungle mosquito, due to some freak Darwinian evolutionary twist, only become itchy and obnoxious days after the fact. We (Rebecca and I) are now discovering bites where we didn't believe we had any. And even in places where we were mostly covered by clothes. My ass looks like a dozen mosquitoes ran a track meet on it.
See, the city mosquito can afford to have its bite itch immediately because as soon as you shoe it away, some other sucker comes along to take your place. With the abundance of ample flesh, the city mosquito has become lazy. It's forgotten where it came from.
But since jungle mosquitoes don't see a lot of people, they have to be alert and stealthy enough to chew on the few that they do see as much as possible without being discovered and squashed. So, they have developed a magic bite that doesn't appear or itch until a day or two after they've hosted a dinner party on your back.
And man, when they itch, they itch. But, the amazing thing, the thing that makes me feel one with nature, is recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the mosquito and the piranha. I couldn't jump in the Cuyabeno River now. With all my bleeding mosquito bites, the piranhas would rip me to shreds.
So, the Monday before we left for the jungle (that's a week ago today) Maya and Jonah hosted a party for their last day of school. Since Jonah knows that his birthday is coming up (August 22), he somehow got it into his head that the "going away" party at the school was his birthday party. Since it was so cute to see him excited about it, we played along.
On the Saturday before the party, he and I went to pick out a pinata. He's been really into playing with toy cars lately, and I thought he might pick out a car. But he stayed true to his first love - he picked a ball.
Then, we got some gumballs, candy bars, and individual serving size bags of peanuts to put inside the thing. We had a fun time stuffing it when we got home.
And of course, the kids had a fun time when it was busted open and the candy spilled out.
We also ate some ice cream sandwiches. Jonah didn't seem to care that we didn't sing happy birthday and that he didn't get any presents.
But whoa-nellly. Apparently, bites from a jungle mosquito, due to some freak Darwinian evolutionary twist, only become itchy and obnoxious days after the fact. We (Rebecca and I) are now discovering bites where we didn't believe we had any. And even in places where we were mostly covered by clothes. My ass looks like a dozen mosquitoes ran a track meet on it.
See, the city mosquito can afford to have its bite itch immediately because as soon as you shoe it away, some other sucker comes along to take your place. With the abundance of ample flesh, the city mosquito has become lazy. It's forgotten where it came from.
But since jungle mosquitoes don't see a lot of people, they have to be alert and stealthy enough to chew on the few that they do see as much as possible without being discovered and squashed. So, they have developed a magic bite that doesn't appear or itch until a day or two after they've hosted a dinner party on your back.
And man, when they itch, they itch. But, the amazing thing, the thing that makes me feel one with nature, is recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the mosquito and the piranha. I couldn't jump in the Cuyabeno River now. With all my bleeding mosquito bites, the piranhas would rip me to shreds.
So, the Monday before we left for the jungle (that's a week ago today) Maya and Jonah hosted a party for their last day of school. Since Jonah knows that his birthday is coming up (August 22), he somehow got it into his head that the "going away" party at the school was his birthday party. Since it was so cute to see him excited about it, we played along.
On the Saturday before the party, he and I went to pick out a pinata. He's been really into playing with toy cars lately, and I thought he might pick out a car. But he stayed true to his first love - he picked a ball.
Then, we got some gumballs, candy bars, and individual serving size bags of peanuts to put inside the thing. We had a fun time stuffing it when we got home.
And of course, the kids had a fun time when it was busted open and the candy spilled out.
We also ate some ice cream sandwiches. Jonah didn't seem to care that we didn't sing happy birthday and that he didn't get any presents.
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