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!

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.